Remember way back to the 2008 Presidential campaign? Then Senator Obama made a promise, one he repeated over and over for the next few years. Here’s a refresher of what he said:
“If you’ve got insurance through your employer, you can keep your insurance. We estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, then we’re going to provide you the option of buying into the same kind of federal pool that both Sen. McCain and I enjoy as federal employees. We’re going to make sure insurance companies can’t discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions. We’ll negotiate with the drug companies for the cheapest available prices. We are going to invest in information technology to eliminate bureaucracy and make the system more efficient. We’ve got to put more money into preventive care.”
This figure that Obama kept spouting ad nauseum was derived from a memo by three Harvard professors that were unpaid advisers to the Obama campaign. Their memo cites their “best guess” of annual savings of $200 billion. They then divided that by the U.S. population, multiplied out to represent a family of four, then they rounded down to get to the $2500 figure.
However, we ultimately got confirmation of something that just about every logical thinking American knew for the truth – that Obamacare would not drive costs down, but it would have the opposite effect and inflate healthcare costs across the board.
“During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.
But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama’s vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey.
Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370.
What’s more, premiums climbed faster in Obama’s four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.”
Now fast forward to today and what does Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius have to say about Obamacare?
““These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she said. “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”
Ms. Sebelius added that those customers currently pay more for their health care if their plans have high out-of-pocket costs, high deductibles or exclude particular types of coverage, such as mental health treatment. She also said that some men and younger customers could see their rates increase while women and older customers could see their rates drop because the law restricts insurers’ ability to set rates based on age and gender.”
Now that the election is over, and Mr. Obama is safely ensconsed as President Obama for a second term, and as we are starting to see the mal effects of Obama’s policies more and more of the undeniable truth is being revealed.
But it isn’t only individual and family insurance costs that are costing more, the states are on the hook for billions more healthcare costs, as well.
“The additional cost to employers in states that do not expand Medicaid has been estimated as $1.3 billion a year. Of course, if Medicaid is expanded, that’s another fleecing for we, the taxpaying sheep. If we’re going to get our pockets picked anyway, subsidizing businesses sounds like it would be cheaper. And that’s what waiving the notorious “individual mandate” or business mandates amounts to, because the purpose of those mandates is to force every American to buy health insurance right away, rather than waiting until they get sick and invoking that “must cover pre-existing conditions” mandate.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas, which is resisting Medicaid expansion, made this point through a spokeswoman: “This is not free money from the federal government – it’s either being borrowed from China or taken out of taxpayers’ pockets. The state and federal government can’t afford the current Medicaid program as is, and it’s financially irresponsible to continue expanding a program that we know to be broken.”
Thank you President Obama, you’ve made sure you were the U.S. President who ushered in socialized medicine, regardless of whether it actually helps anyone…