The Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) is, to put it lightly, a colossal failure. Characterized by broken promises, a comically inadequate rollout and seemingly daily reports of more failure, miscommunication, miscalculation, increasing costs and a bleak outlook.
According to a recently-published article by the New York Post, the Congressional Budget Office projects that in 10 years, just as many people will be without healthcare as before the law was passed. If that wasn’t enough, two million fewer will be out of work, due to the healthcare reform. All for the low low cost of $2 trillion. It’s almost as if the Affordable Care Act does not actually make care affordable at all.
One of the biggest disappointments to the ACA is the oft-repeated “If you like your plan, you can keep it” line. Before the act was passed, this was a major selling point pushed by Obama and the politicians – to repeat that the ACA does not remove choices, only expands them. Less than a minute of Googling returns hundreds of reports of individuals losing their healthcare plans, even vocal supporters of the act were hit by the reality of what the act entailed. Cathy Wagner of Denver supported the ACA, but was dropped and the replacement plan to give her the same coverage increased costs by $1,000 a month for her and her husband.
Even something as seemingly simple as a website to register was a complete bungling mess. While infrastructure and logistics for an online system serving the entire country seems like a daunting task, keep in mind that private companies are running worldwide systems with only the rare bug. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia are all used far more often than the healthcare website, yet all required far less than the conservative estimate of $677 million for the healthcare website – which still doesn’t really work. Almost as if to kick us while we’re down, security flaws in the website combined with the sensitive nature of information being transmitted (Social Security numbers, bank account or credit card information), the website became an irresistible target for hackers, the potential costs for those dealing with identity theft, credit card companies, and law enforcement add yet more invisible costs to the launch of the ACA.
One of the most appalling aspects of this entire fiasco is the reaction by the American public. Only a tiny fraction are at all vocal about the magnitude of deception and extent of failure by the Obama administration, while most do not care and blithely blame the corporations, “capitalism” and greed for the increasing price of goods across the market, increased unemployment and tighter and tighter personal finances. New reports coming to light illuminate the extent that the Obama administration was aware of the failings of the ACA. In July of 2013, a report by insurance companies to the House Energy and Commerce Committee were direct and to the point: insurance premiums will universally rise, many plans cannot be continued under the new guidelines, and in short, none of the stated goals of the ACA could be met. Regardless of this information, no changes were implemented and the same rhetoric repeated: If you like your plan, you can keep it. Expanded choices. Regardless of the mounting pile of evidence demonstrating the administration’s knowledge of the inadequacy, barely a whisper of protest is heard from anybody. The only people who didn’t know the ACA was going to be a colossal failure before implementation was the American public, yet a petition to review Olympic skating scoring has over two million signatures.
As long as the American public remains complacent, it remains complicit in the acts of the government that willingly and knowingly mislead and endanger the public. Without protest or outcry, without significant action discouraging politicians from this behavior, they will only continue to take advantage of citizens and pillage the economy for their own benefit.