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Friday, November 22, 2013

ObamaCare by the Numbers


ObamaCare by the Numbers

 


 
219 Democrats voted for it in the House of Representatives, and zero Republicans voted for it.

60 Democrats voted for it in the Senate, and zero Republicans voted for it. President Obama and Congressional Democrats own this legislation; keep that in mind, while reading how much money this has cost.

$2.6 Trillion -- That is the latest Senate Republican Budget Committee estimate -- using the Congressional Budget Office numbers -- of what ObamaCare will cost in its first ten years.

$716 Billion -- This is the amount of money President Obama removed from Medicare to help pay for ObamaCare. For many seniors with UnitedHealth Group Medicare Advantage plans, you will not be able to keep your doctor, because UnitedHealth has dropped thousands of doctors from the plan.

More than $4.3 Billion -- According to USASpending.gov, this is the amount spent on 2,118 grants and contracts so far to try and get the Affordable Care Act up and running. All that money spent, and it's still a disaster.

 

More than $1 Billion -- This is the cost to create just the federal website, www.healthcare.gov, which is meant to be Americans' portal to purchasing ObamaCare exchange plans and has been in the works for more than three years. So what did American taxpayers get for more than $1 billion in tax dollars? A website that crashed on the first day it was open for business and has been down for maintenance every night and some weekends since October 1. It is doubtful taxpayers will ever learn how much the Obama Administration is paying to try and fix it.

Six -- This is the number of people who signed up for ObamaCare on the first day.

26,794  -- This is the number of people who signed up in the first month through the federal website.

As a footnote to the Health and Human Services (HHS) report in Orwellian-speak, "'Individuals Who Have Selected a Marketplace plan' represents the total number of 'Individuals Determined Eligible to Enroll in a plan Through the Marketplace' who have selected a plan (with or without the first premium payment having been received directly by the Marketplace or the issuer) during the reference period. This is also known as pre-effectuated enrollment."

In English, "pre-effectuated enrollment" translates to "wishful thinking."

$1.1 billion -- This is how much the 14 states and the District of Columbia spent to set up their individual websites. They were about as successful as the feds in getting people to sign up for ObamaCare.

79,391 -- This is how many people signed up in the first month throughout the 14 states and the District of Columbia's websites. (This total also includes the HHS' "pre-effectuated enrollments.")

So the total sign-ups for the federal and state websites for October 2013 were 106,185. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, said the government would know by December 15 how many of those 106,185 people actually bought the plans they signed up for, which would transition them from "pre-effectuated" enrollees to actual enrollees.

396,261 -- This is how many people logged onto the ObamaCare website and found out they don't have to buy insurance because they are eligible for Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This means, of course, that taxpayers will have to pay more in taxes to cover these new costs.

500,000 -- This is how many people President Obama and Secretary Sebelius estimated would buy insurance through healthcare.gov in October.

7 million -- This is how many people the government needs to sign up by March 31, 2014, to make ObamaCare work.

More than five million Americans -- This is the number of people in the individual insurance market who have already had their insurance policies cancelled due to ObamaCare. That number will continue to grow.  

52 million -- This is the low estimate of how many people could lose their health insurance because of ObamaCare.

26-27 million -- This is the number of people who will remain uninsured under ObamaCare.

41 percent -- This is the average increase for individual-market health insurance policies after ObamaCare. The average increase for men in the individual market will be 99 percent and for women it will be 62 percent. This is supposed to be affordable?

More than 700  -- This is the number of bogus websites scamming people trying to sign up for ObamaCare. If you are not getting ripped off in an actual government-mandated plan paying for coverage you don't need or want, you may be getting ripped off by identity thieves and crooks.

$67 million in government grants -- This is how much the 105 "navigator" groups are receiving to try to get people to sign up for ObamaCare. Community organizing meets government- mandated healthcare, and a new industry is born.

Planned Parenthood got in on some of this navigator funding, which is probably not a surprise to most. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa received $214,427; Intermountain Planned Parenthood in Montana received $295,604; Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in New Hampshire received $145,161, and three Planned Parenthoods are sub-grantees of organizations in Oklahoma and Utah receiving navigator funds. Planned Parenthood has a vested interest, given the fact that consumers are not able to tell which ObamaCare exchange plans cover abortions and have a monthly abortion surcharge to help pay for abortions, so it is exceedingly difficult to avoid paying for something they oppose. The more people Planned Parenthood signs up for these abortion surcharge plans, as the nation's largest abortion provider, the bigger the abortion slush fund becomes.

$5 million -- WebMD, a consumer health information website, received this amount to shill for ObamaCare.

$130,000 to the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens; Pittsburgh Steelers: $ amount unknown -- These two National Football League (NFL) teams are promoting ObamaCare. Perhaps the payment amount should be zero if it is based on a success rate. Secretary Sebelius held an event at Heinz field and only 100 people showed up in the 60,000 seat stadium.

When President Obama and Congressional Democrats decided 2010 was the time for the government to take over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the writing was on the wall that Americans would suffer. That writing now extends across the nation as people receive the cancellation notices in the mail or others find out their monthly premiums, annual deductibles, and co-pay amount are all going up, for many by huge amounts.

The government cannot guarantee health care to everyone without mandating that some must pay for others. Young, healthy people are expected to carry the burden to cover the elderly and the sick. Without the young picking up the tab, ObamaCare collapses.

A trillion dollars here, billions spent there, millions losing their health insurance, millions more seeing their costs skyrocket, and only 100,000 enrolling so far all add up to a big ObamaCare mess. The cost is much greater than just dollars; American lives are now at stake.

 

Brenda Zurita is the Research Fellow for Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute.

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