Six years ago this week, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law…with all the arrogance and pomp we have come to expect!
Obamacare is still the gift that keeps on giving…fiscal pain, budgetary heartbreak, and unfulfilled expectations.
For this magic anniversary, Patrice J. Lee f the Independent Women’s Forum walks us down Memory Lane:
During the debate over ObamaCare, President Obama promised –among many things- that the average family premiums would decline by $2,500. Let’s just see if that held up.According to the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Americans in most states face higher healthcare premiums this year under ObamaCare. In 17 of those states, the deductible increases are 20 percent or higher. As for deductibles, those too have spiked. Forty-one states saw average deductibles for ObamaCare plans increase and 17 of them experienced double-digit increases.That’s a whopping $3,000 or more for consumers in some states. Here are the largest increases: Mississippi (39 percent), Washington (31 percent), South Carolina (26 percent), Louisiana (24 percent), Florida (23 percent), Minnesota and Vermont (22 percent), Arizona (21 percent), and North Carolina (20 percent).
There is even more Obamacare “success” to report, too. A few weeks ago, after both Harvard and NPR studies diagnosed the program as a failure, the Congressional Budget Office trimmed estimates of the anticipated enrollments substantially, from 21 million to 13 million.
Those numbers have been even further reduced:
The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday slightly lowered its projections for ObamaCare enrollment, trimming its tally by about 1 million people.About 12 million people are now expected to have ObamaCare coverage by the end of 2016, according to the nonpartisan budget office. Just three months ago, the office had predicted that 13 million people would have coverage.
And to put even more frosting on this particular cake, the Government Accountability Office now says the Obamacare website has logged more than 300 cyber-security incidents over the past 18 months.
Most of them involved electronic probing by hackers, but none of the incidents appears to have led to the release of sensitive information like names, birth dates or social security numbers.Although GAO said the Obama administration is making progress, its report concluded that security flaws “will likely continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity and availability of HealthCare.gov.”
The nature of those incidents is disturbing, indeed.
Overall, 41 of the security incidents involved personal information that was either not properly secured or was exposed to someone who wasn’t authorized to see it. Nearly all of those were classified as having a moderately serious impact….Separately, GAO said it also submitted 27 cybersecurity recommendations in a separate report that isn’t being made public because of its sensitive nature.
With luck and hard work on our part, hopefully we can celebrate the end of this costly regulatory failure by having the next President blow out the candles on Obamacare.
[Featured Image: Obamacare Ad ‘Get Physical‘]
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