Obamacare is no longer a split political issue: both sides agree its a healthcare failure

Thursday, April 07, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, health care fiasco

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(NaturalNews) At a recent campaign event for her mother, Chelsea Clinton demonstrated why tens of millions of Americans are showing up at primaries and caucuses and casting ballots for the political outsiders.

In response to a question about Obamacare, literally President Obama's signature piece of legislation, the young Clinton decried the law's "crushing costs" in telling the small assembled crowd that if elected president, her mother is open to executive or congressional action to, among other things, put a "cap on out of pocket expenses."

"This was part of my mom's original plan back in '93 and '94, as well as premium costs. We can either do that directly or through tax credits," Chelsea Clinton continued. "And, kind of figuring out whether she could do that through executive action, or she would need to do that through tax credits working with Congress. She thinks either of those will help solve the challenge of kind of the crushing costs that still exist for too many people, who even are part of the Affordable Care Act and buying insurance..."

Clinton, the consummate insider, figures out Obamacare is squeezing consumers

You can see the video here.

Now it's official: Republicans and Democrats officially despise Obamacare, though it took a presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton to admit the law is a disaster.

But that's the problem: Clinton has always been a proponent of government-run healthcare, as her daughter reminded us (back in the day, when she was first lady and attempting to take over one-seventh of the U.S. economy in secret). Her criticism of Obamacare – through her daughter – does not include any mention of repealing the horribly expensive and complex law; she just wants to do government-run healthcare her way.

Which makes her the epitome of a consummate political insider, and one rejected by millions of voters.

She's right that Obamacare has imposed crushing costs on throngs of American families, though, a fact that conservatives have been trying to raise for years. But Clinton's pivot away from supporting Obamacare (which she just did in February 2014) is purely political – and typical of an establishment candidate. Let us also not forget that Clinton regularly reminds voters that, "before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare, as some of you might remember."

The fact is that for years the majority of Americans have opposed Obamacare, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polling data.

Part of the reason for that is the costs the law imposes. In December, Clinton admitted what fair and honest economists and health industry experts have known for some time: that the law is turning full-time employment into part-time employment, so that employers with more than 50 full-time employees can reduce their full-time staff and avoid the law's mandate to provide health insurance to workers. Even Reuters reported that in 2013.

High premiums, deductibles

Another result of the law is major increases in health insurance premiums. As The Daily Caller reported in November, premiums are soaring three times faster than the federal government estimated – 20.3 percent in 2016 instead of 7.5 percent.

In addition, out-of-pocket expenses have also dramatically increased, in the way of much higher deductibles. In November, The Fiscal Times noted that many plans carry deductibles of thousands of dollars – and those include plans bought through Obamacare exchanges.

"That these deductibles are so high is clearly one of the reasons people aren't buying a plan—they simply don't see themselves getting anything for the money," Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy & Strategy Associates, a business and policy consultant, said in a newsletter in November. (And didn't Obamacare promise universal coverage?)

Yes, Hillary Clinton is now admitting that Obamacare is an expensive failure, and she's right about that – but she's only doing so because it's politically expedient. Furthermore, nothing she is proposing will actually fix what's wrong with the law, because after all, "before it was Obamacare ..."

Sources:

WeeklyStandard.com

NYTimes.com

TheFiscalTimes.com

RealClearPolitics.com