OBAMACARE: The Gift That Keeps on Taking

By Jim Quinn

Isn’t it interesting that the mainstream media offers barely a peep about the ongoing and worsening Obamacare debacle?

Healthcare premiums, co-pays and deductibles are soaring, while doctor and plan choices contract to a minuscule level. Recent surveys reveal the hardship being inflicted upon families across the nation. Those who are willfully baffled by the lack of consumer spending need look no further than Obamacare and its impact on the budgets of hard working Americans.

According to a survey by LIMRA, an insurance and financial services trade association, six in 10 workers agreed that the rising cost of health insurance directly affects how much they set aside in their workplace retirement savings plan. Employees are being forced to cut back on their retirement savings in order to meet the skyrocketing cost of their health insurance. Based on the numbers being bandied about by the Kaiser Family Foundation, it seems average families will soon have to decide between food and healthcare. Remember Obama’s quotes in 2008- 2009 when he was selling this bloated pig of a plan to you?

“We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.”

“If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”

Millions of people have been kicked out of their existing health plans and have seen their premiums and deductibles go up by double digits. Small business owners are being forced out of business. And now the fines, mandates, and taxes really begin to kick in. At least median household real wages are lower than they were in 1989. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Single and family average premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 4% this year over last. The average annual premium for single coverage is $6,251, of which workers pay an average of $1,071; the average family premium is $17,545, of which workers pay an average of $4,955. Deductibles have risen more sharply than premiums. That’s the amount that consumers must pay out of pocket before insurance pays for anything, except for certain preventive services that are covered at 100%. The average deductible for workers with employer-sponsored health insurance who face a deductible is $1,318 for single coverage this year, up 44% from $917 in 2010. By contrast, over that same period, single premiums are up 24% and wages have risen 10%, just outpacing general inflation at 9%.

The brain dead proponents and cheerleaders for Obamacare reveal themselves to be nothing more than liberal control freaks who care not for the people they supposedly are helping with “free” healthcare. They need to falsify enrollment figures in order to prove how successful they’ve been in destroying the health system. They only care about press releases and winning the PR battle with the Republicans. It’s all about votes. It’s not about what is best for the uninsured. Families being forced into the limited number of Obamacare plans are seeing weekly costs of $300 to $400 for barely acceptable coverage.

The poor suckers forced into the Obamacare marketplace have to contend with health plan deductibles that are even higher than those with workplace-based coverage. The average 2016 deductible for a silver plan on the Obamacare exchanges is $3,117 for individual coverage, up 6% from 2015, while the average silver family deductible is $6,480, up 8% from this year, according to a recent analysis by HealthPocket, a technology company that ranks and compares health plans.

The entire reason Obama and his liberal minions forced Obamacare down the throats of a public that did not want it, was to provide insurance for the 30 million uninsured Americans. He failed, as there are still close to 30 million uninsured Americans, only they now get to pay a penalty to the IRS. It’s laughable for the MSM and brainless liberal twits to hail Obamacare as a huge success in covering the low income uninsured, when a poor family has to meet a $6,480 deductible before insurance pays a dime. How many poor families have $6,480 to spare? We know for a fact that more than half the households in the country don’t have $1,000 in savings, let alone the poor households. It’s a joke to say they have health coverage.

Obamacare is an unequivocal disaster that has resulted in less job growth, small business closures, worse care, less options for consumers, higher health insurance premiums for all, and soaring profits among mega-insurers, mega-hospital corporations, drug conglomerates, drug stores, drug wholesalers, and the political campaign coffers of corrupt bought off politicians. It’s the gift that keeps taking from hard working Americans.

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