JUST WHEN WE THOUGHT WE KNEW EVERYTHING ABOUT OBAMACARE

Submitted by: Kathy Hawkins

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.