Obamacare Will Get Much, Much Worse
November 13, 2013
RUSH:
Betsy McCaughey -- who's one of the ranking analysts of socialist
medicine, socialized medicine, be it Hillarycare or Obamacare -- has a
piece at Investors.com, the old Investor's Business Daily, and headline
of the piece says, "Think Obamacare Is Bad Now? It Gets Worse Next
Year." Okay, now, what gets worse next year?
Well,
here's how she starts the piece: "'Substandard' and 'cut-rate' is what
President Obama calls the health plans that millions of Americans have
lost, even though they wanted to keep them. Backpedaling on his promise
that 'if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,' Obama is now
telling Americans another whopper: The insurance they can get on
Obamacare exchanges is a better deal. Don't believe
him. On the exchanges, you may no longer be able to use the doctors
and hospitals you prefer.
"Many
exchange plans exclude the top-drawer academic hospitals like Cedars
Sinai in Los Angeles, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and New York
Presbyterian in New York City. Instead, the law says exchange plans
must cover care at 'essential community providers ... that serve
predominantly low-income, medically underserved individuals.'" That's
from the law itself. "That means clinics, public hospitals and hospitals
largely serving the Medicaid community" is where the majority of
exchange plans will work.
You
do not get the top-drawer hospitals and clinics. Those are reserved
for people who will pay out of their pocket and will not have
insurance. "Yet the president claims that people losing their health
plans and having to sign up on the exchanges will be getting a better
deal," and he is. That's what Jay Carney was trying to say yesterday, as
they continue to lie about this law. It's just astounding. They are
compounding their one lie with another.
I
mean, they're just continuing to tell lies here, and they sent Carney
out to say yesterday, "Well, of course the president doesn't like what's
going on here! He doesn't like these substandard plans that people had,
and what is
gonna happen here is that people, when they lose their plan and sign up
they're gonna get a better deal. Who's opposed to that? So here's
what they're defining as "getting a better deal." It's losing your
doctor, losing your existing plan that you liked, now having to shop
blind on a website that doesn't work for a health plan.
Settling
for Medicaid-level care and government controls at underserved
hospitals and clinics, all for a premium that's on average 41% higher
than what you were paying. That, somehow, is a better deal. Here is the
piece de resistance"Wait until the other shoe drops in 2014..." Do you
know what that other shoe to drop is? All we're talking about now is
people who are losing individual insurance, meaning you have gone to an
insurance company and bought an individual policy, and you may be lumped
in with another group.
But
right now, that's the only thing affected is individual policies.
Nevertheless, even though that limited number of people is affected,
that limited number of people is causing all of this havoc. The other
shoe to drop in 2014 is when this I same thing starts happening to
people who get their health care at work. We're not talking about
employer-provided coverage here yet. That shoe doesn't drop until next
year. Right now, it's just the individual insurance market that's being
affected by the exchanges.
It's
just the individuals who are unable to keep the plan they like. Wait
until everybody who's insured by
their boss begins to lose their plan! That happens in January of next
year. Then all hell is gonna break loose because then we're talking
about the vast majority of the people in this country. Admittedly,
folks, the individual insurance market is not the major part of it. I
mean, how many of you...? Let me just ask you the question. How many of
you have a health insurance policy, or had, that you went out and
bought yourself?
Show
of hands. Let me see. Probably two out of 10 people. The vast
majority of people get their health insurance at work, and none of this
impacted them. They haven't lost their plans yet. They haven't had
their plans taken away from 'em. Their premiums and all that stuff
hasn't gone up yet. That doesn't happen in the employer-provided market
until January. Now, wait until 80% of people with health insurance
start being impacted by Obamacare, and it's gonna make what's happening
now look like Romper Room.
See,
if you get your insurance at work as an employee benefit, none of
what's being discussed here really has impacted you yet. About the only
way it has is maybe you've been converted to part time. You may have
lost your health insurance at work because your company can't stay in
business with the new rules. But for those of you who still get health
insurance at work -- and there's one exception, talked about it
yesterday. If your company is self-insured none of this is gonna matter
to you until they get around to fixing it so that you do get hurt by
it.
Right
now the self-insured market is not impacted by any of this. There
aren't any rules or restrictions in the self-insured market. And again,
the
self-insured market is when your boss, your company, just pays for your
health care directly, without an insurance policy. They set aside the
same amount of money to insure everybody that works there. An employee
goes to the doctor, has to get an operation, the company pays the
hospital directly, the doctor directly, not an insurance company.
That's called self-insure. And Obamacare doesn't touch them.
Republicans got a carve-out for that. Now the Democrats are trying to
fix that.
So
the only way that you who have your insurance through your boss will
not be impacted in January is if your company self-insures, and I don't
know how many it is. But the point that Betsy McCaughey's making is
that right now we're just talking about the individual insurance market,
and let's face it, the percentage of Americans who go out and buy their
own health insurance like
they buy hotel rooms is tiny. Most people are insured at work. Wait
'til they start losing their policies. Wait 'til they lose their plans
that they like. We're talking tons and tons of people. That's the
other shoe to drop in 2014. Nobody's brought it up yet. I just want
you to have a heads-up.
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