President Obama is a great salesman, no one can take away from that. But when push comes to shove, there are many great salespeople, and that is not leadership, more seriously when you don’t get what you think you’re getting, it’s frequently referred to as a scam. Take his new inclusion of the term “Group insurance,” for the PPACA entitlement.
Entitlement should refer to who pays and who benefits from a particular program. Entitlement as we now know is a dirty word, the Scarlet A put on selected programs by politicians setting up to criticize, reduce and destroy a particular program that receives the unfortunate label. I object to the word entitlement for Medicare since 30 years of paycheck stubs will belie any allegation that seniors are getting a freebie from government when it comes to Medicare and collecting money based on the promise of health insurance coverage in your old age and then substantively removing that coverage by changing key terms such as age, and specific services covered is a scam.
But I also object to the failure to use the word Entitlement where it applies as it should to those who will participate and be eligible for government dollars under the PPACA. Currently, “entitlement,” is used for any program that is funded by the federal government in any amount that goes to a selected group of people, paid for by everyone else through their tax dollars. This should include Veterans Benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Food Stamps. Arguably current Medicaid is less an entitlement since it includes state money contributions.
The Affordable Care Act is a scam when it comes to the original goal set out by the President that at the very least helped him get into office (we’ll put aside the self-sabotaging extremist behavior of the Republicans that has marginalized their ability to be viewed as anything but worthy of contempt, which is at least equally responsible for the President’s election and reelection. In short, for the majority of thinking Americans, Republicans are scary.)
The actual promise made of what the PPACA would be and its complete failure to meet even a single one of the identified goals is covered this week in two postings, “Empowerment: Obamacare and Redefinition of “Success,” and “Obamacare: Getting new route…” which supports extra caution as the President begins his sales push for an Obamamnesty (made up word).
But it’s this next troublesome “New” meaning that I’ve heard the President apply to the Marketplace that is the basis of the next scam, the next sales pitch duping Americans, referring to marketplace health insurance as a GROUP PLAN.
This week, go through the President’s Weekly Address to better understand the sales pitch offered by the President. Why? Because we’ve only just begun to feel the impact of Obamacare and if we don’t act while we’re well, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to obtain necessary changes to the law to protect us when we become sick.
Obamacare is still under construction. As with any law in the US, it is subject to legislative and judicial change. Obamacare is not some unique law that possesses the irrevocable permanence of the 10 Commandments, such as being carved in stone. That’s why the President is still selling.
So, I dare you, call the President out for his new use of the words GROUP INSURANCE as opposed to the use of a word we’ve already applied to programs similar to the Obamacare handout, ENTITLEMENT.
You can find a transcript of the President’s words or listen to his ad at Whitehouse.gov’s Weekly Address.
After his greeting, the President included his first lie by omission:
“It’s called the Marketplace. And for Americans without health insurance, and Americans who buy insurance on their own because they can’t get it at work, it’s a very big deal.”
Without the inclusion of the word “some” before Americans without health insurance, this is a lie. Because it is an entitlement for the segment of people who qualify to purchase and obtain federal money to pay for premiums and perhaps some co-pays using the Health Exchange, it should be obvious that not all Americans will qualify, not all Americans will be eligible, and that the Federal handouts to those in the marketplace is a freebie to which they have not contributed…An entitlement.
The next lie occurs in the very next sentence:
“If you’re one of those people, the Affordable Care Act makes you part of a big group plan for the first time.”
This lie is huge because it spells out that the Affordable Care Act is in fact an entitlement but instead sells it as a GROUP PLAN, which it cannot be unless we accept the President’s new definition of “Group Plan.”
Currently if you go to any definition of group health plan it provides that it is an employee benefit plan directly through insurance, reimbursement or otherwise. The President is cleverly tweaking the traditional definition of Group Plan, by implying that the entitlement created by Obamacare resembles such employee group benefit plans.
True, you must be employed to be eligible for the Obamacare handout, which in part is evidence of the PPACA’s failure rather than success since being unable to afford health insurance is largely a problem of the poor, and the poor includes those without employment or part-time employment rather than those meeting the income requirements for Obamacare handouts.
But there is another aspect of Group Plans, that is that they cost less than people going out and purchasing health insurance alone because they promise more enrolled people to insurance companies which means that insurance companies get more customers in exchange for providing better benefits at a lower cost.
Now you know why Obama is pushing healthier young people to enroll in the exchange, to spread out costs, because without sufficient enrollment, the plans will raise prices. Now you also know why Obamacare leaves the unemployed and part-time employees out in the cold.
This is not a group plan in the traditional sense of group plans provided by employers or unions where people pay money in and the group representatives negotiate with insurance companies for the best plans they can get for the money, exchanging the promise of providing lots of members in exchange for a better deal. That’s group insurance under traditional definitions.
Obamacare is the GOVERNMENT paying for benefits for the group of employees who are not their own, these are not government employees (they’ve got better insurance that is untouched by this mess), this is the government covering the cost of insurance for other entities’ employees…a handout, the government gets nothing in return, not the work performance, productivity or fulfilling a function of government.
There’s another problem with Obamacare, taking its role in the GROUP PLAN idea as negotiator with insurance companies, Obamacare laid out its criteria for what would qualify various plans for participation in the exchange. It’s not a negotiation for the best rates, it’s a list of what the plans need to contain in order to be listed on exchanges.
This means that as a bloc, insurance companies can keep raising the price of the plans in order to meet these criteria which sooner rather than later will mean that fewer plans will be offered on the exchanges or that the current levels of handouts will be insufficient to pay for health insurance plans on the exchange.
It also means, as has already occurred, that insurance companies will raise prices on all other plans so that unions and employees eligible under former employer group plans will be squeezed out of their groups to support the handouts provided to the group of Americans qualifying for the Obamacare entitlement.
Further, Obamacare will be subject to not only this Congress but every Congress in terms of continued funding of the handout, because after all the Federal government’s money is our money and our representatives if they would get their houses in order still control funding.
I argumentatively refer to the entitlement created by Obamacare as a handout, to illustrate that the use of words is critical in the pitch. Group Plan sounds benign and friendly and empowering under the President’s new definition of the term. But handout is more accurate and more in accordance with politicians’ new labeling of entitlements.
