New "polls" are coming out comparing the unpopularity of Obamacare to the Republicans' plan, and foreseeably, the Republican plan is losing and the main reason is that the consumer public has been slapped around by Obamacare and the stooges in Congress that passed it and we're once burnt, twice shy.
Who would've worried about Republicans'' continuous care provisions (the privatized version of the individual mandate that forces people to purchase health insurance or allows insurers to charge a 50 percent added on premium when they decide to again purchase insurance) if we hadn't been smacked upside the head with the government forcing consumers to purchase the financial product of health insurance under Obamacare?
Who would've worried about the stark focus of the Republican plan to save the government money, reducing government costs more "affordable" rather than lowering consumers' bills but for the double-talking Obama and the vague inclusion of the word "Affordable" in the Affordable Care Act name?
Actually, who would've guessed that our representatives and government had partnered with insurance companies, making a devil's deal, if not for Obamacare and the revelation that in fact it was concocted by the insurance company lobby in 2008 (AHIP)? This partnership continues with the insurance industry's newly concocted memo ("Making Health Care Work for Every American, Solutions to Deliver More Competition, Market Stability and Affordable Coverage, http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2016/12/trump-and-consumers-are-being-threatend.html) again, revealing insurers using the candidate's magic words, like Obama's pre-existing conditions, and this time using "More competition), to trade political efforts of our politicians for the well-being of the American public.
Nobody would've assumed that Congress would exempt itself from Obamacare, after all, the President had promised coverage like his family has, except, we also didn't know that public employees would use our money to describe themselves as lucky "employees" who merely had a great plan offered by their employer (the Federal government), as a loophole to escape compliance with their own law. Naturally, the Republican public employees haven't addressed that loophole.
But the partisan comparison of these two exploitive policies, at their core, is being missed because of politics and politicians unaffected by the laws. And remember, Obamacare, that piece of timed deceit with its first swoop of horrific policies kicking in for the 2014 plan year, after Obama was able to continue to lie about large portions of Obamacare and win another term, is not done yet.
There are provisions going forward to 2020 and beyond, and just like this year's suspension of insurance company payoffs from the federal government, risk reinsurance and risk corridors, resulted in widespread exodus from health exchanges, there are more cost-cutting, ceilings to be reached, and yes, the death panels of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which comes into its own in the year 2019 vis-à-vis its complete authority.
In 2018, the Cadillac tax comes in, discouraging superior insurance policies available to some through their employers, even as public employees take our money to finance their own Cadillac plans, after all we pay 72 percent and more of their premiums.
These laws create pockets of new entitlements, whether it's new Medicaid eligibility or the ridiculous cost sharing and premium assistance of Obamacare which has been fraught with fraud from day one and even allows millionaires who can show that their income falls within certain boundaries to collect government money to pay for their care, while the poorest Americans are left out in the cold, especially in states that didn't expand Medicaid. Wonder if this is true? Just look at who's exempt from coverage, those who can't pay their bills, victims of domestic violence, those evicted, the homeless. Similarly, the lying Republicans are trying to embrace those impoverished as not exempt, but with the "freedom" not to purchase health insurance. Same garbage.
It's always been pretty obvious that the Republicans agreed with the Obamacare goal of saving government money on payments on behalf of citizens while preserving their own superior benefits by partnering with insurance companies. We deserve better and the way to get it is to start by closing the loophole--You pass it, you live with it. Your benefits and pensions are no longer affordable to the people who pay them, public employees. That's the message we need.
