Turns out the Affordable Care Act isn't so affordable

A Patriot's Opinion

By Jim Snyder

Well, once again the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is in the news, and the news isn’t good. In the famous words of Gomer Pyle, “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.”

Prices for insurance through the ACA are going up again. It was just reported that the average increase in premiums for 2017 will be 25 percent. Now that is the average. Some states are seeing much higher rate increases. Arizona’s ACA rate increase is projected to be 116 percent, Oklahoma’s will be 69 percent, Alabama 63 percent, Pennsylvania 53 percent, Minnesota 59 percent. Those are the highest ones but many others are still ridiculous increases. North Carolina is 40 percent, Kansas 42 percent, and Montana 44 percent. These increases are more proof that Obamacare is a disaster. So let’s take stroll down memory lane, or in the case of Obamacare, nightmare lane.

When the Affordable Care Act was first hatched as an idea what were we told? We were told that there were 30 million people with no healthcare coverage. We were told that Obamacare would provide affordable healthcare for everyone. We were told rates for these new Obamacare policies would be competitive and save us money. The most famous promise of all was the famous “If you like your doctor, and you like your plan, you can keep your doctor and you can keep your plan”. As a matter of fact the president alone made that promise 39 times while campaigning for his healthcare plan.

The president told us that every family would see an average savings of $2,500 per year. Then the law was passed on a straight party line vote with 100% of democrats voting for it and every republican voting against it. Many of those republicans (including myself ) knew how this was going to turn out. As a matter of fact they tried to warn us. But as usual government thought they were smarter than the rest of us.

Now back to the real world. What actually happened? Millions of Americans did not get to keep their doctor. Millions of Americans did not get to keep their plans. Millions were forced to buy these new government run healthcare plans or face a penalty tax if they did not purchase insurance. Of course the government came up with a brilliant plan to collect that penalty by deducting it from your tax return before you get it. Rather than seeing a $2,500 a year savings many families have seen a $2,000 to $ 3 , 0 0 0 increase in their annual healthcare costs. Then to add insult to injury a video surfaced showing the architect of Obamacare Johnathon Gruber who said “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever but basically that was really critical to getting the thing to pass.” How does that make you feel? Were we that stupid to believe that it was a good thing? Well apparently enough people were. Now we see that the so called Affordable Care Act is not so affordable. It has raised the cost of healthcare for everyone.

Even those with company provided healthcare insurance are paying higher premiums to make up for the losses by the Obamacare providers. We had the greatest healthcare system in the world. But the government thought they could do it better. That was a lie. Hopefully this boondoggle can be fixed or replaced before it completely crashes. And the saddest part of this whole thing is there are still more than 30 million people without coverage, the very reason we were told that this had to pass.