By: George Noga – April 1, 2014
You believe you know all the ObamaCare horror stories? You know the lies about keeping your doctor and health plan; you know about the millions of cancelled plans and the illegal extensions. You know about the website disaster and the much higher premiums, deductibles and copays. You know about all the political payoffs to labor unions and about the 29ers and 49ers.. You know high-end medical facilities such as Mayo are now off limits. You know you have much fewer choices of physicians and hospitals. You know about the coming doctor shortage, rationing and death panels.
If you know all that, you still don’t know the biggest April Fool of them all; in fact, you don’t know either of the two biggest ObamaCare surprises. In the run up to the law we incessantly heard about the 40+ million uninsured and how disgraceful this was for Amrica. Obama said: “I’m not going to walk away from 40 million Americans who can get health insurance for the first time.” ObamaCare was sold primarily so that the uninsured could get coverage. The dirty secret is ObamaCare never was about providing coverage to the uninsured; instead, it was about changing Americans’ private insurance plans into government plans.
“ObamaCare’s goal was not to insure the uninsured but to shift Americans from owning private insurance plans into becoming dependent on government plans.”
The numbers bear this out. Pre ObamaCare, the 48 million uninsured number always was a known red herring. From 10-15 million already were eligible for public plans; 9-12 million were illegal aliens; 17-29 million earned enough to buy insurance but freely chose not to; and 4 million were without insurance only temporarily. Bottom line: when using reasonable midpoint estimates for the above data, only 5 to 10 million Americans were involuntarily without health insurance. Now, let’s fast forward to 2014 and ObamaCare and see what has changed.
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Only about 10% who bought through exchanges were previously uninsured.
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Up to 80% who signed up with exchanges shifted from private plans to public subsidies.
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60% of those who signed up for Medicaid were already eligible.
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Illegal aliens remain ineligible for ObamaCare just as before its passage.
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The 17-29 million Americans (mostly young males) who previously chose not to buy insurance are less likely to buy now that they are required to subsidize everyone else.
When all the data become known, we still will have 40 million uninsured Americans – about the same number as before ObamaCare. This is not an accident and was well understood beforehand. ObamaCare never was about insuring the uninsured, it was about shifting private insurance to government programs. There you have it; you once again have been hoodwinked and bamboozled. This April Fool is no joke and it is on you. Where are all my liberal friends who were bleating about helping the poor and uninsured? When the piper plays; they dance.
“ObamaCare is dividing Americans into 3 distinct cohorts. One-third will be dependent on Medicaid (ugh!); the middle cohort will have fewer and much less desirable choices; the top group will enjoy top-tier concierge services.”
I wrote supra there is a second surprise, i.e. ObamaCare is carving up Americans into three distinct segments each of which will receive widely different care. The bottom third will be on Medicaid and dependent on government programs with little choice of doctor or hospital; they will receive substandard and indifferent care. The middle cohort of Americans will muddle through with costly plans that exclude the best physicians, hospitals and facilities; they will experience lengthy waits and rationing. Surprise: the top 10% to 20% of Americans will receive concierge medical care and continue to have the best of everything America offers.
ObamaCare is a naked lie. It was sold to us as compassionate to insure more Americans; it doesn’t accomplish that because there weren’t but 5-10 million involuntarily uninsured Americans to begin with. Instead, its goal is to move everyone into government care and in the process it cruelly divides us into three groups – each with vastly different standards of care.