President Trump keeps telling us Obamacare is a disaster. Paul Krugman and Ezekiel Emanuel keep telling us it is a success.

The Obama administration told us that 20 million new people have obtained healthcare insurance because of Obamacare.

We know 14.5 million people lost their healthcare insurance in the individual market the year after Obamacare was passed.

Many assumed they got their insurance back through Obamacare. There is no evidence for that assumption.

I followed Obamacare enrollment carefully on acasignup.net.

This site was supposed to be publishing the exact numbers published by the government weekly. www.acasignups.net

It turns out that the numbers published were inaccurate. They were too high.

“Since the release of the HHS study, the government has published two additional surveys of health-insurance coverage – the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS). Both offer data through the end of 2015, allowing for comparison with the NHIS estimate.”

The government now claims these studies are only estimates of nonelderly adults, under the age of 65, who gained insurance coverage.

The estimate in increased adult coverage ranges from 13.5 million in the CPS study to 16.5 million in the NHIS study.

Where did the number 20 million new lives covered come from? Bill Clinton boosted the number to 25 million when campaigning for Hilary Clinton.

Edmund F. Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski of the Heritage foundation examined data from insurance company regulatory filings and from the government’s own headcount of Medicaid enrollment.

“Their study found that 14 million people (including children) gained public or private coverage in 2014 and 2015.”

This total is even lower because it includes S-Chip coverage for children.

Compounding the government lies of estimated enrollees was that 84% of the new enrollees was either Medicaid or S-Chip children.

This means only 2,240,000 people signed up in President Obama’s Health Insurance Exchanges.

It also means that there were 11,760,000 new Medicaid or S-Chip patients.

Edmund F. Haislmaier concluded in testimony to congress;

“While the final figures will be somewhat different once the more complete end of year data is available, at this point it is reasonable to expect that

for the three year period 2014 through 2016, the net increase in health insurance enrollment was 16.5 million individuals. Of that figure, 13.8 million were added to Medicaid and 2.7 million were the net increase in private sector coverage enrollment.”

http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_budget_testimony-haislmaier.pdf

Eighty-five percent of the 2.7 million have pre-existing conditions. Most are receiving government subsidies.

The 2.7 million covered under Obamacare have destabilized the healthcare insurance market so that healthcare costs for businesses have become unaffordable.

No one has even mentioned the cost of this Obamacare folly to the average hard working taxpayers with healthcare coverage from their employers.

Obamacare’s failure to has been devastating.

“The authors also found that nearly half the new Medicaid enrollees met eligibility standards that were in place before the ACA.”

Maybe Jonathan Gruber is right when he said we, the public, are too stupid to know the wool is being pulled over their eyes.

“For all the hoopla about the ACA exchanges, it appears that Medicaid accounts for the lion’s share of coverage gains and that many new Medicaid enrollees would have been eligible for that program even if the ACA had never passed.”

Medicaid is a single party payer system (socialized medicine) that works very poorly. It is almost as bad as the VA Healthcare System.

Is this what the public wants? No

America needs a better healthcare system. Hopefully Dr. Tom Price knows what to do replace Obamacare with once he dismantles all of the Obama administrations regulation.

Maybe Jonathan Gruber is wrong.

The general taxpayer may be smarter than Dr. Gruber thinks. Maybe it is the reason the public elected Donald Trump.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
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The New York Times editorial “The Republican Healthcare Con” should really be entitled “The New York Times Con of The Republican Health Care Con”

In my opinion The New York Times has become a biased newspaper. Instead of publishing “all the news fit to print”, it is printing articles and editorials that are biased opinions with incomplete facts.

The Republicans have not introduced their replacement of Obamacare yet this editorial is critiquing the replacements effect on the healthcare system..

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. No one is entitled to his or her made up facts.

“Republicans say the Affordable Care Act provides health insurance that manages to be both lousy and expensive.”

This is true. Most of the population seems to agree with this statement.

The only people buying insurance from the health insurance exchanges are people with pre-existing illnesses. These people have no other insurance available.

“Whatever the flaws of these policies (Obamacare), the new Trump administration is trying to pull off a con by offering Americans coverage that is likely to be so much worse that it would barely deserve the name insurance.

It would also leave many millions without the medical care they need.”

How does the New York Times editorial board know this when the Trump administration’s healthcare plan has not been introduced?

The liberal media keeps saying the Republicans have no plan. If Republicans do not have a plan how can the NYT criticize it?

How can a non-existent healthcare plan leave many millions without the medical care they need”?

There is no evidence for the statement above.

This reality became increasingly clear when President Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, testified before a Senate committee last week.

He looked pained as he described the terrible predicament of people who earned around $30,000 to $50,000 a year and had to deny “themselves the kind of care that they need” because they had Obamacare policies with deductibles of $6,000 to $12,000.

Tom Price M.D. is correct in saying the Obamacare deductibles are $6,000-$12,000. The NYT left out that the Obamacare networks available are restrictive and the access to proper healthcare is difficult.

The NYT editorial board also left out the fact that 85% of people buying healthcare insurance from the health insurance exchanges are subsidized by the government and have a pre-existing illness.

“ Yet, earlier in the same hearing, Mr. Price extolled the virtues of policies that would be woefully inadequate — policies that cover medical treatment only in catastrophic cases.”

This is a misrepresentation of Dr. Price’s testimony.

Perhaps the NYT editorial Board does not understand Health Savings Accounts?

If you want to understand a potential Trump administration proposal read my blog “Medical Savings Accounts Are Democratic.”

Dr. Price was talking about the virtues of health saving accounts without being specific.

The goal of health savings accounts are to put consumers in control of their medical care and healthcare dollars while providing them with financial incentives to save retirement dollars and not waste medical care dollars.

Consumers could have control of what they spend for their own healthcare.

The employer or government would pay for the deductible and the reinsurance above the deductible.

The money would be put in a healthcare trust. The money in the trust would pay for medical care.

If consumers did not spend the money on medical care that year, it would go into a personal saving trust for those consumers retirement.

“ Such policies often have deductibles of around $14,000 for family coverage.”

FALSE! One can get excellent coverage with a $6,000 deductible and first dollar coverage after spending $6,000 at a reasonable price.

Health Savings Accounts are the fastest growing healthcare insurance vehicle.

The government has put so many restrictions on health savings account that employees are hesitant to offer it. The government must remove these restrictions. www.unitedheath.com

“ This is simple hypocrisy. Condemn the policy you don’t like, propose something far worse as a replacement and claim that it is much better”

This paragraph is written to condemn Dr. Price and rile up the anti-Trump forces with false information.

The editorial completely disregards the fact that a proposal has not yet been announced by the Trump administration.

There were 2000 plus pages published about President Obama’s Obamacare proposal. There were glaring defects in he proposal.

The NYT did not comment on these defects at the time. Others did. I turned out that the defects were the source of Obamacare’s failure.

In reality the NYT has no idea of what the Trump administration’s proposal will be.

The NYT editorial also ignores the fact that Obamacare is unsustainable, unaffordable and is restricting access to care while rationing care for the very citizens that need the care.

“Mr. Price and Mr. Trump have recently said that their goal is to offer health care to many more people than are covered by the current health care law, which has driven the uninsured rate to historic lows.”

I believe historic lows are a counting error just as the unemployment rate and the inflation rate are counting errors in order to provide the Obama administration acceptable numbers.

Average people know exactly what is happening.

Mr. Price’s testimony and the legislation he introduced in the House (a few years ago), where until recently he was the Budget Committee chairman, show that the new administration will make decent health care less affordable and less accessible for most people.

The underlined portion is a NYT editorial opinion. It is an opinion without facts or evidence. It could also be a lack of understanding of the bill Dr. Price’s introduced.

The Trump administration’s upcoming proposal might be completely different.

How would the NYT know the Trump administration’s healthcare plan would make decent health care less affordable and less accessible for most people?

This is an unsubstantiated bias that would qualify as fake news.

“Those Health Savings Accounts would not help families earning the median household income of $56,000 a year because these families would never be able to sock away enough money.”

The NYT editorial either missed the concept of Health Savings Account totally or is reporting the concept to fit its bias.

The best description of what Mr. Price stands for can be found in a bill he introduced in 2015, the Empowering Patients First Act. It would “empower” Americans by eliminating the health care law’s expansion of Medicaid that has helped more than 10.7 million newly eligible people enroll in that government-run insurance program.

Many of these Medicaid patients cannot find a physician or hospital that accepts Medicaid.

Therefore they have very limited access to care.

A potential proposal could expand Medicaid patients’ access to care using health savings accounts.

It would also drastically cut subsidies that have helped 11.5 million people purchase private insurance on federal and state health exchanges.

There is no evidence for this wild statement.

Under his bill, people buying insurance for themselves would get between $1,200 and $3,000 a year in subsidies, down from an average of $4,600 that people get now on HealthCare.gov.

The amount of tax benefits or tax credits for Health Savings Accounts have been restricted by Obamacare in order to discourage its use.

The Obama administration wanted to control medical care and eliminate consumer choice and power.

President Obama wanted healthcare decisions to be in the hands of the central government.

The Trump administration plans to modify these restrictions. President Trump has stated he wants to put healthcare decision making back into consumers’ hands and not the government’s hands.

The bill would even get rid of the requirement that allows young people to stay on their parents’ insurance policy until age 26, a provision that is widely popular.

This is totally false and once again fake news.

And it would hurt people who get insurance through their employers by setting a cap on how much of that expense businesses can claim as a deduction on their taxes. Experts say that over time this would encourage companies to stop offering health benefits to workers.

The independent insurance market has not had tax deduction. It should be on a level playing field with group insurance. There is no evidence that the group market will lose its tax deduction.

“When it comes to health care, Mr. Price and other Republicans say their goal is to give people more choices. It is hard to argue against choice. But in the ideological world inhabited by Mr. Price, House Speaker Paul Ryan and many other Republicans, choice is often a euphemism for scrapping sensible regulations that protect people.”

This claim also has no basis in fact. It is pure opinion by the NYT editorial board.

“Some Americans might well be tempted by this far-right approach. They would have to pay less up front for these skeletal policies than they do now for comprehensive coverage.”

Has Obamacare provided comprehensive care? It is unaffordable and inaccessible to all.

But over time, when people need health care to recover from accidents, treat diabetes, have a baby or battle addiction, they will be hit by overwhelming bills.

Where did this come from? It came from a negative bias toward Donald Trump and his administration without facts or evidence.

The Trump administration seems perfectly willing to sell those people down the river with false promises.

People are not stupid. They do not need government to rule their life and make healthcare decisions for them.

People need incentive to control their health and healthcare dollars.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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It is clear that Donald Trump won the presidential election.

The U.S. economy is in bad shape despite what President Obama has been telling us. Economic growth has been stagnant with growth at less than 2%.

People are feeling the loss of jobs as factories are closing.

Corporations are moving factories overseas for cheaper labor.

The many unemployed gave up looking of jobs. Full time jobs have been switched to part-time jobs so corporations can avoid the Obamacare mandate. People need to have at least two jobs to make ends meet.

Price inflation continues but is not measured because food and fuel are left out of the inflation calculation.

Inner city unemployment is worse despite President Obama’s saying it is getting better. Neighborhood security has declined. National security is threatened. People do not feel safe.

Obamacare, which was supposed to provide universal healthcare that was affordable to all, was a outright failure both in terms of affordability for individuals and to the national economy.

Yet, the Obama administration, through the mainstream media, keeps telling the people everything is going as planned.

The people could easily see that the administration was tell them a lie. The unemployment rate was reported as being less than 5%.

Americans realized that much of the money for food stamps was being abused. It was discovered that many people were not using the money for food.

Hard working Americans found out that one could collect at least $49,000 non-taxed dollars from the government for not working.

Our foreign policy was in a shambles.

Americans were being told by President Obama that we winning the war. Yet we were losing territory to ISSI and experiencing terrorism both at home and abroad.

Ordinary hard working people were beginning to realize that the tax and spend Democratic Party were ripping them off even if the details of these rip offs were unclear.

Many state governorships and state legislatures were lost to Republicans. Many seats in the U.S. Senate and house were lost to Republicans.

It was clear that the people wanted a change even though they felt the Republican establishment had deceived them previously.

They understood that government was too large. The government bureaucracy consisted of people who could not be fired. These people can obstruct change.

As government grows it employs more people and it becomes more stagnant and less functional.

Along comes Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was a non-charismatic presidential candidate who received millions of dollars from rich people to buy uninspiring advertising on television.

Her message was that she was going to continue President Obama’s legacy. She missed the point completely.

Donald J. Trump comes along and tells the people they are being ripped off by our own government and by other governments. Our trade deals stink. Other countries are living off our tax dollars because of our government’s stupidity. He promises to fix it.

He says America has to be run like a business. He will bring back jobs, decrease waste, increase the status of our military all around the world and uncover the great energy and potential of America, especially in the decaying inner cities.

It is a great message. Few know how he is going to do it. He is not telling anyone. He says he is going to hire great people to help him. He is going to hire successful people to help him.

He is going to create opportunities for everyone using a free market based economy.

America as been sliding toward a central government controlled economy for many years.

It should be clear to everyone that Keynesan based central controlled economy does not work.

Fredrick Hayek taught us that in 1937. However, few listened.

I think it is because the central government fears a loss of control over the economy and the people. It fears that very smart people can take advantage of an economy if they have the ability initiative and become innovative without government restraints. The government does not want to believe that the free market works.

Steve Jobs believed it. Jeff Bezos believed it. All the start-ups believe it.

At the Consumer Electronic Show I saw many companies tying to succeed without government interference.

Why? People want to have the freedom to be innovative and creative.

Maybe the American people believe that Donald Trump is going to give them that opportunity without as many government restraints.

The establishment’s fear is warranted.

My view is the government’s job is to legislate the rules that put everyone on a level playing field. The government should step aside and make sure everyone plays by the rules.

This brings me back to my title, “Come On Guys. Give Them A Chance!”

Donald Trump might just know how to navigate through the swamp of the dysfunctional government bureaucracy.

He doesn’t have to tell us how he is going to do it yet. He just has to do it. He might know how to navigate around America’s bad trade deals.

He might just know how to pick a Secretary of Health and Human Services in the name of Tom Price M.D.. Tom Price M.D. might be the person who can navigate across the failed Obamacare healthcare system.

Tom Price M.D. is a smart and decent man. The Democrats and the media might want to indulge in his character assassination out of fear that he might have a workable plan to repair the healthcare system.

The American people are wise to the Democrats’ tactics.

These tactics will hurt them and not Tom Price M.D..

Maybe he knows how to create a system where if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance. If you like your freedom to choose you can keep that also.

The Democrats, the main stream media and the government bureaucrats should not criticize Donald Trump when the Democrats have failed so miserably. They do not know what the Republicans will propose.

We know what doesn’t work. That is Obamacare!!

Give the new guys a chance!

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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