Obamacare: Unhealthy Changes Doom Law

Obamacare, the president's eponymous health care reform, barely resembles the law passed in 2010.  In the intervening months, the legislation has been changed 24 times by President Obama.  On each occasion, he has acted unilaterally without Congressional consent to alter the bill.

As if the presidential tampering wasn't enough, the courts have stepped in and dealt crippling blows to the law.  In the latest decision, a federal appeals court ruled the feds could not provide tax subsidies for millions of people who purchased insurance policies through the federal marketplace.

If the ruling stands, it will derail one of the law's key provisions effecting millions of health insurance purchasers.  Health and Human Services (HHS) has estimated that 85 percent of those Americans who enrolled in Obamacare were promised they would receive premium subsidies.    

As a result, the health care law has been left in tatters.  What remains is a hodgepodge of rules and regulations that few individuals can comprehend.  There is a growing awareness that Obamacare has metamorphosed into health care retrogression instead of reform.

For instance, a powerful union that first endorsed Obama for president just released a scorching report on the health care law, charging the administration with destroying insurance plans that benefited its members.

"The ACA (Affordable Care Act) threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage," the UNITE HERE union said in its report, entitled, "The Irony of Obamacare: Making Inequality Worse."

UNITE HERE has more than 265,000 active members, who predominantly work in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse and casino gaming industries.  Its report, released in July, was not covered by a single news media outlet because most have been hushed by the Obama Administration.

Insurance companies, most of which supported the law, are in full retreat.  The nation's third largest health insurance firm Aetna recently disclosed figures that cast doubt on the administration's claims that 8 million Americans signed up for Obamacare.

Aetna originally declared it signed up 720,000 people during the enrollment period.  By the end of June, it had fewer than 600,000 paying customers.  The company now expects the final number to be a shade over 500,000, a 30 percent drop since the sign-up figures were trumpeted by the president.

The news is worse for those who enrolled in Obamacare.  Data compiled by the Health Research Institute reveals that most health insurance buyers will see their premiums rise by at least 7.5 percent next year.  Some states, such as Nevada, could potentially be socked with a 36 percent hike.

In its latest forecast, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the federal government would spend an astronomical $1.032 trillion between 2015 and 2024 on subsidies for insurance premiums paid by low earners.  The average subsidy is projected to be $4,250 annually per family.

However, with all the adjustments to the law, even the CBO is hedging its bets.  The government agency announced earlier this year that it can no longer estimate Obamacare's total cost to taxpayers, in part, due to the "ever-changing rules in the laws implementation."

Worst of all, President Obama's promises about health care reform have all crumbled.  Americans cannot keep their insurance.  They cannot continue to see their same doctor.  Consumers' insurance costs aren't going down.

The only change that will salvage health care reform is to dump Obamacare and start all over. That would be change most Americans would welcome as opposed to the kind the president promised in his propaganda campaign to peddle government health care.