Broken Promises: Obamacare, One Year Later, Worse Than Originally Projected

Recently the CBO came out with their report on Obamacare showing the Obama administration and the then Democratically controlled House and the still Democratically controlled Senate, severely miscalculated and underestimated the costs and deficit of Obamacare.

That CBO report got lost in the news as widespread reports of Japan's earthquake, Tsunami and subsequent nuclear problems dominated the news.

Reminder from my previous piece:

The CBO's bottom line from their website summary:

Compared with the Administration's estimates, CBO's estimates of the deficit under the President's budget are lower for 2011 (by $220 billion) but higher for each year thereafter (by a total of $2.3 trillion over the 2012–2021 period). That disparity stems from differences in the underlying projections of what would happen under current law ($1.3 trillion) as well as from differing assessments of the effects of the President's proposals ($1.0 trillion).

That was the initial, official bad news for Obamacare last week.

Today we see things are even worse as the Heritage org. details in full, the havoc Obamacare has wrought and the lack of benefit seen by it's passage.

Many of Obamacare’s key provisions—such as the creation of health insurance exchanges, costly subsidies to purchase coverage, the massive expansion of Medicaid, and the individual and employer mandates—do not take effect until 2014. However, several important provisions—such as minimum loss ratio regulations, the small-business health insurance tax credit, high-risk pools, and coverage mandates on insurance companies—have already taken effect. Obamacare has already added over 6,500 pages of regulations to the Federal Register. The Obama Administration has struggled to implement many of these regulations, and the number of waivers that exempt entities from complying with the law has passed 1,000 and is growing by the day.

Obamacare has increased government control of Americans’ health care choices, raised the cost of insurance, forced insurers to stop offering child-only policies, broken the promise that an individual can keep his insurance unaltered, and bailed out underfunded union early-retiree health care plans. The early results suggest that Obamacare’s “benefits” are not worth their costs.

They go through it item by item, covering Insurance Mandates, Child-Only Health Insurance, Annual Limits and Mini-Med Plans, Medical Loss Ratio Regulation, Multiple and Uncertain Requirements for Grandfathered Plans, “Free” Preventive Services, Reviews of “Unreasonable” Premium Increases, Early-Retiree Reinsurance Program, Creation of High-Risk Pools, Small-Business Health Tax Credit, HSA and FSA Restrictions, Medicare Beneficiary Drug Rebate and State Option to Expand Medicaid Coverage for Childless Adults.

The conclusion: Obamacare “Benefits” Are Too Costly to Continue

America urgently needs to reform health care, as increasing health care spending is consuming ever larger shares of household and government budgets. Obamacare falls short of genuine reform because its “benefits” will both increase the cost of private insurance and government spending on health care.[43]

Congress should repeal the government-centric Obamacare law and replace it with consumer-focused reforms and sensible changes in health care entitlement programs. America simply cannot afford Obamacare’s “benefits.”

Read the entire article .



Wall Street Journal points out that the cost of Obamacare has jumped by 8.6 percent in just the first year.

To wit, CBO says the entitlement’s health insurance subsidies will cost $1.13 trillion between 2012 and 2021, not $1.04 trillion, the prior estimate. This 8.6% jump is the result of revised assumptions, the so-called technical factors in CBO’s budget model. The bill’s total cost now stands at $1.445 trillion, according to another recent CBO estimate.

Remember that all of these are fictitious numbers that reflect Congressional gaming of CBO conventions to make it seem as if ObamaCare “saves” money. But now, even under these conventions, CBO is conceding that it significantly underestimated the bill’s cost. If the propeller heads decide to add a few more trillion dollars in new spending, they might get somewhat closer to the bill’s true cost.

According to the polling done over the last year since the passage of Obamacare, the average opposition is still over 50 percent.

Video below of Speaker of the House, John Boehner, speaking about Obamacare's "broken Promises"



Text provided by Speaker.gov.:

Speaker Boehner on One Year of Job-Crushing ObamaCare

“If there’s a constant in the story of ObamaCare, it’s broken promises.

“Instead of creating jobs, employers have been handed more uncertainty and more headaches. Instead of lower costs, families and small businesses are being squeezed even further. Instead of keeping what they like, millions are being forced off their coverage.

“For all that, a more fundamental promise was broken when this government takeover of health care was pushed through. That day, that week, the people said one thing, and their government did another. Yet the people, unfazed by Washington’s payoffs and backroom deals, kept speaking out as the law proved unpopular, unaffordable, and unconstitutional.

“In January, the House passed a measure, consistent with the will of the people, repealing the job-crushing health care law. The House has also voted to defund the law altogether. In the coming weeks, you’ll see more votes and more hearings in the House to take this law apart, step by step. That includes repealing the law’s mandatory spending slush funds. In short, we will do whatever we can to ensure ObamaCare is never fully implemented.

“Together, we can repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common-sense reforms that lower costs and protect American jobs.”

News also shows that in a desperate attempt to mask the new projected costs and deficits of Obamacare, the Obama administration has tasked 42 officials to attend events in 22 states to talk up Obamacare and try to "image-shape".

Any bets on them mentioning the facts and figures provided by the CBO, the 1,000+ waivers, the deficit projections, or the other myriad of "unintended consequences" we have seen over the last year?

It becomes one of those cases where politicians and their lackeys try to tell you to believe what they say, not your own eyes, believe their promises, not the actual figures, believe the hype, not the truth.

That has not worked in the full year since the passage of the law and I doubt Americans are going to fall for it now.

Meanwhile, I have said this before and it is worth repeating... Obamacare, can, should and will be a large factor in the 2012 elections and one that has not proven beneficial for Obamacare supporting politicians aka Democrats.




Related:

Health care law a bad prescription

ObamaCare and Carey's Heart

Price Predicts Court Will Kill Obamacare

Health care law breaks promises

Poll: One Year Later, Americans Still Hate Obamacare

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