If nothing else, perhaps Democrats can be called to use their terms accurately or clearly or to define the "new" meaning assigned to them when it comes to Obamacare. It's been a problem from the start with the President supporting his well-spoken scam of Obamacare by peppering it with terms designed to mislead because he uses widely understood terms with a "new" and deceptive meaning.
For instance, the word "affordable," that allows the comical declaration of Obamacare success though for consumers prices are higher for care and for coverage and the only entities "saving" money are payers, insurance companies and the government. For instance, the Obama government brags of "savings," though they're only referring to amounts spent on patients, the insureds, the beneficiaries, not how much is wasted in the administration of Obamacare, the governmental costs of the program which are not counted, CBO Publication 49892, 1/15/15, page 1, “…estimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACAhttp://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-is-purpose-of-this-article-sorry.html . Idiotically, people cheer the "savings" that are done off citizens' backs.
Then there's the term GROUP health insurance, the President dishonestly applied to Obamacare. Obamacare is NOT group health insurance whereby employers, unions or other interested parties would negotiate with insurance companies by offering enrollment of their members or employees in a trade for better rates to make those plans useful for their membership, http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2016/07/six-years-in-and-starting-to-get.html.
Obamacare is not group health insurance and the proof is in the rancid pudding we see--The only way Obamacare attracted insurance company participation was by forcing people to purchase health insurance and bribing insurers to participate on exchanges with risk corridors and risk reassurance, set to expire with this year's benefits year (2017) and not coincidentally resulting in the abandonment of the exchanges by insurance companies. This is not "tough" negotiation, this is caving, giving in, which to the President (see Iran, see Cuba, see Guantanamo, see any "deal" he's made), IS what he means by negotiation, because it allows him to sacrifice the population he's supposed to represent for his self-centered, adolescent need to check off his list of things he wanted to do.
For Obamacare, not only are the bribes to insurance companies expiring, but those participating insurance plans, since they were not a result of negotiation, but rather simply a result of Obama's bribing them to participate (so he could get out his pen and check-off health care "reform") achieved low premium rates through the old-time insurance strategy of offering less coverage and narrower networks, which the government itself revealed, 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.” (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 22), http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-is-purpose-of-this-article-sorry.html.
Then there was the ultimate whopper, the President's persistent claim that there is a right to health care in the United States, rather than the truth which is that there is a mandate to purchase a financial product of health insurance in the United States, which Castro of Cuba had to remind our liar-in-chief of at their meeting in March, http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-come-everyone-but-president-knows.html.
I don't care if Obamacare fanboys and fangirls want to hate everything and everyone that isn't part and parcel of the nonsensical use of English used to mask Obama deception, what I do care about is that consumers are paying the price for their idiocy.
There is no way under Obamacare that cost controls of what we're charged by providers comes into play, it's weakened as insurance companies instead focus on requiring consumers to pay more for the less coverage, the minimum standards (essential benefits) and often inappropriately ridiculous mandates for coverage Obamacare imposes. After all, women's sterilization is not only more complicated but is also a more expensive procedure than male vasectomies, why on earth MUST that be covered for free while men must pay for it? After all, in order to take advantage of the mandatory coverage for children's dental checkups, families must enroll their children in health plans which are charging more in order to provide the coverage under EVERY plan, how is that sensible?
Make it an option, a cheap checkup add-on available for families who purchase health insurance plans to cover their young children rather than charging those families twice for the same coverage and making everyone else pay for the coverage.
The sad truth is that consumers have tried to politicize Obamacare and therefore have stopped using our heads. The government's goals as payer teams them up with insurance companies, not individual consumers, making our position weaker from the erosion of employer-sponsored health plans to the forced purchase of the financial product of health insurance that removes any incentive for insurance companies to improve their product in order to get our business.
Finally, the providers must also be pressured, to not only accept a minimum number of insurance plans, but must also be subjected to INSURANCE company (or government) negotiation pressure to participate in plans in exchange for groups of patients.
Here's the challenge: Demand cost controls on what we're charged for care. Demand a removal of the individual mandate which de-incentivizes insurance companies from developing products that meet marketplace needs because now everyone's required to purchase their product. Demand that the 80-20 rule (or 85-15) be changed to incorporate rewards for recovering fraudulently paid out sums so that they can be included in the 80 or 85 percent part of the equation rather than in the 20 or 15 part of the equation that insurers protect for other expenses. Remove minimum requirements of "free" checkups and mandatory coverage for things that only apply to a segment of the population and let everyone else SELECT what they want coverage for. Undo the CMS rule that has further limited the availability of the short-term insurance policy (June of this year) used by younger people as a punishment because they're not buying into more expensive insurance policies. Undo the payment for physicians to give end of life counseling that includes financial opinion and whether the preservation of a person's life is worth it.
These are first changes that we need to prevent further physical and financial jeopardy to consumers from misplaced loyalty to a President who is only loyal to himself, which is ultimately simply being pathetically misinformed.
