As the healthcare dialogue circles the same drain it has for years, readers must dissuade the cheap, repetitive partisan sales strategies used by supposed "reporters," as federal law changes to our healthcare policy continue.
Even before the election was lost by Democrats, six years of brutal policies imposed on the American people by Obamacare left most people advocating change, in defiance of even President Obama's relentlessly inaccurate (arguing for instance that we have universal health care or that Obamacare is group insurance or that Obamacare is a single risk pool) embarrassingly untrue plugs of his "signature" healthcare bill.
I advocate that regardless of any change to provisions of Obamacare, that Congress is the BEGINNING of how to make meaningful improvements for healthcare policy THAT BENEFITS CITIZENS and in order to accomplish this, whatever the changes, the LAW must apply to public employees FIRST, especially Congress.
This was never true with Obamacare which extended the benefits of a government-insurance company partnership to public federal employees through the mechanism of a de facto exemption whereby their "employer" is the federal government and their "employer" chose to provide them with superior benefits (naturally ignoring that the majority of such funding comes from the pockets of Americans).
Shamelessly Republican lifetime public employees like Paul Ryan and Democrat lifetime employees like Harry Reid, excused and thumbed their noses at the American people as they enjoy their protected and superior benefits. After all, eight percent of the federal budget goes to paying veterans and RETIRED FEDERAL WORKERS their benefits. That's just RETIREES, (see "Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?" 3/4/2016, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.) And in 2016, $267 Billion was paid out for public employee federal worker salaries and benefits, (See Chris Edwards, Reducing the Costs of Federal Worker Pay and Benefits, 9/20/2016).
Americans know Congress is mooching off us and coasting by on the public dole, after all, they're at 16 percent approval rating, a near-lowest ever standing.
But here's what we also know, the faux liberal reporting and polling that predicted Hillary Clinton's victory should be looked at with a more discerning and perhaps outspoken eye. And so it is, we get the oh-so-yesterday reporting of US News ' David Brodwin on December 2, 2016, (Trump's Obamacare Quandary), snarking, "It turns out most Americans actually like most parts of the law, raising political risks for those who repeal it without providing a suitable alternative," in a preamble to another attack of Trump and Trump supporters. Best look a little more closely at Paul Ryan, the oft-rejected somehow still politically alive nationally unpopular character of recent infamy as he threw his own candidate under the bus by withholding his approval, ultimately onnly giving lukewarm and qualified support for Trump. That's a divide worth noticing not only for the faux liberal reporters, but for Donald Trump himself.
We've already been distracted by "polling" and pollsters who carefully craft their questions to get the answers they want. But apparently Obamacare fanboys and fangirls haven't learned. One thing for sure, instead of rooting for Trump's failure, it would be more meaningful for these frustrated truth spinners to focus on rooting for consumer success.
And with that we examine David Brodwin's passé plea for Obamacare, rooted in gleeful threatening that the law ain't so bad.
Consider the, "Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: November 2016," (Ashley Kirzinger, Elise Sugarman, Mollyann Brodie, December 1, 2016) which reports on polled voters' attitudes towards Obamacare and came up with four key findings: First, most people were not Obamacare voters in the election, second 26 percent "want" repeal, 17 percent "want" the law scaled back, 30 percent want the law expanded and 19 percent want the law to stay the same, third that "Many of the law's major provisions continue to be quite popular," and fourth, a majority of Trump voters believe that repeal would be good for them and their families.
The KFF poll first indicated that healthcare was not a big voter item for the voters it polled. OK, not relevant at all for those of us unconcerned about the healthcare crisis in this country.
That same point went on to break down the 26 percent who want the law repealed, the 17 percent who want the law scaled back, the 30 percent who want the law expanded and the 19 percent who want the law implemented "as is."
This is the meat of the "key" KFF findings that were a springboard for David Brodwin to launch a POLITICAL, pro-faux liberal attack on Donald Trump with Brodwin concluding that the choice of Tom Price for head of HHS, belies Trump's promises to "keep" protections for people under Obamacare as he snidely ends his article, "Will the real Donald Trump please stand up?"
That's the context. Now for the play: Fear mongering. Mr. Brodwin recites the same poll findings as he gleefully reports that "…voter attitudes toward Obamacare are become more favorable as they contemplate the reality of life without it."
Back to the KFF poll: 26 percent want repeal, 17 percent want provisions scaled back, 30 percent want the law expanded…In its broadest terms, which naturally these polls are, that's 73 percent of the population that wants Obamacare changed. That says that for 73 percent of the people polled, Obamacare is NOT working.
What is very obvious is that if we're led by the nose by politicians who don't vow to make public employees bound by any national healthcare law FIRST, and then impose it on the rest of the population, that we will NEVER get out of the government-insurance company partnership that brought us Obamacare. Public employee benefits have outstripped the non-government worker benefits for the years under Obamacare and that must stop.
For true liberals, this government public worker class of superior benefits should be the FIRST target of reform, not their fellow citizens whom they've deemed the enemy," Trump supporters." Public employees, like Congressmen, both Democratic and Republican who live off the benefits paid in large part by the American taxpayer even as they impose draconian measures on the rest of us.
But, Mr. Brodwin's desire to smash Trump instead leaves his consideration DEVOID of any mention of the disparate benefits of public workers making laws for the rest of us. This elitist corruption of the public employee class is not unrecognized by the American people whose approval of Congress which is at 16 percent, nearly an all-time low.
Second, Mr. Brodwin's thickheaded hatred blinds him to realistic thought: He brings up the grown children staying on their parents' insurance until age 26. First, I think it was about 20 states that had insurers offering this option BEFORE OBAMACARE, and logically it made sense. After all, insurance company whining that they're not getting the young healthies is solved by charging working Americans to pay to INCLUDE their young healthies on THEIR insurance plans, evening out that risk pool. Unfortunately, Obamacare didn't help this incentive for insurers to provide the option because it made the purchase of health insurance MANDATORY for every working adult even while EXEMPTING those who are too poor to meet Obamacare thresholds from purchasing health insurance or enabling them to purchase catastrophic plans only--in other words giving an out or an option to poorer young adults and THEIR PARENTS who can avoid the higher rates charged under Obamacare for dependent health insurance by getting their children insured in an alternative way. This isn't fear-mongering, it's what happened as the insurers drastically increased their rates because they're still not getting enough of those "young healthies."
Mr. Brodwin then cheers for Obamacare's "accomplishment" of the "elimination" of out-of-pocket costs for routine preventive services, ignoring that under Obamacare this "free" garbage that does not properly belong in pricing INSURANCE, a product designed to cover the costs of the UNANTICIPATED needed care and services, not only has been used as an excuse by insurance companies as a justification for raising their rates (big surprise), but has been used as a justification for narrowing options available for care/coverage when a person NEEDS medical care and services. Obamacare embraced and legalized this old "get the gym bag" approach of insurers, cover the cheap, finite stuff and exclude the expensive items and choices people with medical needs face.
Mr. Brodwin IGNORES what we already know the likes of Paul Ryan supports which mimics Obamacare in the worst possible ways using concepts of continuous coverage which like the individual mandate charges consumers for lapses in coverage, instead of taxing them as under Obamacare, continuous coverage allows insurers to raise consumers' rates more if they have lapses in coverage.
And both the distracting KFF poll and Mr. Brodwin ignore the obvious, Obamacare was NEVER going to stay the same, so asking people if they want the law to proceed as implemented (and getting 19 percent of those polled to say, "Yes,") is very similar to asking people whether they prefer riding their unicorns to work, so that question and those who chose that answer was completely unreal.
After all, already Obamacare has been changed dozens of times under Obama, many of those changes furthering the government-insurance company partnership such as CMS deciding to pay providers to counsel people with life-threatening illness on whether various options are "worth it," including financial factors, or with CMS this summer, 2016, limiting when people can purchase short-term health insurance policies in order to force more young-healthies into more expensive Obamacare plans, or with court cases challenging what on earth certain provisions meant and whether they were legal.
Unfortunately, the rotten and deceptive roots of Obamacare make repeal smarter than changing it because it relies on the unholy alliance of government and insurance companies working to screw the American people while exempting public employees from its damage.
