5 Devastating Obamacare Facts Every American Should Know

obamacare
Jason Reed/Reuters

Last week’s devastating Obamacare announcement by United Healthcare — it expects to lose $600 million on Obamacare policies next year — further confirms what conservatives have known and said all along: Obamacare is a disaster.

The nation’s largest health insurer is even considering pulling out of Obamacare altogether.

Below, then, are five devastating Obamacare facts every American should know about President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement:

1. Insurance companies are withdrawing in droves

Commenting on the potential withdrawal from all Obamacare exchanges, UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said in an investor call Thursday morning “We cannot sustain these losses . . . We can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.”

Additionally, a critical element to Obamacare was the creation of co-ops in order to spur competition and create less expensive coverage for consumers. However, as Breitbart reported, with the recent closure of the Michigan Obamacare co-op, more “than half of the 23 original co-ops have now failed. Previous closures include the co-ops in Arizona, Utah, South Carolina, Colorado, Iowa/Nebraska, Louisiana, New York, Nevada, Tennessee, Oregon, and Kentucky.”

2. “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” was a brazen and cruel lie.

Obama repeatedly promised Americans “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” This may have been a catchy political phrase for approval of his senseless program but after millions of Americans had their plans cancelled Obama’s infamous fabrication was named the 2013 PolitiFact Lie of the Year.

3. Still waiting on that $2,500 in savings Obama promised you? You’re not alone. Premiums are skyrocketing nationwide.

As a candidate in 2008, Obama boasted his healthcare plan would reduce the typical family’s annual premiums by up to $2,500 per year. To the contrary, rates have skyrocketed. As Breitbart recently reported “Across the board, Obamacare premium prices are increasing 20.3 percent for 2016” – this increase is on top of the more than 20 percent 2015 Obamacare hike.

4. Obamacare customers say their plans are “useless” due to soaring deductibles

In an effort to convince people to sign up for Obamacare, Obama officials have hyped low premiums available on the exchanges. Unfortunately, the sky-high deductibles are making these plan useless. The New York Times described a common experience of Obamacare consumers “The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,” said David R. Reines, 60, of Jefferson Township, N.J., a former hardware salesman with chronic knee pain. “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.”

Furthermore, as the New York Times article reported “In many states, more than half the plans offered for sale through HealthCare.gov, the federal online marketplace, have a deductible of $3,000 or more.”

5. The Obamacare “death spiral” conservatives warned about is real.

As Breitbart highlighted, “Obamacare appears to have entered an insurance industry “death spiral.”

Basically, too many sick people are signing up, and too few healthy people are doing so. This causes prices to surge, and that causes fewer healthy people to sign up. The death spiral continues until the insurance program collapse completely. The 20.3 percent price increase for 2016 is probably the cause of the current round of the Obamacare death spiral.

As these facts make painfully clear, Obamacare is not the answer. What is needed is a product Americans want to buy, one based on common sense and easily understandable benefits and incentives. A program that forces people facing tough budget choices to purchase a product they don’t want to buy through penalties is a train wreck in the making. The time has come for Oblimination — the full scale dismantling of Obamacare and replacing it with a system based on free market principles that actually work.

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