Its the kind of information you will never get from one soul connected with the Obama administration. Americans need to know the facts; Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will deal with an Obamacare meltdown of catastrophic proportions.
That means outgoing President Barack Obama will not face the wrath of this grim reality when figures emerge conveniently after the November 8th election. To misconstrue this as a gift for candidate Clinton would be absurd. It smells of politics and just how this administration views ordinary Americans; lemmings.
The next president will face the latest Obamacare enrollment tallies, which will most assuredly be a decisive verdict about the still-shaky healthcare marketplaces. Healthcare insurance providers are ready to cut their losses and pull out en masse. The largest medical insurance company in America, United HealthCare, has already done just that.
Meanwhile, brewing like a volcano about to erupt, the fourth Obamacare signup period begins about one week before Election Day. It was craftily put there to have no final results until after the election. It is much like the bad part of the Affordable Care Act regulations did not emerge until the last mid-term elections.
Mounting complaints from big insurers will spell judgment day according to the healthcare professionals. From the infancy of Obamacare in April, 2010 to what is happening today and tomorrow are highlighted in my book, Redistribution of Common Sense : Selected Commentaries on the Obama Administration 2009 – 2014. Five chapters are dedicated to Obamacare. It’s eerily on target with today’s reality. [see it at amazon]
Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, summed it up best, “The next open enrollment period is key.” That is a mild way of saying healthcare insurers have seen enough of this failed law and cannot sustain their corporate profits. In other words, contrary to the Barack Obama vision of America, we are not socialists, but rather capitalists since this country was founded.
It’s actually very simple; the Obama administration has struggled for several years to bring young, healthy people into the marketplaces. They were needed to offset the medical costs of older and sicker customers. But young, healthy people think they’ll live forever and choose, if they choose anything, catastrophic health insurance. They are paying off enormous student loans, struggling with low-paying starter jobs or even starting a family.
Many insurers are proposing substantial rate hikes hoping that can hold back the tide for higher recent medical costs. The average premium increase next year is about nine percent, according to an analysis of 17 cities by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some increases will be far higher. For instance, Blue Cross Blue Shield has proposed increases of 40 percent in Alabama and 60 percent in Texas to name just two states. Will that bring in the younger participants?
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said repeatedly he will dismantle Obamacare. It remains to be seen what his alternative is. But Hillary has a tougher road to hoe being that she promises the continuation of Obamacare as President Obama’s potential Democratic successor.
Like Obama, she has promised to invest in advertising and in-person outreach to help more people enroll. She claims she will increase Obamacare subsidies. Customers will spend no more than 8.5 percent of their income on premiums, down from 9.5 percent under current law. Of course that is ludicrous and obviously a campaign promise that is economically infeasible to most economists.
Hillary proposes a tax credit of up to $5,000 per family. Her theory is that will offset rising medical costs. Experts frown at this campaign promise specifically because the real problems are much more vast than some political Band-Aid in lieu of telling the honest truth; Obamacare is sinking faster than Titanic.
In 2015, 11 million people bought coverage through the exchanges. Its a huge drop from the Congressional Budget Offices initial projections that 21 million would be enrolled by that time.
The simple, honest truth is large corporations who sell healthcare insurance are screaming they have hit the ceiling of their patience. Their stockholders are demanding drastic change and Hillary has promised to be Obama’s third term.
This shows how out-of-touch Hillary Clinton and her campaign team are.
