We survived, so far…Hardly the plug for Obamacare you’d expect from Jonathan Chait the oftentimes illogical and selective “reporter” of factoids supporting the idea that Obamacare is working. Yet, his recent article in NEW YORK MAGAZINE boasts just that: “The Obamacare Doomsday Cult Struggles to Adapt to World That Did Not End,” 4/2/2015.
Though I was hopeful that the article beneath the headline which though a pathetic kind of plug, after all, “It didn’t kill us,” is hardly supportive of the law, might reflect a commitment by Mr. Chait to “report” rather than continue to indulge his hatred of conservative politics (though many of his arguments mirror the most heartless conservative arguments criticized by liberals)through his tireless and transparent efforts at political manipulation through shoddy reporting about Obamacare.
Instead, Mr. Chait’s article is yet another regurgitation of his already familiar Obamacare “evidence” that the law is “working.”
This kind of self-serving nonsense that attempts to play to dismissing Republicans as kooks rather than addressing the mess of the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion exploits and perpetuates one of the biggest scams ever pulled on the American people in recent history.
What could be the purpose in misleading people into ignoring criticism of Obamacare or dismissing the peril in which it places people until it’s too late, until they come face-to-face with what narrow networks really mean to health, or until they come face-to-face with unaffordable premiums for their dependents, or until they come face-to-face with the next generation of workers who likely will face the challenges of an American work environment that devalues American workers, the sick, the old and the young who find themselves frighteningly underemployed or only able to find part-time work and unable to address real barriers to obtaining needed medical services when they’re sick?
For Mr. Chait, it seems purely political, a deep commitment to attacking “conservatives,” though as a registered Democrat I am not alone in believing that the legislation is harmful.
Far from liberal, this sort of pseudo-reporting is merely argumentative and divisive, trying to dismantle the exchange of ideas by sensible people with different views, much in the way Obama himself operates when he faces dissent by ignoring it, making fun of it or lying to discredit his critics and artificially puff himself up.
In spite of declaring the new lower standard…Hey Obamacare didn’t destroy us…Mr. Chait disappoints as again as he plunges into his boring lecture on why citizens shouldn’t pay attention to any of the issues that have arisen under Obamacare, hoping to pacify the knee-jerk liberals and bore the rest of us to death until we’re sick…Too sick to make our voices heard.
His latest list of why he likes Obamacare (whether it’s true or not) includes eight items.
First, we get Jonathan Chait the great denier as he addresses criticisms of Obamacare regarding the broken promise of keeping your insurance if you like it. Unwilling to make his lie completely blatant by pretending it never happened, Mr. Chait chooses the next best thing for him and pretends it’s no big deal because the number of people affected might be smaller than first reported.
Like a crazy reverse auctioneer Mr. Chait argues “that policy cancellations were not ‘millions,’ but under a million.” Do I hear 4.7 million? (as originally reported) Do I hear 2.6 million? (Factcheck.org, 4/11/2014). Do I hear less than a million?
We get it. Apparently Mr. Chait doesn’t believe that whatever number of people who lost health insurance are worthy of his attention and that they certainly don’t amount to anyone significant in terms of Obamacare’s failed “keep your plan if you like it” promise.
Second, we get Jonathan Chait the confused, arguing that health insurance is the same as health CARE and therefore he enables himself to assert that narrow networks, an old-time insurance company strategy of saving costs by providing too few “participating” providers forcing people to wait for care or use out-of-network care, also doesn’t matter.
Desperately Mr. Chait asserts that having some insurance is better than none, (You can’t be “pushed” into a “smaller” network when your previous network was nonexistent). I hope most of us know that health insurance is supposed to be a TOOL to help pay for needed healthcare services and that to the extent it DOES NOT help pay for those services it is a useless product.
Simply “having health insurance” of poor quality in terms of access to and coverage of needed medical services is not a useful tool to consumers who post-Obamacare often remain one illness away from financial devastation…Another failed Obamacare promise.
Historically, the ineffective protection of the health insurance tool in terms of protection against the financial risk of illness was one of the reasons that many people chose to skip the purchase of health insurance…It was a tool that didn’t work.
Obamacare worsened this risk by focusing on finite costs of preventive checkups (which is used by insurance companies as an excuse to raise premiums) rather than addressing coverage of expensive needed medical services for the sick leaving people paying more for health insurance, more in deductibles, more in copayments, more in coinsurance with the added twist of pushing more of these ineffective policies to people who are forced to comply with Obamacare’s mandatory purchase of health insurance whether it’s a useful tool or not.
Unfortunately, Mr. Chait appears unable to distinguish between health insurance and health CARE…Health insurance is NOT health care, but a tool designed to help people get health care by improving access to and affordability of needed healthcare services. Narrow networks negatively impact BOTH access and affordability.
After changing the promise of Obamacare that people would not be one illness away from financial devastation to an argument that narrow networks existed prior to Obamacare, Mr. Chait neatly skips over the fact that Obamacare worsened the problem of narrow networks.
The policies that the exchanges attracted had even narrower networks than other health insurance plans making those plans WORSE than non-Obamacare plans and ALSO PROMISING HIGHER PRICES TO CONSUMERS FOR OBAMACARE plans because as the CBO predicts, the cheap plans with narrow networks will not be sustainable.
(Read the CBO, the government publication 49973 of March 2015 stating: “CBO and JCT anticipate that many plans will not be able to sustain such low provider payment rates or such narrow networks over the next few years, placing upward pressure on exchange premiums.”)
Even Medicaid expansion, offering near-free health insurance at near-free costs for treatment for a new group of people under Obamacare has INCREASED the problem of narrow networks because doctors who have thus far gotten lots of Medicaid bucks under the ACA are set to get less this year unless Obamacare agrees to keep paying them more which will result in…that’s right, more people with fewer doctors available.
(Read how Medicaid doctors were given a big raise in 2013: “A 73 percent raise for their primary-care services,” THE WASHINGTON POST, Sarah Kliff, 12/21/12 and how that expired: USA TODAY, Phil Galewitz, Kaiser Health News, 4/4/2015, “Doctors face big cuts in Medicaid Pay.”)
Third, Mr. Chait the untruthful argues that premiums haven’t gone up which on its face should make readers doubt his veracity. Instead of addressing premium increases, for many in the double-digits, Mr. Chait argues that people got better insurance so it cost more or that they had to buy insurance when they didn’t have any so it cost more than the nothing they were paying for before Obamacare.
His logic and “facts” are so flawed or deliberately unclear that he ends up going into the only thing we do know which is that government is spending less on health costs for individuals (Though we know that the government expenses of salaries paid to the army of government employees, agencies, administrators is conveniently omitted as reported by the CBO which clearly states it only considers the expenses of the insurance coverage only provisions of Obamacare.)
In his fourth claim, Mr. Chait becomes a big business conservative booster arguing that businesses aren’t struggling with higher costs…Uh yeah, they’ve reduced the quality of plans available to their employees pushing them into higher deductible, higher copay, higher coinsurance plans usually costing employees more money, and some of them have reduced the number of employees they need to cover by making sure they come in below the 30 hour mark, and some employers have stopped covering spouses who have other health insurance available, and some employers have raised premiums for dependents…Yeah, more employees have found themselves with more expensive and worse plans as business has found ways around Obamacare, we agree, Mr. Chait.
Fifth, Mr. Chait s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s the truth writing that “2014, the first year of Obamacare’s implementation coincided with the fastest growth in GDP since the start of the recession.” That would be wrong. You can find GDP at BEA.GOV (Gross Domestic Product) and you’ll see Mr. Chait is wrong. GDP for 2014 was 2.2 percent and GDP in 2010, 2.9 percent (http://econpost.com/gdp/us-gdp-2010), for starters.
Sixth, Mr. Chait goes conservative again congratulating new job creation that grotesquely dismisses the misery of American workers, the unemployed and under-employed, his views going beyond even the New York Times that had to admit on 4/27/2014 that, “Recovery Has Created Far More Low-Wage Jobs than Better-Paid Ones,” Annie Lowrey.
Seventh, Mr. Chait continues his conservative alliance arguing that people haven’t been moved to part time from full time instead of citing the real concern for reality-based Americans that “the number of people working part time involuntarily is more than 50 percent higher than when the recession began,” CNN MONEY, Patrick Gillespie, 11/20/2014.
Eighth, Chait becomes a true Obama half-truther arguing that “The percentage of Americans delaying medical care for financial reasons has dropped sharply,” ignoring report after report that Obamacare is MORE expensive for consumers, “Yep, Obamacare Costs a Fortune,” by Christopher Flavelle, 2/11/15, BLOOMBERG VIEW, “Despite Obamacare Promises, Health Care Costs Up,” US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 10/28/2014, by Kimberly Leonard, which also noted that utilization, people’s use of healthcare services is DOWN and that “Falling utilization helped mask continued growth in health care prices…”
Chait continues his half-truth rant citing that “The rate of hospital-acquired infections (a key target of the law, which changed hospitals’ financial incentive in order to drive down infections) has fallen,” ignoring other significant risks posed to patients at increased levels including reports such as those of this past summer, July 2014, noting that deaths by medical mistakes are the NUMBER THREE KILLER in the US in back of only heart disease and cancer (Erin McCann, 7/18/2014, “Deaths by Medical Mistakes hit records,” Healthcare IT NEWS).
The now desperate and frantic Mr. Chait asserts, “The American health-care system before Obamacare was an utter disaster — the most expensive in the world and also the only one that denied access to millions of its own citizens. Obamacare set out to change those things, and it has worked.” Sorry, no. We still have the most expensive health care in the world and we deny access to millions of our own citizens.
Obamacare has not worked based on the criteria of the prices charged for medical services and the number denied access, “U.S. Healthcare: Most Expensive and Worst Performing,” Olga Khazan, 6/16/2014, THE ATLANTIC, which also notes, “Americans also had the worst equity of care between high-income and low-income patients.” And the CDC in January of 2015 reported: “Number uninsured at the time of interview: 44.3 million,” (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-insurance.htm).
Mr. Chait inserts some other falsehoods just to pad out his fantasy health story arguing that death panels don’t exist, clearly confused about what the death panel was defined as. It refers to the IPAB which does exist (42 US Code Section 1395kkk) and refers to the FACT that the provision creates and pays all the expenses for a board with the purpose of CONTROLLING GOVERNMENT COSTS and empowers that Board to cut costs if Medicare spending gets too high.
Obviously Mr. Chait is so busy regurgitating old lies that he missed the Supreme Court decision not to hear a case called Coons v. Lew that specifically included an issue about the IPAB. The board came to be known as a death panel for the VERY SAME REASON that Chait uses to defend Obamacare that health insurance equals health care (which is wrong) therefore if the IPAB denies health insurance coverage it is denying health care.
One would think that Mr. Chait would refrain from contradicting his own lie to avoid appearing to be a crackpot, but he doesn’t. Instead he proves himself illogical by first arguing that health insurance equals health care in defending Obamacare but criticizing those who use the same mistaken thought to say that a governmental board, the IPAB, empowered to deny coverage and cut coverage jeopardizes health care.
