Six Years of Obamacare, Six Broken Promises

by Charles Katebi

In March of 2010, Congress rushed to pass a massive unread bill titled, "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," aka Obamacare. Now at the sixth anniversary of Obamacare we ask, "Has this legislation in fact protected patients, and has it proved to be affordable?" Here are six examples of promises Obamacare has broken:

1) Obamacare will reduce insurance premiums

While campaigning for President in 2008, Barack Obama stated that his healthcare reforms would substantially lower insurance premiums:

"I'll bring Democrats and Republicans together to provide every single American with affordable, available healthcare that reduces health care costs by $2500 per family."

Instead, it dramatically increased premiums. Obamacare forces health insurers to cover a smorgasbord of expensive services most patients will never need or desire. Insurers in turn passed these costs onto patients by raising premiums. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the annual cost of workplace insurance increased $1,200 for individuals and $3,775 for families since 2010. Families are now paying $6,275 more in premiums because of Obamacare than promised.

Contrary to Obamacare's apologists, these premium increases aren't temporary. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums for employer-based plans will rise another 60 percent between now and 2025, straining workers and employers alike.

2) Obamacare won't raise taxes on the middle-class

To help individuals pay for these expensive new health plans, Obamacare spends billions subsidizing their premiums and deductibles. How does it pay for this enormous spending spree? Not to worry, promised the President: the middle class won't pay a dime. At a campaign stop in Dover, NH in 2008, then-candidate Obama vowed:

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

The President played us for fools. Obamacare created 18 new taxes and fees that collect over $830 billion. Many of these fall on the middle class. These include the individual mandate, the employer mandate, and new penalties for Health Savings Accounts.

3) Patients can keep their healthcare plans

Obama repeatedly assured Americans who already had insurance that they could keep their plans. Politifact reports that he made this promise at least 37 times, stating "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

Politifact dubbed Obama's claim "Lie of the Year" for 2013. Obamacare's onerous regulations make it prohibitively expensive for insurers to cover their patients so many people lost their plans. The Associated Press estimates that at least 4.7 million health plans were cancelled because they didn't meet these rigid requirements of the Obama Administration. In Wyoming, 3,200 people lost coverage because of Obamacare.

4) Obamacare will expand health insurance choices

During a Joint Session of Congress in 2009, President Obama proclaimed:

"My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition… This plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices…Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers."

He could not have been more wrong. Since few insurers could afford to offer the kind of insurance that Obamacare demands, many exited the market, leaving fewer choices for patients.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse recently released a report illustrating Obamacare's ruinous impact on health insurance choice, particularly in Wyoming. When Obamacare took full effect in 2013, there were 21 health insurers serving Wyoming's individual health insurance market. Yet by 2016, just one insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, remains in business. These are scant choices indeed.

5) Obamacare won't grow the national debt

The president also promised that his plan was fiscally responsible. During the same Joint Session of Congress, Obama said:

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future."

Wrong again. Even though Obamacare included a range of new taxes on working and middle-class families, they're still not enough to pay for its spending. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion to our national debt that future generations will be on the hook for.

6) Obamacare will cover the uninsured

Obamacare's most important goal, above all else, was to cover Americans without insurance. Just one month into his presidential campaign in 2007, Obama promised:

"I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American."

To accomplish this, Obamacare offers generous insurance subsidies and levies steep fines for those without coverage. Yet few Americans want what Obama is selling. Even with these incentives in place, Obamacare's insurance still costs too much for the average household.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated in 2010 that 25 million uninsured individuals would enroll by 2016. Well, 2016 is here. According to the federal government, only 12 million Americans signed-up.

Worst of all, most of the newly insured enrolled on Medicaid after Obamacare expanded the program. According to estimates by the Heritage Foundation, 97 percent of the newly insured population went on Medicaid rather than private insurance. This portends poorly for these patients as Medicaid's recipients often have worse access to care than even the uninsured.

Obamacare was sold on the notion that government could cure our healthcare system's woes. Unfortunately it's made them much, much worse.