Once Healthcare.gov’s technical problems get fixed, which at the current rate may happen around 2017, the real fun begins. Millions of Americans will learn just how much more Obamacare will force them to pay for the same or weaker coverage than they have now. Some of us warned that these days would come, while others who supported the law denied it.
Democrat Kirsten Powers is among the latter. Sticker shock greeted her once she finally managed to get through the exchange web site. Holding hands with Sticker Shock was its BFF, You Can’t Keep the Plan You Liked.
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Powers is being kind at the end of the clip, when she notes that the reality of Obamacare’s higher premiums isn’t “quite the way they sold it.”
No, it’s nothing like “the way they sold it.” Obama sold his plan as one that would do the impossible. It can’t. Some of us saw this coming years ago and warned the country about it, but people like Powers shouted us down. Shockingly (not), I personally spent more than a year at the Texas GOP doing interview after interview about what a job-killing, economic mess Obamacare would be. Not a single reporter has come back to me to ask what it’s like to be proven so right.
What happens once millions of young, healthy people like Powers get through the dysfunctional exchange web site, find a plan that sort of suits them among the limited choices offered, and then see the price? Do they enroll for a heinously expensive plan they don’t really need, or do they balk and pay the fine and do what Obamacare now allows them to do — wait until they get sick to buy insurance? If they choose the latter, then Obamacare sends the U.S. health insurance industry into a death spiral. As some of us predicted.
Additionally, Obamacare introduces the possibility of widespread fraud and identity theft via its system of navigators. Navigators are supposed to help Americans navigate their way through Obamacare and find a plan. In order to do that, navigators will have to capture some personal information. But there are major problems surfacing with these navigators. First, there are the navigators who are proven criminals of one type or another. Then, there are the navigator groups who haven’t been vetted and may not be real entities. The government isn’t vetting these groups before listing them on the Obamacare site as “local help.” Some of them are left wing political groups. Others …. ??? The Obama administration is using the “honor system” with these groups. The fact that there are proven criminals among them should blow up the whole idea of using the “honor system,” but so far it hasn’t. The mainstream media hasn’t found this Obamacare underbelly yet. What if the navigator story breaks out? You’d be a fool to use any navigator for help, as doing so risks exposing you and your family to who knows what kind of fraud.
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