Obamacare supporters shocked to discover tooth fairy isn’t real
And there are no unicorns involved, either.
I’m sorry that Obamacare supporter Cathy Wagner’s premiums have risen so much. But what did she think would happen, if pre-existing conditions were now required to be covered, and extras like maternity benefits became mandatory?
Wagner herself seems to at least understand a little bit about the way the insurance business works, because she’s quoted as saying, “The whole plan was to get everyone enrolled so there’s a larger risk pool and our costs go down.” The article doesn’t give Wagner’s age, but since it does say she took early retirement my guess is that she’s somewhere in her 50s. She is correct that the young were expected to enroll and make the premiums for the older relatively lower (and for the younger relatively higher; did she factor that in?). But the increased benefits for all had a good chance of offsetting that gain, even for the older enrollees. Plus, premiums for the first year of operation are based only on estimates rather than actual enrollment—which probably turns out to be fortunate for Wagner, considering the fact that (at least so far), the young are barely enrolling at all and if this continues it could well precipitate a steep rise in future premium levels.
Oops. And yet that last phenomenon, that of the young and healthy giving Obamacare a pass, was always a good bet and in fact was predicted by most of the right. All it took was one look at the toothless penalties to know that only the old and the young and sick were likely to be enticed into this endeavor, not the young and healthy.
And yet Wagner was hardly alone in feeling “so hopeful that this plan was going to move us forward.” Nor is she alone in now saying, “in fact I think it’s moving us backward.” The puzzlement is not why she now thinks the latter, it’s why she ever thought the former.
I have become convinced that a large number of people never understood what Obamacare entailed. Some people just weren’t paying attention, although Wagner does not appear to have been among them. For some who were paying at least some attention, their ignorance may have been in part because the facts weren’t all that easy to come by, between the secrecy and the speed with which the bill was passed, plus the bill’s length and the purposely misleading claptrap put out by the administration and the Democrats and much of the press about it.
But for others, even though they knew the main facts, they did not understand their possible significance for the future, either because they are math-challenged or logic-challenged, or wanted so desperately to believe in Obamacare, or some combination of the three.
I have also become convinced that very few people in America really understand the basic principles of the insurance business. They do not understand the concept of risk. They believe the liberal propaganda that insurance companies are just plain mean to charge the sick more for health coverage, for example. They believe that insurance company profits are way out of line with other industries.
They believed Obamacare would stop all that and replace it with a “fairer” system. And they believed in unicorns.
“The whole plan was to get everyone enrolled so there’s a larger risk pool and our costs go down.”
This was the first fundamentally incorrect premise in the Progressive health care plan. The assumption was that all of those 40+million Americans without healthcare really wanted it but were either denied or prohibited from getting it by the evil private insurance industry (you know, pre-existing conditions and all).
One of the arguments made against blanket health care was that many of those without it were without it by choice. Now, the dearth of younger people enrolling evinces that latter claim. Furthermore, since Obamacare stakes its very existence on younger Americans signing up, it was a stroke of brilliance to pass legislation to allow young people to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26.
People say the Republicans are the dumb party (and they oftentimes are) but I’m beginning to see that they don’t “hold a candle” to the Progressive Dems who have hoisted themselves with petard after petard of their own making. Without a supine press, this Marxist comedy of errors would have ceased to exist decades ago.
All of the Lefty Useful Idiots, every one, live in a fairy tale world, with mean old Republican trolls,and sweet little Democrat Billy Goats Gruff. Even now, they are blaming insurance companies and Republicans that 2+2 still =4.
In a small way, I do blame our side, but only in the sense that I blame myself for not locking the car, which was then burglarized. We knew, but we did not act, even when we had the majorities. Yes, I realize that Democrats would have blocked reform efforts, because the situation that we had was just what they needed, to make it possible to get the ultimate control that they so passionately wanted. However, feckless Republicans allowed themselves to be blocked from serious and productive action. They could have passed a bill allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. They could have expanded Health Savings Accounts, which would have been coupled with high-deductible policies, as the HSA’s grew to cover a higher and higher portion of the total bill. This would have allowed more market forces to work in health care, and that would have brought down costs. Enough? We’ll never know, but it would be nice to find out, and then go from there. They could have even spent some more money on Alzheimer’s research, not as much per patient as they spent on AIDS, of course, but more, and, bringing down the total national spending on caring for patients with that one illness would have made a huge impact. A genuine Republican party could go a long way toward solving many of our problems, which is why the Left fights so hard, and so dirty, to prevent one from developing. TEA parties? Sarah Palin? You betcha! The Left hates them, and with very good reason.
Michael Adams:
I agree that Republicans squandered their opportunity. They were too busy pretending to be Democrats and passing Medicare Part D, as well as being very focused on the war on terror and the Afghan and then Iraqi wars. Domestic issues in general were taking a back seat during those years. But still, I agree that they missed a golden opportunity and should have known if they didn’t fix things the Democrats would “fix” them when they got a chance.
My first reaction was to despair of making any progress given that so many of our fellow citizens believe in the “tooth fairy.” But then I remembered that this Obamacare rubbish was never popular, typically polling something like 60-40 against, I believe, before the bill was passed and pretty much ever since.
So there’s some common sense to work with out there. But then again, a big chunk of that 60% against Obamacare turned right around and voted for King Barack and enough Dems to hold the Senate and prevent this thing from being undone.
I think the main problem is that health care has been caught up in the political game since at least Nixon’s presidency, when he proposed health care reform and he and Ted Kennedy almost came to an agreement about it:
Then things went quiet until Hillarycare. Then Medicare Part D, which only just squeaked by — the vote was 216 to 215, with only 9 Dems voting “aye”. The Democrats should have embraced it because it was in line with their ideas, but they were what, “obstructionists”?
As I have pointed out before, health is a personal condition, not a commodity or service you can buy, so you can’t buy health insurance and health care. They are fictions like unicorns and fairies. Obama convinced a lot of people that someone else would pay their doctor bill. They truly believe there really is a free lunch that they can vote for and the government will provide it. It’s all part of Obama’s stash.
The blame lies with Medicare as it created a system that would pay for everything because cost was never a consideration. It was buy now, pay later. Now the chickens come home to roost as eventually the piper will be paid or the whole thing falls apart. I suppose it’s possible that if we somehow convert to a true free market in healthcare we can continue with dramatic improvements but the expense will have to be paid by those willing and able to so do. New, expensive innovations can continue and eventually competition and technological advances will bring the price down. It’s too bad people don’t understand economic facts. There is no free llunch. Conversely, we likely have gained a real benefit from delaying payment for the system. We likely would not have come as far as we have with healthcare advances if payment was not delayed.
A Doctor explains:
If the criminal Bush wasn’t worried about starting two illegal wars and making sure Halliburton and Big Oil stock prices stayed high, he would have Ben forced to deal with the millions of women, children, minorities, and gays that were denied health coverage. Every time someone would ask about why people were denied health care, Bush would change the subject and complain that “honer-sexuals” wanted to get married and how the Mooooslims wanted to kill us. Bush belongs in jail for what he did to the people of this country, and I am sick of people racially-slurring Obama because he wants to give health care to all.
Brian G:
Yes, of course, we are all rampant racists here because there could be no reason other than racism for slandering the obviously-perfect perfection of President Obama.
And I want to thank you for coming here and so perfectly demonstrating what all too often passes for reason and discourse on your side.
Wow, Brian G. can still talk like this 5 horrid years into the obama regime, even after Obama is on tape lying to the American people and covering his lies with more lies. Not only lies about obamacare but Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS scandal and on and on.
Obama does not want to give heathcare to all, just hell to all.
I miss Bush.
People do NOT “racially slur Obama because he wants to give health care to all”.
-1- The reason the vast majority of Obama critics dislike him has nothing to do with his race.
-2- If there were infinite resources in this world, *I* want to give health care to all. Got that? So does neo. So, even, does Brian G. But once we awaken to the *inconvenient* *truth* that our resources are finite, we’ve got a problem on our hands — even Brian G.
-3- Do you, Brian G., want to give health care to all? You are perfectly free to pay for it yourself. Ohhh, you mean *Obama* wants to give health care to all? Then *he* is perfectly free to pay for it *him*self. Ohhh, he isn’t going to do that? He’s not going pay for health care for all, he’s not going to fill everyone’s car with gasoline? Well, who’s gonna?? Ohhh, the rich and the eeeevil insurance companies. Why didn’tcha say so? Hmmm, the rich can “vote” with their feet — there comes a point when “the rich” won’t stand for any more of their assets to be forcibly confiscated, and besides, who’ll be around to finance Obama’s and Reid’s and Schumer’s and Pelosi’s campaigns? Hmmm, the insurance companies? They’ll happily take their marbles and go home — and who would blame them? Even if they’re eeeevil, who’s gonna stand around and suffer loss after loss? Who’s gonna be left, Brian G.?
Looks like you’re gonna hafta make good on your offer. Ohhh, it was Obama’s offer, not yours. I get it. OPM (Other People’s Money). OPM runs out eventually. I know, we’ll soak our children and their children. But that’s finite, too.
I GOT IT!! The tooth fairy will finance it. (Now Brian G. will be in his element.)
I agree Ray.
Krauthammer appeared on the Jon Stewart show and extolled the benefits of the welfare state, namely, social security. I don’t know where he places food stamps, fraud, and the 1000 other aid programs. But according to him, everyone is now in agreement regarding Social Security.
Oh really. For how long?
The distinction to determine what government is proper for is that word “personal.” Is transportation personal? How do you build your own highway? Is a military personal? How do you build your own military? Is a police/fire force personal? Is the regulation of commerce personal? How do you regulate commerce?
Teaching? Is teaching your children personal?
No. Retirement (Social Security), health (Obamacare), home (ACORN) your job (unions): these are personal things which if you lack and think the solution is someone else (the government) should provide them, then you are a thief.
I lived with single payer health care for 21 years, during my time in the Navy. All military doctors are salaried, work a 40 hour week (except those in combat zones), and are relieved of responsibility for results. They have done wonderful things in developing combat medicine, but once you get away from the battlefield and into routine care, the quality declines. It was bad enough that my wife and I used civilian doctors for my wife and children’s health needs, paying out of pocket for better quality care. It wasn’t easy on my pay, but it was important to us. Being in the military, it was frowned on for me to use civilian care. So I was forced to endure it. I could bore you with my horror stories of botched procedures, desultory attention to detail, and poor consideration of the patients. On two occasions during my career, during relatively routine procedures, things went wrong because of lack of attention to detail. As a result I am very picky about who I let doctor me now.
People who think universal government healthcare would be just ducky, should talk to some of the people who have experienced military or VA care. It’s better than nothing, but doesn’t hold a candle to what we have in the private practice model.
kmj’s statement from a doctor also explains a lot about why our private system has become so expensive. We have a very expensive, extensive infrastructure in place to deal with medical emergencies. It has saved lives, but it costs a bundle. In addition, the fear of malpractice suits has created a model in which doctors are over-testing and over-treating, which further drives up costs. It will be hard to change the model unless the money dries up. With Obamacare taking more out of people’s pockets and deductibles rising, it is like a massive tax increase on health care consumers. That may lead to an even greater economic squeeze and a further faltering of the economy. It’s a Mongolian cluster**k so far.
I’m pretty sure Brian G is joshing, pretending to be a liberal.
Richard Aubrey:
I suppose it’s possible. But this is the first time “Brian G” has ever commented here, so it would be an odd way to start.
I’m not sorry for Cathy. She deserves every bad thing (of this sort) that happens to her and much much more! May she only be seeing the beginning of her Obama=induced suffering! I hope she is brought lower than low.
The problem is that the rest of us are going to get what this rotten person deserves since she voted for it. Therefore, she is also a victimizer. Where do we go for reparations from these people?
Mike, 8:07 pm — “I’m not sorry for Cathy. She deserves every bad thing (of this sort) that happens to her and much much more!”
Hey, I got an idea: we grant a universal and permanent waiver from the ACA health care monster for everyone *except* registered Democrats. Easy-peasy to do, just go to the voter rolls. We make it easy for those registered as green, or socialist worker, or communist, or those types, to sign up, with direct mail and e-mail invitations. (I don’t have a way yet to publicize those who decline the invitation without violating privacy laws. Help me out, will ya?)
Then, *ev’ryone* will be happy! . . . . . . . Right?
They believe the liberal propaganda
That’s it in a nutshell.
People need to get burned in order to learn a lesson. In this circumstance, it is entirely moral to wish people like Cathy Wagner get burned because it is reality doing the burning, not us.
In the Old Testament, people got punished by God for being wicked. Now, they get punished by reality (and the laws of economics) for being stupid and/or gullible.
Matt_SE, I think Kipling put it best in his oft-cited poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”:
“Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.”
One friend tried out the Berkeley benefits calculator and plugged in a salary of $85,000 and no employer insurance.
The calculator told her that her premiums would be $0.00. That’s right, zero dollars. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Another friend I saw tonight said an acquaintance of hers, a liberal asshat with a trust fund and a million-dollar apartment in NYC, and a “fun” job as an adjunct lecturer at a college, was crowing that she’ll only have to pay $91/month for her premium, and that it even includes her gym membership!
Until she found out that NONE of her doctors will accept it, NONE of the top Manhattan hospitals will take it, and it does NOT pay for her gym, but for another one she doesn’t like.
She’s baffled and is now whining that it’s going to have to be “fixed.” That, of course, will happen courtesy of the working American taxpayers. She has no scruples about taking other people’s money to pay for her stuff, and brags about her Communist (literally) parents.
Brian G. is actually putting us on, I am quite convinced.
No one that utterly obtuse could possibly be able to manipulate a keyboard.
(But they can manipulate voting machines, I am beyond sorry to say.)
Oh, and to the visiting troll — Obama’s race, ironically, is the ONLY thing that’s protecting him from being run out of town on a rail.
But thank you for playing.
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How about I point a gun at your head and say you need to invest in my business in order to redistribute the risk and lower the individual costs? That would be about as ethical as what they are doing now, to us.
“She is correct that the young were expected to enroll and make the premiums for the older relatively lower (and for the younger relatively higher; did she factor that in?). “
Because it’s not enough that those younger working people are paying for social security for the elderly even though there’s no guarantee that those younger working people will benefit from social security. They are being counted on to forcibly, not only help pay for medicaid for the elderly as they have been all along, but for the health insurance plans for everyone who is chronically ill or elderly.
Now explain to me again how this administration and any other supporter of said administration care so deeply for the youth and the middle class who are most negatively affected by their “caring”.
When Ms Wagner notes: “The whole plan was to get everyone enrolled so there’s a larger risk pool and our costs go down.”
With the emphasis on “our”, she means her and people her age. She doesn’t seem to have given a thought to the notion that forcing people to enroll in something they don’t want is the cornerstone of the plan. Or if she did think about it, she didn’t care.
In my mind, that is the key point to take away – she fully understood the basic premise of insurance, but has no problem with forcing others to subsidize her benefits, whether they want to or not. As long as she gets hers, she was more than happy to place her trust in the government to take care of this personal desire.
This is an attitude I hear expressed by a lot of elderly people, right or wrong; including my elderly relatives, who believe they’ve “paid into the system” whatever that means, and it’s everyone’s turn to provide them with healthcare and benefits from 67 until 97.
It might just be me, but as a society, we seem to have lost our way – we are entitled to what we earn and what we pay for, not entitled to what our children and grandchildren earn. We can raise our children to take care of us when we’re old, but we should not demand it by political force. I guess it’s the sense of entitlement that bothers me. We should be willing and able to make sacrifices in the present, so that we can take care of each other and not EXPECT future generations to pay for our welfare today, or our society will wither up and die.
To Oysteria – I’ve been working for a long time and approaching the age where I could apply for SS. However, I doubt that I’ll get much and I’ll have to rely on my savings to survive. But I planned for that situation.
On the other hand, there is a good possibility that once on Medicare, I will be denied life-saving care since I am no longer an “productive” part of society – ie I am not paying into the social security and medicare funds.
I remember that Bush lost a lot of “political capital” in the year after his reelection since he tried to make a change in the social security rules to allow a small portion of the employee’s portion of the soc sec tax be placed in a self directed investment fund. This would have been voluntary, not required. So, reform was suggested, but rejected by many.
On another topic – has anyone seen how these subsidies are going to actually work?
For example, a policy prices out at $400 per month but with a subsidy the person has to pay $100. Does the person pay the $100 monthly or pay the $400 monthly with a rebate at tax time?
If the person pays the lower amount, how does the insurance company get the difference? They changed the rules so that a certain % has to be paid out for health care, so will there be a looming cash flow problem for the insurance companies?
And, what happens at tax time when the person is suddenly over the subsidy threshhold – do they pay it all back with penalty and interest?
If the person has to pay out the higher rate as well as the higher deductuble & maximum out of pocket expenses, how are they going to live on what is remaining?
I am starting to see some articles on the potential effect on consumer spending and the impact on businesses everywhere.
The thing about a media that is so uncompromisingly in the bag for the Obama presidency and administration is that people who rely wholly on that media are completely ignorant of what is coming their way.
The warnings were ignored by a Democrat leaning press. Fox News is automatically dismissed as The Stoopid and devoted followers ignored anything that contradicted Dear Leader’s promises, clearly it’s all some sort of Fox News conspiracy. So the devoted followers, the media, and low info voters never heard anything the right had to say about the Affordable Care Act.
Now Obama devotees are stumbling around in shock, and the people on the right are thunderstruck at their stupidity and naiveté. Haven’t they been LISTENING to anything we’ve been saying for the past five years?
Of course the answer is no. They haven’t been listening because they didn’t hear the warnings. The leftist media ignored them. The devoted followers dismissed them.
It’s a giant, circular mess.
liz:
I’m doing this from memory (don’t have the time at the moment to find the source), but people can get the subsidies paid to the insurance company each month, and only have to pay their own share each month.
However, if a person is self-employed and has underestimated his/her income for the coming year, and on the basis of that has gotten a larger subsidy than he/she turns out to have actually been eligible for, he/she must pay it back. What’s more, it works in reverse, too. If a person overestimates income for the year and overpays, he/she will get a refund.
It’s a horrible accounting mess, just on that level alone. And there’s more—if the insurance companies don’t give out the correct, mandated percentage of the money in premiums (I forget what the percentage is), then the insurance company must give people a refund.
southpaw:
The system the elderly have paid into is the system of payroll taxes and/or the self-employment tax, which funds (at least in part) both Social Security payments and Medicare (Medicare parts B and D also involve monthly payments after the age of 65; they are subsidized, but they are most definitely not free even at that point).
A person is not eligible for free Part A unless they have a certain number of years of these taxes. I assume that’s what your elderly relatives mean. At least, it was the original concept. These days the money they actually paid is probably long gone, to support other people’s Medicare and Social Security, but the concept is that you don’t get these things unless you paid in for a certain period. For some people, that payment can be quite a large amount over their working lives.
This explains the basic way Medicare is funded (see also this). For years Medicare has also taken funds from other tax monies as well, but the basis of the funding was the payroll and self-employment taxes.
What is sad is that the seeds of our destruction were sown with FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare. These fairy tales bought comfort to generations at the now astronomical cost of $90 trillion in liabilities. Many that created this mess lived their entire lives in blissful indifference as long as they got theirs. Our imminent collapse was created by these selfish Democrat true believers and now Obama is finishing it off.
Those who do not believe in personal or authoritarian ethics, will be put up against the wall and shot.
I’ll be giving the slow golf clap when the Left disposes of useless tools like Brian here, come the Day.
It’s better than nothing, but doesn’t hold a candle to what we have in the private practice model.
The same is true of Hand to Hand fighting techniques or open handed lethal force applications. The civilian sector has better instruction materials.
The common sense expectation is that soldiers are better trained, given they are pros and got nothing better to do. Common sense, as usual, is retarded in a sense.
An Army soldier spends the vast majority of their time honing their physical stamina, learning to accept and obey orders immediately, and practicing various maneuvers designed to accommodate a high tech “battlespace”. They are trained and conditioned to be unable to pull the trigger unless a command is given from a duly authorized commander. Individual thought and free form expression starts bifurcating the longer someone is in the military, to an extent, but the newbies are still conditioned iron hard. Except for some strange fruits and individuals that have their own sense of identity that boot camp didn’t break down.
Being able to think for yourself and pull the trigger for your own private reasons, is considered dangerous by society. But an individual is not an “individual” until they can mature to that point. Civilians operate under a different set of RoE, which in some cases is more and less restrictive than military or police ROE. But what it all comes down to it is, lethal force applications cannot have the accountability “redistributed” such as in SWAT teams or military teamwork.
Individual civilians must learn methods to deal with the crushing weight of responsibility for determining for themselves who needs to die or who needs to live. Combined with certain non strength based fighting systems, that has the potential to produce some interesting evolutionary combinations.
Are Americans so economically stupid that they didn’t understand that to add 12, 30 or 48 million new people to the insurance rolls, depending on the time and person giving the number, with existing conditions not considered directly in the cost of policies, and many more benefits, that the cost for those paying had to rise. Meanwhile there is only one insurance pool which includes the aged and those with pre-existing conditions that insurance companies can use to set rates.
While I follow politics and government closely, I even missed the regs that caused the cancellations, er, lack of renewals that for millions were coming. And the Obama Administration shot itself in the foot with the earlier policy that allowed young adults being able to stay on their parents insurance so they don’t join the exchanges and based on the SCOTUS’s decision, the “tax” cannot be coercive or ObamaCare becomes unconstitutional (according to George Will).
The experts in the administration seem to be economically stupid too, unless this effort is to blame insurance companies in anticipation of a public demand for a single payer government program.
Neo — I understand the situation; I am a few years from retirement myself, and have paid more in taxes a year than I ever thought I would gross. I don’t expect to collect much on that “investment”. And like a number of people, I’m trying to plan for the inevitable “means testing”. I expect our politicians, with the full support of the electorate on both sides of the aisle, will eventually move to forego all SS payments for people with means until personal savings are exhausted. At that point, the politicians who seek to be re-elected and claim to be driven by fairness, will gamble that people like me will never collect what they paid into it, having drained their savings far into retirement. This will be popular with Dems and “moderate” Republicans, who will invoke a sense of fairness and compassion – but would never vote to give up their own pensions under the same sense of fairness.
Here’s one example of an entitlement expectation you may not be aware of: deceased government employees’ ex-spouses are entitled to their pensions if the employee never remarried. The pensions pay out at levels according to the employee’s highest yearly income. Now this law may not still be in effect, but I know of several people who have collected a nice income based on this for over 30 years. These yearly incomes not only exceed the pay of the persons who actually earned them, the duration of payout is as long, or longer than the original employees’ service. These folks fully expect to receive the payments and any other benefits earned by their ex-spouses.
But how did we get here, where we expect to get from others more than we paid oursevles, simply because we paid what we could? The government, whether intentionally or not, now rewards dependence and penalizes independence. Those who benefit from the policy feel justified to accept it because we did our best. It may be compassionate, it may even seem right, but it’s not sustainable, and it’s just another transfer of wealth from those who have it, from those who have yet to have it.
That this has become an expectation for so many retirees without actually considering that they may be expecting more than they ever contributed is bothersome. Obviously, nobody would want to yank the checks or healthcare from the elderly – I’m not advocating anything like that; but somewhere along the line it became an expecation that you could retire with nothing and expect something Fear of being old and penniless is strong motivation to either raise kids who like you, or plan ahead — if you take that motivaton away, you become Greece in two generations. That’s all i’m getting at.
Con artists look stupid, but only from a certain perspective.
What on earth makes you think the Repubicans or the Democrats want to make any changes? They are both getting what they want – more control. Single payer, government controlled healthcare is just around the corner.