Obamacare Racks Up More Failures

***NEWS RELEASE***

For Immediate Release
February 23, 2015

CONTACT: 
Deborah Hamilton, Hamilton Strategies, 215.815.7716, 610.584.1096, DHamilton@HamiltonStrategies.com
Beth Harrison, Hamilton Strategies, 610.584.1096, bharrison@hamiltonstrategies.com

Obamacare Racks Up More Failures

As Enrollment Closes, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom Says Obamacare’s Days Are Numbered; Court Decision Looms   

ST. PAUL, Minn.—The second Obamacare open enrollment period officially ended Sunday—after a week’s extension due to more web site glitches. Meanwhile, late last week the Obama Administration announced it had sent approximately 800,000 Healthcare.gov customers incorrect tax forms and asked them to delay filing their taxes as a result. It also extended enrollment until April 20 to give people penalized for being uninsured in 2014 time to get covered in 2015.

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org),a Minnesota-based national organization dedicated to preserving patient-centered health care and protecting patient and privacy rights, says Obamacare’s continued failures and poor enrollment statistics are further proof that now is the time to return health care to the states.

“The many failures and the poor enrollment numbers are just a few of the reasons Congress and congressional leadership should speak up for individual states and individual citizens about why it’s a bad idea for the federal government to take over the health care system,” said CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase. “Congress should to take its hands off health care and give control back to the states. Obamacare took control from the states. It’s time to give it back.

She says the 11.4 million sign-ups announced last week don’t mean 11.4 million enrollees, with the likely enrollments closer to the 9.1 – 9.9 million estimated by the Obama administration once the premiums are in and finals for 2015 are tallied. In 2013, the Congressional Budget Office, estimating revenues, including from enrollment, estimated 13 million enrollees by the end of 2015 and 22 million enrollees by the end of 2016. Meeting these enrollment numbers, and securing these revenues from enrollment, is increasingly unlikely, especially as premiums are likely to soar in 2017 when three years of health plan subsidies disappear at the end of 2016.

“The country simply can’t maintain the health care monstrosity lawmakers have forced on Americans,” she continued. “We can’t fund it, people aren’t interested in it, it expands the power of the IRS in people’s lives, and it’s a major intrusion on privacy. In many cases, and especially in this case, local control is best. Local government and local representatives know what their constituents want better than Washington bureaucrats do. The administrative and financial mess is now clearly evident, and this is an opportunity to undo the mess and give health care back to the states. Obamacare’s failures should be the start of devolving health care back to the states and freeing people from federal programs and controls.”

Brase says state exchanges are also in peril, even as the Supreme Court is deciding King v. Burwell, along with similar cases Halbig v. Burwell and Pruitt v. Burwell, which could unravel the entire system if the SCOTUS decides that the federal exchange cannot issue subsidies in states that have not set up their own exchanges. Oral arguments in King v. Burwell begin in early March, and a decision is expected by June.

“If the Court rules in favor of King and Halbig, millions of employers and individuals in 36 states will be freed from the Obamacare mandates and penalties.” Brase said. “Millions and millions of American will not be frozen out of hours, additional wages, and jobs.”

A victory for King and Halbig, Brase continued, would not be a story of people losing their health care coverage, but instead a story of people winning back their freedom—freedom from the employer and individual mandates and Obamacare’s penalties. The law’s mandates and penalties are tied to the availability of subsidies. If SCOTUS rules that subsidies can only be issued through state-based exchanges, employers and many individuals and families in 36 states without state-based exchanges will no longer be under the mandate or penalties.

In a recent weekly “Health Freedom eNews,” Brase reported that a whopping $4.8 billion has been spent to build the national exchange system, which consists of a central server (the Federal Data Services Hub), a federal feeder website (HealthCare.Gov), state-based feeder websites (such as MNsure in Minnesota and Covered California, among others) and a new federal database.

“Obama and congressional Democrats did not appropriate funding for a federal exchange because they wanted to keep Affordable Care Act costs under $1 trillion, and they expected states to build and fund the entire structure,” Brase wrote. “But 36 states wisely said ‘no’ to the high costs and federal control. The total spent is expected to rise to $6.2 billion in 2015, according to an analysis released February 2 by Inside Health Policy.”

“After all the time, trouble and expense of forcing the Affordable Care Act on Americans—and with the backend operations still not figured out, five years after the law was passed—now is the time for Congress to repeal Obamacare and send health care back to the states,” Brase said.

For  more information about CCHF, visit its web site at www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page atwww.facebook.com/cchfreedom or its Twitter feed @TwilaBrase.

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom is a patient-centered national health freedom organization based in St. Paul, Minn., that works to protect health care choices and patient privacy.​ CCHF sponsors the daily, 60-second radio feature, Health Freedom Minute, which airs on approximately 350 stations nationwide, including 200 on the American Family Radio Network and 100 on the Bott Radio Network. Listeners can learn more about the agenda behind health care initiatives and​ steps they can take to protect their health care choices, rights and privacy. 

CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase, R.N., has been called one of the “100 Most Powerful People in Health Care” and one of “Minnesota’s 100 Most Influential Health Care Leaders.” A public health nurse, Brase has been interviewed by CNN, Fox News, Minnesota Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, NBC’s Today Show, NPR, New York Public Radio, the Associated Press, Modern Healthcare, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Times, among others. She is at the forefront of informing the public of crucial health issues, such as intrusive wellness and prevention initiatives in Obamacare, patient privacy, informed consent, the dangers of “evidence-based medicine” and the implications of state and federal health care reform.

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For more information or to interview Twila Brase, president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, contact Deborah Hamilton at dhamilton@hamiltonstrategies.com, 215-815-7716 or 610-584-1096, or Beth Harrison at 610-584-1096, bharrison@hamiltonstrategies.com.