The Affordable Care Act passed upon a mountain of lies about “bending the cost curve” and phony cost estimates. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for it.
The subsidies Obamacare shoveled to insurance companies — that enriched them greatly — are set to expire exactly as the Democrat designers planned. This will cause premiums to skyrocket. Right on cue, Democrats label the failed Obamacare promises a “Republican health care crisis.”
In 2019, right before President Barack Obama signed the bill, I wrote the following column in which I predicted he would be long out of office when the true bill came due, leaving others to clean up the mess. Here are excerpts:
Americans overwhelmingly like their health care and their health insurance. While Americans reject Obamacare, the president and Congress insist on driving it through.
Most Americans, up to 85 percent, already have health insurance and are satisfied with it. Lacking health insurance is different from lacking health care which, by law, emergency rooms must supply. Millions go without health insurance by choice and not due to lack of resources. Deduct from the number without insurance those who have access to it via entitlement programs, those temporarily without it while between jobs, those here illegally and those who could go on their parents’ insurance plans by paying affordable amounts and you’re down to 10 million to 15 million people without health insurance for longer than a year. This represents 5 percent of Americans.
To address this, the president and the Democrats propose a complete government takeover of health care. It will, at minimum, force all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay fines or worse. It will force nearly all employers to provide health insurance or pay fines. It will tell health insurers that they must accept applicants with pre-existing illnesses and restrict their ability to “discriminate” based on factors like sex and age.
Incredibly, the president and Congress tell us that our economic recovery hinges on “health care reform” and that they can achieve it providing millions of people with health insurance estimated to cost a trillion dollars in the first decade while simultaneously reducing the deficit. Good luck with that.
“Health care reform” achieves its deficit-reducing magic by collecting taxes in the early years building up money while paying out very little. Only after the first four years does money go out. It also forces states to pick up part of the tab. So, voila, it reduces the deficit — at least in the first decade.
Then what?
The Congressional Budget Office, in cost estimates full of caveats, conditions and on-the-one-hands, says that it could/might/may reduce the deficit in the second and third decades, too.
A poll commissioned by Investor’s Business Daily found that 65 percent (of doctors) “oppose” Obamacare and that 45 percent would consider taking early retirement or leaving their practice if the bill went through.
Given the broad opposition of most Americans, most doctors and seniors in fear of cuts in Medicare, one must ask why do it?
First, Democrats now in control of all three branches of government have convinced themselves they face a political price if they fail.
Second, while a large majority of Republicans and most independents oppose these “reforms,” Democrats overwhelmingly support them. They consider health care and health insurance a right — never mind the Constitution or the price tag — and think “the rich” should bear the costs.
Third, many believe in good faith that this is the “right thing to do.” This breathtakingly ignores the mountain of evidence that government command-and-control health care reduces quality, reduces innovation and inevitably leads to rationing. The president of the Canadian Medical Association says Canada’s system, a single-payer kind, the model favored by President Obama, is “imploding.” She calls for more competition.
Critics of America’s health care system say that citizens in other countries enjoy longer life expectancies. But after adjusting for homicides, increased infant mortality due to teen pregnancies and low birth weights, obesity, traffic fatalities and other behavioral factors, the discrepancy disappears.
When the Obamacare bill comes due when the deficit explodes and the costs are “controlled” through government-directed rationing supporters, including President Obama, will long have departed Washington, leaving others to deal with the mess.
This is where we are today.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit here. Follow Larry on X @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage.
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Then President Obama and the Democrat Congress knew exactly what they were doing — ripping off the taxpayer to fill their pockets. Everyone else was against it but who was going to stop its passage. Unfortunately, it is too late to prosecute. As stated, someone else has to clean up the mess.
His legacy, disaster and incompetence. Not in his personal finances, there he proved to more than competent.
Obamacare sent ninety four million dollars to dead people and allowed tens of thousands of duplicate Social Security numbers to be used for coverage. This system is a fraud machine and it has to be gutted. Investigators didn’t submit Social Security numbers citizenship documents or income records and twenty three of twenty four applications were still approved. Eighteen of those were still getting coverage as of September. The Obamacare exchange and insurers verified nothing and kept paying out tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars for people who do not exist. The GAO found that twenty nine thousand Social Security numbers in 2023 and sixty eight thousand in 2024 were used to secure more than one year of insurance coverage. Multiple people openly using the same SSNs to defraud taxpayers. On top of that ninety four million dollars went to insurers on behalf of dead people. This is the exact broken system Democrats want to extend without a single reform. Pathetic.
Very true, Larry Elder. People voted to retain Gavin Newsome, when they could have had you as Governor of California. Same illogic. Just because one wants something to be true, doesn’t make it true, does it? My husband has USPS insurance, and I straight Medicare. Try very hard not to misuse it and, at 76 and 77 years of age, respectively, we pray that more people will begin pursuing healthy lifestyles to take a good bit of the burden off the healthcare system.
It isn’t “Obamacare,” it is Obamadoesn’tcare!
A functional health system is so complex that God Himself would have to manage it. Obama (and the Democrats) were slightly less wise than God. (Heavy understatement). An aging population, increasingly expensive medical technology, unhealthy lifestyles and worsened health conditions since the pandemic, incredibly confusing billing systems with huge inefficiencies, unnecessary procedures, coverage extended to illegal immigrants, malpractice lawsuits and insurance against these lawsuits, graft and abuse, the list could go on and on. I don’t know why the whole thing doesn’t collapse. Add to this the challenge of undoing all the harm that Obamacare has done! To fix things will require a lot of pain and teaching Americans that this is NOT a right, and we will NOT get premium health care (except for the rich) until wiser and more sensible people are running things, and it will take years unless AI can help.
Otherwise, we will end up with rationed medical care, long waits and long lines, underqualified medical personnel, and assisted suicide as “compassionate health care”. Not to mention what we already have—abortion as “health care” and acoholism and drug abuse as “self medication”.
BOcare was an attack on our healthcare system, a softened terrorism basically. That’s it, no big conspiracy, just a low IQ attack.
Osambo about 1995 as a community agitator used the CRA of 1977 along with the additions of Slick Willie Clintoneone to help create the housing market collapse of 2006 and then become the hero as illegal totus. He stole America’s money to bail out the banks too big to fail(better known as filling democrat coffers). He is a worthless illegal kenyan POS of the first degree.
And the impact on the medical community goes way beyond care. It dictates and takes away choices of medical professionals about their jobs and futures; all kind of things the public doesn’t hear about. It has been a complete disaster and Kremlin style takeover of the medical community.
People with AARP don’t remember how they where lied to!!!
You can almost hear BO saying now: “I love it when a plan comes together!”
Remember the old air filter commercial?
“you can pay me now or pay me later”. Obamacare make others/ the healthy pay now and all citizens pay even more later.
Remember Jonathan Gruber? If not, look him up.
How’s that “$2500 lower premium” working out? One publicity-seeking GOP senator BROKE HIS WORD to his constituents an allowed this behemoth to be born! It could never work as touted. And forcing men and older women to buy pregnancy insurance was beyond stupid! Give the $$$ to the people but do put some guardrails on so they don’t waste it on quack cures or their liquor budget!
Scrap orig ACA
Merge like plans
Compare, contrast plans
Streamline
Make Usable
Rebrand AHA: American Health Act?
Expand treatments, RX
Blend into Medicare?
Obamacare doubled my health insurance costs on day one. My costs then went on to triple. And I am not rich.
And where did the millions that the Kenyan has come from? Plenty of fraud and incompetence in this government. If Trump had not been elected, would we know of all of it? BTW- I will never believe that the Kenyan was born in the US,
The government should have never stuck their nose in healthcare in the first place. They ruined the best and most affordable care in the world. They can’t deliver the mail on time or educate our kids and you want them in charge of your health??? lol. Get rid of Obama care and replace it with NOTHING!
“In 2019, right before President Barack Obama signed the bill…”
Typo.
It’s what the Democrats always do – they make a mess, every four or eight years and when, finally, the Republicans are back in the oval office they have to spend much of their time trying to clean up the mess that was left behind! I think it’s because Democrats just don’t have any common sense. Their only concern seems to be gaining more power and money and the rest be damned!
A friend of mine dank the koolaid early on. She gave up her federal employee health benefit to go on Obamacare. She had to pay thousands of dollars before any copay was satisfied. She’s retired now and am not sure she was able to get back on her old insurance, but while on Obamacare, she was dissatisfied and sorry she believed the lies.
How can you look at the people an call it the “affordable care act”? It is not affordable, they
only care about the money and it is an act. The actors have gotten rich.
As usual, almost all the brain fart ideas and policies of the Democrats result in “King Midas in Reverse” outcomes, i.e., everything they touch eventually turns to crap! Obummer Care is no exception and is a prime example of a negative outcome. Hopefully, Obummer Care will eventually die and a better solution found for health care for those Americans who need it.
Because it seems that only the health insurance companies liked the ACA, I believe it was a money laundering scheme that was legal, these companies supported the Democrat party. This is just a deduction from the facts, that no one got better health care, from this so called health insurance.
Bravo for this article, I have been saying this was the problem from the beginning of the ACA, And was told repeatedly by those in office, that I was imagining that the cost hadn’t suddenly increased from what it was just immediately before. People prior to the ACA brought healthcare insurance based on their health needs —those with specific medical conditions might have had a higher cost rate but if they remained with their insurers long term and maintained their health care, it was a pre-determined cost. One did not need to shop around yearly but only when one needed more coverage The way the ACA works, you have to check yearly to make sure that your health needs are covered adequately by your health insurance coverage because they might suddenly consider your coverage not profitable enough and will over charge for your coverage and/or turn around and deny you any coverage because it suddenly became unprofitable for them despite your health needs. And the ACA , worked exactly like the student loan program, there was no cap on costs of same basic treatment given nationwide, so facilities could charge whatever they wanted in return because the government guaranteed them the coverage of the costs. And the states took advantage of this, especially those states that have high SALT taxes, they covered their costs by defaulting the cost to gaining higher federal subsidies. That’s why NYS and California are complaining—they allowed costs for healthcare to rise so high because they expected to pay their costs with federal subsidies funding.And meanwhile all our federal elected representatives ( Senators and Congressional representatives) get a Cadillac healthcare plan that covers more and costs them pennies compared to what they want us to pay. The ACA is set up to guarantee that the insurance companies maintain a high profit margin by raising premiums and passing as much costs on to those who pay for healthcare plans without any subsidies benefit, in other words, we who pay are paying the cost with higher overall costs, exactly like we are stuck paying higher premiums for vehicles insurance. We are paying more just to make sure that the health insurance companies have a profit. That is the opposite of what people want—they want to be able to see a doctor and get needed care when they need care. Only barely 5% of the population needs specialized care that requires costly medical treatment services. The expansion of adding mental health services has also added costs which are not being given the priority to make those who need that service available with stronger support supervision which can effectively reduce the constant burden of having them re-treated and evaluated. The whole ACA is one big failure plan
Shame on the insurance companies!! Praying they figure out alternatives soon! ????????????
Go to Hot Air dot com and look for “It Sure Looks Like Obamacare is Rife with Fraud”, by John Sexton. It lays out just how the ACA is awash in fraud, to the tune of Billions of dollars.
this was a ploy to have gov take over healthcare and then the prices would skyrocket and destroy heathcare and of course politicians would get there cut and criminals too no one would be the wiser because the media would cover it up
Obama wasn’t POTUS in 2019 so he couldn’t have signed off on it. Was it 2009?
The Affordable healthcare is communist.
No matter what system we end up with every politician should lose any special coverage they have and be required to use it too
Obamacare was a nightmare the minute it started. I’ve heard Obama claim this was his greatest accomplishments during his presidency. That accomplishment is trash. Americans know Obamacare is a major fail and not the fault of the Trump administration. Financially upside down financially from the start.
Pelosi said,,let’s pass it then we will find out what’s in it..we still dont know what’s in it. Except she be ame very wealthy….
My observation. The Republicans are going to fall on the sword for it. I can see a blue wave coming in midterms.