Exposing the Real Costs of ObamaCare

With the U.S. Supreme Court failing in June 2012 to stop the unconstitutional imposition of ObamaCare on the nation, it’s important to keep everyone abreast of the lies that are being exposed as the system creaks into operation.

In a Feb. 1, 2013 Wall Street Journal article, Daniel P. Kessler, a business professor at Stanford University and Hoover Institution senior fellow, explained how the law’s effects are different from what was promised. “Every one of the main claims made for the law is turning out to be false,” says the subhead line on the article, “ObamaCare’s Broken Promises.”

Here the claims and the current reality. ObamaCare supposedly would:

• Reduce the federal deficit.  “In 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the cost of per year of expanding coverage at $154 billion; by 2012, the estimated cost grew to $186 billion. Yet the CBO still scores the law as reducing the deficit. How can this be?”  Kessler explains that estimated revenues are rising, with the money coming from lower Medicare payment rates. Congress was supposed to impose Medicare cuts, but refuses to do so.  Hence, the savings are in the “pretend” realm.
• Allow everyone to “keep your insurance.”  Barack Obama himself famously made this claim, which Kessler says “is obviously false.”  According to a Kaiser survey, the percentage of employees in high-deductible plans rose to 19 percent from 13 percent in 2010.  Also, in 2010, the CBO estimated that employer-sponsored insurance would “decline by three million people in 2019; by 2012, CBO’s estimate had doubled to six million.”
• Reduce unemployment and increase productivity.  “According to [the president’s Council of Economic Advisors in 2009], health reform would reduce unemployment, raise labor supply and improve the functioning of labor markets….reduce absenteeism, disability and mortality, thereby encouraging and enabling work.”  According to CNSNews, “During President Barack Obama’s first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance increased by 1,385,418 to a record 8,827,795.”

Unemployment is still hovering just under 8 percent, which is about where it was when Obama took office. Meanwhile, companies like the Darden restaurant chain are shedding full-time employees, giving them 30 hours or less so they don’t have to pay for skyrocketing mandated health benefit costs.

The only good news here is that the onerous effects are being felt more widely, which could generate eventual political support for repealing all or the worst parts of ObamaCare.

--Robert Knight