#32 Is Obamacare Costing Consumers $1.3 Trillion?

Issue #32 - Monday, November 12, 2018 

 
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/11/32-is-obamacare-costing-consumers-13_41.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

Is Obamacare Costing Consumers $1.3 Trillion?

This past year at age 83 I had a horrific 3-week bout with health problems. Included were myriad doctors and specialists, ER, OR, recovery room, ICU, meds, CAT scans, X-Rays and hospitalization—the whole megillah.

 

The bill (so far) is $97,349.41.

 

 No kidding. Here's one of the actual bills. 

 

Imagine a young family or a single mom—with no health care—getting smooshed in a car crash and facing $97,000 in health care bills when 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency bill.

Financial ruin on top of physical wreckage.

Okay. I have Medicare.

What do you have?

I Remember Medicare

I was thirty in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law.

• My father loved it! He had contracted tuberculosis of the bone 60 years earlier and underwent 19 excruciating operations. He ended up with a shriveled right leg and was on crutches all his life. My family could afford it. If not, I wouldn't be here.

• I do not recall any wringing of hands or national debate how Medicare would be paid for. Congress and the president simply said, "Make it so."

• I thought it was nuts!

• Why only take care of geezers? I wondered.

• For God's sake everybody should be insured. The most important are those working people who are paying taxes and contributing to the economy. They should be able to get back on the job as fast as possible.

In terms of Health Care, the U.S. is alone in stupidity.

World Health Care

  Universal Health Care (Green), Free Health Care (Blue) 

Countries in Red Have No Free or Universal Health Care

Look at the bright red United States on the map above. No Universal Health Care—just like the primitive nations of Africa and Asia where the sick and injured die like flies.

      Even with Medicare, Medicaid, corporate paid health plans and Obamacare, 28 million of us have no health care.

Twenty-eight million is roughly the population of Yemen (which has no Universal Health Care).

      In Yemen, the under-five child mortality rate is 100 deaths per 1,000 births. That means 10% of all children under five dies.

      A Yemeni's life expectancy is 64.95 years.

 

Universal Health Care—AKA Single Payer—

Is a Simple, No-brainer Marketing Challenge

 When I was an NBC page (usher) part time while at Columbia College, FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) was deducted from every paycheck. FICA deductions continued throughout my 60-year career.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are no routinely dubbed "entitlements" by sad sack politicians.

        "To balance the budget," Congress whines, "we must cut entitlements!"

        "Entitlements" sound like we are all lazy leeches sucking undeserved cash out of the government and each other.

        Let's get one thing straight:

        Since 1935, FICA has been a financial contract from birth to death forced on us by the government. When a weasel politician threatens to "cut entitlements" he is advocating a breech of contract.

 

Obama's Grotesque Rip-off: The Affordable Care Act

The original Affordable Care Act runs 955 pages of dense, often indecipherable and twisted legalese. It could have been reduced to 10 words:

 

Medicare is hereby expanded to include Americans of all ages.

 

The FICA deduction should be substantially increased to cover Medicare for all. Like Social Security, there should be no choice of plans. No opting out. Healthy youngsters, sick oldies, everybody with pre-existing conditions—all much participate in the scheme. Yeah, this means raising taxes.

 

Taxes are good. 

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—words inscribed over the entrance of IRS headquarters.

Taxes pay for the necessities of life—schools, infrastructure, military, courts and jails, legislative bodies, education, police and fire protection, clean water, disease control, FEMA, paying down the national debt, etc., etc. You cannot order these necessities from Amazon. They come from tax dollars.

Taxes should pay for Universal Health Care, just like every other civilized country in the world.

 

Our Impoverished Congress

Every member of Congress has one overarching agenda that trumps all else: Get re-elected."

         Base salary of a Senator or House member is a beggarly $174,000 a year. Other "earned" income cannot exceed 15% of that. Honoraria are disallowed.

 

The average Congressperson spends 4 hours a day—every work day—out of the office in a telemarketing boiler room with a script pleading with donors for campaign contributions. 

Congresspersons need to raise $18,000 a day every workday or find another job.

On the first Wednesday morning in November after Election Day the four-hour-a-day fundraising starts again so they can buy their jobs in the next cycle.

 

 Bribing Congress with $414.1 Million a Year

In 2009-2010 the Affordable Care Act was being enacted.

That year—and every subsequent year—the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries bought their way into Obamacare with contributions to the campaign funds and private PACs of financially strapped members of the House and Senate:

Industry                                       Bribes to Congress

Health Insurance Industry               $168.4 million

Pharmaceutical Industry                  $245.7 million

              Total Bribes                      $414.1 million

 

ROI on $414.1 Million Bribes to Congress

Industry                                        Annual Revenues 

Health Insurance Industry               $938 Billion

Pharmaceutical Industry                  $450 Billion

Single payer health coverage would eliminate the health insurance industry and free up $938 billion annually that could go directly health care. 

What Do Bribes to Pill Peddlers Buy? No Negotiating Prices!

"Under current law, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is explicitly prohibited from negotiating directly with drug manufacturers on behalf of Medicare Part D enrollee." 

(Unlike with the Veteran's Administration.) 

If drug prices were 20% lower, that wold free up another $90 billion that could go directly to health care.

Add these two amounts together—eliminate health insurance ($938 billion) and get drugs 20% cheaper ($90 million) in my opinion insurance companies and big pharma are stealing $1.3 trillion from health care.

 The Utter Failure of Obama's Marketing

The premise of Obamacare: involve every prospect in the deep weeds of health care. Give them choices to join or opt out (and pay a small fee) and offer myriad plans.

In the United States, 50% of adults cannot read a book at the 8th grade level. Thus half the country had no idea what the hell the Obamacare website was talking about.

Duh.

The Fact Is...

People do not want choices. They want to check a YES box that enables them to pay afforable premiums and be guaranteed they will be taken care of if they get sick or injured.

Obama's Non-P.R. Campaign

 I am a student and long-time practitioner of Public Relations/Publicity.

At age 15, as an apprentice (intern) at the Ivoryton, Connecticut summer playhouse, my teacher was Evelyn Lawson, a hard drinking, heavy smoking ex-Ziegfeld Follies showgirl. Evelyn said:

"Successful P.R. is letting people in on what you are doing."

"Editors are basically lazy. If you can give them a story they can use, they'll run it rather than going to the trouble of writing something original." 

 For starters, on opening day the HealthCare.gov website crashed and remained comatose for days.

Thirty million said the hell with it and opted out.

The financial viability of Obamacare was crushed at the outset.

Shudda. Wudda. Cudda.

What the White House should have done was hire a great P.R. Firm—e.g., Bob Dilenschneider, Edelman, Weber Shandwick, Ogilvy—consummate professionals that know the secrets of influencing public opinion.

From the moment Obamacare was signed into law, the country should have been blitzed seven day a week with heartfelt, deeply individual stories of men, women and especially children whose lives and family fortunes were being saved by Obamacare. (Or destroyed by having opted out.)

This P.R. coverage of Obamacare news should have been filled with the key copy drivers—the emotional hot buttons that make people act:

Fear - Greed - Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity - Salvation - Flattery

The ultimate hot button: FEAR. Scare the Bejeezus out of everybody without health care.

Instead nothing. Nada. Zippo.

"The sale begins when the customer says yes," is the mantra of the great freelancer Bill Christensen of Ellicott City, Maryland.

All politics is theater.

"We don't do theater" was the mantra of Team Obama.

And so this rogue legislation squeaked through, whereupon the White House did not follow-up and went on to other business.

Fast Forward to 2018

In the November midterm elections, Donald Trump held rallies all over the country scaring the wits out of his base these specious terrifying issues:

    Immigration

    Caravan of Foreign Invaders from Mexico

    15,000 U.S. Army Troops Being Sent to the Boarder

    The Wall

    War with Public Enemy #1: the Media and Fake News

    Witch Hunt Investigations

    Replacing Obamacare

    Blame Hillary Clinton and the Democrats

Health Care: The Issue That Threw the Rascals Out!

"A plurality of 41 percent identified health care as the issue most important to their vote, which Democrats made the centerpiece of their campaign races throughout the country." —Benjy Sarlin, NBC NEWS  

Will Congress and the Executive Branch get it right?

Not in my lifetime.

Alas, the Herculean struggle to get re-elected dominates the life of every single member of Congress.

Too many of them are emotionally—and financially—incapable of doing the right thing.

Takeaways to Consider

• "The definition of an honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought." —Simon Cameron (1799-1899) U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

 

• By eliminating health insurance and knocking 20% off drug prices, $1.3 trillion could go directly to health care.

• Single Payer Universal Health Care must be paid for by higher taxes.

• Taxes are good.

• Taxes pay for the necessities of life—schools, infrastructure, military, courts and jails, legislative bodies, education, police and fire protection, clean water, disease control FEMA, paying down the national debt, etc., etc.

• In the U.S. we pay the lowest taxes in the world!

• 44% of Americans pay no federal taxes.

• Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law with net worth of $324 million) paid little or no taxes 2009-2016.

• With the looming $30 trillion national debt, we are human lemmings inexorably headed for financial Armageddon.

•Yeah, let's raise taxes and start to pay down the debt. We can afford it.

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