Forbes reports that 93 Million people were going to lose their insurance due to the affordable care act, something that the administration knew going back to 2010. The report comes from Administrative internal data see here :http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-06-17/pdf/2010-14488.pdf.
Page 18 has most of the information you would need.
Bottom line everybody knew that a substantial number of Americans were going to lose their Health Care Coverage, their Doctors, their low premiums. I copied the government report to my google drive account just in case of another shut down.
Now of course the 69 % doesn’t necessarily mean they will lose coverage all together. What it does mean is that for those individuals at the bare minimum would be losing the plan they had. In many cases employers would be assisting with a new plan. This however neglects the already been documented by the hundreds of thousands who have lost their insurance through their employer. For these people they are now on their own or will be come January 1.
Let’s cease the talk about the individual mandate and the penalties for avoiding it. Instead lets focus on the real life catastrophe that was created when the House under the Leadership of Representative Nancy Pelosi passed the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote. Millions of people, not hundreds of thousands, but millions are losing their health insurance.
The report estimated that 93 million Americans would lose their insurance. A more conservative estimate is 30 million, this on the data that roughly half the population has insurance through their employer and that 20% would lose that all together. so lets just go with 30 million its the low number its roughly 10% of the United States population. Maybe a better perspective is required though. from 2012 census data we know that MN has a population of roughly 5.3 million. So really we are looking at almost 6 States worth of citizens who are now without insurance.
So 6 states just lost their insurance. This was the cost of making insurance available for everybody. But this shouldn’t be a problem right. After all Health and Human Services as well as the President, and Minority Leader Pelosi, and of course distinguished Sentors have pointed out that the plans you can get now are better, often cheaper and when they aren’t cheaper many will qualify for Government subsidies on the cost.
So lets just take a look at some of these cheaper plans that are now available.
Again courtesy of Forbes
According to the Commonwealthfund insurance premiums rose 62% between 2003 and 2011. Contrast that with the stories of people who are getting the sticker shock of the new plans. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/10/28/Californians-Experience-Obamacare-Sticker-Shock. The Bronze plan the lowest plan is a 65% increase over the 2013 costs. Think about that this isn’t a marginal increase this is an increase that exceeds the previously measured 8 year span and it happened by a single piece of legislature taking effect. For the woman who was given the option of the Bronze Plan at 65% increase that is an added cost of roughly $2,300 per year spent on the monthly premium. Not to mention the added cost of the deductible. That is real money being taken out of peoples hands, a grand total of $5600 on health insurance per year.
Worse yet, the so called subsidies available are hardly worth it. Take a look at this poor student at the University of Minnesota for example. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/us-employers-slash-hours-avoid-obamacare The subsidies barely offer relief for people at all.
It isn’t that Congress and the President had malignant intentions. They didn’t, theirs was as pure as pure could be in trying to provide insurance for everybody (I say insurance because technically everybody had care). The problem is the solution used is even worse than the problem. Instead of making care available to everybody we have made it affordable only to a key few.
Worse now of course is we just took 30,000,000 people minimum and dropped them of their Health Care come January 1. Even if Congress and the President approve waiving the penalty for those who don’t have insurance we still have the problem of people going bankrupt should disaster strike. Right now the Government Health Care web site isn’t working. So these people cannot actually sign up, even those going through paper channels have no choice. For the healthy they may be able to hold off for a while, just pray they don’t get hit by a bus or get diagnosed with cancer. For those who had pre-existing conditions for requiring treatment, this could mean something else entirely. What about the pregnant woman who is losing her health care who is now forced to give birth without insurance coverage because she can’t get through https://www.healthcare.gov or any of the other alternatives.
What about Joe down the street who did manage to get through and only finds out after his first month’s bill in February that he somehow was signed up for a Platinum plan despite signing up for a Bronze plan, or worse he somehow managed to be registered for 3 plans. This is a serious thing, it is already happening. http://www.tacticalchess.com/2013/10/more-trouble-with-affordable-care-act.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304410204579142141827109638
Americans are being left in the lurch. They are being forced into dangerous financial situations because we turned a deaf ear on their concerns. It is a shame, because not only does this law not help, but it risks creating an entirely new class of the impoverished. Ironically while trying to help the poor.
