by Paul Joseph Watson Analysis
Obamacare is a big government boondoggle that will empower the nanny state to extort, intimidate, harass and surveil Americans like never before. Here are ten ways in which the Obamacare train wreck is screwing the American people.
1) Research by the Manhattan Institute documents how average insurance rate premiums will rise 99 per cent for men and 62 per cent for women under Obamacare. In states like North Carolina, men face a whopping 305 per cent average rate hike, whereas women in Nebraska will be paying on average 237 per cent more. Studies by the Congressional Budget Office found that some Americans will face premium increases of 203 percent under Obamacare. The new law will increase health care spending by over $7000 for a typical family of four. When we asked Americans on Facebook and Twitter if their costs would be higher or lower under Obamacare, virtually all said they would be paying significantly more.
2) The Obama administration claims that federal subsidies will counteract these rate hikes, but according to health care expert Avik Roy that’s simply not true. “You hear all these excuses from the [Obama] administration — that people are exaggerating the effect of the law,” Roy told CBS News. “But real people are getting notices from their insurers now. My blog is flooded with comments from people saying that they just got a huge premium hike,”
3) The Obama administration lied to the American people when it claimed that existing health insurance plans could be kept. Obama’s promise that, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what,” was complete baloney. Americans across the country are being informed that their existing health care plans are being canceled because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” “The promise that you could keep your old policy, if you liked it, has proved illusory, writes Kathy Kristof. “My insurer, Kaiser Permanente, informed me in a glossy booklet that “At midnight on December 31, we will discontinue your current plan because it will not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.” My premium, the letter added, would go from $209 a month to $348, a 66.5 percent increase that will cost $1,668 annually.”
4) Numerous analysts have concluded that the complete train wreck that was the launch of Healthcare.gov was in fact designed to fail in order to avoid a sudden backlash from Americans irate at the massive premium increases. Online database experts say the system wasn’t even tested before it was launched. “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not “troubled.” Not “glitchy.” A failure,” wrote the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said it should be delayed for a year. Only about 1 out of every 100 people who have attempted to enroll for a health care plan (if they could even access the website in the first place) have been successful.
5) For those Americans who are able to enroll in Obamacare, they are putting their private information at the mercy of hackers and NSA spies. IP addresses, social security numbers, private bank account details, employer details, email addresses and passwords are all being uploaded to a shoddily designed database that is wide open to penetration, and the record can never be deleted. “Obamacare is the meta-level con of tricking Americans into thinking they’re signing up for free health insurance when, in reality, the website primarily exists to scrape personal financial details, passwords, emails and social security numbers from Americans who will later be targeted by the government itself,” writes Mike Adams.
6) As a result of Obamacare, the general precedent has now been set, thanks to last year ’s Supreme Court ruling, that the federal government has the power to force Americans to purchase private goods and services. What’s next? Will the government force Americans to buy a certain brand of “eco-friendly” vehicle only? Will the feds force Americans to buy “licenses” to watch television, as happens in the UK? The door has now been opened with potentially disastrous consequences for financial freedom and the cancerous growth of big government.
7) Obamacare provides the IRS with a new justification to hunt down Americans deemed to be evading the new system. While claiming that the IRS will not target Americans who don’t sign up, the administration last year directed $500 million to the IRS “to help implement the president’s healthcare law.” With the IRS already claiming the power to prevent Americans who are merely under investigation from leaving the country, a House Ways and Means Committee study last year concluded that 16,500 new IRS agents would be hired to oversee the nearly two dozen tax levies imposed by Obamacare.
8) Many small businesses are firing workers and scaling back working hours in a desperate effort to avoid exorbitant Obamacare costs. Whereas giant companies like McDonalds have received waivers, almost half of small businesses said they froze hiring as a result of the Affordable Care Act and one fifth said they had been forced to fire workers. Numerous companies announced last year that they would be laying off hundreds of employees. Many businesses are also reducing the number of hours their employees work in order to avoid Obamacare mandates. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obamacare will be a disaster for the US economy, expanding the deficit by billions of dollars every year and “further spiraling America into an uncontrollable debt.”
9) Other small businesses have chosen to close down entirely. A chiropractic clinic in Pennsylvania was forced to close down as a result of receiving reduced payments from insurance companies thanks to Obamacare. CiCi’s Pizza franchise owner Bob Westford pointed out that the additional $221,000 in taxes as a result of Obamacare was $78,000 more than the combined profit of his three restaurants, making the decision to shut up shop a no brainer.
10) The only entities that seem to be benefiting from Obamacare are giant insurance companies, who have all seen their stock prices soar over the last three years. That’s unsurprising given that it was the insurance companies who wrote the foundational document for Obamacare in the first place.
