Perhaps there’s no greater testament to the deception of whose wallet was being protected at whose cost under Obamacare than the recent news that “N. Carolina Fires Gruber after Affordable Care Act Remarks,” in an article by Reid Wilson originally reporting for, “The Washington Post,” on 11/22/2014.
The article reports how after Jonathan Gruber’s stupid voter remarks the so-called architect of Obamacare has been fired by the Republican state government of NC.
In a state that is arguably more inconsiderate and contemptuous of its poor than any other, (it voted against Medicaid expansion and slashed unemployment benefits) it’s not so much the firing but the hiring of Gruber in the first place that helps illustrate that Obamacare was a dazzle them with bullsh*t law engineered to save government and private insurance payers money in covering health expenses by charging consumers even more for health services and/or health insurance premiums than we paid before Obamacare.
As if this principle of charging us more and/or providing us less coverage wasn’t a codification of a situation that had already contributed to medical cost bankruptcies and the ballooning numbers of people opting out of buying health insurance, the law also deliberately failed to address limiting what we could be charged for medical care other than in terms of rewarding providers with cash for taking steps to cut costs by limiting treatment of patients and reducing certain administrative costs.
Ignored were any steps to address how exorbitant the fees are that we’re charged for any medical care or treatment though we know that the US far exceeds other industrialized countries in what we’re charged with below average impact on life expectancy, where the US comes in at 42nd, (51st according to some).
We’re told that Gruber was hired by NC “…to analyze the state’s Community Care program, which provides managed care to the poor and disabled,” (Reid Wilson, Washington Post, 11/22/2014). Gruber was hired by a Democrat, Beth Wood pursuant to the Republican dominated General Assembly 2013 mandate to review the state’s CCNC/Medicaid system essentially looking to cut costs to the state (see Carolina Journal Online, CJ Series, “CCNC/Medicaid Reform).
NC has not done well in dealing with or passing policies to reduce the number of its poor. As reported in “Business Insider,” 8/18/2014, Allan Smith, “Here’s Why North Carolina Keeps Getting Poorer,” in addition to policies like NAFTA that destroyed many jobs in NC, and the housing collapse, both arguably national issues, NC also opted out of Medicaid expansion, shortened unemployment benefits to 14 weeks, the shortest in the nation and eliminated the earned income tax credit that reduces taxes for lower income earners under its Republican leadership.
“From 2008 to 2012, the poverty rate within the state has grown from 14.6% to 18%, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts,” http://www.businessinsider.com/why-north-carolina-has-a-poverty-problem-2014-8#ixzz3JtXKQgAF.
So the firing of Jonathan Gruber, an Obamacare architect by NC is far less surprising than the hiring of Jonathan Gruber in the first place unless we finally realize that the consumer voice is largely absent from Obamacare and that it was never part of the “affordability” of the “Affordable Care Act to begin with.
