Most people do not know what this is all about, most people don’t care about “Obamacare” or health insurance. What they want is to have health care when they need it largely like we did before.
As of Tuesday the Affordable Healthcare Act otherwise known as Obamacare a law that was passed in the dark of night in 2010 finally took effect. In theory everybody should be insured by January first or face tax penalties.
So what is the issue. Why is the House fighting what seems on face value to be a good thing, people are insured?
1. Prior to the law taking effect nobody was denied healthcare, while some were denied insurance based on previous conditions this is by no means a denial of service which many many experts in the field see coming down the road now.
2. Since the law was passed in 2010, President Obama has granted exceptions to the law for large business, and for Congress http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355176/congresss-obamacare-waiver-michael-f-cannon.
3. Republicans have been saying for months that the act was poorly named that it is in fact not affordable and they tried to stop on numerous occasions the law from taking effect but as they control only the House of Representatives not much has been approved (7 out of 30 bills were approved by both Houses and signed by the President.)
Economists and Healthcare experts have been predicting that costs would rise at unbelievable cost to the consumer. While the President went on to tell people that if they wanted their insurance they could keep it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfl55GgHr5E This wasn’t a lie, you can keep your Doctor, you can keep your coverage, but as was noted over at http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/03/Obamacare-Facebook-Erupts-With-Citizen-Sticker-Shock one man posted to the Official Affordable Healthcare Act Facebook page
“The information is not very complete as I don’t see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does given an actual price as to the “Premium.” It is VERY SCARY!! For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2500 deductible. We are both 32 years old. When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.78 a month!!!! So compare my old Plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% Coverage for $945 a month. This is only only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me to see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!”
For many you can keep your old plan it is just going to cost you everything else you have. I think it is safe to say that the Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is not aware of the outrageous costs the bulk of America now faces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_92wsfmLjzQ. Of course she wasn’t too concerned about those costs nor debating them before passing the law. Back when she was the Speaker of the House she said “We have to pass the bill for you to find out what’s in it” Apparently she didn’t read it herself since as the man quoted above in the Brietbart story has a $2500 deductible.
Then take a look at the implementation of the Health Exchanges just on day one. Well we can’t actually because the Government is not giving us an exact number which is odd since Apple for instance could tell you the exact number of iPhones sold on the first day, we can get a dollar number for the revenue for box office films for opening night but the official number of those signing up for the new health plans not so much. California did initially report having over 5 million visits to their webpage but this turned out later to be only 640 thousand visits.
Then there is the matter of security. In Minnesota Personal Identifiable Information was already leaked from the MNSURE people, a surprising feat as the incident happened prior to the exchange coming online. http://www.startribune.com/business/223564521.html
So what does this all have to do with the crisis and the Government shut down. It is simple. The Republicans in the House have had enough. When Congress was exempted from the Health Care law by the President, a divide was created. We now have a ruling class and everybody else. Republicans asked in their funding bill to extend the waiver to every American not just Congress and Big Business. They also wanted to get rid of what many people on both sides of the aisle consider to be a very bad tax.
The Medical Device Tax, was already voted on in the Senate at a vote of 79 to 20 for repeal. The issue being that all Tax laws must originate in the House of Representatives and as this law originated in the Senate and the House never took a vote on it until now the tax was never repealed. Amusingly despite the original Tax Repeal law being written and sponsored by Democrats http://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/news-releases?ID=D97E6C71-A30C-4828-8ECB-B74C9AF0DC6F they now seemingly want nothing to do with the repeal Officials from the White House have said repeatedly the President will not sign any bill other than the Funding Bill the Senate passed which does not mention the Medical Device Tax.
People losing their insurance, people who can no longer afford their insurance, people getting cut hours at work and losing their insurance….
-BrotherLeRoy
