ObamaCare
Backlash
It's worth remembering that President Obama decided not to let his new
ObamaCare scheme take effect until 2014. At the time of its passage in
2010, it seemed politically wise to delay its implementation.
Republicans won the election of 2010 and lost that of 2012. But the full
impact of the new law will begin to become apparent in 2014 and the
effect will be horrific, deeply damaging the Obama administration and
the Democrats who backed it.
The main brunt of the impact will be on premiums for health insurance
coverage. They will skyrocket in very short order. The Heritage
Foundation estimates the increases by state. Here's a sample:
State
Premiums Rise By Percentage
California
42-69%
Florida
61%
Georgia
61-100%
Illinois
61%
Michigan
35-63%
New Jersey
39%
North Carolina
61%
Ohio
55-106%
Pennsylvania
39%
Texas
35-63%
Virginia
75-82%
Why such draconian increases? Heritage ascribes it to two provisions of
the new law.
The first restricts health insurers from charging any one age group more
than three times the premium it charges any other one. This 3-1 ratio --
typically between the older, non-Medicare portion of the covered
population and the young group -- is the brain child of the social
planners. The actual figure is about 5-1 -- it costs about five times as
much to insure older patients than younger ones. Because, obviously,
companies are not going to cut the premiums for the older patients, they
will increase them for the younger ones so they can meet the 3-1 ratio.
That means big increases for younger families.
The second provision that pushes up premiums is the tendency of the new
law to kill its customers with kindness by requiring all manner of
illnesses and treatments to be covered, and covered generously. Mental
health, dental care and such are all required in any policy. And the law
restricts any effort by insurance companies to limit the utilization of
these services. So the premiums will rise for everybody.
The result of this premium inflation will be that more and more
employers will refuse to continue to cover their workers and will find
it far cheaper to pay the penalties in the law than to underwrite the
vastly more expensive policies. Tens of millions of Americans will lose
their insurance and have to buy coverage from the insurance exchanges
Obama is creating -- at a multiple of their current premium's cost. The
ObamaCare subsidies are limited and will not begin to make up for the
increased costs. And, to make matters worse, employers will be obliged
to pay an annual $65 tax per employee to subsidize catastrophic coverage
for the most expensive patients.
Obama's real goal, of course, is to destroy employment-related insurance
and force everyone into the insurance exchanges. This will lay the basis
for single-payer, government-funded, socialized medicine in the United
States: his stated goal.
The political consequences of these premium increases are going to be
horrific. Voters will realize how fraudulent Obama was in predicting
average premium cuts of $2,500 per family. And the full dimensions of
this misguided law will become apparent.
The result will be a gradual and continuing erosion of Obama's
favorability until he gets his clock cleaned in the 2014 election.
Normally, of course, sixth year-elections are a total wipeout for the
incumbent party. FDR lost a hundred seats in the House in 1938. Truman
lost control of Congress in 1946.
Eisenhower lost more than a dozen Senate seats in 1958. Nixon/Ford
suffered massive losses in 1974. Reagan lost the Senate in 1988, as did
Bush in 2006. Only Clinton, with Republicans self-destructing over
impeachment, avoided severe losses. Obama will fall victim to the
general trend, but his losses will increase as the economy fails to
recover and health insurance becomes unaffordable.
LEAKED: Feinstein's Sinister
"Gun-Grabbing" Agenda Revealed
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