Those with pre-existing conditions who are not yet covered have therefore been frozen out of applying for the promised coverage, and many of those fortunate enough (?) to have applied before the surprise suspension of new applications will soon be denied coverage too. IE, their "condition" will come off the "approved" list at the authority of the unelected bureaucrats who hold full legal power over such decisions. (The people some might prefer to refer to as "death panelists.")
For the above reason and others, even the group of citizens who did apply in time to get coverage for their pre-existing conditions will nevertheless shortly find things to be worse -- FAR worse -- under Obamacare than they were prior to it. The same has already proven true for millions of others, and will soon prove true for virtually every US citizen. And ... as explained below, there is a truly terrible aspect of Obamacare that will ensure things are even worse than even its most harsh critics have suspected.
All this is being very poorly covered in the press. What else is new?
Statistics, Accounting, and Life-Expectancy
The GAO is quite independent of politics but if anything, it still usually underestimates the costs of government programs, though it is usually a lot closer to the truth than the politicians behind the program subjected to its accounting, because the GAO reports the current
factual truth, and then makes its projections based on data which include numbers the politicians give them (ie, projections depend on political "estimates" rather than on facts).
The article linked above is primarily about the current FACTS, where the GAO's record is for excellent accuracy, and NOT about projections where the GAO must rely heavily on ESTIMATED numbers provided by those with political stakes in the outcome. Even with those pollyanna, politically-motivated estimates, the few GAO projections in the article are not very encouraging, to put it mildly.
As for the current facts, at only the halfway point of Obamacare's implementation, they are already very substantially worse than what the biggest critics of the Obamacare law had estimated.
The life expectancy of Americans -- having risen steadily for nearly two centuries -- is about to experience a very sharp decline, even in the face of magnificent breakthroughs in medical treatments and cures. Most Americans, like people everywhere, are suckers for any political promise of a freebie, no matter how unrealistic or how insupportable by logic. Those who supported Obamacare will soon be experiencing the horror of their error (many already are) as will -- unfairly -- those who foresaw its obvious consequences early on and opposed it. But, let's move on to . . .
The Horror
The so-called "death panels" are ALREADY operating under the cover of bureaucratic rules which have the
INDIRECT BUT UNAVOIDABLE effect of
increasing deaths amongst certain demographic groups. The EXACT mechanism which enables this, and which prompted the use of the phrase "death panels" in the first place,
is now operational. In the case of pre-existing conditions, the article above doesn't say it explicitly, but it's indisputable, right there in black & white. By removing certain types of "pre-existing conditions" from the "approved list," the panel in charge basically signs the early-death warrants for huge categories of people. The same effect is produced by freezing people out of applying for special kinds of coverage they need, using red tape as the weapon of death.
These are unelected bureaucrats, and their mandate is to cut expenses, and this is exactly what we now see as the reason for hanging those with pre-existing conditions out to twist in the wind.
The VAST majority of health care spending occurs in the last years of life, NATURALLY, and so that's where the BIG cuts are going to be concentrated. As the full implementation of the law progresses, we'll see this
same mechanism operating on more and more demographic groups, with emphasis on
seniors. A young or middle aged person's health care expenses are pennies compared to the dollars spent by seniors, on average. When the per-capita budget has to be cut by a dime, it would be necessary to deny all care for younger groups in order to accomplish that, which would make no sense, especially since they have a lifetime of voting left, so why infuriate them to no political advantage? But a mere 5 or 10% cut for seniors would do the same budgetary trick -- either across the board or by eliminating all coverage for certain conditions -- and10% will look at least reasonably modest. Over time however, a succession of these will send more and more of our seniors to early graves.
Not only is this efficient budget cutting, but it also targets all the pain onto the group that won't be voting much longer anyway, so it's a double benefit for the powers that be in government. Heads the politicians win, tails the voters lose. Only when they become older will today's youngsters realize what a bill of goods they'd been sold with Obamacare. But it will be too late, their doom will be sealed -- if Obamacare is allowed to stand.
The Truly Sinister HORROR WITHIN the Horror
The decisions to cut benefits or coverage will be made in large measure by the idiotic, inhumane, and immoral "cost/benefit" approach adopted in England and followed by Obamacare too. The benefit side of the formula is the number of years of life for the patient who will be enjoying the treatment's benefits, and if it's a few years for a lot of money, then that treatment will not be permitted and the patient will just die from his condition, UNTREATED,
and he will be FORBIDDEN from getting that treatment even if he can pay for it himself unless he can also afford to get it overseas
. Well. . .
Consider a 65 year old when the nation's life expectancy is 75. His life expectancy is for another 10 years, so a treatment costing 100,000 dollars will have a beneficial effect for only 10 years, and thus it is to be expected that this beneficial effect will cost "society" $10,000/year.
But as seniors are killed off, life expectancy will drop still further. A few years from now, someone of the same 65 age with the same condition will, based on national averages, have only an expected 5 years to live because the average age at death will have fallen from 75 to 70 as a result of the recent years of kill-offs. Thus, the cost/benefit will have become $20,000/year of expected life, a doubling, and the treatment will be denied to even younger seniors.
IE, the effect of the system is SELF-AUGMENTING as it FEEDS ON ITSELF. THIS IS THE REALLY, REALLY SINISTER ASPECT OF IT. By shortening lives, the average age of death will come down, and thus the statistics will arithmetically reduce the TIME of any medical benefit's duration to a shorter one BY THE OPERATION OF THIS VERY PROCESS. By killing off seniors, the expected remaining statistical life of EVERYONE OF EVERY AGE will also drop, thereby reducing the statistically expected "benefit period" following the procedure, and thereby raising the cost/year of that benefit by spreading it over fewer years. This in turn will INCREASE the number of refusals of treatment, because they will automatically appear to have an ever-worsening cost/benefit as time goes on, even under exactly the same circumstances. This in turn will accelerate the decline in the average life-expectancy, which takes us back to step 1. In short, the self-feeding nature of this scheme will automatically continue to increase the likelihood of being denied coverage with every passing year, as we see steady increases in the number of "death panel" decisions to deny coverage which steadily reduce statistical life expectancy, which causes cost/benefit calculations to worsen, which causes more denials of coverage. It's going to be a vicious circle which steadily intensifies its own effects toward wiping out the population of seniors.
Another way to understand this, perhaps more easily for some:
When average life expectancy drops from, say, 75 to 70, that means EVERYONE has (statistically) 5 years fewer to live, based on the expected or average age at death. I repeat:
EVERYONE's average life expectancy is now 5 years SHORTER. That means the cost of any procedure will be providing its benefits,
in ANY AND ALL CASES, over a period which is 5 years shorter, so the cost per year of permitting that benefit to someone will have risen. For example, using again the above example of a drop in statistical life expectancy from 75 to 70, caused by the "death panels":
For a 20 year old, the benefit of a particular procedure will be expected to last only 50 instead of the former 55 years. Only a 10% difference -- not much -- and it will have little to no effect on decisions made for the youngest population groups. But for a 60 year old, the expected benefit (life itself in many cases) will now last only 10 instead of 15 years. If the procedure costs, say, $150,000 then over his remaining 10yrs of statistically expected life, that's 15,000/yr whereas it was only 10,000/yr to get that benefit before, when the average death age was 75.
That's a 50% increase in the cost/benefit ratio, from 10,000 to 15,000. A 65 year old's cost/benefit calculation would come out
100% higher. The higher this ratio is,
the more frequently it will be a denied benefit.
This is purely a consequence of the laws of arithmetic. It cannot be denied. This kind of change in the numbers over time CANNOT be avoided, because the laws of arithmetic are the only thing determining it.
In very brief sum: The operation of the death panels in killing off seniors, MAKES IT EASIER FOR THEM TO JUSTIFY IT THE NEXT TIME, ever-easier every time.. The more seniors who die courtesy of the death panels, the STILL MORE will become targets for death.
The Underlying (over-lying?) Big Lie
So . . . Obamacare is a WONDERFUL plan for
"cutting the costs of health care." It is all based on the
SCAM of using the phrase "cut health care costs." Here's how it was done--another fact which, to the author's knowledge, has not been identified elsewhere:
Yeah, "costs" will be cut.
The costs to the government, and the total costs of health care spending. All you do is gradually kill off those who need most of the medical care, and VOILA, spending ("cost") goes down. And the more you cut, the more this Machiavellian scheme of Obamacare will be able to cut on the next round. (Of course, other factors will more than compensate for these cuts, and costs will rise anyway, just not quite as fast. That's another story for another article, but of incidental interest is the fact that the rising costs for those other reasons will provide an added impetus for the practice which does successfully cut costs--killing seniors and others with high individual medical expenses.)
This scam--used to sell the Obamacare fraudulently to the public -- is an
equivocation on the phrase "cut costs."
As explained below, this phrase has TWO meanings, and the Administration sold it by shrewdly tricking the public into believing they meant one of its common meanings, when in fact it meant the other. It was an intentional lie by the Obama Administration, amongst many others, meant to deceive the public into supporting its own worst interests and giving more power to the politicians to control us: Here's how it worked:
"Cost" has TWO meanings: it can mean EITHER "price" or "expense outlay."
The price of an item is what it "costs" you. But also, we use "cost" to refer to the amount we spend buying that item many times, IN TOTAL.(EG,"Our weekly budget costs for ice cream are $10, versus "Ice cream costs $3 per pint.")
If beef prices rise from $5 to $10 per pound, then the COST (or price) of beef has doubled. But if you reduce your purchases of beef from 10 lbs each week to only 2 pounds, your weekly beef COST (total spending on it) have dropped from $50 to only $20. So has your "cost" gone up or down?
If you mean the PRICE of one unit of the item,
your "cost" for beef rose, from $5 to $10.
But if you mean your weekly expense outlay for beef, then your weekly
"cost" for the beef you consume went down.
This was and continues to be the intentionally misleading lie of Obamacare's advocates. They want you to think YOUR PRICE for health care procedures will go down when they say "cut health care costs," but what they really mean by it is that YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO CONSUME ONLY A MUCH SMALLER AMOUNT OF HEALTH CARE, thus "lowering your costs."
By the way the Obama Administration means "cut health care costs," we could easily cut them to zero, just by killing all newborns and gradually reducing the life expectancy from 75+ years to only 5 minutes. Costs for health care would drop to almost nothing. Of course, we'd soon be depopulated to an extreme and there would be no one left to vote or pay taxes So Obamacare will be shrewd enough to kill people only at much higher ages than 5 minutes old--such as people 55 and over, according to their current plan (which of course will be subject to change according to the whims of future bureaucrats)
There is an alternative way to reduce health care costs to zero, and that would be to abolish the entire medical sector of the economy. No more aspirin, band-aids, prescription drugs, or brain surgery or anything in between.. No more doctors or hospitals or clinics.
BOTH these methods are entailed in Obamacare's approach to "cutting costs." Killing off relatively older people is carried to its logical extreme in the 2
nd paragraph above, and cutting costs by simply forbidding the purchase of the product is carried to its logical extreme in the 1
st paragraph just above. Each is merely a few steps further along a path that Obamacare actually is following. The common feature of both, the fundamental objective each accomplishes, is to reduce the total supply of healthcare available to Americans in order to keep the consumption of it, and hence the spending on it, and hence the expense outlay on it, or its "costs," LOWER.
That's the trick. I can cut your car insurance costs, guaranteed. I'll just steal your car and prevent you from buying a new one unless its of much lower quality and market value, and hence costs less to insure. Or perhaps I can cut your car insurance bills to zero by stealing your car and leaving a bicycle in its place. What a savings in transportation costs!! What a savings in gasoline/energy expense!! What a wonderful BENEFIT I'll be conferring on you!!
This is the utter, unmitigated SCAM that the Obama Administration--the whole lot of them--pulled on the American public. It seems we have WORSE than snake oil salesmen at the helm in Washington. Kinda surprising, huh?
Bottom Line Warning for the Future
Most people -- but especially those over 50 -- who supported Obamacare and helped enable it to pass, effectively put a time bomb in place to commit suicide a few years earlier than they would otherwise have died. Unfortunately, they also helped put similar time bombs in place to murder those more perceptive than themselves, whose pleas to prevent these atrocities were dismissed out of hand through ignorance, willful denial, or the naïve gullibility of accepting political promises on faith.
Of course, there are probably some liberal/progressives who supported Obamacare for reasons of envy, sheer malice, or a general hatred for free markets and a society of free, self-responsible people. But these are probably too few to mention -- or too many.
