Obamacare turns 14... how's it working out? (03-25-2024--Hour3)

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[00:00:27] so much for your support. Email is pt at the Pete Kaliner Show dot com, and oh my gosh

[00:00:31] no wonder what like my feed dropped out from the, I was like, what happened to the, I was

[00:00:38] monitoring the white house press briefing in the feed dropped no wonder. Okay, you can email

[00:00:43] Pete at the Pete Kaliner Show dot com. I got a message here from, yeah, from Kevin who

[00:00:53] says that the center should be shut down by executive order by sundown on January 6,

[00:00:58] 2025. Right? Yes, this, uh, the erpo extreme, or extreme. Now, I don't even forgot

[00:01:10] the name of this thing now. E R P O extreme resource, no extreme risk protection order resource

[00:01:19] center, but they're calling it the center, the justice department launching the national

[00:01:24] extreme risk protection order resource center or the NURPORC. Or as they call it the

[00:01:32] center. Oh, you know what? I almost forgot. Um, and well by almost, I mean, I did forget

[00:01:43] happy birthday, Obamacare. I totally didn't get you anything, but that's okay because Obamacare

[00:01:49] didn't, doesn't ever get us anything either. Awful. 14, it is 14. So it's just going to become

[00:01:59] completely unbearable as old teenagers. Barack Obama taken to Twitter over the weekend

[00:02:08] to tout how 14 years ago today, I signed the Affordable Care Act into law. The average

[00:02:19] family health insurance premium since that time has increased by about 100% the premiums.

[00:02:30] All right. So you're a monthly premium that you pay. These are the employer based policies.

[00:02:36] Your premiums have gone up the average. So now here's a defender of the program, James

[00:02:42] Sura, weki, Sura, weki, weki, weki, weki. I don't know how he pronounces it, but he's

[00:02:47] from, he's a writer in New York magazine or whatever, but he's a defender of the Obamacare.

[00:02:52] And he says, look, if you take the costs from 1996 to 2010, so the 14 years prior to Obamacare,

[00:03:04] right? Premiums rose 168%. If you take the 14 years after Obamacare, premiums rose 75%

[00:03:18] less than half as fast. So yeah, Obamacare bent the cost curve. That's a success. Of course,

[00:03:31] you would have to forget what we were promised, right? Which James Sura, weki, weki,

[00:03:38] weki apparently does forget, but I don't. I remember I was sitting in this chair. I had six

[00:03:44] folders packed with material, like the Mandela folders, right? And I had them all labeled healthcare.

[00:03:52] Number one number two number three number four. I had six different folders of all of the material

[00:03:59] about Obamacare because I was, I was start off doing fill in work as a host and then became a full

[00:04:04] time host right at this time. And the Affordable Care Act took up a lot of content time on the

[00:04:13] radio and my show. And we did deep dives. We did interviews with experts and such. So I remember

[00:04:22] the arguments. I remember the pitch. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

[00:04:28] Turned out to be the lie of the year literally. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan

[00:04:35] not true. If you or sorry, the other regarding this was that the premiums that the Affordable

[00:04:43] Care Act was going to reduce our premiums, it would make it as is in the name the Affordable

[00:04:51] Care Act. It was supposed to drop the premiums. It was supposed to lead to a decline in the premiums

[00:04:59] and it has not also the share of compensation that healthcare premiums gobble up. If you go back

[00:05:10] to 1988, it was about 8%. So 8% of your compensation was used to pay for healthcare premiums by 2019

[00:05:20] that figure is now almost 18%. So you can say yes, that it has made

[00:05:31] coverage more accessible quote unquote. Right? There's a couple of things to keep in mind here right?

[00:05:37] Care is not coverage. They are different. I understand that coverage can be used to get care

[00:05:43] absolutely, but they are not the same things. So coverage with like so for example, Medicaid.

[00:05:52] You get Medicaid and you're like, hey, I'm covered. Yay. Okay, but now what if a doctor that you

[00:05:57] want to go to doesn't accept Medicaid as a payment? Your coverage doesn't mean crap to that doctor.

[00:06:02] So does it matter? Do you have access? No, you don't have access. You have coverage, but you don't

[00:06:07] have care. Right? You don't have the care. This is why during the debate over whether or not

[00:06:13] government should take over a six of the US economy through essentially fascism, which is a veneer

[00:06:21] of a private sector, but you regulate everything so strictly that you basically don't have

[00:06:28] any kind of free market, free enterprise competition going on. And that's what Obamacare did by

[00:06:35] creating the gold and the silver and the bronze plans. And by the way, I've used the plan and

[00:06:42] I got heavily subsidized for the year that I used the Obamacare Open Market Plan, the silver plan.

[00:06:51] It cost me, I want to say $10 a month until of course, I got a job. And then I had to pay back

[00:06:59] the previous year subsidies, thousands of dollars afterwards.

[00:07:07] Access quality cost. Those are the three factors, right? You want unlimited access for everybody.

[00:07:18] You want the highest possible quality and you want the lowest cost. And you can have two of those

[00:07:26] three things. Which two would you like? Because you cannot have all three, because they're different

[00:07:35] pressures. So if you give everybody access and you cut the price for everybody, you're going to

[00:07:41] suffer in quality, right? Access, quality, and pricing. I love though that there are people out there

[00:07:50] on this 14th anniversary or birthday of Obamacare that still believe that the Affordable Care Act

[00:07:56] despite its name never promised to reduce the cost of health insurance premiums.

[00:08:02] No, no, that's not what we said. It's just going to bring down the cost of healthcare just I guess

[00:08:06] in general, but not the price point that people face every paycheck, right? No, it's completely not

[00:08:14] what Obamacare said even though I have the quote here. If you already have health insurance,

[00:08:19] the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on

[00:08:24] premiums. That will be less quote, Barack Obama. A lot of gas lighting out there folks, a lot

[00:08:35] of gas lighting stay safe. March 23rd was the 14th anniversary of the passage of Obamacare in a

[00:08:43] piece over at Newsweek Sally Pipes who is the president CEO and the Thomas W Smith fellow in

[00:08:50] healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. She wrote a book called False Premise, False Promise,

[00:08:56] the disastrous reality of Medicare for All talking about this very topic. She says for the last decade,

[00:09:03] Obamacare is driven the cost of health and health coverage up and the quality of care down. It

[00:09:10] is long past time to advance market oriented reforms that would actually yield more affordable care.

[00:09:16] We are now paying more for health coverage than ever before. In 2019, five years after Obamacare's

[00:09:23] cost and flitting regulations took effect, average premiums have more than doubled compared to what

[00:09:29] they were before the Affordable Care Act. Premiums have since continued to climb the average family

[00:09:35] in last year pay 22% more for employer sponsored coverage than they did in 2018.

[00:09:43] Right? Deductibles have also gotten completely out of control. They are nuts, thousands and

[00:09:50] thousands of dollars that we are now responsible for to pay first before any of the

[00:09:54] coverages start kicking in and even then your coverages are not 100% usually.

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[00:11:15] is not a sponsor of this promotion and is used under license. Got a peak tweet or actually this

[00:11:21] is a message from mark who says let insurance companies go across state lines take away the regulations

[00:11:28] and let capitalism do its thing. Yeah remember these arguments that we had

[00:11:35] 14 years ago 15 years ago you're battling back and forth and talking with experts and all of

[00:11:41] these different ideas right the mandated coverages and such which now we all have right all of the

[00:11:49] plans that that are offered you don't get a lot of price competition any really because they all

[00:11:57] have to cover the same things so you have no choice so I have to pay for a maternity policy

[00:12:04] which is silly I don't want a maternity policy I don't need one right anyway that like the

[00:12:13] this fight was lost and it was lost and for people who weren't paying attention for youngins who

[00:12:19] who didn't know what all was going down wait I'm gonna run I'm gonna run down some of the

[00:12:25] some of the deals that got cut for people who don't remember or don't know or weren't paying

[00:12:31] attention or you know weren't old enough to pay attention like the corn husker kickback remember

[00:12:36] that one or the Louisiana purchase yeah these these were names that were that were created based on

[00:12:46] the corruption around the creation of Obamacare Sally Pipes writing at Newsweek

[00:12:56] says Americans are paying more for coverage now than ever before deductibles have spiraled out

[00:13:04] of control for mid-level silver plans deductibles have doubled since 2014 having to spend

[00:13:13] more and more at a pocket before ever receiving a dime from their insurers may cause people

[00:13:18] to question why they're buying Obamacare insurance in the first place see for people who are like

[00:13:25] I said I was on Obamacare silver plan for very cheap $10 a month or some ridiculous amount of

[00:13:31] money because when I lost my job in Asheville I had no income because I lost my job in January

[00:13:37] and so all so I go into the enrollment period my wife isn't offered insurance at her employer

[00:13:43] so it's both of us so we have no insurance provider that we can go to accept the exchange quote

[00:13:52] unquote the Obamacare exchanges and at that point I have no income I then launched my podcast

[00:14:00] and I can't prove a year's worth of income at that point because I just started it

[00:14:08] so my income was zero so we're running off of one person salary so we were heavily subsidized which

[00:14:15] then of course after the year was over and we file our taxes and I showed them how much I was

[00:14:20] able to make on the podcast then they were like oh yeah you're going to have to pay us back for all

[00:14:24] of that subsidy so that was a fun tax cycle to go through but the the people who get subsidized

[00:14:35] coverage pay very very little the people who were in the marketplace before the Obamacare exchanges

[00:14:44] came in before Obamacare people were just out there in the free market they would buy their policies

[00:14:49] and the you know self-employed people and the like and so they were out there with these policies

[00:14:55] they were paying for they're the ones and if you're in the exchange and you make too much money

[00:15:00] they're the ones that aren't facing these kinds of subsidies but also employer-based plans

[00:15:05] are bearing the cost of these increases so the people who are you know below income levels and

[00:15:13] that sort of thing they get all of the subsidies to them oh yeah this is working out fantastic

[00:15:18] that's why people are calling it Medicaid for all right because that's what that's what the plan

[00:15:24] has always been it's to get government involved in it so much that nobody can think of another way

[00:15:31] this should operate which is bizarre because the government doesn't I mean the government doesn't do

[00:15:37] this for other sectors that are you know quote vital right they do vouchers well except if

[00:15:46] you're talking about education then it's like oh no we can't do that we can have vouchers in every

[00:15:49] other aspect of government food vouchers Medicare we could do all these vouchers food stamps and

[00:15:56] stuff but no no no not for education no vouchers for that right all right I'll go over the corn

[00:16:01] husk or kickback in the Louisiana purchase okay if you're listening to this podcast you are

[00:16:07] obviously paying attention to the world around us you also have really great taste I might add but

[00:16:13] if you haven't started getting prepared for various emergencies I got to ask what are you waiting

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[00:16:39] Carolina readiness dot com or call them at 828 226 72 39 Carolina readiness supply has 2,000 square

[00:16:48] feet of supplies as well as educational materials that you're going to need for any kind of

[00:16:52] emergency veteran owned Carolina readiness supply will you be ready when the lights go out it's all

[00:16:58] a distraction on Twitter says before Obamacare I paid around $250 for a per month

[00:17:07] 250 per month for a family of four and a $500 deductible to 50 a month family of four

[00:17:15] $500 deductible premiums have increased every year and now I pay almost 800 a month

[00:17:22] for myself and child so two and my deductible is five grand family of four to 50

[00:17:33] now two at 800 500 dollar deductible with the family of four $5,000 deductible with two people

[00:17:44] that's crazy and that prompted a response from Lulu it's a Pete tweet who says

[00:17:53] my bills aren't even bills anymore they've grown so much I call them Williams

[00:18:01] just bill William Bill okay

[00:18:05] all right the cost increases are no accident

[00:18:12] right Sally pipe says they were baked in from the start Obamacare's mandates are designed

[00:18:17] to increase costs for the general population as a means of subsidizing coverage

[00:18:22] for favored groups and this of course is correct in 2023 the enrollment in the exchanges

[00:18:32] broke all sorts of records last year with more than 16 million Americans signing up

[00:18:38] record enrollment is a function of the lavish premium subsidies that democrats have used

[00:18:44] to blunt the impact of those skyrocketing premiums most enrollees have no idea how much

[00:18:49] their insurance costs because taxpayers are covering a lot of the tab for them

[00:18:54] Medicaid for all once they sign up they may find that their exchange plans can find them

[00:19:01] to more narrow network limited providers that are available you can only go to certain doctors

[00:19:08] and such as a result patients often have to travel long distances or wait for care particularly

[00:19:14] in rural less populated counties and according to a report done in 2022 by the government

[00:19:20] accountability office the GAO along with the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services they

[00:19:25] identified almost two thirds of insurers they examined as quote not in compliance with network

[00:19:32] adequacy standards so yes to quote Joe Biden kind of Obamacare has proved itself to be a big

[00:19:40] bleeping deal but for all the wrong reasons so 14 years ago this was a story at legal insurrection

[00:19:50] com by William Jacobson who talked about this was 2012 okay and he was talking about

[00:19:59] how things needed to go wrong for Obamacare to get pissed okay a couple different things actually

[00:20:07] so first off Arlen Specter remember him senator from Pennsylvania republican he switched parties

[00:20:18] that had to happen al franken had to pull out a very very slight victory and that happened you'll

[00:20:26] recall they found a bunch of ballots in the trunk of a car literally of a poll worker who's like oh

[00:20:32] yeah I was on my way to drop these off at this you know election headquarters and then oh look

[00:20:37] at that I found all these ballots and they were all for al franken so he won that US senate seat

[00:20:42] oh and also senator Ted Stevens from Alaska believe he had to lose reelection just after being

[00:20:53] convicted on a corruption charge all three of those things happened if any one of them did not

[00:21:00] we would not have Obamacare so Jacobson looks only at the Stevens incident I'm going to go into

[00:21:08] some of the others but Ted Stevens convicted for corruption okay but that was later overturned

[00:21:15] of course it was overturned too late to have an impact on Obamacare's passage it was overturned

[00:21:22] for prosecutorial misconduct but his his election lost that stood the release of a scathing report

[00:21:32] last week this is 2012 detailing widespread prosecutorial misconduct that botched the corruption trial

[00:21:39] of the late senator Ted Stevens because he died has reignited calls to revisit the rules requiring

[00:21:45] government prosecutors to hand over evidence that could help exonerate criminal defendants in

[00:21:49] other words they did not turn over in discovery they did not turn over exculpatory evidence

[00:21:55] to Ted Stevens stuff that would have cleared him or could have could have helped to clear him helped

[00:22:00] to acquit him the prosecution had this information and did not turn it over the underlying cause

[00:22:07] of the derailed prosecution has been known since April 2009 when his conviction was set aside

[00:22:14] after the DOJ said that it failed to disclose evidence that would have helped the senators defense

[00:22:20] team details of prosecutors quote willful non disclosure in last week's reports stunned legal advisors

[00:22:27] they go how naive people how naive were we back in 2009 2012 right oh really the DOJ did that

[00:22:39] oh my gosh that's so crazy the DOJ there just a bunch of straight shooters over there

[00:22:49] what else um our inspector I mentioned him as our inspector

[00:22:57] us house representatives was safely democrat as a result of the two thousand eight election

[00:23:03] okay Obama wins his first term the democrats control the house by two hundred fifty seven to one

[00:23:10] hundred ninety nine so what fifty eight seat majority the democrats had picked up twenty one seats

[00:23:16] over the course of two years but the real interesting political dynamics began in november

[00:23:24] two thousand eight senate elections going into that election cycle the senate had forty nine

[00:23:31] democrats forty nine republicans and two independence Bernie Sanders who has been in the senate since

[00:23:38] I think eighteen oh two and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut who caucused with the democrats they both did

[00:23:46] when the smoke cleared from the two thousand eight elections though the democrats had picked up

[00:23:50] eight seats they had a fifty seven to forty one seat majority although al franken's recount

[00:23:57] victory didn't get official until the summer right because of the ballots in the trunk of the car

[00:24:02] no with the two independence the democrats were one vote shy of a super majority magic number sixty

[00:24:12] that they needed to ward off any filibuster attempts and move forward with broad healthcare reform

[00:24:20] legislation where would it come from well our inspector he changed parties giving senate

[00:24:28] democrats that sixty of vote see this is why when I hear the north carolina democrats

[00:24:38] screaming and crying about trisha cough him

[00:24:42] I do not have the softest shoulder for them to cry upon because orlin's

[00:24:50] inspector switched party affiliation in two thousand eight he became a democrat he gave them

[00:24:58] the super majority in the senate and democrats took over a sixth of the u.s. economy with health care

[00:25:05] so no sorry school vouchers you know no they don't even hold a candle to what democrats did when

[00:25:17] they flipped the seat like that and then there was Ted Kennedy who died remember that

[00:25:26] Ted Kennedy died and then oh what where's the sixty of vote going to come from now because we

[00:25:32] just got sixty votes now what now what do we do oh well we're going to have a special election

[00:25:39] okay it'll be fine don't worry it'll be fine it's taxa choose it's they always vote democrat

[00:25:46] or do they we will resume the trip down memory lane saw this story from a fella on the twitter

[00:25:57] machine he says when i was at catholic high school i had this right wing priest who told us

[00:26:04] everybody who was not baptized by the church goes to hell so i raised my hand and i asked

[00:26:09] what does that mean that every u.s. president besides Kennedy is in hell and the priest without

[00:26:16] missing a beat says no Kennedy is in hell also

[00:26:28] anyway we're talking about obama care completely unrelated topic uh we're talking about obama care

[00:26:33] and how it just turned fourteen years old and oh godly g isn't it fantastic

[00:26:39] it's been everything that they promised it would be and then some right

[00:26:44] right

[00:26:46] mark says uh the funny part about oh sorry there's another message prior to that i have noticed

[00:26:53] that the better high end doctors no longer take medicare and i get it because no government

[00:27:00] paperwork saves them all kinds of headaches the funny part about our inspector was he was supposedly

[00:27:06] a law and order guy but it turned out he was just another political scumbag

[00:27:10] russ says chiming in on health insurance pre-obama care our healthy family of four

[00:27:18] paid less than six hundred a month for a high deductible plan and a health savings account

[00:27:24] six hundred a month for four family members within two years our premium was over eighteen eighty

[00:27:31] with higher out of pocket limits before contributing to the hsa

[00:27:35] we used to pay out of pocket at time of service and usually got a forty percent discount now

[00:27:41] they don't know what to charge and they got to run it through our insurance before it ends up

[00:27:45] back with us for repayment or for payment um the pediatrician doesn't even have the ability

[00:27:50] to accept payment in the office anymore it's all just an expensive mess i got another message here

[00:27:58] from

[00:28:01] ron my former carrier world insurance exited the health insurance business in twenty ten once obama

[00:28:09] care kicked in they sent us a letter explaining that after a hundred two years in the health insurance

[00:28:14] business they could no longer offer health insurance uh... in the obama care environment

[00:28:21] so we had obama care for twelve years until we reached medicare age the last premium

[00:28:27] that we paid before medicare eighteen hundred dollars a month for the bronze plan

[00:28:37] the brand and that's the lowest and i'm assuming that's ron and his spouse

[00:28:43] that's two people paying nine hundred a month

[00:28:48] and they both had he and his spouse is why both had twelve thousand six hundred dollar deductible

[00:28:54] so they each had to hit twelve six on top of paying eighteen hundred a month

[00:29:00] how was that an affordable care act

[00:29:06] Ted Kennedy died while he was in the u.s senate one month later so he so he died so that leaves

[00:29:12] the democrat one vote shy of the sixty that they need to ran this thing through at the time

[00:29:17] one month later september twenty fifth two thousand nine democrat poll clerk was appointed

[00:29:23] interim senator from massachusetts to serve until the special election set for january 19th

[00:29:29] once again giving democrats the sixty-th vote on christmas eve two thousand nine in a sixty to thirty

[00:29:36] nine votes i remember that when we hear democrats complaining about oh my gosh they passed a bill in

[00:29:40] the dead of night right or the cloak of night i should say right it's uh

[00:29:45] you know sorry it's crocodile tears from a party that used christmas eve to ram through obama care

[00:29:51] massachusetts then holds its special election where everybody knew democrat attorney general

[00:29:56] Martha coakley would win and then she didn't she lost a scott brown by a hundred ten thousand votes

[00:30:03] remember that

[00:30:06] then there was the corn husker kicked back this went to bill nelson um in uh or bend nelson in uh

[00:30:12] in nebraska right he was the last one to commit a series of amendments that got florida

[00:30:18] lewisiana and michigan all on board the corn husker kick back the purchase of marry landrews

[00:30:24] vote down in lewisiana was the lewisiana purchase

[00:30:30] all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening i could not do the show

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