Another Obamacare Trick Exposed And Backfiring
Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE
The drug industry has been quiet during the Obamacare debate. However, the industry’s lobbying group worked with the Obama administration to get Obamacare.
Why would PhRMA do that when President Obama encouraged everyone to buy generic drugs in order to get full coverage for their drug costs?
It is because President Obama promised PhRMA huge concessions and windfall profits after the health insurance exchanges were successful.
PhRMA is not going to make those windfall profits. When Americans see that the health insurance exchanges are more expensive than the private plans. Only those who cannot buy private insurance because they have pre-existing illnesses will sign up for Obamacare.
This will drive the health insurance exchange premiums higher,cover less, restrict access to care and drugs and ration care.
President Obama provided waivers from the implementation of Obamacare to many special groups except the individual market. Those waivers delayed implementation of Obamacare for one to two years.
The administration was concerned that implementation of Obamacare to everyone would cause a storm of protest that the administration could not contain.
These special groups will lobby for the continuation of those waivers as they realize that premiums and deductibles will be higher in the health insurance exchange market than the private market.
The profits PhRMA expected will evaporate.
Consumers not subsidized by Obamacare who bought Silver plans in the individual market through the health insurance exchanges are cooked.
They will pay one and one half to two times the price for drugs next year than they are paying this year.
The government will be paying drug companies for the increased price of drugs for people whose Silver plans are subsidized.
The result will be an increased cost of Obamacare to the public as President Obama redistributes wealth on the backs of the middle class making $50,000.01 or more
How did PhRMA help President Obama get Obamacare passed?
PhRMA paid for the multimillion dollar Harry and Louise ad campaign on TV during the debate for passage of Obamacare.
It financed a false message that was in support of Obamacare as opposed to its original Harry and Louise message that sunk the passage of Hillarycare in 1993.
“A new report by Milliman, Inc. finds that Silver plans with combined deductibles offered through the Health Insurance Exchanges may require patients to pay more than twice as much out of pocket for prescription medicines overall as they would under a typical employer plan.”
“This is a far larger increase in out-of-pocket costs than was found for other medical care.”
The cost of drugs to consumers buying a Silver plan through the Health Insurance exchange without government subsidy and high deductibles will cost twice as much as employer sponsored plans.
“Americans participating in the Exchanges were promised coverage comparable to employer plans and yet the reality is that many new plans are failing to provide an appropriate level of access to quality, affordable health care,” said John Castellani, President and CEO of PhRMA.
Patients’ with high deductible Silver plans will have difficulty affording medicines necessary to manage their illnesses. Paying for medications will be especially difficult for consumers earning more than $50,000.00 who are not subsidized and have chronic diseases. These people need multiple medications to control their chronic disease in order to avoid complications of their disease.
Eighty percent of the healthcare dollars are spent on treating the complications of chronic disease.
The unaffordability of medication to prevent acute and chronic complications of chronic diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus results in an increase in hospitalizations and higher health care costs overall.
Conversely, programs that encourage better adherence have been shown to reduce emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and other preventable, costly care.
The Obamacare rules and regulations are going to encourage an increase, not a decrease, in healthcare costs for non-subsidized Americans.
This contradicts President Obama’s pledge to encourage prevention of illness.
However, it fulfills President Obama’s goal of redistribution of wealth. It could also be interpreted as increasing the tax on the middle class.
If the public realized this would happen with Obamacare it would have protested the passage of Obamacare.
A house panel uncovered the secret deal in an email between PhRMA and the Obama administration in 2012. It was not revealed to the public until recently.
Nancy Pelosi’s statement about not knowing what is in Obamacare until it is passed was an ominous signal that the public would be taken advantage of. No one picked up the signal.
President Obama’s signal legislation is leaving hard working Americans no option but to demand that Obamacare be repealed.
It must be replaced by a healthcare plan that will work.
It must be replaced by a plan that gives consumers the opportunity to be responsible for their health and their healthcare dollars.
It must be replaced by a plan where common sense prevails.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone
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Stan
I agree with your assertion that the greed of the insurance and drug industry leaders are wrong and that Obama and Congress accepted feeding that greed to get the ACA passed. It is time to correct that but, on the whole, I support the ACA. Here is my recently submitted letter to the Editor of the NC Med Journal about this:
To the Editor — The November/December NCMJ’s letter to the Editor, ‘Health Care Costs Must Come Down’ by Ron Howrigen, president of Fulcrum Strategies, Raleigh, NC, demands a response. This is mine.
I heartily agree with the author that Health care costs must come down. This is inarguable and, in spite of the author’s pessimism, I note that the rate of rise of health care costs has already moderated since the Affordable Care Act ( ACA) was passed, even though it will cause a rise (estimated at 6%) as the millions of uninsured (at least double the 6%) are extended coverage by the ACA as it is fully implemented. However, the author totally avoided discussion of the ethical and moral issues the ACA sought to address, particularly the American public’s right to access and coverage of good health care. It has been our obligation, as fellow members of a wealthy nation, to provide that coverage after having failed to address it for over fifty years. Notably, the author, a consultant to physicians, is certainly not a disinterested party in the health care system and therefore his denial of any conflict of interest is hardly forthright. He actually admits his conflict in his statement of his ‘biggest concern,’ i.e. that the ACA will try to control costs by drastically reducing reimbursement to physicians. He and we must realize that our health care system is rapidly evolving to become not nearly as dependent on the physician as it has been in the past.
When the ACA was being considered by the Congress, those whose corporate bottom lines might be significantly impacted by it and the lobbyists who represent those interests read and studied the ACA carefully. I too read it, all of it. Yet few physicians or patients to whom I spoke had actually read even a small portion of the ACA. As I discussed it with others, I shared my excitement about the significant amount of the ACA which was directed to research ways to assess and improve medical care and coverage. I believe these aspects of the ACA had been included with the expectation that, someday, the findings of the research funded by the ACA could and would be used to improve health care and save money through the implementation of evidence-based practices and payment policies identified by that research. I am not unaware of the considerable compromises and gifts our elected officials in Washington, including our President, had to accept to get the ACA through Congress. I hoped that, over time, the positive effects and benefits of the ACA, such as the coverage of the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance and the removal of the pre-existing condition clauses, would be appreciated by most Americans. While I was disappointed especially in the failure of our President to be successful in his quest to avoid many of those concessions in the final ACA, I hoped those gifts to some corporate interests, including hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical businesses, could be ameliorated or even reversed with time.
While I am dismayed by the unrelenting efforts in Congress to undo or limit funds for the ACA, the deficiencies of which are remediable, I remain excited about the good things which have already come and will be coming from this act, one of the most courageous, morally right steps our nation has ever taken.
Richard A Dickey, MD, FACP, FACE
Retired endocrinologist
51 Players Ridge Road
Hickory, North Carolina 28601-8839
radmd51@gmail.com
(828) 495-1230