{"id":268647,"date":"2016-09-20T23:42:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T23:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=268647"},"modified":"2016-09-20T23:44:55","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T23:44:55","slug":"republicans-issue-good-news-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/republicans-issue-good-news-obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Issue Good News About Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

To Republicans, good news about Obamacare (the American President\u2019s \u2018legacy\u2019 healthcare-reform program, called officially \u201cThe Affordable Care Act\u201d) is bad news about Obamacare (for all Americans) \u2014 and, now, they\u2019ve got more of it to crow about than they did before.<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, on Friday, September 16th, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported<\/span><\/a> that the two categories of consumer products and services whose prices rose by far the most, during both the past year, and the latest month, were \u201cMedical care services\u201d and \u201cMedical care commodities.\u201d President Obama had promised that his Obamacare would end healthcare-cost inflation, not supercharge it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to that, House Republicans (the House Energy and Commerce Committee) issued on September 13th, their own \u2018good news\u2019 about Obamacare, in a research study that they did, titled “Implementing\u00a0Obamacare: A Review of\u00a0CMS\u2019 Management of the\u00a0State-Based Exchanges\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It reports that U.S. taxpayers (the CMS or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have paid $4.6 billion to 16 states to set up state-based insurance \u201cexchanges\u201d or marketing-sites for the insurance companies\u2019 plans, and that four (25%) of them have already failed, and one more will close by the end of 2017. (More could fall subsequently.) Furthermore, with all of that $4.6B spending, every one of these exchanges was supposed to be self-sustaining by the end of 2014, but none of them yet is, nearly two years after the deadline; and, consequently, their economic drain to the country continues, and the federal expenditures will keep rising for Obamacare\u2019s state exchanges (if and as long as any of them continue to exist).<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the Committee\u2019s main \u201cFindings\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

CMS is not confident that the remaining SBEs\u00a0will be sustainable in the long term.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

As of September 2016, every SBE still relies\u00a0upon federal establishment grant funds \u2014 20 months\u00a0after SBEs were to be self-sustaining by law.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Only one\u00a0SBE \u2014 Kentucky \u2014 complied with\u00a0PPACA\u2019s requirement that all SBEs publish the\u00a0costs associated with operating its exchange on the\u00a0internet, including monies lost to waste, fraud, and\u00a0abuse.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

CMS prohibits pay-per-enrollee schemes in\u00a0federally facilitated exchange states, but permits the\u00a0same problematic scheme in SBEs, in order to\u00a0increase enrollment numbers.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The HHS Inspector General found that Maryland\u00a0and Nevada violated federal rules and used federal\u00a0Medicaid dollars to pay for unpermitted SBE\u00a0expenses.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

CMS failed to enforce its own rules on Medicaid\u00a0allocations, and did not recover the misspent dollars\u00a0identified by the HHS Inspector General.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

CMS has recovered\u00a0only\u00a0$1.6 million in misspent\u00a0federal funds from three SBEs. Nearly $1 million\u00a0was for impermissible construction costs that went\u00a0undetected by CMS for over a year.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The Government Accountability Office issued\u00a0two reports on CMS oversight of the SBEs. All six\u00a0of the recommendations for how CMS can improve\u00a0its oversight of the SBEs remain \u201copen,\u201d indicating\u00a0that CMS has not implemented a single one.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

CMS eased the transition for failed SBEs to join\u00a0healthcare.gov by allowing them to keep user fees\u00a0collected by insurance carriers intended to pay for\u00a0the use of healthcare.gov.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Starting in 2017, CMS will offer failed SBEs a\u00a0\u201creduced\u201d rate of 1.5 percent to use healthcare.gov,\u00a0at the expense of federal taxpayers.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

According to CMS, SBEs have \u201ca right to change\u00a0their mind\u201d if a state decides it no longer wants to\u00a0operate an exchange.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

However, these are actually small problems compared to broader issues of Obamacare \u2014\u00a0 <\/span>especially: healthcare cost, universality, and quality, in the United States, as compared to other countries. After Obamacare\u2019s having been in effect now for two years, there is no indication whatsoever that it has at all improved the competitive standing of the U.S. in healthcare, but some evidence exists that the U.S. \u2014 already twice the per-capita healthcare cost as compared to healthcare in other countries \u2014 experienced the highest percentage increase in that cost of any country, soaring from $8,713 per-capita in 2013 (pre-Obamacare), up 9.3% to $9,523 Obamacare in 2014, the latest-reported year<\/span><\/a>. Obama had promised the opposite (though, like nearly all of his \u2018promises\u2019, only in vague terms).<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Obama, when he was selling Obamacare, back on 23 June 2007, early in his Democratic primary campaign against Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, promised that if he became President,\u00a0“I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first\u00a0term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a\u00a0typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The results turned out to be this: Obamacare started in October 2013 (not \u201cby the end of my first term\u201d) and so its first year of operation was 2014. Obama there promised in terms of insurance-costs per family, not<\/i> per person. The closest statistically measured standard term for that word \u201cfamily\u201d is the U.S. Census’s \u201chousehold.\u201d The Census\u2019s\u00a0\u201cNumber of people per household” has been stable near its current number, 2.54, ever since 2001.<\/span><\/a> So: Obama\u2019s promise was to lower the average American\u2019s<\/i> annual insurance premium<\/i> by \u201cup to\u201d $1,000 per year (which actually means anything less than $1,000 per year<\/i>). No clear data have been published regarding whether that promise (such as it was \u2014 meaningless, but that\u2019s the way he won the Presidency, by seeming to say things that actually meant almost nothing) was fulfilled. However, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued\u00a0a report<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on 21 May 2015, when the first results were in for the year 2014 (Obamacare\u2019s first year), and found that, when individual insurance plans’ enrollees \u00a0(both Obamacare and traditional) were asked \u201cDo you feel well-protected by your health insurance plan, or do you feel vulnerable to high medical bills?\u201d 38% of Obamacare enrollees said \u201cFeel vulnerable to high medical bills\u201d but only 34% of non<\/i>-Obamacare individual health insurance enrollees did; and this fact suggests that the deductibles and other exclusions were worrying people more in Obamacare than in the pre-existing (traditional) insurance plans. In other words: though Obama was promising to lower health-insurance premiums by \u201cup to\u201d $1,000 per person, he wasn\u2019t promising to lower healthcare costs<\/i> for anyone<\/i>. There are lots of healthcare costs that insurance doesn\u2019t cover. Obama\u2019s promise was thus meaningless, especially because there seems to be some evidence that the Obamacare plans have higher deductibles etc. \u2014 out-of-pocket uncovered costs \u2014 than pre-Obamacare plans. <\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s not<\/i> meaningless is total annual healthcare expenses<\/i> (which include health-insurance premiums) per person in the United States. And those figures do<\/i> exist, and here they are:<\/span><\/p>\n

The total annual health expenditure per person in the United States<\/a><\/span>\u00a0was $8,454 in 2012, $8,713 in 2013 (the last pre-Obamacare year), and a whopping $9,523 during Obamacare\u2019s first year, 2014; and it hasn\u2019t yet been published for 2015, though we\u2019re already nine months into 2016. Regardless of whether Obama\u2019s promise to reduce annual premiums by \u201cup to\u201d $1,000 per year per person ever becomes fulfilled, per-capita healthcare costs<\/i> seem to be increasing sharply under Obamacare, not<\/i> decreasing, but the government (and thus the press) aren\u2019t publishing recent-enough data for that to be firmly established yet. The 2015 costs, when published, will provide a crucial early indication of whether there\u2019s any net benefit from Obamacare at all \u2014 or maybe even lots of net harm. (In any case, the first year\u2019s results on healthcare costs were deplorable.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Another key variable by which to judge Obamacare is the universality of health insurance; and, until Obama came into office, 85.4% of Americans had health insurance, 14.6% did not. The latest figures are 89% have insurance, 11% do not<\/span><\/a>. Candidate Obama promised \u201cuniversal\u201d coverage, and that it \u201cwill cover every American,\u201d but increasing the coverage-rate from 85.4%, up to 89%, doesn\u2019t even come close to achieving that (100%). All other advanced nations already<\/i> have 100% coverage<\/span><\/a> \u2014 in every one, healthcare is a right, not a privilege that\u2019s available only to people who can afford it. Coverage is universal, and therefore people get diagnosis and treatment early enough in a disease so as to be able to extend their health and life-spans. That\u2019s the way to keep healthcare costs down, not twice the international average as is the case in the corrupt United States. The only people who benefit from the American system are investors \u2014 including the people who invest in politicians: including Republican politicians, which is why they can\u2019t criticize Obamacare on these factors (cost and universality) without being total hypocrites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another key variable is quality of care; and the U.S. quality of care is low in comparison to other advanced nations<\/span><\/a>, (as one should expect where the cost is high and the universality is low), and there exist as-of-yet, no solid data indicating whether quality of care has improved under Obamacare. To be satisfied with Obamacare is to be satisfied with America\u2019s being at the very bottom, in what America gets for what America pays on healthcare. Even if Obamacare might help the investors who actually hired him and the other politicians to produce it, Obamacare might harm America. No evidence yet exists that it has helped America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Near the very end of Obama\u2019s eight years in office, his promises (to the extent that any were clear and important) about what he would achieve regarding healthcare in the U.S. if elected President, still remain to be fulfilled, and America still (and even increasingly) continues to lag the other advanced nations regarding healthcare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama rammed through the healthcare plan that he wanted, and he continues to rave about the plan that he got, but even near the end of his Presidency, we don\u2019t know whether it had any real merit, at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the entire speech from which that quotation of his<\/span><\/a>, promising \u201c$2,500 a year\u201d premium-reductions per \u201cfamily\u201d was taken, was loaded with assertions that seem outright phony in retrospect. Even the immediately surrounding context of that quotation exemplifies this: \u201cI have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2500 a year. That’s not simply a matter of policy or ideology \u2014 it’s a moral commitment.\u201d<\/i> Would he acknowledge, now, at the end of his Presidency, that his deception of the public there, was a \u201cmoral failure\u201d? It was, indeed, profoundly corrupt: Obama didn\u2019t choose to write the bill Senator Ted Kennedy, who had endorsed Obama against Hillary Clinton and wanted and expected to get that assignment, and who favored the public option and many other progressive features that candidate Obama had said he wanted; but instead Obama selected the conservative Senator Max Baucus, who opposed all those things. And Baucus then engaged the health-insurance-company lobbyist Elizabeth Fowler to draft the bill. After it passed, Obama hired Fowler into his Administration to administer Obamacare\u2019s implementation. And after that was finished, Fowler went right back into lobbying \u2014 this time for yet another healthcare industry that had worked with Fowler to draft Obamacare and that expected to (and did) profit from it: pharmaceuticals. On 5 December 2012, Britain\u2019s Guardian<\/i> headlined \u201cObamacare architect leaves White House for pharmaceutical industry job\u201d<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

If Obama is going to leave a positive legacy, Obamacare certainly won\u2019t be it. That\u2019s lots of good news for Republicans, but lots of lousy news for Americans. And it\u2019s the reality about Obamacare, and about the extraordinarily corrupt nation, America, which stands out for high costs and low quality, in healthcare. Nothing that Republicans recommend on healthcare is any better. But the fact that Obamacare is a bust, is good news to their ears, and so they trumpet the minor points of its failure, while ignoring the major ones, where their own recommendations are even worse than what Democrats gave us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this a country in decline? The answer to that question is more than economic. It is everything, including<\/i> moral. But if America is to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world, it can\u2019t proceed any further in its becoming increasingly corrupt. That certainly won\u2019t do the job. It cannot work. The \u2018change\u2019 candidate in a corrupt America, has brought us just more of the same, but worse \u2014 even if it\u2019s not<\/i> bad enough to satisfy Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org To Republicans, good news about Obamacare (the American President\u2019s \u2018legacy\u2019 healthcare-reform program, called officially \u201cThe Affordable Care Act\u201d) is bad news about Obamacare (for all Americans) \u2014 and, now, they\u2019ve got more of it to crow about than they did before. First of all, on Friday, September 16th, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":268200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,96,853,698,854,804,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-268647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-hillary-clinton","13":"tag-obamacare","14":"tag-politics-2","15":"tag-usa-news","16":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}