After two months of ongoing website disasters, president Obama and the Obamacrats are telling us that they expect significant improvements at the Obamacare exchanges by the deadline of December 1. After listening to Obamacrats spouting the talking points about the upcoming "fix" for the exchange websites, I started to wonder if these people actually believe that making the website work will rescue Obamacare so as to restore the Democrats' political position. Clearly, this is the message that they are giving to the media, but are they so far inside the Beltway Bubble that they really mean what they are saying?
I do not think that the Democrats actually accept this nonsense. Consider just this:
1. The biggest problem to hit Obamacare so far has been the millions of policies in the individual market that have been cancelled due to the law. The number is over five million policies so far in this area alone. That means that something like ten million people got dumped by their carrier, a move which surely angers these people a lot more than the lack of functionality on the website.
2. Over the next year, an estimated 100 million more people are going to see their employer sponsored group policies cancelled due to Obamacare. Here too, this disruption is much more likely to anger Americans than the failure of the website to work.
3. Once the website actually works, millions of folks are actually going to be able to find out just how large the increase in their insurance costs will be. They will also get to see the major increase in deductibles and co-pays compared to what they currently have. These changes will be real money and they will be a threat to the insurance coverage of many millions of folks. For the first time, many Americans will come to realize that there will be no savings to them from Obamacare; instead, there will be major cost increases added to the budgets of families struggling to make ends meet. The anger on this will be extraordinary.
4. At some point soon, the IPAB (otherwise known as the Death Panels) will start issuing directives that eliminate certain types of medical treatments as not cost effective. As stories surface about how individuals are being left without treatments that might help them because the government wants to save money, the anger of the American people will again rise. It will have nothing to do with the website.
5. On top of all this, there are likely to be statistics over the next six months that show that Obamacare has not reduced the numbers of uninsured at all except for the increases in Medicaid coverage. In other words, the huge Obamacare structure will result in fewer folks with insurance. Only the people on welfare will see any increase in coverage. When people realize that all the upset and disruption not only did not help, but it actually hurt the numbers who have insurance, the anger will increase even more.
I do not think that the Democrats actually accept this nonsense. Consider just this:
1. The biggest problem to hit Obamacare so far has been the millions of policies in the individual market that have been cancelled due to the law. The number is over five million policies so far in this area alone. That means that something like ten million people got dumped by their carrier, a move which surely angers these people a lot more than the lack of functionality on the website.
2. Over the next year, an estimated 100 million more people are going to see their employer sponsored group policies cancelled due to Obamacare. Here too, this disruption is much more likely to anger Americans than the failure of the website to work.
3. Once the website actually works, millions of folks are actually going to be able to find out just how large the increase in their insurance costs will be. They will also get to see the major increase in deductibles and co-pays compared to what they currently have. These changes will be real money and they will be a threat to the insurance coverage of many millions of folks. For the first time, many Americans will come to realize that there will be no savings to them from Obamacare; instead, there will be major cost increases added to the budgets of families struggling to make ends meet. The anger on this will be extraordinary.
4. At some point soon, the IPAB (otherwise known as the Death Panels) will start issuing directives that eliminate certain types of medical treatments as not cost effective. As stories surface about how individuals are being left without treatments that might help them because the government wants to save money, the anger of the American people will again rise. It will have nothing to do with the website.
5. On top of all this, there are likely to be statistics over the next six months that show that Obamacare has not reduced the numbers of uninsured at all except for the increases in Medicaid coverage. In other words, the huge Obamacare structure will result in fewer folks with insurance. Only the people on welfare will see any increase in coverage. When people realize that all the upset and disruption not only did not help, but it actually hurt the numbers who have insurance, the anger will increase even more.
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