There are headlines boasting that Obamacare is working and though everyone likes a good “feel good” story, it’s nicer if the story has some basis in reality when it’s being presented as fact. For consumers, “working” is very different from how Obamacare has been described as “working,” by the politicians and media lackeys.
For consumers, health plans are as big as ourselves or ourselves and our family members, or ourselves, our dependents and our employees. No larger. The discussion of enrollment, of how fast the website is processing or even the amounts of entitlement going to those workers who qualify for Obamacare federal dollars is only meaningful in terms of our experience.
For many Americans, the 44.5 percent (according to Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/160676/fewer-americans-getting-health-insurance-employer.aspx) who have insurance through their employers, while we may have temporarily put aside the increases in premiums, increases in co-insurance payments and/or copayments we’re required to pay in combination with or separately from new restrictions on coverage, new approvals for coverage and new exclusions from coverage, Obamacare has not “worked,” and we hope only that we can absorb the additional costs and remain well enough to NOT think about Obamacare until next benefits season.
And, entitlements? Well, those numbers are going up (http://www.gallup.com/poll/160676/fewer-americans-getting-health-insurance-employer.aspx). As is always the case with any statistic, there is a significant lag time between the period of time the statistic is reporting on and current experience. However, as reported by Elizabeth Mendes at the cite above, 25.6 percent of Americans had a government based entitlement health plan, “Medicare, Medicaid, military or veteran’s benefits” in 2012, up from 23.4 percent in 2008.
In the time it takes to tally and report on the new costs from expanded Medicaid expenses and from the new Obamacare entitlement that became effective this benefits season, it seems pretty predictable that government spending will be higher than anticipated and that both Democrats and Republicans will look to lop off Medicare benefits, the benefits that older Americans have paid into for their whole working lives.
It’s not working by consumer standards of affordability, access and quality. As the tweaking of Obamacare begins, we consumers must keep our eyes on what’s important to us, our experience…how much healthcare services are costing us (even if they’re currently covered by insurance because insurance is covering less and less), how many new procedures, medications and treatments are limited in terms of their coverage by health insurance companies, and how much our paid-into programs to protect our older citizens are cannibalized for other governmental spending and waste by gutting Medicare.
