Is Honesty Too Much to Expect From Our Leaders?

I have observed an interesting contrast between the national elections here versus in Germany. Their current chancellor, Angela Merkel, told the German people what they could expect if they elected her. Another major contender for power was the Green party, which likewise laid out their platform. Merkel’s did well in the elections, but the platform of the Greens cost them three-quarters of their support. (The Green party was up-front with the voters, and told them their green platform meant higher taxes for almost everyone.)
Contrast that with our elections. President Obama not only did not tell us that his major initiatives would cost us money and reduce the quality of our healthcare, he painted an illusory picture, telling us on June 6, 2009: “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”
In order to get Obamacare signed into law, Mr. Obama was not willing to take the chance of happening to him what happened to the Greens.
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“Premiums are expected to soar under ObamaCare
in all but five states.” — The Heritage Foundation
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Moving on: Last week I wrote on the diminishing “Quality” of our health care under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Now let’s go to the “Cost.”
We were told that we could expand our health care umbrella to millions of people currently without health care insurance and could reduce the cost of health care in the process. Here is a sample of how that is playing out. In the May 27 Wall Street Journal, Jim Ray, a lawyer who represents the Laborers International Union of North America said, “When we first supported the calls for healthcare reform, we thought it was going to bring costs down.” In fact, healthcare costs are up, resulting in lower wages for some of the workers.
The article moves on to a New York labor attorney who said provisions of the law are increasing costs to the point it is creating a challenge for even some of the stronger unions to maintain the quality health plans that they have offered over the years. This clearly does not square with what President Obama told us, that premiums were to decrease by as much as $2,500.
According to the Heritage Foundation, here is what is becoming clear, ”premiums are expected to soar under Obamacare in all but five states (where premiums were already staggering thanks to over-regulated insurance markets.) For example: For young adults, premiums will increase 171 percent in Arkansas, 168 percent in Georgia, and 156 percent in Arizona. An adult age 50 faces an 81percent increase in Indiana, 75 percent in Florida, 74 percent in Connecticut, and 72 percent in Kansas.”
One of the major objectives of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to insure that people with limited means had access to health care. Prior to ACA, people had learned that they could go to the hospital emergency room and receive care whether or not they could pay for it. That is, however, going in the direction of becoming history. Reading between the lines of a May 25 front-page The New York Times article, “Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces created under the ACA.”
The problem is, the new federal law reduces aid to hospitals that treat large numbers of poor and uninsured people, which places further pressure on hospitals to reduce charity care. So the poor and uninsured are finding themselves in a Catch 22: On the one hand, hospitals are unwilling to treat them and on the other hand, they are not qualifying for affordable Affordable-Care-Act coverage. This is particularly an issue for illegal immigrants, who are excluded from the act.
So, how did we come to this point? The American people were not told the truth about Obamacare, because if we had been, the bill would not have passed in Congress. In fact, it barely squeaked through anyway.
This Affordable Care Act needs a complete overhaul. It is not going to happen, however, until we have new leadership in the U.S. Senate, and a new president in the White House.
Art Hall
From the Bible: If you treasure my commandments, discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech. From Proverbs 2