As
soon as I started reading each screen, I realized that it was asking me to
consent to third parties to obtain my medication prescription history from my
pharmacy and to my entire medical history.
I
had the right to request and restrict as to how my protected health information
was used or disclosed. However, when I declined to sign, the computer stopped,
and prompted me to talk to the receptionist. She informed me that diagnosis
and/or treatment “may be conditioned upon my consent.”
The
electronic screen and the paper copy the receptionist gave me said, “The [name
withheld] is not required to agree to the restrictions that I may request and
may refuse treatment based on my restriction as permitted by Section 164.506 of
the Code of Federal Regulations.”
Suddenly,
because I refused the IRS and HHS meddling in my personal health affairs, I had
become persona-non-grata (unwanted person) to my doctor who had sworn a
Hippocratic Oath to care for me and any patient who comes across his/her path.
In
other words, I would not be treated if I did not sign yes. I had the right to
say no, don’t’ give my medical information and history to anyone else but the
doctor is not required to honor my request and may refuse treatment to me as
permitted by Section 164.506 of the Code of Federal Regulations. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title45-vol1/pdf/CFR-2011-title45-vol1-sec164-506.pdf
What
if I said no, do not release my medical history to a third unapproved party and
I paid cash? The doctor would not see me. Welcome to the destruction of our
stellar healthcare and patient/doctor confidentiality, compliments of Obamacare.
How
affordable is this Obamacare, the unfortunately named, the Affordable Care Act?
The Democrats and the President said that costs would be so much lower; it
would save the typical family $2,500 per year.
The
cheapest category of Obamacare is the Bronze Plan which costs $20,000 per year
for a family of two adults and three children and it pays only 60% of medical
costs after the deductibles for the year have been met. And the deductibles are
high per person and per family. The following tiers are Silver (70%), Gold
(80%), and Platinum (90%).
During
my 30 year teaching career, I seldom had to pay more than $3,600 a year premium
for private insurance for my family. Even a retirement private plan did not
cost more than $8,000 per year with 80% reimbursement as opposed to only 60%
reimbursement under the Obamacare Bronze Plan. Is Obamacare really affordable?
The answer is a resounding no.
According
to the IRS, the penalty for not buying insurance is capped for now at either
the annual Bronze premium, 2.5% of taxable income, or $2,085 per family in
2016.
President
Obama said, “If you are one of the more than 250 million Americans who already
have health insurance, you will keep your insurance.” Heritage’s Amy Payne
estimated that “more than 11 million people will no longer have their
employer-sponsored health coverage once Obamacare is fully implemented.”
(Businesses Cutting Hours, Bracing for Costs of Obamcare, December 6, 2012)
Obamacare
employer mandate is killing jobs. An employer with 50 employees must provide
coverage or pay $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers. It
is easy to see how an employer would have to cut back employees to 30,
replacing full-time employees with part-time ones, in order to avoid the
penalty or the skyrocketing premiums for private coverage. These private insurance premiums rose significantly
because Obamacare mandates insurance for all children up to 26 years old and for
those insured with pre-existing conditions whose treatment can be costly.
Breitbart
News reported that Pennsylvania Community College of Allegheny County had
already cut the hours of 400 adjunct professors, staff, and part-time teachers,
saving $6 million in potential Obamacare fees. (Wynton Hall, Obamacare Layoffs,
Hiring Freezes Begin, January 5, 2013)
Because
of the Obamacare medical device 2.3 percent excise tax, Stryker medical supply
cut 1,170 employees (5%). Boston Scientific, Welch Allyn, Medtronic, Kinetic
Concepts, and Smith & Nephew are also contemplating cuts in their work
force. Zimmer Holdings, makers of hip replacement implants, laid off 450
workers in expectation of a $60 million tax bill in 2013. (Bob Unruh, Democrats
in Congress ‘want out’ of Obamacare)
Everybody’s
private insurance has been disrupted and private premiums have escalated, in
addition to adding the “Cadillac tax” to plans that are judged too generous. According
to Jonathan Gruber of MIT and the actuarial firm Milliman, non-group premiums
rose 19-30% in some states and 55-85% in others.
The
federal government has built a data hub to be used only for Obamacare without saying
how it will be run. The HHS has released 13,000 pages of regulations with only
30 days for public comment while attempting to re-engineer 17% of the economy.
(WSJ, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Obamacare, December 13, 2012)
On
the deadline of December 14, 2012 states had to declare health insurance
exchanges. At that time, only six states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland,
Oregon, and Washington) received conditional approval from the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) to operate their own exchanges. Twenty-six
states stated that they will not set up exchanges.
If
a state operates its own exchange, it must come up in 2015 with its own source
of revenue to run the exchange, making a state a vendor to HHS. The state running
an exchange must also expand Medicaid to “able-bodied, low-income, childless
adults” in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid
expansion voluntary. The federal government was not planning on covering
the full cost of such Medicaid expansion. “Half of the reduction in the number
of uninsured promised under Obamacare was based on mandating that states expand
Medicaid.” (Heritage’s Morning Bell, December 13, 2012)
Several
states asked Sibelius, the HHS Secretary, if they could expand Medicaid less.
The answer was that only full compliance with the law will garner 90%
reimbursement from the federal government. Nine states have refused to expand Medicaid
to cover new populations. The feds will set up their own exchanges in those
states but final regulations and specifics for the federal exchanges are not made
public yet. Oklahoma and Maine have sued over Medicaid expansion and over
statutory language and Medicaid expansion, respectively.
Three
deadline extensions of implementing health exchanges have passed. Most states
will share responsibilities with the federal government or default to a
federal-run exchange. Only a minority of states have agreed to run their own
exchanges.
A
3.5 percent administrative fee on coverage sold through federally-run exchanges
will be levied. An additional $63 fee per employee must be paid in federal fees
to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
Government
funds will be set aside to promote/advertise [on primetime] Obamacare. Critics
of the unaffordable health care law call such advertising “political advocacy.”
Practicing
medicine will become more and less a government-run monopoly instead of the
current monopolistic competition where patients are free to choose what doctors
they go to, based on preference, doctor qualifications, specialty, reputation, insurance
types, and premiums they choose to pay.
Doctors
will either merge with hospitals, insurance companies, and specialty management
firms or become “concierge” doctors, serving a reduced number of patients for a
set fee. Consolidation will have a negative effect on patient access, price,
and competition. Mergers in the 1980s and 1990s had negative effects in terms
of patients being restricted or blocked from access to specialists and
procedures.
More
than $719 billion will be taken from Medicare over the next ten years to pay
for Obamacare. According to Rep. Wally Herger, Chairman of the House Ways and
Means Subcommittee on Health, the Independent Payment Advisory Board
established by Obamacare is authorized to unilaterally impose price controls
and de facto rationing of medical care.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/11/medicare-reform-crucial-for-economic-health/
Medicare
is already in trouble. Taking $719 billion over ten years from Medicare to fund
Obamcare will exacerbate financial problems. Medicare benefits are not a return
on taxes paid into the system over time because Medicare is run as “pay as you
go” - today’s wage earners pay taxes to fund benefits for today’s retirees. Since
people live longer, “Medicare payroll taxes cover only 38 percent of current
benefits.” (Rep. Wally Herger)
Obamacare
depends on bringing young, healthy people into insurance markets to help offset
the costs of insuring the old and the sick. If young people do not participate in
the program and elect to pay the fine instead, Obamacare will not be able to
make coverage affordable for the uninsured.
Most
young Americans do not have insurance. Young people who do have insurance
purchase less coverage. Under Obamcare, young Americans must get more coverage
and pay more whether they want the added coverage or not. Private insurers have
increased their premiums because the law prohibits them from rejecting the
sick, and are no longer allowed to charge higher premiums to older customers.
Premiums for a young, healthy male could go up as much as three times. Young
adults could then opt out of private coverage, causing the market to implode.
(Washington Post, Insurers Warn of Health Law ‘Rate Shock,’ N.C. Aizenman,
February 16, 2013)
To
make matters worse, government officials announced on February 15, 2013 that
state-based “high-risk pools” under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants
on February 16 through March 2, depending on the state, because funding is
running low. The existing 100,000 enrollees will not be affected. If the
funding is running low now, what will happen by the time Obamacare is fully in
force?
There
is a glitch in Obamacare that could leave more than 500,000 children uninsured.
Congress defined “affordable” in the Affordable Care Act as coverage not
exceeding 9.5 % of family income. If people have coverage that fall under this
9.5% affordable, they cannot get subsidies to go into new insurance markets.
This restriction was put into place to prevent people from switching from
employer coverage to exchanges in droves. “Affordable” was calculated based on
self-only, individual worker, with an average market cost of $5,600. But the current
market family coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, is $15,700
per year. IRS announced on January 30, 2013, that employers are not required to
pay for dependents, leaving the employee to pay the family premium since he/she
will be locked out of subsidies in the federal exchanges.
Betsey
McCaughey wrote that Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prediction that
Obamacare would leave only 30 million people uninsured in 2016 was predicated on
the assumption that kids would be covered by employees. If a parent is covered
at work, no subsidies will be provided for the child in the health exchange.
Millions
of people will remain uninsured because their states are choosing [wisely] not
to expand Medicaid. The states do not have the money to expand Medicaid.
By
the time the uninsured will be counted, almost as many Americans (40 million
plus) will be left without insurance as the number of uninsured before the Democrats
passed their signature monstrosity, the Affordable Care Act. Having sat in a
drawer for decades, the bill was dusted off, repackaged, and polished. Nobody took
the time to publicly debate or read the bill that passed after some arm-twisting.
The Democrats, who had promised free
health care for all, feverishly proceeded to spend trillions of dollars we did
not have to re-engineer our health care system in the name of social justice.
The
states that refuse to set up health exchanges are expected to sell the
government-mandated plans and to give out taxpayer-funded subsidies to those
who enroll. Betsey McCaughey identifies the glitch:
“The
law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an
exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration
says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but
the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.” http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/wheels_coming_off_QPojjZX0Bd8BU80hDpcKZP
To
safeguard from disaster, take care of your body, eat right, exercise if you
can, and pray very hard that you will not get sick. There is a good chance that
there will not be enough highly qualified doctors to deliver care when needed even
if you do have insurance. Should you need specialists, expensive drugs or
surgery, you are out of luck. Rationing will tell you, “no, you can’t have it.”
The emergency rooms will be filled to capacity with confused, desperate, sick
people, and new illegal alien arrivals.
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