I am very confused by President Obama’s health care press conference. I don’t think I’ve seen such a mess since Clinton had an affair with an intern and Nixon went nuts with Watergate.
I wonder why it took him so long to make a statement about the devastation in the Philippines? That’s what he started with. Then he went on about how he was going to change the law again pertaining to his healthcare plan.
This is a mess that the President has created. I guess he figures he can change the law anytime he wants and just do about anything! He is attempting to put the toothpaste back in the tube! Sorry Mr. President it an’t going to happen.
President Obama announced Thursday he would offer an administrative “fix” to a provision in the Affordable Care Act — or ObamaCare — that forces millions of Americans to lose their existing health coverage by directing insurance companies to allow affected policy holders to renew their old coverage.
Rick Stambaugh of DFGGAM News offer his perspective to this mess:
There are a many problems with this fix and the Insurance industry, only moments after his announcement, are stating there are MAJOR problems here.
Here are some of my issues:
My first issue would be, how, (as he has already done a couple dozen times), change “THE LAW” without congressional approval. This is illegal and a direct violation of our Constitution! (Calls for impeachment please)!
In addition to his numerous violations of United States LAW & The Constitution; how about the continuous, (YES I’m saying it without hesitation), LIES that have come out of our White House & directly from our President? (Calls for impeachment please)!
Despite his obvious illusion to the thought that he is a dictator and can dictate as he pleases, he has NO AUTHORITY or POWER to order insurance companies to conduct a particular piece of business. (Much as he does not have authority of power, at least not under law or the constitution, to tax or fine you for not buying a particular commercial product! He can have legislation put through for congressional approval followed by his signature into law to set standards, but he does not have the authority to do that on his own. (More calls for impeachment please)!
Many insurance companies have literally closed their doors in many states, California comes to mind where I think something like 4 or 5 companies have shut down operations as it was no longer financially viable for them to do business there. To re-instate those policies the insurance company would need to reapply to do business in that state and simultaneously get all their policies re-authorized by those states. Each of those operations could take months to accomplish.
Where companies are still actually doing business in a particular state, they will also have to have those policies re-authorized by the state commission.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will still require those, along with new insurance companies to provide much more expensive policies under the ACA which will now not be funded by those who would have had to buy the more expensive policies but are not now since ‘they are able to keep their old policy’. Thus, if an insurance policy is re-instated the insurance company will have to increase the premiums on those old policies so much they will also be cost prohibitive. The only other option there would be for Mr. Obama to guarantee the companies viability by granting them even more of YOUR TAX dollars.
Even all this does not alleviate the issue that it will ALL recur again next year in addition to having the business side of all this kick in. It is estimated that as many as 129,000,000 Americans will be in the exact same position as the estimated 4 to 5 million folks with individual plans are now facing right now and that number is expected to grow to 10 to 14 million.
IF, and that’s a really really big ‘IF’, all this works out this year, (and next), there are many many issues with the ‘keep your doctor’ side of this issue which has as many, if not more problems than the actual policy side of it itself. Many doctors are not accepting many insurance polices now since they don’t even get paid for what it cost the doctor to see a patient or perform a medical function such as an EKG. And there are many more problems for doctors than just this one.
Our dear minority leader Nancy in the House of Representatives, (apparently having finally read the bill maybe!), completely without smiles, came out earlier in the day admitting that the ‘President needed to do something to correct the situation! Getting the message now or just a slow reader(?), I don’t know!
Meanwhile, in his statement to the people, and I can’t quote directly but it’s real close, ‘one of the major problems, referring to the website issues, is that buying insurance is a complicated issue, it’s not like buying ‘iTunes’. As I recall, he didn’t reference iTunes before but did state that the website would be as easy as using sites such as Amazon and others and that you should be able to get through the entire process in 25 minutes from start to end.’ My conclusion from that statement can only be – Americans are just not smart enough to do this on his own. I will quote here: “Americans need for us to hold their hands” through this process!!! (Don’t know about you, but I’m a little itsy bitsy offended by that statement myself !!!)
Mr. Obama said: “I completely get how upsetting this could be for many Americans” I have a thought here: Why didn’t you fix that when you knew about it back in 2010?, (or was it a lie?).
In my opinion there is a solution: Repeal the law, bring in BOTH PARTIES, along with insurance industry experts and expects from the medical field and develop a workable plan which can be agreed to by ALL parties involved! Unique and unorthodox thought in these times, but I think it could work! Imagine, having the people involved in their government, what a concept. Heard once that they called that a REPUBLIC, which I thought this country was!
