eNews Commentary • Oct 2013 • Health Care Reform - Obamacare • Health Exchanges -Obamacare • Health Surveillance • Medical Records • Medicare • Patient Care • Patient Privacy

$1.4B Buys Obamacare Failure – Twice?

 


October 16, 2013
 

 

Obamacare must not be lost in the debt ceiling debate. Try not to be distracted by false claims of America defaulting on its debt. According to Ronald Reagan’s deputy assistant Treasury secretary David Malpass, writing Oct. 10 in The Wall Street Journal:
 
“Fortunately, an actual default is a red herring. The president has sweeping powers through Treasury to continue paying the national debt. Mr. Obama alluded to this on Tuesday by listing the non-debt obligations that might be paid late, including government contractors, veterans and Social Security recipients (whose checks are due Nov. 1). In effect, the government would choose to pay them late and use newly arrived tax revenues to maintain debt payments.”
 
The only reason a shutdown can be leveraged for political purposes like funding Obamacare is because the federal government can shut down too many things. It doesn’t have to be that way. Case in point, New York decided to use state funds to keep the Statute of Liberty open. Arizona used state funds to reopen the Grand Canyon. Utah did the same. That’s exactly how it should be. States should pay to keep their own attractions open and tourists should be charged to replenish state coffers. Individuals and states are sending far too much money to the Feds for far too many things.
 
Today’s Senate debt ceiling agreement is a bad deal. The U.S. Senate’s decision to raise the debt ceiling and keep spending money for things we can’t afford will only take us through February 7, when President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate will again try to use the debt ceiling deadline to get more money from the pockets of taxpayers for things we don’t want to buy. The minor Obamacare concession Senate Democrats allowed in today’s deal was strict income monitoring of individuals seeking taxpayer subsidies in the Exchange -- which is already required by the ACA.
 
Call your U.S. Representative (#202-224-3121) and ask them to say “No” to the Senate’s agreement. And please consider a generous contribution of $50, $100, or $250 to CCHF today so we can continue this critical battle against Obamacare.
 
Here’s the scary reality. The U.S. Senate budget includes $1.4 billion to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to continue building the national Obamacare exchange system plus an additional $400 million for IRS tax and mandate enforcement. It’s not clear yet what is included in today’s Senate agreement but if the Obamacare funding is in there, that’s all the more reason to wait for a better deal.
 
HHS has already awarded $1.4 billion to the Montreal-based CGI Group to build the national Exchange system and look what we got.  A disaster -- and might I say, thankfully so, despite the great loss of taxpayer dollars to build this gigantic IT system.
 
Why doesn’t the Obamacare Exchange work? It was revealed in the The Wall Street Journal that HHS forced people to share personal information before revealing available Obamacare plans because they wanted to prevent sticker shock. They wanted to hide the real costs of Obamacare under a cloak of federal taxpayer-funded subsidies.
 
As the WSJ reports, “the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” In other words, HHS officials were worried about how the public would react to the unsubsidized high prices of Obamacare coverage.
 
By forcing people to share their personal, employment and financial data, HHS could:
 
  1. Give Americans the “security” of taxpayer-funded federal premium subsidies before they faced the shockingly high cost of Obamacare coverage.
  1. Limit the number and type of coverage policies visible and available to the individual according to income. For example, the only “choice” for very low income people is free access to their state’s Medicaid program.
  1. Collect personal and financial data on people who may choose not to enroll, potentially using it in the future to market Obamacare coverage.
 
But HHS was foiled by creating a system that couldn’t do the task. From the October 1 start of Obamacare enrollment, few people could interact with the federal and state websites -- and even fewer could enroll. And there is evidence that even the taxpayer subsidy calculations were wrong. (WSJ, Oct 6)
 
HHS officials are hiding the facts. Health officials say healthcare.gov, the federal exchange website, has had 14.6 million unique visitors since it opened on October 1, but the agency refuses to reveal how many people have actually enrolled. HHS says they’ll wait until November -- apparently hoping those enrollment numbers will look better than today’s.
 
One British publication, using their government sources, says only 51,000 people have enrolled in the 36 states using the federal portal, www.healthcare.gov. Alaska had zero takers. If true, it’ll will be very difficult to enroll the 7 million people HHS Secretary Sebelius says they need by March 31, 2014 to keep the Exchange system financially solvent. Even worse for the administration, many Obamacare enrollments are duplicates -- or triplicates – or vapor.
 
Here’s a happy thought: All federal funding for the Exchange system disappears on December 31, 2014.
 
Keep the heat on. Tell Congress to refuse to fund Obamacare: #202-224-3121. And encourage everyone you know to refuse to enroll in the Obamacare Exchanges. Let’s starve them of the cash they need to impose national health care. And remind your friends and famity that they must avoid the Exchange altogether if they want to keep their data out of the new federal exchange tracking and enforcement database.
 
CCHF is committed to securing health freedom for all and stopping Obamacare until it’s repeal. Please consider a donation of $50, $100, $250 or $750 today.
 
Working with you for freedom’s cause,
 
Twila Brase
President and Co-founder