XDA

Our President's often repeated lie about keeping the policy and doctor you like has received sufficient coverage. Let's move on to the new ones. Here's a sample of several from the extreme left wing paper the Guardian:

In fact, it's yet another reminder that, for all its hiccups, Obamacare is well on its way to transforming how Americans receive healthcare – and almost certainly for the better. For most Americans, Obamacare will mean little evident change. If, like the vast majority of Americans, you receive your insurance through your employer today … you will continue to receive it from them tomorrow. And you will do so with greater security and more flexibility if you leave your job.

Almost certainly the mandated coverages will not be for the better. The policies and plans will certainly cost more and contain things that many individuals don't need or want. Oh, and the deductibles will almost certainly rise. Making you pay more for things you don't want is not better coverage. I'm the best judge of what I need for coverage. Not Ms. Sebelius, not the President, not a faceless bureaucrat--me.

I'm not sure the Guardian is keeping up on current events but many businesses are dropping health insurance coverage for their employees' family or for the employees themselves. This had already been happening. It's been in all the media. Also, in case the Guardian writer is not aware, the employer mandate was illegally delayed for a year so the real scope of what will happen as it finally kicks in is unknown, although we have a lot of clues and it appears very unlikely that a "vast majority" of Americans will continue to receive health insurance from their employers. I'm not sure I would call my job more secure if I'm the 51st employee who puts the company into the maw of Obamacare. There's more.

Forcing insurance companies to offer better coverage – and a minimal set of benefits with no trapdoors for consumers – is an unqualified good.

This is merely tautology. Better is good. But, aside from who gets to decide which is good or better,  there is the cost to contend with. A policy that covers everything but costs $200,000/yr. is not an unqualified good for someone making $94,200. It gets worse.

Of course, there will be some Americans who will end up experiencing actual sticker shock in the form of higher premiums. But let's be clear, this is an incredibly small segment of the population. It's basically healthy, young people who earn enough money not to qualify for subsidies (which are available to Americans who make up to 400 times the poverty level, or $92,000 for a family of four) and still buy their insurance on the individual market. But even if you do end up paying higher premiums, you will have coverage that actually can be described as insurance, with broader benefits and actual security if you become seriously ill.

Let's first take up the genius author's math problem here. $92,000 divided by 400 is $230 which is not the poverty threshold in America (perhaps in Haiti or Somalia). I think he means 400% or four times the poverty threshold. Let's see: The poverty threshold for a family of four is $23,550 times 4 is $94,200. He said $92,000--close enough. I see, the higher premiums that poorer people won't be able to pay won't merely represent spreading the cost to the pool of pre-existing condition sufferers and old people not yet on Medicare, and for certain mandated coverages neither needed nor necessary. No, this added expense will be because the health insurance that was cheaper was so bad it wasn't actually insurance and the moronic losers who chose it will have been saved from being defrauded by the super terrific Obamacare. It's so simple. Obama care is better no matter how expensive, unwanted, or unpopular most people perceive it to be, because the superior genius class (except for math) Guardian staff says so. Any evidentiary support beyond merely repeating it's better?

None.

Here's another telling paragraph about lying:

Still, President Obama is hardly off the hook here. When he sold healthcare reform, he promised "nothing … requires you to change what you have." That wasn't exactly true. But it was indicative of the rosy manner in which the administration described a post-Obamacare America.

It was just a little lie, no doubt caused by well meaning exuberance over all the good the ACA was going to do. Wanker. Final lie.

Obamacare's current problems, while frustrating, shall pass. What we'll be left with is very likely a profound transformation in America's healthcare system. The changes wrought by Obamacare are already leading to historic reductions in healthcare costs.

You think that the link embedded in the claim that Obama care is already leading to historic reductions in healthcare costs would lead to a site where there was some evidence that healthcare costs had actually reduced. No such luck. The costs of the approved insurance is merely less than expected.So if they got the expectations wrong then health insurance premium costs could have risen a lot but still be below the inflated expectations. Beating expectations is simply not evidence that costs have been reduced, historically or otherwise. Double wanker.

I have to think the lies upon lies are like cuttlefish ink. Or panic.

Labels: Obamacare Lies