Want to know how the healthcare law will be changed under the Democrats? Go back to some of the liars who have made careers of misleading the American public about the law and then look at their new malevolently motivated intentions to change the law to preserve bad law and ignoring our growing healthcare crisis. Today, those lies are focusing on the word "fix" rather than "replace," but it's worth some examination and you'll find that current goals to change the Affordable Care Act into something new and worse, and more expensive that reduces choice all to sustain a law rather than the people governed by it.
Take a look at Paul Krugman, whose widely read articles about Obamacare include deranged meanderings and cherry-picked charts that show who knows what to basically argue one point--He hates Republicans. This is the economist Hillary Clinton chose to quote as evidence that she had some great plans for the US, when on November 14, 2015 she said, "Well, I'll tell you who is on my side. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, who said my plan for what we should do to rein in Wall Street was more comprehensive and better," http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2015/11/obamacare-to-gruberhillary-to-paul.html.
Well, he's back with his most worrisome, malicious unsound ideas yet, http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/10/paul-krugman-obamacare-hits-a-pothole.html, that should leave us all worrying that his contempt for the American people and especially those who disagree with Democrats, might not have finally rendered him incompetent.
In his writing, "Obamacare Hits a Pothole," 10/28/2016, Krugman ignores the first utter failure of Obamacare to address our healthCARE crisis, the lie Obama told that Obamacare would "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year," http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/521/cut-cost-typical-familys-health-insurance-premium-/. Only later was "affordable" redefined as saving the new partners, government and insurance companies money on what they paid out per capita for individuals covered by plans while the rest of us faced unexpected and gigantic increases in our expenses worsening the healthcare crisis.
The befuddled Krugman, ignoring this utter failure that we were scammed into believing, that the basic problem of consumer affordability was NOT what Obamacare was about,then wonders why the other partner, insurance companies aren't happy since they are saving money on what they pay out on behalf of insureds--Ridiculous, even the youngest children know there is no honor among thieves, but apparently the ridiculous Krugman remains surprised: "But if health costs," remember not for consumers but for the government-insurance company partnership, "are looking good," which of course they are not for consumers, "what’s with the spike in premiums?" (Why aren't insurance companies happy? He whines.)
Following this? He's seemingly astonished that the government that partnered with insurance companies to screw the public is now facing insurance companies that are raising their premiums with the deranged idiocy of someone who never understood Obamacare in the first place.
In 2014, in the post, "Obamacare: Paul Krugman’s Magical World," http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2014/07/obamacare-paul-krugmans-magical-world.html, I wrote, "Out-of-pocket expenses not including premiums have increased to an average $768 for each privately insured consumer in 2012 according to the nonprofit, non-partisan Health Care Cost Institute, and are projected to skyrocket as much as 50 percent in 2015 under Obamacare’s numerous mandates." So everyone knew but Paul Krugman, the economist who in 2016 wonders, "…what's with the spike in premiums?"
Well WE all knew that the way the law emerged that the government-insurance company partnership that essentially bribed insurance companies to participate on exchanges with temporary provisions for federal risk corridor payments to insurance companies and risk reassurance payments to insurance companies expired this benefits year (see How Obamacare Shot Itself in the Foot: UnitedHealth’s Threat to Pull out of Exchanges, 12/6/2015) and would create higher premiums.
We all knew that the government's acceptance and embrace of the old insurance company trick of narrow networks would only satisfy insurers for a certain amount of time before they raised rates again. Heck, even the government knew, when 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," http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2015/04/obamacares-new-standard-world-didnt-end.html.
But apparently the wizard Krugman is confused, "…what's with the spike in premiums?"
Mr. Krugman and the rabid Democratic fight to save a law rather than address a CRISIS gets even more bizarre as he ignores the relationship between plans in the non-Obamacare exchanges with those in the real world. After all, touting his own expertise, shouldn't he know that the law's pricing for plans on exchanges is based on REGIONAL plans at the second lowest silver level and those prices jumped precipitously in 2014?
So…Come on now, Mr. Krugman, since the law is based on the price of those real-world plans and those premiums spiked in 2014, combined with the expiration this year of the bribes known as risk corridor and reassurance rates paid by the government to its new partner, insurance companies, and combined with having already made the narrowest networks available, what did you THINK insurance companies would do? Come on now, give us an answer without the word "Republican" in it.
Instead, Mr. Krugman argues that not that many people are hurt, "How many people are hurt by these premium hikes? Not as many as you may think…" This is remarkable because after saying not that many people are hurt by the hikes, he argues that the answer is to use the rest of us to put more money in to pay out entitlements: Expand the subsidies--have the government pay even more using our money.
So, Democrats want to pay more in subsidies, (it's not the first time we've heard the MORE MONEY argument, for a population that Krugman says is "Not as many as you may think,") so, pay more money to benefit fewer people than we think to preserve bad law.
Then there are his other suggestions which should make even the most deluded liberals worry: "Strengthen the mandate," charge people more in penalty tax if they're not enrolled. Cha-ching, the government gets more money.
"Close the loopholes that have allowed some insurers to bypass the exchanges," cha-ching make it so that people who are INELIGIBLE for an exchange plan because they don't fall within income parameters of Obamacare and don't qualify for Medicaid, have access to NO insurance at all just to make sure that the exchanges have no competition in the marketplace with other insurance plans.
More marketing, "reaching out to families to make them aware of their options," cha-ching, which taxpayers have already paid uncounted amounts for, some estimating $700 million and higher and some estimating over a billion. Naturally, as Mr. Krugman, the spendthrift advising that we spend more on such advertising should know, the government also aware of its out-of-control infrastructure and administrative spending on the law not the crisis, decided long ago not to count those numbers, CBO Publication 49892, 1/15/15, page 1, “…estimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and do not reflect all of the act’s budgetary effects…" http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/p/cadillac-tax-obama-fangirls-and-fanboys.html.
And as with all things Krugman, having decided that more government spending, more taxpayer penalties, more forced participation are necessary for the new healthcare law, Mr. Krugman slips into his boilerplate hate-speech blaming Republicans who won't give Obamacare more money--"…unless…Republicans are willing to cooperate in the public interest."
Public interest? Restricting options, raising penalty fines, making everyone pay more to so government can make more entitlement payouts to far fewer people than we think? Krugman has gone from silly to dangerous because of all the people in the world, Hillary Clinton bragged that this manipulator is "on her side."
