OpEd: Real Healthcare Reform Should Focus On Care, Not Just Coverage

O-Care’s one-size-fits-all failure

By: Nancy Pfotenhauer  -  The Hill  -  May 8, 2016

Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that universal health insurance is the central goal of a successful health care reform. The left sold the Affordable Care Act to the American people on this promise; the right hopes to do the same with an alternative plan set to be unveiled later this year.

Both sides are trying to fix the wrong problem. Universal health insurance is profoundly different from better health care—and so long as reformers focus on the former, the latter will continue to deteriorate.

Real healthcare reform must improve the quality of America’s healthcare system. At its most fundamental level, healthcare exists to improve individuals’ health outcomes and overall well-being. Beneficial reforms will thus improve those outcomes, increase healthcare’s quality and lower its costs, with the ancillary effect of expanding its availability.

This is a more worthy goal than putting a health insurance card in everyone’s hand, a la ObamaCare and its Republican replacements. Universal health insurance is merely the provision of a service regardless of that service’s quality. This cannot be achieved without the assistance of a massive bureaucratic apparatus in Washington that stifles innovation, limits consumer choice and increases its costs. Thus, reforms that seek universal health insurance decrease healthcare’s quality, and they don’t deliver on their promise to make coverage universal.

Better healthcare will not be realized without unleashing market-driven innovation. Reformers can’t pretend that this existed prior to Obama-Care’s passage. Then, as now, federal regulations hemmed in consumers and innovators on every side. ObamaCare’s mandates only expand this restrictive regulatory regime.

Innovators and consumers should be unshackled from the reams of red tape. This starts by putting patients—not bureaucrats or insurance companies—at the center of health care. Patients must be free to choose a health plan that is tailored to their needs, not one with benefit mandates created by special interests. Patients need access to real-time health care provider data that doesn’t hide costs or quality behind an impenetrable wall of bureaucratic regulations. Patients should be empowered to improve their own health using breakthrough technologies and personalized treatments.

Thus free to choose, consumers will seek out products and services that actually fit their needs. Innovators will concurrently strive to develop treatments and health care options that consumers want—and at a price they can afford.

No one-size-fits-all federal policy can accomplish this goal.

For instance, several state and federal laws prevent innovators and consumers from working together. So, multiple policy proposals targeting these barriers should be considered and challenged. 

National Center for Policy Analysis President John Goodman’s ideas about improving the poor’s access to care can be coupled with Cato Institute Director of Health Policy Studies Michael Cannon’s ideas about getting prices closer to consumers. Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) idea about equalizing the tax treatment of insurance policies can be one of a number of policies, along with Rep. Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) and Rep. Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) slightly different approaches. Economist John Cochrane has proposals to help those with pre-existing conditions; Bob Graboyes, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, details how we can unleash healthcare innovation. And ideas by the likes of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), and many others all have promise.

Every proposal should be judged by whether it leads to better healthcare for individuals and families, not whether it gives them a health insurance plan they don’t want or can’t afford. Until this shift happens, the country’s healthcare system will continue to serve Washington’s whims rather than Americans’ well-being. 

Pfotenhauer is the president of MediaSpeak Strategies and a senior adviser with Freedom Partners, a nonprofit advocate for free-market policy.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Healthcare Reform,Health Insurance,Universal Healthcare,Wake-Up,Socialized Medicine,ObamaCare Surprises,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare

My Wife's Last Days -- And the Coming ObamaCare Death Panel

By Stuart Schwartz – American Thinker: We have been so absorbed by the cavalcade of government incompetence and individual hurt produced by the rollout of ObamaCare that it is easy to forget the tragedy-in-waiting should this federal healthcare takeover stay in place: the death panel, also known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). This is the group of political appointees designed to allow the federal government to use a combination of medical and social criteria to determine the healthcare an individual receives.

Or, to put it as bluntly as Sarah Palin did, to determine who lives and who dies. Why am I thinking about that now? Because my wife and soul-mate of 33 years, Sharon Harrah Schwartz, died at the age of 62 in January. Her passing put an end to a slow-motion death from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS, popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She would have occupied the bottom portion of an IPAB treatment list.

Her suffering and passing was and remains wrenching for her family and friends. It was especially difficult over the last year as her illness accelerated, destroying her muscles and, consequently, her ability to speak, to eat, and ultimately to breathe. A variety of drugs and equipment kept her reasonably comfortable, while medical technology helped clear the fluids collecting in her lungs. She enjoyed, as much as possible, the last months with her family. An advanced directive, worked out in concert with ALS healthcare professionals, proscribed the treatment limits. For almost two years, her healthcare relied on a myriad of individual decisions based on relationships with both the ones she loved and with healthcare providers. The most significant one: she and I -- lovers and best friends for more than three decades -- had decided together that, barring a miracle and/or last-minute medical research breakthrough, we would allow the disease to take its course, keep her as comfortable as possible, and let God do the rest.

This illustrates something that President Obama and his party, in its zeal to use healthcare as a driving force in transforming American society, accrue power, and expand centralized government, have ignored: that the foundation of what has become the uniquely American and consequently world-class healthcare system is individual decision-making and values, resting upon a multitude of relationships that work best when left to those with a stake in it -- healthcare professionals, patients and their families. The government has a role, yes; but its role should be limited, allowing the marketplace of providers and patients to work.

At its most basic level, healthcare is individual and personal, depending upon relationships and particular values. Our faith, our love for each other and belief in the sacred responsibility of marriage underlaysleepless nights, caring for her when she could no longer care for herself, servicing the machines that alleviated some of the symptoms, the decisions that allowed just a few more months to live and love with her family and friends.

Her… our struggles with this terminal disease -- she referred to it as the “beast” in her body -- illustrate the government-sponsored agony awaiting so many families just over the horizon. Love informed our decisions in consultation with those providing treatment. I valued her life as sacred and God-given, acknowledging the debt I owed to someone who had joyfully served as wife, mother, and friend.

But looming on the horizon is a whole other set of criteria. ObamaCare has established an agenda-driven political board that will shift the loci of healthcare decisions from individual and relationship to the application of social justice concepts. Even a cursory reading (something that few, if any, of the Democrats foisting this law upon us took the time to do) of the pages and footnotes of this intrusion and the writings of its designers -- many so-called medical policy experts from academia -- makes it clear that progressive social engineering by government-appointed experts will largely determine medical treatment.

Peruse the publications and reports of the thinking of the architects of ObamaCare. Their various scoring systems, their social priorities would have put my wife at the bottom of the list for treatment. Obamacare architects perceive healthcare, as they do income, as a zero-sum game -- every dollar spent on her treatment is a dollar taken away from someone else. Never mind that this notion, like so much of ObamaCare, is a deliberate lie with no foundation in fact; healthcare, like wealth, in the United States has expanded  as new medical technologies, techniques and research have brought ever more accessible and better care.

But centralized control needs to declare medical resources finite, which in turn demands rationing, and rationing needs, of course, a government board to decide who gets treatment and when, who gets to live… and die. My wife, under a fully implemented ObamaCare, would have been among the last in line for treatment. She was a retiree (too old!) with a terminal disease (too expensive with a limited future!), a woman who had chosen to spend most of her adult life raising children (that’s not really societally valued employment, the architects might sniff) and who lived simply and lovingly, taking pride in her family and her role as a homemaker (what --no greater ambitions?)

Sharon was loved by her family, her friends and, above all, by God. We devoted a considerable portion of our energy and resources to making sure she felt loved during her last year. We could do no less, as love is a basic tenet of our faith, a Christianity that says her worth depends solely on her standing as a creation of God -- not a federal bureaucracy.  Such was the sanctity of Sharon’s life, a human life. That is the opposite of Obamacare which, if fully implemented, would likely have robbed us of much of her past year. To a centralized and progressive federal bureaucracy, Sharon’s worth was the totality of the probabilities of her contribution to the good of a theoretical community, as defined by Washington politicians and technocrats.

But for us, it was much simpler: She was God’s gift, to whom we owed our love and resources and energy until she passed from life in this world.

It is time to repeal Obamacare.

Dr. Stuart Schwartz is on the faculty of Liberty University and has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker. His wife, Sharon, passed away on January 7 at their residence in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Technorati Tags: IPAB,ObmamaCare,Death Panels,Sarah Palin,Palin Was Right,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare,Wake-Up,ACA,Fundamental Transformation,the Plan,Socialized Medicine,Obamaland,God,ALS,Rationing Panel,Big Brother,Christianity,PPACA,Healthcare

Republicans to Officially Present Alternative to Obamacare

Changing Winds?

By Katie Pavlich – TownHall:  Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or alter Obamacare as the popularity of the legislation continues to be nearly non-existent. In the process, Republicans have been criticized for failing to present an alternative piece of legislation to replace Obamacare. More than a dozen alternative plans have been crafted on the Hill, but Republicans haven't been able to rally around a single plan. Now, that's changing as Republican prepare to present Americans with an official alternative to the Affordable Care Act:

The plan includes an expansion of high-risk insurance pools, promotion of health savings accounts and inducements for small businesses to purchase coverage together. The tenets of the plan — which could expand to include the ability to buy insurance across state lines, guaranteed renewability of policies and changes to medical-malpractice regulations — are ideas that various conservatives have for a long time backed as part of broader bills.

But this is the first time this year that House leaders will put their full force behind a single set of principles from those bills and present it as their vision. This month, House leaders will begin to share a memo with lawmakers outlining the plan, called “A Stronger Health Care System: The GOP Plan for Freedom, Flexibility, & Peace of Mind,” with suggestions on how Republicans should talk about it to their constituents.

The timing for this legislation is great for Republicans who just came off of a special election win in Florida where Democrat Alex Sink lost by running on a fix, don't repeal platform. Not only can Republicans running for election in the fall run against Obamacare, a law that will only continue to make the lives of Americans worse and more expensive, they can run on a new alternative.

Technorati Tags: GOP,ObamaCare,Change,Hope,Healthcare,Republicans Unite,ACA,Affordable Care Act,PPACA,Alternatives,ObamaCare Alternatives,Election 2014,2014 Elections

Stephen Blackwood: ObamaCare and My Mother's Cancer Medicine

The news was dumbfounding. She used to have a policy that covered the drug that kept her alive. Now she's on her own.

WSJ: When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked.

And now, cancer? Anyone who's been there knows that a cancer diagnosis is terrifying. A lot goes through your mind and heart: the deep pang of possible loss (what would my father and all of us do without her?), and the anguish and anger at what feels like injustice (after decades of mothering and managing dad's practice, she was just then going back to school).

We, as a family, were scared and angry, but from the beginning we knew we would do all we could to fight this disease. We became involved with fundraising for research, through the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation in Boston; we blogged; we did triathlons (my mother's idea) and cherished our time together as never before.

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

Getty Images

As with most cancers, one thing led to another. There have been several more surgeries, metastases, bone deterioration, a terrible bout of thyroiditis (an inflammation of the thyroid gland), and much more. But my mother has kept fighting, determined to make the most of life, no matter what it brings. She has an indomitable will and is by far the toughest person I've ever met. But she wouldn't still be here without that semimonthly Sandostatin shot that slows the onslaught of her disease.

And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

Because the exchange website in her state (Virginia) was not working, she went directly to insurers' websites and telephoned them, one by one, over dozens of hours. As a medical-office manager, she had decades of experience navigating the enormous problems of even our pre-ObamaCare system. But nothing could have prepared her for the bureaucratic morass she now had to traverse.

The repeated and prolonged phone waits were Sisyphean, the competence and customer service abysmal. When finally she found a plan that looked like it would cover her Sandostatin and other cancer treatments, she called the insurer, Humana, HUM -2.81% to confirm that it would do so. The enrollment agent said that after she met her deductible, all treatments and medications—including those for her cancer—would be covered at 100%. Because, however, the enrollment agents did not—unbelievable though this may seem—have access to the "coverage formularies" for the plans they were selling, they said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable.

Though I'm no expert on ObamaCare (at 10,000 pages, who could be?), I understand that the intention—or at least the rhetorical justification—of this legislation was to provide coverage for those who didn't have it. But there is something deeply and incontestably perverse about a law that so distorts and undermines the free activity of individuals that they can no longer buy and sell the goods and services that keep them alive. ObamaCare made my mother's old plan illegal, and it forced her to buy a new plan that would accelerate her disease and death. She awaits an appeal with her insurer.

Will this injustice be remedied, for her and for millions of others? Or is my mother to die because she can no longer afford the treatment that keeps her alive?

Like every American, I want affordable health care, and I'm open to innovative solutions of all kinds—individual, corporate, for-profit, nonprofit and public. It will take all of these, and all the intelligence, creativity and self-discipline we have, as well as everything we can offer one another as families, neighbors, friends and citizens—and it still won't be perfect. But it is precisely because health care for 300 million people is so complicated that it cannot be centrally managed.

The "Affordable" Care Act is a brutal, Procrustean disaster. In principle, it violates the irreducible particularity of human life, and in practice it will cause many individuals to suffer and die. We can do better, and we must.

Mr. Blackwood is the president of Ralston College, a planned liberal-arts institution in Savannah, Ga., and is on the board of the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation. His mother, Catherine, manages the Family Medicine Center in Virginia Beach, Va.

Technorati Tags: Cancer,ObamaCare,Wake-Up,ObamaCare Surprises,Socialized Medicine,Carcinoid,Neuroendocrine Cancer,ObamaCare Casualties,Obamaland

Dr. Ben Carson Becomes Chairman of Save Our Healthcare

Dear Friend,

I’ve got some exciting news to share with you.

My friends at American Legacy PAC are launching an important new project called Save our Healthcare - and I will be serving as Chairman.

Let me tell you a bit more about what we’ll be doing, and how you can help.

When I spoke just feet away from President Obama about the dangers of political correctness at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast, many were surprised.

After all, my background is medicine, not politics.

But it doesn’t take a brain surgeon like me to see that America is facing serious problems. And right now, the number one problem is Obamacare. 

Dropped coverage, failing websites, skyrocketing premiums - the list goes on and on.

I wish I could snap my fingers and make Obamacare disappear tomorrow, but we both know that won’t happen.

That’s why we’re launching Save our Healthcare - a national citizens’ effort to hold Washington accountable, re-center the healthcare debate around doctors and patients, and begin to answer the question of “What’s next?” - because real reform is absolutely vital.

Please join me, and sign our petition at SaveOurHealthcare.org.

It is our goal to recruit every American that believes we can do better than Obamacare, and make sure that our message is received loud and clear by every elected official and candidate in 2014.

Please sign up to support this project, and ask your friends and family to do the same.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ben Carson

Chairman, Save Our Healthcare

American Legacy PAC

 

Video: Dr. Ben Carson:  Let’s Save Our Healthcare 

And for anyone who missed this speech:

Video: Dr. Benjamin Carson's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Published on Feb 15, 2013:  A politically incorrect speech by Dr. Benjamin Carson; criticizing government policies at the National Prayer Breakfast, attended by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Books:

America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (Kindle)

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (Kindle)

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaCare Alternatives,Books,Obamaland,Choices,National Prayer Breakfast,Dr. Ben Carson

Emilie’s Story: ObamaCare is hurting people like me

Video: Emilie’s Story: ObamaCare is hurting people like me

Here is comment I received from a gal, a reader of mine named Emmie over at AskMarion.  Neither of these women are alone or exceptions… their situations are repeated hundreds of times daily…

I wanted to contact you privately but cannot find an email address for you anywhere. So I will write here and hope you see it.

I was all for healthcare reform because I found it unacceptable that so many Americans were unable to get it. This sounded like a good thing. So I tried to allay the fears of people like you whenever I heard concerns being raised. Boy, was I ever played!

I am currently between jobs. Cobra will run me about $500 a month – more than half of my mortgage. Not an option. Okay, I’ll go through healthcare.gov and see what they have to say. Well, that will run me more than $300 a month. Unemployment won’t garner me enough money to consider this and I’m not poor enough to qualify for any tax credits. Forget what my situation is – they don’t care that a bad economy, a major illness and two job losses, one of which resulted in gross underemployment, has led to a growing pile of bills. They don’t ask those kinds of questions. They don’t care. So I click on one of the two options remaining in IL, and I call Assurant. Sure, they can get me something for under $200 a month, but it won’t cover any pre-existing conditions. Wait, wha??? I thought that was part of the reform!?! Only if you go with the ACA plans! This fixed coverage won’t pay for much, certainly not major med if something happens, and since it’s not one of ACA plans, I’ll have to pay a penalty for using it. WHAT?! Oh, yes! There is a penalty, I was told by the nice lady at Assurant. Is this something you’ve read about anywhere? I’ve read that people will face a penalty if they have NO insurance, but I can’t seem to find anything about a penalty if they opt to go with a cheap plan outside of the ACA plans.

Now, how in God’s name are we supposed to pay for a government insurance policy that costs so much money we cannot afford it, yet if we don’t go that route we’ll be penalized anyway? If I was once considered middle class, and I’m struggling, how the heck will those who couldn’t afford healthcare before suddenly be able to afford it now?

I know it says there are exceptions and that people who face financial hardships will be excluded from penalties, but guess what? My hardships are never hard enough, apparently. I never qualify for any kind of aid or assistance or help of any kind. I guess it’s time I start considering filing bankruptcy since I’m losing faith. I long ago lost the hope Obama had the audacity to pedal.

AskMarion~

Related: 

Attention Main Stream Media. Regarding Obamacare… I Told You So! 

GOP Senators’ Obamacare Replacement Beneficial to Young People says Senator Colborn as He Loses His Own Cancer Doctor in the Midst of His Cancer Fight 

Pray For Jim Hoft Over At Gateway Pundit

 

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ACA,Insurance Exchanges,Lies,Obamaland,Wake-Up,Stand-Up,Reality,Get-Involved,Elections Have Consequences,Assurant,Election 2014,Election 2016,Healthcare.gov,Healthcare Exchanges,Read the Bills,Socialized Medicine,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare,Trainwreck

GOP Senators’ Obamacare Replacement Beneficial to Young People says Senator Colborn as He Loses His Own Cancer Doctor in the Midst of His Cancer Fight

GOP senators’ Obamacare replacement beneficial to young people

Red Alert Politics: Just weeks into the new year and only months after Congressional Republicans attempted to defund the Affordable Care Act, a trio of Senate Republicans have unveiled a plan to replace Obamacare. And this alternative seeks to put money back in Millennials’ pockets.

Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) joined forces in crafting a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, unveiling the proposal Monday. Called the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act, the law’s first step would be to repeal Obamacare. However, the proposed alternative does leave some key aspects of the current healthcare law in place, while offering some reprieves for Millennials.

“The American people have found out what is in Obamacare— broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates, and government bureaucracy.  They don’t like it and don’t want to keep it,” Burr said in a press release. “…We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.”

Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, young Americans have found their premiums increasing, some as much as 260 percent. However, the law was designed to require Millennials to pay more for health insurance to subsidize coverage for the elderly, whose health insurance is deemed to be more costly.

The Patient CARE proposal, however, seeks to take the financial burden off of young people’s shoulders.

“Unfortunately, young Americans are on the front lines of experiencing the costs and consequences of Obamacare’s costly mandates and broken promises: skyrocketing premiums, fewer choices, employers deciding not to offer health insurance, cutting back hours, or not hiring all together,” Burr said in an emailed statement to Red Alert. ”They know that Obamacare is not fair to them or their future.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies can charge older Americans only three times as much as they charge “young invincibles.” This provision drives up the cost of health insurance for Millennials.

But under the Patient CARE proposal, that threshold is increased to allow insurance companies to charge the elderly a maximum of five times as much as they charge Millennials. States, though, can set their own ratio below that amount or opt out of the mandate by passing a law allowing it to do so.

Prior to the implementation of Obamacare, many states adhered to the federal benchmark proposed by Burr, Coburn and Hatch.

“Mr. President, we can see the importance of choice in the failings of ObamaCare, which is struggling to sign up young people who might just need a health plan that’s affordable instead of one that includes coverage they’ll never use or need,” Hatch said on the Senate floor Monday.

One of the Affordable Care Act’s most lauded provisions allows young people under the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans, and the measure has long been a staple of President Obama’s speeches and addresses surrounding his signature healthcare law. Sens. Burr, Corburn and Hatch included the provision in the Patient CARE proposal.

“While we believe fewer young consumers will utilize this option as the cost of health insurance decreases, retaining this policy has a very marginal effect on premiums and provides consumers with more choices,” it states.

The Congressional Budget office projected Obamacare would lead to 800,000 fewer jobs, likely as a result of the high cost of providing employees working more than 30 hours per week and other provisions in the employer mandate. But repealing the Affordable Care Act, as the Patient CARE measure seeks to do, provides both economic relief and opportunity for Millennials — a generation facing 15.9 percent unemployment.

“The Patient CARE Act would provide relief to young Americans by repealing Obamacare’s costly mandates, putting in place common-sense  insurance protections – like guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions, and empowering them to find a plan that meets their needs, including allowing health savings account dollars to go toward health premiums for the first time,” Burr said.

The Patient CARE legislation has yet to be introduced in the Senate, as the Republican triad hopes to “further refine and improve upon the proposal” and build support on both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile, Cancer-stricken Sen. Tom Coburn revealed Tuesday that his health insurance under Obamacare doesn’t cover his oncologist.

The Oklahoma Republican’s spokesman confirmed to POLITICO that since the senator enrolled in his health insurance plan under Obamacare, his coverage has been reduced and he lost coverage for his cancer specialist. Coburn will continue to pay out of pocket and see his oncologist, his office said.

Luckily the former physician and Senator can pay for his doctor of choice and treatment out of pocked, but that is not the situation for many Americans who are losing their specialists, doctors or choice or their healthcare coverage completely and can’t afford the replacement.

His spokesman said Coburn’s struggles with his own doctor illustrate the need for a new policy, saying that not every American has the option to pay out of pocket for care.

“We hope the White House will work with us to make sure Americans who can’t afford to pay out of pocket don’t lose access to life-saving care,” spokesman John Hart said. “As Dr. Coburn’s experience shows, the American people are about to learn they’re going to lose access to not only their doctors and plans, but their specialists and treatments.”

Technorati Tags: Patient Choice,Affordability,Responsibility,and Empowerment Act,ObamaCare Alternatives,GOP,Tom Colburn,Cancer,ACA,Millennials,Health Insurance

Ted Cruz: Obamacare 100% Not Secure - Expert: Healthcare.gov Security Getting Worse

Video: Ted Cruz:Obamacare 100% Not Secure - Expert: Healthcare.gov Security Getting Worse

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare Problems

The GOP’s Grandfather Weapon

Daily Caller: ‘If You Like Your Obamacare, You Can Keep Your Obamacare’: I don’t quite understand the new, near-unanimous Dem line on Obamacare – which is that because it has signed up a few million people, many previously uninsured, it is now somehow invulnerable to repeal. From WaPo:

“A fundamental political shift happened on January 1 because millions of Americans now have health insurance,” said Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama senior adviser. “The Republican strategy now means taking that insurance away. It was all theoretical until now, and the Republican repeal plan is no longer politically viable.” [E.A.]

It may be true, as the New York Times hopefully declared, that “[o]nce a benefit has been bestowed, it is nearly impossible to take it away” (though there are a million or so Americans who’ve been receiving long-term unemployment benefits who might want to argue the point). But there’s a traditional political solution to this Take Away Problem, namely the “grandfather clause.”

It wouldn’t be hard for Republican repealers to write a law that got rid of Obamacare while somehow keeping those few million who’ve signed up on some form of similar insurance. “If you like your Obamacare you can keep your Obamacare.” Exchange policies could be converted to non-exchange policies in a special, no-new-enrollments program, for example. Over time, attrition would whittle this grandfathered class down to trivial size–a process with which you’d think Obamacare’s architects would be familiar.

I don’t know if Obamacare will survive or not. Even its cockiest defenders, now whistling past the graveyard of missed deadlines, concede** that (as one of them, Josh Marshall, puts it) if “the mix of young and old people, healthy and sick” is “significantly out of whack you’ll have problems.”*** Problems that include, in Greg Sargent’s words, the possibility that “insurers pull out, and the exchanges collapse.”

But I do know that if Obamacare isn’t repealed it won’t be because two (or ten) million people in a country of 300 million have already signed up.

P.S.: Its also possible that Obamacare, instead of collapsing, will become a long term, slow-bleeding, painfully unpopular policy wound, as millions more middle class Americans who don’t qualify for subsidies get shunted into the individual market where they have to buy policies that offer them less for more. It’s not clear that this outcome is better, politically, for the Democrats.

P.P.S.: You want a health care benefit that would be nearly impossible to take away, or to grandfather? Extending Medicare to age 55 would have been more or less impossible to take away, even by grandfathering (i.e. by continuing Medicare for existing 55 year olds but denying it to new 55 year olds). Just sayin’.

_____

**– Marshall also downplays the non-payment problem –i.e. the possibility that many of the 2 million who’ve signed up on the exchanges “won’t end up paying their premiums.” He says GOPs who make this argument are “dead-enders” in an “intense form of denial.” But the non-payment threat seems like a reasonable worry for supporters of the law as well as a source of hope for opponents.

***– I favor a more panicked, pro-active approach that accepts the need for reasonably big fixes (e.g. fewer mandatory benefits). Letting Americans know improvements (if necessary) are planned might in turn help build confidence and boost enrollment.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Grandfather Clause,GOP,ObamaCare Alternatives,Stand-Up,Exchanges

Eight Ways to Opt Out of ObamaCare -> Ron Paul Says It Will Totally Self-Destruct

With the deadline to sign up for Obamacare having come and gone, many Americans have decided to “opt out” of President Obama’s signature health care reform law, choosing instead to pay the $95 penalty for sidestepping the individual mandate.

“For many Americans opting out of Obamacare is the best decision they can make, but it's important that they do it the right way—just refusing to buy health insurance and not having another way to pay for catastrophic medical expenses is a mistake,” Sean Parnell, author of the newly-released The Self-Pay Patient, told Breitbart News. “People who want to opt out should be looking at alternatives to conventional health insurance, such as joining a health care sharing ministry or purchasing a fixed benefits policy."

Parnell also strongly advises Americans against opting out and simply paying the “list” price for medical visits and prescription drugs without shopping around, or by relying solely on the local hospital emergency room for routine medical care.

“This approach leaves people who opt out vulnerable to sky-high medical expenses at inflated ‘list’ or ‘chargemaster’ rates, and can result in an inability to obtain needed care because of cost,” Parnell writes on his blog, selfpaypatient.com.

Instead, Parnell recommends the following eight options for those who have opted out of ObamaCare:

1. Join a health care sharing ministry, which are voluntary, charitable membership organizations that share medical expenses among the membership.

Parnell states that Samaritan Ministries, Christian Healthcare Ministries, and Christian Care Ministry are open to practicing Christians, while Liberty HealthShare is open to those who are committed to religious liberty.

Healthcare sharing ministries “operate entirely outside of ObamaCare’s regulations, and typically offer benefits for about half the cost of similar health insurance,” says Parnell. “Members are also exempt from having to pay the tax for being uninsured.”

2. Purchase a short-term health insurance policy.

“These policies usually last between one and 11 months and are not regulated under ObamaCare, and, therefore, don’t offer the same high level of benefits that can drive up costs,” writes Parnell.

3. Buy alternative insurance plans such as fixed-benefit, critical illness, or accident insurance.

“These policies pay cash in the event you are diagnosed with cancer, spend a night in the hospital, or need some other medical treatment,” Parnell says. “They cost a fraction of what health insurance costs under ObamaCare, and by giving you cash directly you aren’t locked in to any particular provider network.”

Parnell also recommends maxing out medical and uninsured/underinsured driver coverage amounts under an auto insurance policy, which can help pay for medical bills in the event of injury in an auto accident.

Once major medical insurance is arranged, Parnell suggests shopping around for health care providers and services.

4. Visit cash-only doctors and retail health clinics for primary care. If you usually visit a doctor more than a couple times per year, consider joining a direct primary care practice which will give you access to nearly unlimited primary care for a modest monthly fee.

5. Sign up for a telemedicine service—lower-cost options in which doctors treat relatively simple medical issues via phone calls, email, or a video connection. Telemedicine especially works well, Parnell says, for common injuries, conditions, and illnesses.

6. Use generic prescription drugs whenever possible, and compare prices between pharmacies. Less expensive options are sometimes available at large chain pharmacies such as Walmart and CVS, and online sites such as GoodRx.com and WeRx.org allow patients to view the best deals on medications.

7. For surgery, Parnell recommends going to a facility that offers up-front “package” prices for self-pay patients, such as the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and Regency Healthcare, where prices are typically much less than what is charged at most hospitals. In addition, sites such as MediBid, where doctors bid on providing your surgery or treatment, will often yield substantially less expensive costs coupled with high quality medical care. Yet another option is to become a medical tourist.

8. When a hospital visit becomes necessary, Parnell suggests working with a medical bill negotiation service to get the best price available rather than accept the wildly inflated “chargemaster” prices, usually three to five times more than what insurers pay for the same service or treatment. Patients who wish to negotiate on their own will likely need to put in a significant amount of time and effort, but can use the Healthcare Blue Book or Pricing Healthcare as a starting point to help them find out what insurers are paying for medical services.

“Many Americans say they would prefer free market healthcare, and they don't have to wait for Congress to repeal, replace, or reform Obamacare to have that,” Parnell told Breitbart News.

“Simply by opting out and doing things like visiting cash-only doctors, becoming a medical tourist, shopping around for the best prices on prescription drugs, and obtaining an alternative type of coverage they can enjoy all the benefits of free market healthcare today including access to affordable, quality care and getting government and insurance company bureaucrats out of the doctor-patient relationship.”

 

Ron Paul: 'Conceivable' In Next Years ObamaCare Will 'Totally Self-Destruct'

Daily Caller:

Former Republican lawmaker and presidential candidate Ron Paul said it’s “conceivable” Obamacare will “totally self-destruct,” declaring it will “eventually end because it’s such a disaster.”

The libertarian icon spoke with Fox News’ Stuart Varney Thursday about whether the net loss of nearly 4 million private health plans under Obamacare “spells the end of activist government.”

“I wish,” Paul quipped. “No, there’s a lot of diehards out there. There’ll be excuses made and politicians will spend it a certain way. But it’ll eventually end because it’s such a disaster. This a sign that the delivery of healthcare will even be worse than signing up for the healthcare.”

Paul predicted that the total cost of medical care in the U.S. under Obamacare “is going to be huge. It’s going to be a tax, and the quality of care and what people are going to get — everybody’s tells me, ‘They’re canceling me, they’re charging me more, I’m getting less,’ and they’re furious. It’s going to be the biggest political issue in this year’s campaign.”

Despite the problems, Paul noted that a political solution is nearly impossible. “You’re not gonna get rid of it, you’re right about that,” he told Varney. “They’re gonna limp along. If Republicans win in the fall, they may tamper it a bit and tinker with it and change it.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re stuck with Obamacare forever. “The only way it’s going to disappear quickly is if it totally self-destructs, which is conceivable,” he claimed. “Everybody just quits because they’re getting nowhere with it… One day it’s going to be so bad, people are just going to opt out on their own.”

“All we need to do is have the right to opt out and have a little bit of competition,” Paul concluded.

(Obamacare debuts with more canceled plans than enrollments)

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

*If you can wait and avoid signing up for ObamaCare it is certainly something to consider.  The fewer people that sign-up, especially the fewer healthy and young people who will not use the system but will help pay for it, the better chance there is that the entire system implodes or that the we can repeal and replace it… that is if we elect the right people in 2014 and 2016.  Vote out anyone up for re-election in either of those two elections that voted for ObamaCare at any point in the process.  Also… No Hillary Clinton and no Chris Christie. Nobody that mentions the word Progressive or follows that ideology!  Time to elect people who care about the common man… the common average American.  We are all ‘TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY’ and nobody can afford ObamaCare… MORE EXPENSIVE FOR MOST… FOR LESS SERVICES, LESS FREEDOM, and MORE BIG BROTHER!

Yes, States Have the Constitutional Right to Nullify Obamacare

Capitalism Institute: Every effort to navigate the proper channels to repeal Obamacare have been thus far blocked by Democrats (and even some big government Republicans), despite practically everyone hating the oppressive legislation.

Naturally, states are considering other means by which to stop this economic disaster before it gets even worse.

South Carolina and Georgia have already jumped on board with a state-level model developed by the Tenth Amendment Center to effectively nullify Obamacare in their states. The template is even being applied outlaw the NSA from operating within Arizona.

Using this model to combat Obamacare, South Carolina and Georgia are prepared to “nullify” Obamacare by withholding the state’s personnel and resources the law depends on. It would be illegal for the state’s resources to contribute towards the law’s implementation. This is essentially how it works:

Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, passed by both houses and signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.

Most of the “naysayers” will tell you that these nullification efforts are “illegal” because of the supremacy clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

However, those at the Tenth Amendment Center disagree:

The major argument used by those that oppose Nullification is the Constitution’s supremacy clause. But in fact, the arguments for the supremacy clause ARE the arguments for nullification.

They continue:

The major architects of the Constitution, and those that led the fight for its adoption, laid down what the supremacy clause meant during the ratifying conventions. By doing so, they defended state sovereignty, and set the stage for the negation of unconstitutional actions.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a senior judicial and political analyst, recently confirmed that these efforts are, in fact, legal — and effective: 

[I]t will gut Obamacare because the federal government does not have the resources or the wherewithal […] to go into each of the individual states.

It was Alexander Hamilton who said, “but the laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.”

The TAC cites several other historic quotes from the New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina ratifying conventions and the Federalist Papers demonstrating that the supremacy clause is — and was intended to be — a platform upon which we could hold an overbearing federal government “in check”:

[The Founders] established the means for the states to defend themselves and their citizens from a general government that exceeding its authority and that power is NULLIFICATION.

The nullification of overbearing, unconstitutional federal laws is essential to preserving our liberty. The Founders were certainly not ignorant of the consequences of letting a federal government run amok; thus, they crafted in our Constitution a fail-safe.

When Congress seems more interested in propelling us head-first into tyranny rather than protecting us from it, we have to take matters into our own hands.

The nullification efforts in South Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona are just the beginning.

You can help fight this country’s descent into despotism by sharing this article with your legislators, friends, family, and colleagues. Liberty is at risk with every passing generation. It is time to take action.

Doctor Retires due to ObamaCare

Doctor Posts Newspaper Notice: Closing Due to Obamacare

Townhall- Cross-Posted at AskMarion: Obamacare realities just became a little more intense in the Bluegrass State. Requirements in the Affordable Care Act presented Kentucky Dr. Stephen Kiteck with obstacles he “just couldn’t overcome.”

This tweet helped uncover the story:

Twitter: Dara Bailey @darab_ic

They said it wouldn't happen.....wrong again.

7:21 PM - 8 Dec 2013

Dr. Kiteck verified the ad to Townhall Tuesday:

“It’s pretty basic really. The reason is that Obamacare requires electronic medical records and electronic prescribing and I simply don’t have the finances at this time to go into debt to provide that for my office, it would just be a complete new transfer of electronic equipment in my office for that.

So for me, at my age, I’m just not ready to go into financial debt. Of the 20,000 pages in there, probably up to 1,000 pages are about doctors' offices."

The Electronic Medical Records mandate requires an electronic overhaul by 2015 or penalization. Check out this visual of its implementation:

 

 

"I’ve got 6,000 records, some of them are two inches thick. It would just be basically impossible to scan all of these and put them on electronic medical records and very expensive, by the way,” said Dr. Kiteck, pointing to the many man hours of pay that an electronic overhaul would require.

“It’s a solo practice, I’m just a very small solo practice. I call myself a mom and pop practice,” Dr. Kiteck explained, “so I’ve had it for about twenty years here in Somerset, Kentucky.”

The ad ran for the sake of his customers, according to Dr. Kiteck, as a common courtesy to give patients a one-month notice,

“I just happened to start it out with that little notice there, because so many patients have questions why you’re doing it.”

Kiteck said his ad likely opened up a Pandora’s Box. But the truth is, the box had already been opened when Obamacare was signed into law, and the frightening effects are only beginning to fly out.

Breitbart: The notice closes with this message, "Dr. Kiteck wishes to thank all his patients that have visited his office over the past 20 years, and apologizes for this inconvenience."

Dr. Kiteck's office confirmed that he is indeed closing his practice and that he did publish the notice in the paper. Asked if he would agree to an interview, his receptionist indicated that he'd received many calls from the media but was not prepared to make any additional statement at this time.

There have been surveys which suggested a significant number of doctors might quit or retire early as a result of the new health law. A  2013 Deloitte Survey of U.S. Physicians found that 62 percent of doctors expected some of their colleagues to retire early.

Dr. Kiteck is a 64 year old board certified family physician with a good rating for patient satisfaction on healthgrades.com.

Update: Buzzfeed got through to Dr. Kiteck and he cites a specific reason for retiring, a requirement to use electronic medical records in his practice. That requirement was not part of Obamacare but was included in the stimulus act. Physicians must move to electronic records by 2015 and because of the way use is reported, that means mid-2014 is the deadline for a working system. Those who fail to meet the deadline are charged a fine of 1% (deducted from their reimbursements).

Video Report: Doctors quit on Obamacare

Harry Reid: Obamacare 'Costs Me About $4,500 More'

NewsMax: President Barack Obama may have famously promised his signature healthcare plan would cost consumers less money — but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is proof that it's often not true.

"Under Obamacare, my insurance costs me about $4,500 more than it did before," Reid told the Reno Gazette Journal. "Yes, because it is age-related and it wasn't like that before."
Reid, while noting that 150 million families get insurance through their employers, "so should all federal employees."

Reid's comments came while he denied a CNN story claiming he is the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy coverage through the Obamacare exchanges.

"I followed the Affordable Care Act,” Reid said. “It is the law. The law says that if you have committee staff, leadership staff, they stay where they are. If you have other staff, which is most everyone, they go to the exchanges."

Reid is worth $2.8 to $6.2 million, according to an OpenSecrets.org report, so he would not qualify for subsidies that would lower his Obamacare insurance costs.

But his rate hike is an eye-opener after promises made by people like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who told Meet the Press last year that "everybody would have lower rates" under Obamacare.

And the healthcare rate increases under ObamaCare have been eye-openers for not only the rich, but for many in the middle class and after all is said and done there will be as many uninsured Americans as before only now the government controls one sixth of the U.S. budget through healthcare as well as everyone’s healthcare options.  Wake-up America, the outcome of the next two elections will be the only chance to change this.  Time to oust the Harry Reids, Nancy Pelosis and Barack Obama’s

Pelosi denied to The Weekly Standard in a later report that she'd made the statement, saying she doesn't "remember saying that everybody in the country would have a lower premium."
But a study earlier this year by two members of the American Academy of Actuaries found that tens of millions will see higher insurance costs, reports Forbes, with or without the subsidies — and just like Harry Reid.

Related stories:

• Obamacare Out-of-Pocket Costs Much Higher Than Expected

• Millions Facing Huge Costs, Lost Coverage Thanks to Obamacare Upheaval

James Carville: Don’t Blame Republicans; Blame Obama

CapitalismInstitute: The roll-out of Obamacare has been nothing short of a disaster. Naturally, the Obama Administration has pathetically tried to pin the blame on Republicans.

But, even James Carville, a top Democratic strategist, says Obamacare was a “self-inflicted … disaster.”

Blind party loyalty should never trump facts and Carville demonstrated this in an interview with Fox Business Network recently.

The Washington Examiner reports:

The rollout of this has been awful, and it didn’t have to be that way at all. I think the president has himself to blame as much as anybody. I don’t think he was done in, in this instance by the Republicans, or done in by the media, done in by anything.

While Carville (mistakenly) believes that Obamacare is “going to get better” with time, he is right about one thing: The roll-out of Obamacare was a “massive mess-up” and no one else is to blame but Obama.

Carville is also a little off on the “massive mess-up" as well… It’s more like the “planned dirty Secret behind” ObamaCare,,, rationing, that no one’s talking about and that the goal is Single-Payer Socialized Medicine for all but the elite, but again, either way it all falls into the lap of Obama and the Democrats… not the Republicans, but as long as the media plays the lap dog for the administration, you won’t get the straight scoop from the mainstream media news.

Carville continued:

I look at these polls, and I got to tell you, I think it is all self-inflicted. I think this rollout, which I think they got to get right, was a disaster; it was a joke.

Carville joins the rest of the American people in recognizing Obamacare for what it is: a joke.

He addressed Obama’s “if you like it, you can keep it” lie:

Well, the truth of the matter is, it could be said that he could have — he could have said it a lot more elegantly than he did. …

And there was a way to talk about, you know, how many people would get to keep their health insurance in a way that wasn’t causing this much trouble.

In other words: You should avoid lying to the American people about the consequences of your economically catastrophic law. To say the least, it could “[cause] some grief.”

Even the Obama Administration’s long-time allies are realizing that Obamacare has been a disaster – and no one else is to blame except Obama. If you agree, “recommend” this article on Facebook, Twitter and forward it to help spread the word.

Millennials Abandon Obama and Obamacare

A majority of America's youngest adults would vote to recall the president.

(JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

National Journal: Young Americans are turning against Barack Obama and Obamacare, according to a new survey of millennials, people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are vital to the fortunes of the president and his signature health care law.

The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics: A majority of Americans under age 25 -- the youngest millennials -- would favor throwing Obama out of office.

The survey, part of a unique 13-year study of the attitudes of young adults, finds that America's rising generation is worried about its future, disillusioned with the U.S. political system, strongly opposed to the government's domestic surveillance apparatus, and drifting away from both major parties. "Young Americans hold the president, Congress and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the level of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline," reads the IOP's analysis of its poll. "Millennials are losing touch with government and its programs because they believe government is losing touch with them."

The results blow a gaping hole in the belief among many Democrats that Obama's two elections signaled a durable grip on the youth vote.

Indeed, millennials are not so hot on their president.

Obama's approval rating among young Americans is just 41 percent, down 11 points from a year ago, and now tracking with all adults. While 55 percent said they voted for Obama in 2012, only 46 percent said they would do so again.

When asked if they would want to recall various elected officials, 45 percent of millennials said they would oust their member of Congress; 52 percent replied "all members of Congress" should go; and 47 percent said they would recall Obama. The recall-Obama figure was even higher among the youngest millennials, ages 18 to 24, at 52 percent.

While there is no provision for a public recall of U.S. presidents, the poll question revealed just how far Obama has fallen in the eyes of young Americans.

IOP director Trey Grayson called the results a "sea change" attributable to the generation's outsized and unmet expectations for Obama, as well as their concerns about the economy, Obamacare and government surveillance.

The survey of 2,089 young adults, conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 11, spells trouble for the Affordable Care Act. The fragile economics underpinning the law hinge on the willingness of healthy, young Americans to forgo penalties and buy health insurance.

According to the poll, 57 percent of millennials disapprove of Obamacare, with 40 percent saying it will worsen their quality of care and a majority believing it will drive up costs. Only 18 percent say Obamacare will improve their care. Among 18-to-29-year-olds currently without health insurance, less than one-third say they're likely to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges. 

More than two-thirds of millennials said they heard about the ACA through the media. That's a bad omen for Obamacare, given the intensive coverage of the law's botched rollout. Just one of every four young Americans said they discussed the law with a friend or through social media. Harvard's John Della Volpe, who conducted the poll, said the president has done a poor job explaining the ACA to young Americans.

Republican and Democratic leaders should find little solace in the results. The survey said that 33 percent of young Americans consider themselves Democrats and 24 percent identify with the GOP. The largest and growing segment is among independents, 41 percent of the total.

Democrats' advantage among young voters is fading. Among the oldest millennials (ages 25 to 29), Democrats hold a 16-point lead over the GOP: 38 percent say they're Democrats, and 22 percent call themselves Republicans. Among the youngest of this rising generation (ages 18 to 24), the gap is just 6 points, 31 percent for Democrats and 25 percent for Republicans.

Approval ratings of Congress have declined steeply in the past few years, with congressional Democrats now at 35 percent and congressional Republicans at just 19 percent.

Young blacks say they are much less likely to vote in the 2014 midterm election than they were in November 2009, signaling a worrisome level of engagement among a key Democratic constituency.

In addition to health care, domestic spying is an issue that puts Obama on the wrong side of the rising generation. While split on whether Edward Snowden is a "patriot" or a "traitor" for revealing Obama's surveillance programs, strong majorities of 18-to-29-year-olds oppose the government collecting information from social networks, Web-browsing histories, email, GPS locations, telephone calls, and text messages.  

College loans are a big issue with young Americans, too. Nearly six of 10 called student debt a major problem, and another 22 percent called it a minor one. Seventy percent said their financial situation played into their decision whether to attend college.

Respondents were given a list of options for shrinking the nation's debt. Majorities favored suggestions to tax the rich, cut foreign economic aid in half, slash the nuclear-warhead arsenal, and reduce food stamps.

The results conform with a story I did this summer with the help of the IOP ("The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?"), arguing that while Millennials are deeply committed to public service they don't see government as an efficient way to improve their lives or their communities.

The IOP report issued today said: "This is not to say that young Americans are rejecting politics, the role of government and the promise of America more generally. They are sending a message to those in power that for them to re-engage in government and politics, the political process must be open, collaborative and have the opportunity for impact -- and not one that simply perpetuates well-worn single issue agendas."

The survey was conducted online. The National Journal generally refrains from covering online-only polls but has made past exceptions. In this case, Harvard's IOP survey uniquely focuses on millennials with accumulated data set and a credible polling operation.

(Find full poll results here: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/)

Obamacare: The Final Nail In The Coffin For The Middle Class

Tom Halloran: If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.  Over the past decade or so, the middle class in the United States has been absolutely eviscerated.  The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row, and the poverty numbers in this country are spiraling out of control.  And now here comes Obamacare.  As you will see below, Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.  All of this is creating a tremendous amount of stress for millions of middle class families that are already stretched extremely thin financially.  According to CNN, a survey that was conducted earlier this year found that 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  Most of those families simply cannot afford to pay much higher health insurance premiums for new policies that also come with much larger deductibles and significantly increased out-of-pocket costs.  Millions of those families will ultimately end up choosing to do without health insurance altogether, and that will create a whole host of new problems.  This is a disaster that is so enormous that it is really hard to put into words.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire globe all by itself.  And now Obamacare is going to bring the entire U.S. health care system to its knees.

Obamacare: Since October 1st, The Number Of Americans With Health Insurance Has Fallen By Nearly 4 Million

Last week, Barack Obama decided to allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans for one more year.

Isn’t that generous of him?  Especially considering the fact that he promised us over and over that if we liked our current health insurance policies that we would be able to keep them permanently.

The funny thing is that Obama is not actually changing the law.  So if your health insurance company allows you to stay on your current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, it is technically breaking the law.

And if you continue to stay on that current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, you are technically breaking the law.

It is just that Obama has promised not to enforce what the law says for one year.

For a president to just blatantly disregard the rule of law is a very dangerous precedent.  Do we really want the president to have the power to decide what laws are going to be enforced and what laws are not going to be enforced?

That sounds dangerously close to a dictatorship to me.

And in any event, there are many Americans that are not going to be able to keep their current policies no matter what Obama says.  For example, just two hours after Obama announced his plan last week, the state of Washington announced that they would not be allowing insurance companies to extend their old health insurance plans if they don’t comply with Obamacare under any circumstances…

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has rejected President Obama’s proposal to allow insurance companies to extend health insurance policies for people who have received notices that their policies will be cancelled at the end of the year.

Within two hours of President Obama’s news conference announcing the proposed administrative fix for Americans upset by their policy cancellations, Kreidler issued a statement rejecting the proposal.

“I understand that many people are upset by the notices they have recently received from their health plans and they may not need the new benefits [in the Affordable Care Act] today,” he said. “But I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Kreidler’s statement continued. “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”

How do you think the people of the state of Washington will respond to that?

Things are getting crazy out there, and the number of people that are losing their health insurance policies is absolutely stunning.

According to the Wall Street Journal, so far 106,185 Americans have enrolled in Obamacare since October 1st.  Most of those that have successfully enrolled have done so through the state insurance exchanges.  So far, only 26,794 Americans have signed up for health insurance using the federally run exchanges on HealthCare.gov.

Meanwhile, during that same time frame, 4.02 million Americans have had their health insurance policies cancelled.

So that means that the number of Americans with health insurance has actually decreased by 3,918,205 since October 1st.

Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to result in more Americans being covered?

And according to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Obama not only knew that this would happen, he actually wrote the regulation that caused this to happen…

“I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later. So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you COULDN’T BE CANCELLED, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. EVERY DEMOCRAT VOTED TO KEEP THE RULE THAT CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE.”

So now millions of Americans, including women battling cancer, are losing health insurance plans that they were depending upon.

Thanks Obama?

Obamacare: Skyrocketing Health Insurance Premiums

How much more are you willing to pay for health insurance than you are paying right now?

10 percent?

20 percent?

30 percent?

Well, according to one study health insurance premiums for men are going to go up by an average of 99 percent under Obamacare and health insurance premiums for women are going to go up by an average of 62 percent under Obamacare.

And of course some groups are going to see increases that are much larger than that.  For example, it is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent.

Ouch.

And there are some families out there that have already been hit with health insurance premium increases that are absolutely jaw-dropping.  In a previous article, I included the example of one family down in Texas that has been hit with a 539% rate increase…

Obamacare is named the “Affordable Care Act,” after all, and the President promised the rates would be “as low as a phone bill.” But I just received a confirmed letter from a friend in Texas showing a 539% rate increase on an existing policy that’s been in good standing for years.

As the letter reveals (see below), the cost for this couple’s policy under Humana is increasing from $212.10 per month to $1,356.60 per month. This is for a couple in good health whose combined income is less than $70K — a middle-class family, in other words.

Obamacare: Enormous Deductibles And Huge Out-Of-Pocket Expenses For All

It isn’t just health insurance premiums that are going up either.  Deductibles are going up too.  In fact, just check out what one survey of Americans living in seven different states recently discovered…

Expenses for some policies can reach $6,350 for a single person and $12,700 per family, the most allowed by the health-care law, according to a survey by HealthPocket Inc. of seven states, including California and Ohio. That’s 26 percent higher than the average deductible in the seven states, and a scenario likely repeated across the country, said Kev Coleman, head of research and data at Sunnyvale, California-based HealthPocket.

That same article has a great quote from an elderly New Jersey resident.  82-year-old Larry Saphire thinks that if you have to pay a $5,000 deductible up front, “you might as well not have any insurance at all”…

“If you have to pay $5,000 upfront” when illness hits, “you might as well not have any insurance at all,” said Larry Saphire, 82, of West Orange, New Jersey, who shopped for coverage for his wife and two children, ages 16 and 21. “That’s not insurance.”

On California’s state-run exchange site, the standard low-premium “bronze” plan carries a $5,000 deductible per person, a $60 co-pay to see a doctor and a 30 percent fee, known as coinsurance, on hospital care. In Rhode Island, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s bronze plan has a $5,800 deductible while Missouri’s U.S.-run exchange offers plans by Anthem Blue Cross with the maximum-allowable $6,350 in out-of-pocket costs.

Obamacare: The Quality Of Care Is Going To Go Into The Toilet

A lot of Americans that are signing up for Obamacare are going to be in for a huge shock.  Many of the best hospitals and many of the best doctors are not covered by their plans…

Meanwhile, sometime between March and June, the other shoe drops: People who bought exchange policies realize that the restricted networks insurers created to keep the premium costs low cut out the best hospitals and doctors. A newly insured child with cancer cannot get into a top pediatric hospital because her insurance has zero coverage for out-of-network emergency care. Tearful Mom goes on the evening news and says that she thought when they went on Obamacare, that meant they were safe, and why can’t I take my baby to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, Mr. President?

Can you imagine being a parent in that situation?

In response, some hospitals are already filing suit over this.  For instance, check out what is happening over in Seattle…

Seattle Children’s Hospital filed suit against Washington State’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner this week, after Obamacare implementation caused the hospital to be cut from four of the six insurance plans offered by the new Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

And even if you are on Medicare that does not mean that the quality of your care is going to stay the same either.  As Reuters just reported, UnitedHealth is dumping “thousands of doctors” from their Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly because of Obamacare…

UnitedHealth Group dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company’s other healthcare business. The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.

In the United States, we already pay much more for health care than everyone else in the world, and we typically have to wait longer to see a doctor than most of the rest of the industrialized world does.

Now Obamacare is going to make all of this even worse, and the quality of the care that we receive is going to go downhill fast.

Obamacare: The Jobs Killer

A while back, Obama unilaterally made the decision to delay the implementation of the employer mandate until 2015.

That was probably a good political decision, because it would have been a huge political issue in the 2014 elections.

But the truth is that we won’t have to wait until 2015 for Obamacare to start killing jobs.  In fact, according to CNBC it is already happening…

Approximately one-third of business decision-makers at companies with between 40 and 500 employees, say the health-care law has already increased their costs due to hikes in both the cost of insurance and compliance, according to a recent report from political-research firm Public Opinion Strategies. As a result, many business leaders say they are already making personnel decisions based on the Affordable Care Act.

Among franchised businesses, 27 percent report their company has replaced full-time workers with part-time workers and 31 percent have reduced worker hours. Among non-franchised businesses, 12 percent are replacing full-time workers with part-time workers or reducing hours. This is happening now, with more than a year before the mandate goes into effect; and undoubtedly, these numbers will rise as we approach next July’s “look back” period for tabulating workers’ hours.

It is kind of startling that we are already seeing employers make such big changes even though the employer mandate does not come into effect until 2015.  You can find a very long list of some of the employers that have already either eliminated jobs or cut hours because of Obamacare right here.

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Once we get closer to the deadline things are going to get much, much worse.

At a time when the middle class desperately needs jobs, Obamacare is going to slaughter them.

And even if you are able to keep your current job, that does not mean that your health plan will remain the same.  In fact, Forbes is projecting that a staggering 51 percent of all employment-based health insurance plans will be canceled and replaced with new ones.

Overall, Forbes is projecting that an astounding 93 million Americans will eventually lose their current health insurance policies due to Obamacare.

Obamacare: Providing Huge Incentives For Many Americans To Work Less And Make Less Money

Did you know that Obamacare is going to cause millions of Americans to want to keep their incomes under certain levels?

If you make too much money under Obamacare, you will miss out on some absolutely massive health care subsidies.  The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles…

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The figures that you are about to see were calculated using the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator.  These numbers apply to a husband and a wife that are both 62 years old.

A non-smoking, married couple living in San Francisco, California earning $63,000 a year will have to pay $20,318 a year for a silver plan under Obamacare and $12,647 a year for a bronze plan.

At $63,000, that couple would be making too much money to be eligible for a subsidy, so that couple will have to pay the total cost of whatever plan they choose by themselves.

But if that couple only made $62,000 a year, things would dramatically change.

The plans would still cost the same, but the couple would now be eligible for an Obamacare subsidy of $14,428.

So a silver plan would end up costing them only $5,890, and they would ultimately pay nothing for a bronze plan.

In other words, by reducing their income by $1,000, that couple would save $14,428 if they got a silver plan or they would save $12,647 if they got a bronze plan.

Isn’t that bizarre?

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In the end, millions upon millions of middle class families will decide to go without health insurance entirely for one reason or another.

This will work great until they get into an accident or become seriously ill.

As I have discussed previously, approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.  And most of those bankruptcies actually happen to people that are supposedly “covered” by health insurance.

Obamacare is going to make all of this so much worse.  Millions of middle class families will end up with no health insurance at all, and because so many of them are living paycheck to paycheck a single health emergency will be enough to send them hurtling down the path to financial oblivion.

If you get into an accident, a visit to the emergency room and a single night in the hospital can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars in many areas of the country.

If you get a serious illness such as cancer, the medical bills can be absolutely astronomical.  For instance, there are many cancer patients that rack up medical bills well in excess of a million dollars by the time that they die.

Something desperately needs to be done about our horrible health care system.  Unfortunately, Obamacare is going to make just about everything that is bad about our current system much, much worse.

And the American people are becoming increasingly disgusted and frustrated with Obamacare.  According to Real Clear Politics, an average of recent opinion polls shows that the American people are opposed to Obamacare by an average margin of 14.2 percentage points.

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin