Obamacare: A Deception - A Detailed Analysis - Paul Craig Roberts

Why Insurance Industry Support of Obamacare Will Be the Downfall of Insurance Companies
http://www.thedailybell.com/images/library/Hemera-m.jpgObamacare is law but that may not prevent health insurance companies from feeling considerable backlash as time goes on. This brings up questions not just about insurers’ profitability but the viability of the industry as a whole both from a professional and investment standpoint. This is something that has not been focused on much, but it should be.
Now insurers, behind the scenes, are throwing their considerable muscle toward getting Obamacare up and running. Bloomberg, for instance, tells us that “Insurers Oppose Obamacare Extension as Danger to Profits.” The article explains that “allowing Americans more time to enroll for health coverage under Obamacare may raise premiums and cut into profits.”
Extending the enrollment period would have a destabilizing effect on insurance markets,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the Washington-based lobbyist group American’s Health Insurance Plans.
Allowing younger, healthy Americans to sign up later, as they probably would, means less revenue for insurers counting on those premiums to help defray the cost of sicker customers, threatening industry profits. “If you can enroll at any point in the year, then you can just wait until you get sick,” Brian Wright, an analyst with Monness Crespi Hardt in New York, said in a telephone interview. “This isn’t the industry crying foul and exaggerating the issue, this is actually one of those issues where there is a well-grounded reason for the concerns.”
And this is no small matter for the US economy. According to NPR, “One in eight Americans work in health care and the U.S. spends about $2.7 trillion on it each year. Tony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, tells Robert Siegel that the U.S. healthcare system is ‘growing like crazy.’ ”
The insurers’ dilemma, despite current growth, is a self-inflicted one. In the article, “Reuters to US Economy: ‘Our Heart Will Go On’ ” we focused on the hysteria over the government shutdown and the media’s sympathetic viewpoint toward government services generally. In fact, Reuters characterized the shutdown as a “fight with no room for compromise ...” and blamed the shutdown on the so-called Tea Party. “Minority government,” the editorial fumed. “It’s outrageous when you think about it.”
This is part of a larger dominant social theme: While the national healthcare website may be fixed, the larger legislative push is not to provide healthcare to all but rather to make the current provisions so onerous and expensive that people will cry out for a single payer system. The media’s sympathy toward big government will make this meme an active and persuasive one.
Government bigness and its necessity is surely a growing dominant social theme, but it is one that a significant portion of the US population doesn’t feel comfortable with, especially libertarians and Tea Party types who make up a growing and vocal minority of the electorate. In addition, heavy-handed health insurance tactics have probably alienated their natural political constituency as the Internet Reformation shows supporters of big insurance to be the bought-and-paid-for hacks they are.
The insurance industry is thus in trouble on two fronts in the US and one wonders as a result why they’ve done what they have. The clearest explanation is greed, but if so, insurance executives may have set some sort of record for shortsightedness.
As the US public becomes familiar with the ins and outs of Obamacare there is a very good possibility that the role of the insurance industry itself will be associated with its failures. While in the short term established insurers may make considerable profits via Obamacare, in the long term they face several dangers.
The first is that the public will associate insurers closely with the more unpleasant aspects of the bill, thus giving the entire industry regular doses of bad publicity that may eventually undermine the control they’re currently exercising over the bill.
The second and even more difficult possibility is that Obamacare is merely a way station to a fully socialized single payer system. The insurance industry has probably alienated a base of natural supporters with its heavy-handed tactics in support of Obamacare. And a significant number of US citizens sympathetic to a single payer system wouldn’t mind seeing healthcare insurance done away with entirely.
It’s too soon to say healthcare insurers have signed a protracted death warrant by forcefully backing Obamacare behind the scenes, but over time it may begin to seem so. Would you want to be a healthcare insurance executive right now? Neither would we. Nor will we be looking to invest in any insurance companies at this point.
- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/trends-a....1mcrZ96E.dpuf
Why Insurance Industry Support of Obamacare Will Be the Downfall of Insurance Companies
http://www.thedailybell.com/images/library/Hemera-m.jpgObamacare is law but that may not prevent health insurance companies from feeling considerable backlash as time goes on. This brings up questions not just about insurers’ profitability but the viability of the industry as a whole both from a professional and investment standpoint. This is something that has not been focused on much, but it should be.
Now insurers, behind the scenes, are throwing their considerable muscle toward getting Obamacare up and running. Bloomberg, for instance, tells us that “Insurers Oppose Obamacare Extension as Danger to Profits.” The article explains that “allowing Americans more time to enroll for health coverage under Obamacare may raise premiums and cut into profits.”
Extending the enrollment period would have a destabilizing effect on insurance markets,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the Washington-based lobbyist group American’s Health Insurance Plans.
Allowing younger, healthy Americans to sign up later, as they probably would, means less revenue for insurers counting on those premiums to help defray the cost of sicker customers, threatening industry profits. “If you can enroll at any point in the year, then you can just wait until you get sick,” Brian Wright, an analyst with Monness Crespi Hardt in New York, said in a telephone interview. “This isn’t the industry crying foul and exaggerating the issue, this is actually one of those issues where there is a well-grounded reason for the concerns.”
And this is no small matter for the US economy. According to NPR, “One in eight Americans work in health care and the U.S. spends about $2.7 trillion on it each year. Tony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, tells Robert Siegel that the U.S. healthcare system is ‘growing like crazy.’ ”
The insurers’ dilemma, despite current growth, is a self-inflicted one. In the article, “Reuters to US Economy: ‘Our Heart Will Go On’ ” we focused on the hysteria over the government shutdown and the media’s sympathetic viewpoint toward government services generally. In fact, Reuters characterized the shutdown as a “fight with no room for compromise ...” and blamed the shutdown on the so-called Tea Party. “Minority government,” the editorial fumed. “It’s outrageous when you think about it.”
This is part of a larger dominant social theme: While the national healthcare website may be fixed, the larger legislative push is not to provide healthcare to all but rather to make the current provisions so onerous and expensive that people will cry out for a single payer system. The media’s sympathy toward big government will make this meme an active and persuasive one.
Government bigness and its necessity is surely a growing dominant social theme, but it is one that a significant portion of the US population doesn’t feel comfortable with, especially libertarians and Tea Party types who make up a growing and vocal minority of the electorate. In addition, heavy-handed health insurance tactics have probably alienated their natural political constituency as the Internet Reformation shows supporters of big insurance to be the bought-and-paid-for hacks they are.
The insurance industry is thus in trouble on two fronts in the US and one wonders as a result why they’ve done what they have. The clearest explanation is greed, but if so, insurance executives may have set some sort of record for shortsightedness.
As the US public becomes familiar with the ins and outs of Obamacare there is a very good possibility that the role of the insurance industry itself will be associated with its failures. While in the short term established insurers may make considerable profits via Obamacare, in the long term they face several dangers.
The first is that the public will associate insurers closely with the more unpleasant aspects of the bill, thus giving the entire industry regular doses of bad publicity that may eventually undermine the control they’re currently exercising over the bill.
The second and even more difficult possibility is that Obamacare is merely a way station to a fully socialized single payer system. The insurance industry has probably alienated a base of natural supporters with its heavy-handed tactics in support of Obamacare. And a significant number of US citizens sympathetic to a single payer system wouldn’t mind seeing healthcare insurance done away with entirely.
It’s too soon to say healthcare insurers have signed a protracted death warrant by forcefully backing Obamacare behind the scenes, but over time it may begin to seem so. Would you want to be a healthcare insurance executive right now? Neither would we. Nor will we be looking to invest in any insurance companies at this point.
- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/trends-a....1mcrZ96E.dpuf

Will Pelosi Cost You Your Full-Time Job?

By Money Morning Staff Reports

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Nancy Pelosi still insists that Obamacare will improve the lives of average Americans, despite over 20 reports indicating otherwise.
"Because of the law, in the coming months Americans will have expanded choices and more affordable care." Pelosi said at a recent Capitol Hill briefing. "We will be enhancing patients' rights, putting money back in the pockets of consumers, reducing costs and strengthening the economic, financial, and health security of working families."
She goes further to say that Obamacare will even lower the nation's debt.
"The Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down in both the public and private sector," said Pelosi. "And that is what is largely responsible for the deficit coming down."
But what she doesn't realize is that her numbers are flawed.
"Despite promises that the law will lower costs, [Obamacare] will in fact cause the premiums of many Americans to spike substantially," a report released by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce concluded. "The broken promises are numerous, and the data reveals that many Americans, from recent college graduates to older adults, will not be able to afford the law's higher costs."
The report is based on responses from 17 insurance companies to a letter from Congress asking them to estimate the effects Obamacare would have on premiums and found that individuals in about 90% of all states would likely face "significant premium increases."
Furthermore, the committee found that some individuals may see premium increases up to 413%.
Editor's Note: How much extra will you have to pay? To see how much Obamacare will take from your paycheck next year, go here.
On top of higher premiums, Obamacare will create no fewer than twenty new taxes or tax hikes on the American people.
Most of the new taxes go into effect January 1, 2014, but they are already infuriating millions of Americans.
The Obama administration has even given the IRS an extra $500 million to enforce the rules and regulations of Obamacare.
The new taxes don't bode well for middle-class Americans. Incomes for the rich have soared this decade but middle class workers have seen their wages stagnate and even drop since the 2008 Great Recession.
Many fear Obamacare with its high insurance costs and new taxes, could provide the middle class a fatal blow.
Of course, the Obamacare plan was primarily designed to decrease the number of uninsured Americans and reduce healthcare costs.
Experts are saying it will have the exact opposite effect. In fact, it's estimated that Obamacare will cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes as early as next year.
A McKinsey report now estimates Obamacare will cost taxpayers at least an additional $400 billion more than originally proposed.
And another study done by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare won't actually expand coverage and that the number of uninsured under Obamacare won't ever fall below 30 million.
Perhaps worse than anything, is that millions of Americans will now lose their full-time jobs.
That's a big reason why close to two-thirds of the country do not approve of Obamacare, according to recent polls.
Many are still furious over how the Democratically-controlled Congress passed this bill, which many scholars deem unconstitutional.
"Bipartisanship is a two-way street," Pelosi said before Congress voted on the law. "A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes...We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it."
If Congress had read the bill before passing it they should have noticed one section of the law that says you could get slapped with a $2,000 fine for not having health insurance - even if you do actually have it.
Or another section that says that under Obamacare ordinary Americans will get stuck paying for substance abuse coverage even if they never touched a drink or drug in their life.
http://moneymorning.com/ob-article/img/vid-obama-2.jpg Can the U.S. government really put you in jail for not buying health insurance? Go here to see the shocking story.
With the implementation of Obamacare quickly approaching, millions of Americans are asking what they can do to prepare for all the new costs and rules.
One expert, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant Governor of New York and constitutional scholar with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, recently wrote a best-selling book showing Americans how they can survive Obamacare.
McCaughey is one of the only people in the country -- including members of Congress - who has actually read the entire 2,572 page law.
Her book, titled Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving the New Health Care Law breaks down the complicated bill into 168 pages of actionable advice.
The book, written in an easy going, easy to read style, examines the implications of Obamacare not seen in the mainstream press.
"Section 1501 of Obamacare requires nearly everyone to enroll in a one-size fits all, government-designed health insurance plan. For the first time in history, this law empowers the federal government to control how doctors treat privately insured patients," McCaughey writes. "So even if you have your own private health plan that you paid for yourself, the government will have say over your care."
She says that higher costs are only one negative of Obamacare. Doctors, nurses and other hospital employees will suffer from the government's interference in healthcare. This will trickle down to poorer patient care.
What's more, one third of all U.S. employers could stop offering health insurance to their workers, says McCaughey.
In fact, corporations including GE, IBM, and Time Warner have already said they will stop providing insurance for hundreds of thousands of employees.
McCaughey also exposes several sections of the bill that empower Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to dictate what doctors can and cannot do.
"Section 4104(a), empowers Sebelius to reduce preventive services for seniors based on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force," McCaughey notes. "This is the panel that said women ages forty to forty-nine and older than seventy-four should no longer get routine mammograms."
And according to McCaughey's research, senior citizens will get hit the hardest from Obamacare. "If you're a senior or a baby boomer, expect less care than in the past," she says. "Hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery will be especially hard to get from Medicare in the months ahead."
She warns seniors to get some of those types of procedures done now before Obamacare goes into full effect, as Obamacare awards bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on seniors.
Lastly, many will find it difficult to keep their medical records private, according to McCaughey.
"The law will compel Americans to share with millions of strangers who are not physicians confidential private and personal medical history information they do not wish to share"
Editor's Note: Real facts and figures about the hidden Obamacare taxes and fees and how they will affect everyday Americans and seniors are hard to find. As a courtesy, Money Morning is giving readers a free copy of Betsy McCaughey's new book Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving The New Health Care Law. But only a limited number of copies are available. Please go here to reserve yours today.

http://moneymorning.com/ob-article/img/vid-obama-5.jpg

You ‘Could Destabilize the Market’: Insurance Industry Warns of Problems With Obama’s Health Care ‘Fix’

Nov. 14, 2013 8:00pm Becket Adams

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President Barack Obama announced Thursday a “fix” for the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance coverage due to the Affordable Care Act — a fix could “destabilize the market,” according to America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
“Making sure consumers have secure, affordable coverage is health plans’ top priority. The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today,” AHIP president and CEO Karen Ignagni said in a statement.
The president announced a one-year fix that would allow 2013 insurance plans “to be grandfathered in” so long as insurance companies inform consumers they might have a better deal from the Affordable Care Act exchanges, TheBlaze reported.
But AHIP doesn’t think this plan will work.
“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace,” the statement reads.
“If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers,” it adds.
AHIP is one of the insurance industry’s leading lobbying groups.
See more reactions to Obama’s health care “fix” on TheBlaze Blog.
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Cavallo is right (as are you, Proverbs)…
there is nothing that can be done to make this plan workable for the nation.
and they either knew it in creating it or were so ideologically blind in voting without reading that they are STILL responsible.
any delay does not address that 52 million will lose their insurance in order to provide more (yes, more, ED’s and existing federal plans did provide care to any who needed it) care to 75% of the 15-30 million who were uninsured…
even if you add 10 million illegals to that number, you are still denying more Americans the coverage they had chosen and were paying for in order to give more to a smaller number of Americans.
That’s the truth whether it happens now or after the next election cycle.
will the MSM pretend it is all solved if the White House (illegally) delays implementation for another year (until after elections)?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...-announcement/ comment ............... Here we go, O’A-hole is going to surround himself with a bunch of sycophants and give another fancy speech. He could say things like “I’m going to kill your children and rape your spouse” and still the sycophants around him will cheer and faint. The media will be beside themselves with joy saying such things as “He has saved us again” and Chris Matthews will have a 15 minute orgasm right there on the set. Then 65% of the American people will reaffirm their love for the jack ass in the white house as America continues to slide down the drain.

Lock, stock, and like shooting fish in a barrel with TNT.

http://hypertiger.blogspot.ca/2013/1...ughter-in.html

Great News! The Obamacare website is now operational!!!

http://rexharrisonshat.com/healthcare/

The "Obamacare Shock" - One California Employer's Terrifying True Story


http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/20/2013 12:54 -050





From a Zero Hedge reader:

My company, based in California, employs 600. We used to insure about 250 of our employees. The rest opted out. The company paid 50% of their premiums for about $750,000/yr.

Under obamacare, none can opt out without penalty, and the rates are double or triple, depending upon the plan. Our 750k for 250 employees is going to $2 million per year for 600 employees.

By mandate, we have to pay 91.5% of the premium or more up from the 50% we used to pay.

Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week. 95% of my employees were on that plan. Remember, we used to pay 50% now we pay 91.5% and the premiums still go up that much!!

The cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. Employees making $9 to $10/hr, have to pay $30/wk and have a $6350 deductible!!! What!!!!

They can't afford that to be sure. Obamacare will kill their propensity to seek medical care. More money for less care? How does that help them?

Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance. It all seems like a joke. How can this be the new system?

Pelosi, pass the bill to find out what's in it? Surprise! You've annihilated the working class.

Q.E.D.

So another apology is forthcoming?

These apologies are coming as regular as Bitcoins every 10 minutes.

That's No fun, too predictable.

http://www.thedailybell.com/images/library/Hemera-m.jpgthere no need to read a bill before you sign it into law , what a bunch of ass holes