Hillary Clinton Is Lying: Obamacare Isn't 'Working

Hillary Clinton recently wrote that Obamacare is a rousing success and that she was “thrilled” to be a part of it.

She scares me. Not personally, but because some Americans might actually believe what she says.

Forget for the moment Hillary’s history of an uncomfortable relationship with the truth. Simply compare the hard facts to what she is saying.

Scout's Honor! (Dr. Deane Waldman, MD MBA)

Obamacare Is "Working"

The 2016 presumptive Democrat candidate for president penned in Quora (Dec. 1, 2015) that Obamacare is “working;” that it’s “actually saving us money;” and that the president’s namesake reform “has given millions of Americans peace of mind.”

I wish that Ms. Clinton would read the comments that followed her political infomercial to see how distressed, rather than peaceful, people are about what Obamacare has done to us.

More People Have Insurance

Her big claim is that Obamacare has reduced the number of uninsured Americans - and that is probably true. The numbers are gross estimates and politically spun at that. However, the uninsured rate has fallen from 14.9 percent when Barack Obama took office to 9.6 percent today. This presumably represents 16 million more Americans with health insurance in 2015 than in 2013.

U.S. Uninsured Rate, 2007-2015 (Dan Diamond, CDC National Health Interview Survey)

Never mind that the vast majority of the newly insured are receiving free coverage “almost entirely through Medicaid expansion.” The rest of us pay for it through Obamacare’s new and higher taxes.

Having More Insured Americans Is Not Automatically Good

The problem is this: insuring all Americans is NOT the goal of the American healthcare system. The purpose for having healthcare at all is to optimize the health of We The People. It is health care service that makes and keeps people healthy, not the healthcare system with its massive, expensive and ever-expanding administrative bureaucracy.

[sharequote align="center"]Health insurance without health care does not help.[/sharequote]

Health insurance without health care does not help. Having more people with insurance while less care is available to them is the opposite of what we need. Obamacare works against what our healthcare system is supposed to achieve: healthy, long-lived, productive Americans. What resulted when Obamacare started “working” was more insured people who have less money and who can’t get health care.

Just ask a veteran, who has government-issued insurance, how long it takes to get his or her care. According to a Department of Veterans Affiars recent internal report, “307,000 veterans may have died while waiting for [approved] care.”

People With Pre-Existing Conditions Are Unprotected

Another of Hillary’s factual distortions appears in the above mentioned Quora article, where she wrote, “The Affordable Care Act protects millions of people with pre-existing conditions.”

How can that be true when Obamacare’s Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Program was discontinued, leaving over 275,000 Americans with high-risk medical conditions out in the cold?

I would appreciate Ms. Clinton explaining to us how additional spending of more than $2 trillion, the cost of Obamacare, is saving us money. Someone needs to take off Ms. Clinton rose-colored, 3D glasses and make her look at the facts. She needs to face the reality that the rest of us must endure.

Obamacare is indeed “working,” but against us, not for us. Economically, its effects are devastating: 12 new taxes; four raised taxes; loss of jobs; economic stagnation; and a massive increase in the national debt. Aren’t these the precise opposite of what President Obama promised us, and what candidate Clinton claims we are now getting?

For individuals, Obamacare makes it harder and harder to find a doctor. Insurance premiums are more un-affordable than before. When we are sick and need our health insurance, the co-pays and deductibles make us even sicker.

Washington (and Clinton) Are In Control

Ms. Clinton claims she doesn’t want to return “to the days when insurance companies wrote their own rules.”

Insurance companies do not write the rules: Washington does. In fact, Hillary was one of the main rule-writers. Do you remember HillaryCare? Ms. Clinton received millions of dollars for her election campaigns from those nasty insurance companies, the same people she publicly called her “enemies.”

Obamacare tells sellers what they must sell and for how much. Obamacare dictates what buyers must buy, for how much, and penalizes us if we don’t. In 2017, the tax penalty (formerly the individual mandate) for not purchasing Obamacare-compliant health insurance will rise to 2.5 percent of your income. The rules and regulations; who actually gets healthcare dollars; in other words, all the controls, reside in Washington.

Let’s be clear. Placing blame on greedy insurance companies, rapacious hospitals, and venal, uncaring doctors is a diversionary tactic. It hides the true culprits: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The people who steal your healthcare dollars work in Washington, not in the TransAmerica building. The reason your doctor can’t spend time with you is because Washington says she or he must first comply with federal regulations. There’s no time or money left for you.

Obamacare IS working, just not for us. Obamacare works exclusively to benefit politicians like Hillary Clinton and her federal bureaucrat henchmen.

For the first time, the U.S. Senate just passed H.R. 3762, repealing most of the heinous healthcare law. Just as Obamacare was rammed through along strict party lines in 2010, this 2015 vote was similar: 54 Republicans voted "Aye" and 47 Democrats voted "Nay." As the House of Representatives has voted in the past more than 50 times to remove Obamacare, H.R. 3762 will move to the president’s desk where a veto is guaranteed.

Despite the harm that President Obama’s namesake law has done to American healthcare and to our nation both economically and politically, it will remain until a new president takes office in 2017, one hopefully with a willingness to do the right thing for the American people.

If that new president is Ms. Clinton, woe be unto us!

Dr. Deane Waldman MD MBA is author of just released “The Cancer in the American Healthcare System;” Host of www.wecanfixhealthcare.info; Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology and Decision Science; and Adjunct Scholar (Healthcare) for the Rio Grande Foundation, a public policy think tank. Dr. Deane sits on the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange as Consumer Advocate. Opinions expressed here are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Board.

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