What Is The Truth About The ACA?

Bottom-line:

We would have ALL been better off had the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress in 100% of all legislation been honest and just proposed a massive expansion of Medicaid in 2009-2010 and left the private health insurance markets alone.

Because that is essentially what the ACA has done more than anything else: expanded coverage by Medicaid programs across the nation by over 34 million people.

'In 2013, the CBO projected that 34 million people would be on Medicaid or CHIP (the Children's Health Insurance Program) in 2016. The CBO now says that 68 million people will be on Medicaid or CHIP in 2016—double its earlier estimate.'*

Remember the numbers that were bandied about about the number of 'uninsured' before the ACA was passed?

Anywhere from 35-40 million people were estimated to not have medical coverage at the time. Based on those numbers, the Medicaid expansion efforts supposedly have cleared up that uninsured number pretty much by now.

Lawmakers and many states have figured out how to game the system once again to the detriment of future taxpayers and debt-payors, namely our sons and daughters and grandchildren. Not current taxpayers.

How so?

The Obama Administration, in their attempt to basically 'bribe' states into expanding their Medicaid programs, offered to pay for the entire Medicaid expansion costs by 100% by the federal government, not the states, for a period of 5 years. Then the match drops to 'only' 90%. Forever, supposedly, without further Congressional action taken.

So what does this mean?

It does not mean that the federal government is raising federal taxes to pay for this increase not in the least bit. It DOES mean that the federal government is either borrowing MORE money from the Chinese or foreign sovereigns to pay for the expansion OR the Fed will monetize the debt somehow by creating more money out of nowhere based on nothing else other than the 'full faith and credit' of the United States of America.

Not even at the state government level does the taxpayer have to pay for any of the Medicaid expansion costs for the first 5 years and then only very little after that.

(However, after that first 5 years, even a 10% state match for the costs of Medicaid expansion can be crippling when states have to balance their budgets and they have pressing needs to pay for such as teachers pay and better roads and safer communities through public safety programs)

We no longer live in a 'real-world' PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) world when it comes to government spending.

We are now cavorting about in the dream world of 'Don't-Pay-As-You-Pass-Along-The-Bills-To-Your-Kids' (DPATBTYK) world and digging a deeper fiscal hole for them with each passing day.

There. Doesn't that make you feel better about things already?

Read the links to the 2 stories about Medicaid noted in the article above to discover how the ACA has also resulted in fewer people being enrolled in the now far more expensive private health plans for companies or individual plans.

If they are still in them, that is.

The ACA is going to have to be HR1 when the next Congress convenes and we are going to need a President who will sit down with leaders from both the House and the Senate to be realistic about the failures of Obamacare and work to fix all of the problems it has caused this country.

*from Weekly Standard

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