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Title: Obamacare Designed as a Scam
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Published: Nov 12, 2014
Author: Stephen Lendman
Post Date: 2014-11-12 09:09:25 by Stephen Lendman
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Views: 248
Comments: 9
Obamacare Designed as a Scam by Stephen Lendman MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber heads the National Bureau of Economic Research Health Care Program. He's an associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics and Journal of Health Economics. Involved in creating healthcare policy. A key 2006 Massachusetts Romneycare architect. Serving in a similar Obamacare capacity. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). For HHS and congressional democrats. A willfully designed scam. A rationing scheme boon to predatory providers. Enriching insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains. At the expense of universal affordable coverage. Market-based for maximum profits. Letting providers escalate prices. Regulatory light. Loopholes let profiteers game the system. Benefitting at the expense of ripped-off consumers. Leaving millions uninsured. Most others way underinsured. A healthcare disaster. Unaffordable for most people. Providing inadequate protection. Forcing millions to pay 40% or more out-of-pocket. For co-pays and deductibles. On top of costly premiums. Rising annually. Double the cost of other developed countries. During protracted Main Street Depression conditions. Eroding safety net protections. Leaving tens of millions of Americans unemployed. Millions more underemployed. Living from paycheck to paycheck. One missed one away from homelessness, hunger and despair. Forcing most households into bare bones coverage. Leaving them woefully uninsured or underinsured against catastrophic illnesses. Profit matters more than people. Healthcare is a fundamental human right. Obamacare commodifies it more than ever. A huge provider giveaway. Shifting costs unfairly to consumers. Designed this way. Social injustice writ large. Obama wants social safety net protections eliminated. In lockstep with congressional bipartisan complicity. Leaving ordinary people on their own sink or swim. Depriving them of affordable healthcare coverage. When most needed. A crime against humanity and then some. On November 9, the conservative Heritage Foundation-controlled digital news web site Daily Signal headlined "Caught on Camera: Obamacare Architect Admits Deceiving Americans to Pass Law." Two videos surfaced. One in 2012. On so-called health insurance exchanges. Where consumers sign up for coverage. Get subsidies if qualify. "In the law, it says if the states don't provide them, the federal backstop will," said Gruber. "The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop. I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it." "I think what's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits." "But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens, you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country." "I hope that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they'll do it." "But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this." Gruber commented in a second October 2013 video. Calling "(l)ack of transparency" in designing Obamacare "a huge political advantage." "And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass." "We had to lie to" do it, he said. Truth and full disclosure would have exposed the scam. Enactment couldn't happen politically. "You just literally (couldn't) do it…Transparent financing? Transparent spending?" "(T)his bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes." If so, "the bill dies…So it's written to" be willfully deceptive. Confusing. Opaque. Hiding its real purpose from public view. Claiming individual mandate policy forcing consumers to buy coverage or be penalized wasn't a tax. Suppressing information about younger, healthier consumers forced to pay more for coverage. Through higher premiums, deductibles and co-pays. To cover costs for older more vulnerable to illness Americans. A ripoff by any standard. According to Gruber: "In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are gonna pay in - if you made it explicit that healthy people are going to pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed." Transparency would have killed it. Big Lies assured passage. A monster scam. Making a dysfunctional system worse. Obama lied claiming Americans "will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihood." An "opportunity to pursue their dreams." Promises Obama made were broken. "If you like your health care plan," you can keep it, "period." Millions of Americans lost theirs. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period." Doing so requires millions of Americans paying extra. "(W)e'll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year." They're significantly higher for most households. Increasingly unaffordable. Up to "90% of Americans (with) health insurance (get) stronger, better and more secure (coverage than) before...They don't have to worry about anything else." Onerous mandates are imposed on individuals with employer-provided coverage. "(N)o family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase." Obamacare mandates 18 tax hikes, fees and penalties. Middle income households are heavily impacted. Obama said he wouldn't sign any plan "add(ing) one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future." The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates Obamacare costs will "increase the primary deficit (annually) by 0.7 percent of gross domestic spending." Elements "reduc(ing) costs for families, businesses, and government (are) in this bill." Higher insurance premiums and other increased costs assure higher spending, not less. "I will protect Medicare," Obama promised. Obamacare cuts its spending. Mandated $700 billion + 2013 - 2022 decreases. Future ones planned. Over the next decade or sooner, radically transforming Medicare. Obama wants it privatized. Handed to Wall Street en route to eliminating it altogether. The same for Social Security. Downsizing Medicaid ahead. Leaving America's most vulnerable increasingly on their own. Especially when help most needed. Obama lied promising a public option. Saying he'd "sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of (his) first term as president that will cover every American." Millions remain uninsured. Millions more woefully underinsured. No public option. One never intended. Providers enriched at the expense of proper healthcare matters most. "(T)his law means more choice, more competition, and lower costs for millions of Americans," said Obama ACA is polar opposite. Compromising a fundamental human right. Bartering human life and welfare for profit. Marketplace medicine fails when most needed. For most people unable to afford proper coverage. Predatory healthcare giants reduce competition. Consolidate for greater control. In most US counties, consumers have either one or two insurer choices. Escalating costs. Americans deserve much better than they're getting. Universal single payer advocates hope their day will come. Medicare for all alone works. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
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#1. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
No, it isn't. Having said that I agree that Obamacare is a scam. "It's not a right. Rights are things that cannot be taken away from you. Read the Bill of Rights. It is all about what the government cannot do to you. It says nothing about what someone else has to do for you. You cannot have a right to healthcare (I assume that's what you meant, although you said "health") unless someone else provides it for you. That would, in effect, constitute a "right" to take something from others. There is a right to free speech. There is not a right to be provided with TV time on which to make it. You have the right to bear arms. You do not have the right to have someone provide you with a gun. Notice that the Declaration of Independence refers to the right to pursue happiness, not the right to happiness. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless. When you hear someone spout the nonsense that healthcare is a "right", they are just trying to erect a smokescreen for what they really mean -- that someone else ought to be forced to provide you with things that you want. That question is subject to argument, but it does not constitute a "right". Quoted from someone who only gave his name as SDD. Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends. Paul Craig Roberts "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat
SDD nailed it - thanks.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Redistribution of wealth, while Goldman and Sachs takes their cut by moving the money around. The first thing that should be done, is for everyone who voted in favor, and every "Architect" of Obamacare to be rounded up and prosecuted. Mass arrests. Mass incarcerations with terms not less than 30 years. These people knew exactly what they were doing, and they lied to the American People, who of course were too stupid to stop the nonsense. My idiot senators were too stupid, and too traitorous to stand against it. We have the socialist democrats to thank for this. "Call Me Ishmael" -Ishmael, A character from the book "Moby Dick" 1851. "Call Me Fishmeal" -Osama Bin Laden, A character created by the CIA, and the world's Hide And Seek Champion 2001-2011. -Tommythemadartist
You're most welcome. I am always amazed at all the things we supposedly have a "right" to according to folks who describe themselves as "progressives." They fail to take into account that in their utopia some would be made slaves for the happiness of others. While I will never argue against charity because I believe it is noble I will always argue that no one should be forced to be a slave to supply charity.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends. Paul Craig Roberts "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat
LOL Really? Gosh. More of a racket really. Now people can go into debt without overspending their budgets, without buying anything, and through no fault of their own otherwise. But it's not about creating debt or anything. Nah. /s The primary beneficiaries of Obamacare are the insurance companies which are all intricately related as subsidiaries to the big banking syndicate. What's next, forcing people to put their money into banks at negative interest rates of -20%. Come on. This shit is so transparent that only the blind and ignorant are clueless.
No, it isn't. Having said that I agree that Obamacare is a scam. Not only that, Obamacare is going to destroy our current "healthcare" system and already is.
Amen ! Enough of this Liberal-Socialist-Progressive-Communist~Fascist bull cookie crud. buckwheat's entire residency is a globalist-engineered, cia-executed, black-op scam against US. End of story.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Yep. More than enough. Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends. Paul Craig Roberts "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat
Healthcare is a fundamental human right.
#2. To: James Deffenbach (#1)
#3. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
#4. To: Lod (#2)
#5. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
Obamacare Designed as a Scam
#6. To: James Deffenbach (#1)
>>"Healthcare is a fundamental human right."
#7. To: James Deffenbach (#4)
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams 
#8. To: Rotara, 4 (#7)
#9. To: Rotara (#7)
Enough of this Liberal-Socialist-Progressive-Communist~Fascist bull cookie crud.
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