Since the kick-off of the Obamacare website, healthcare.gov, I have been unable to compare my current plan with any of the options in Obamacare. This, after 3 weeks of logging onto the website and going nowhere. Today, after two phone calls and three hours on the phone, I was able to get a price, for all three plans, BUT was not able to find out the details of any of the policies, deductibles, what’s covered, what isn’t. You know, everything one would need to make an informed decision on which plan to buy, or not to buy. Not only did President Obama promise I would be saving $2,500 per in premiums, but he also said I would be able to shop the plans and see whether I could get a better deal in the private market instead of from the government exchange.

I asked the lady exactly what the policy covered and she politely said that the details would be sent to me in the mail in about three weeks. What? Is this Obama’s idea of shopping for an insurance policy? They can tell me how much it cost, but not what’s in it? Does this sound familiar? I’ll bet you a cheesesteak that any private health insurance carrier can quote you a policy and explain the coverage inside of a 10 minute phone call without music-on-hold.

I told the woman that the open enrollment period on my group insurance ends in the third week of November, and that I need to know the coverage details now so I can make an informed decision. All she could tell me was that they would send me the coverage details via snail mail, in three weeks.

Now feature this. For Obamacare to be a “success,” they need to enroll 7 million people. Most of which are young and healthy adults. After wasting three hours of my (and her) time today, and two hours on the phone earlier in the month with other phone bank employees, with this kind of productivity (if you can even call that productivity), how in the hell does anyone think that they’re going to enroll anywhere near the 7 million people needed for Obamacare to survive when they can’t answer basic questions about their “product?” According to the numbers so far, over half of the enrollees are qualifying for and getting on Medicaid. Which means they are government dependents, not policyholders contributing to  (wait for it) lowering costs.

If this were a joke, it’d be a good one. Because the purpose (according to its namesake) of Obamacare was to insure everybody, because,  aghast, 15% of Americans don’t have a health insurance policy. Set aside for the moment that the federal government has no business being in the health insurance business. In the last few months, more people have had their policies cancelled than have enrolled into Obamacare. So rather than insure everyone, Obamacare is in the process of destroying the private sector health insurance industry, and increasing costs on the 85% of Americans that were happy with their policy in the first place, and still not insuring everybody, all for the promise of helping 15% of Americans. Some of whom don’t have a policy because they didn’t want one. And Obama’s solution is to force everyone to buy one or be fined. This is exactly where the role and relationship between the government and the citizens has been turned upside down.

Obama ‘gives’ you a right, takes your freedom

Not only that, but The White House is attempting to create another ‘right’ for Americans. In addition to your right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, a right to vote, a right to speak, a right to bear arms, etc., they are saying that you have a right to a health insurance policy. And along with this new right to health insurance you get, there’s a “freedom” you lose. That is, what kind of policy and what kind of coverage you want. You don’t decide that any more. Under Obamacare, it is the government, not you, who makes that decision.

Responding to the president misleading Americans about his main selling point of Obamacare “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period” not actually being the case, at 4:54 in the video White House spokes-kid Jay Carney said . . .

I take your point, it is correct that substandard plans that don’t provide minimum services that have a lot of fine print that leaves consumers in the lurch often because of annual caps, or lifetime caps, or carve outs for some preexisting conditions, those are no longer allowed because the Affordable Care Act is built on the premise that health care is not a privilege, it is a right and there should be a minimum standard of plans available to Americans around the country. {emphasis added}

Cute how Jay and his boss conflate health care with health insurance. Health insurance isn’t a privilege. It’s a product.

Obamacare has fallen and it can’t get up. It is America’s Albatross to get rid of.

An alternative to government-run health care exists. And it will lower costs, won’t increase the national debt, will offer the consumer more choices, and you won’t have the government getting between you and your doctor. What is this alternative? It is H.R. 2300, the Empowering Patients First Act of 2013. It’s been around for years. In the 111th congress it was called H.R.3400, The Empowering Patients First Act.

Link: The hidden truth behind early Obamacare numbers: It’s not what it seems

Hearken back to how the unaffordable Affordable Care Act was promoted with the mandate attached. It was called a “fine” or “penalty” all the way up to the point it went to the Supreme Court. Then, the description of the mandate changed from a penalty to a “tax” you will pay if you did not buy an insurance policy that the government approves of.

That the government does not approve the policies of hundreds of thousands of insured people is the reason insurance companies are notifying their customers that their policy does not meet the “minimum requirements” as proscribed by Obamacare and is being cancelled as of the end of the year. (Barack Obama, “If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.”) Oh never mind.

Which brings me to the mandate, the penalty. The alternative revenue stream that is supposed to make the government exchange insurance policies “affordable.”

Aside from people finding out how expensive their government exchange insurance policy with high deductibles will be, presuming the healthcare.gov website gets fixed, the details of how the penalty is collected is where the program breaks down. Long story short, if you pay taxes already and don’t get a tax refund, and choose not to buy health insurance, you’re home free. If however, you are like many low income people who revel in receiving a tax refund (which is actually you paying more taxes than you owe), and choose not to buy the expensive health insurance, the government will deduct your penalty from your refund. You’ll pay your fair share. (Obama’s words) So where does this end up? Right where Obama intended it to end up. He will try to take Obamacare to its final destination, a single payer system where the private sector health insurance industry becomes extinct and the whole country is on Medicare.

Regardless whether you believe that a single payer system is the goal, that Obamacare is the pathway to a single payer system (like Obama himself has said), you better believe that not only does the mandate have no teeth, but it punishes low income workers while giving everyone else a pass on paying the so-called mandated penalty.

The Joint Tax Committee prepared a summary of Obamacare that includes this discussion of the mandate:

The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

As I understand it, the only way the IRS can possibly collect the penalty is by withholding your tax refund. No problem: if you arrange your taxes so that you don’t overpay, the penalty can never be collected from you. Some observers who should know better continue to tell young people they should pay the penalty and forgo expensive insurance. No: young people, if they want to follow their self-interest, should forgo expensive insurance and NOT pay the penalty, because it can never be collected from them.

Since Obamacare is, by all accounts, “settled law,” it will be interesting to see the wailing from Democrats to change it when the people who look to them for sustenance find out that the government is dipping into their tax refund while taking nothing from those rich people.

The beauty of this train wreck is that Republicans have nothing, zip, zero, nada, to do with it. They didn’t write it, they didn’t amend it, and they didn’t vote for it. But they do have an alternative that does not increase the debt, will actually work to decrease premiums, doesn’t involve raising taxes or imposing fines on poor people, has no death panels, and, doesn’t put the government between you and your doctor. It’s called H.R. 2300, the Empowering Patients First Act of 2013.

Link: DELAY THE MANDATE? WHAT MANDATE?