The following comes from a Jan. 27 story in California Political Review.
I’m pretty amazed at how long the CA media have gone along with the idea that the state’s version of Obamacare is doing well. I wrote about Covered California in Sunday’s U-T San Diego:
“… the state’s version of Obamacare has reduced the number of Californians with health insurance while doing a terrible job with [Latinos,] the single community that was most in need of health coverage and assistance in navigating the bureaucracy to obtain it. The program also appears likely to be far more costly to taxpayers than previously estimated.
“If this is an Affordable Care Act success story, that’s a profound comment on how badly the rollout is going elsewhere around the nation.”
The lack of Latino participation bodes badly for agency’s need to have a healthy mix of subsidized and non-subsidized enrollees.
“Just 15 percent of those enrolled aren’t eligible for subsidies. If that ratio continues — nearly six subsidized enrollees for every unsubsidized enrollee — then Covered California’s cost to taxpayers will explode.
“And there’s reason to think the ratio will continue: More than half of the Californians without health insurance are Latinos, mostly low-income or unemployed. But they make up only one in five of those who have enrolled with the agency.
“These numbers spurred sharp criticism of Covered California officials last week. The state Legislature’s Latino Caucus disputed agency claims that better marketing would sharply increase Latino participation. Critics said that wouldn’t make up for a poor Spanish-language website, weak outreach and the agency’s failure to understand the Latino community.
“If Covered California corrects these problems, and Latino enrollment surges, that’s good news in terms of the agency’s goals. But then it would be more likely that the highly costly ratio of subsidized to unsubsidized enrollees continues.”
The Sacramento Bee also editorialized on the bad job Covered California is doing with the Latino community. I enjoyed this potshot:
“Given the size of California’s Latino population, the misstep is disappointing and surprising in an otherwise successful launch.
‘”Covered California executive director Peter Lee’s persistent efforts to ‘accentuate the positive’ and ‘eliminate the negative,’ as the song goes, should not mask that hard reality.”
That’s a gentle way to describe Lee’s relentless dishonesty. Lee and his agency began lying with their very first significant press release: the one that falsely implied that there wouldn’t be a huge rate shock among Californians because of the Affordable Care Act.
That lie is such a whopper that it once again serves as a reminder that government executives get away with outrageous behavior that would lead to fines and jail if the liars were private-sector CEOs.
(Chris Reed contributes to CalWatchdog. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)
To read the original version, click here.
The reduction of those actually covered by healthcare is an expected effect of a centralized system, government healthcare. Government healthcare has failed miserably before in its task to serve members of the VA—those who most deserve recompense for their servic—and has worked up until now in programs such Medic-aid and Medicare by drastically short-paying MD’s and hospitals, a practice which cannot go on.
As a result of the US Bishops’ virtual endorsement of Obamacare (yes, read @ USCCB.org the long history of their lobbying in favor of the unjust redistributionist socialist program of government healthcare in fall, 2009, right up until their “shocked discovery” that their concerns about contraception and abortion would not be honored [Dec, 2009]—shocked, they were, shocked!), a punitive program of penalizing individuals with prohibitive insurance premiums and tax penalties has been laid as a new heavy burden on the ordinary American. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees: you tie up heavy burdens on men’s shoulders, and your yourselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger, but this they do all their deeds to be noticed by men…” Matt. 23:4-5
And we can always count on Bishop Stephen Blaire of bankrupt Stockton diocese to help: (February 14, 2012)
WASHINGTON—The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a press briefing at the White House on February 13, “…I would simply note with regard to the [US Catholic] Bishops that they never supported health care reform to begin with…”
“This is not the case,” said Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). He went on: “Since 1919, the United States Catholic bishops have supported decent health care for all and government and private action to advance this essential goal,” Bishop Blaire said.“Long before the current battles, the Catholic Church was persistently and consistently advocating for this overdue national priority.” In the recent health care debate the USCCB called universal and affordable health care “an urgent national priority.”
Socialist government redistributionist healthcare, is what he means. And no wonder his diocese is bankrupt.
Those who are putting up such a fuss about “Cover California” failing the Latino population obviously haven’t heard that the state already has a plan in place. The newly launched “out of code” Planned Parenthood Primary Care Centers, under “Obama-don’t-care”, will be the “medical” care assigned for poor, uneducated Latinos.
A new utterly ludicrous argument of the socialist proponents of government healthcare is to claim that in order to be Catholic one must support plans like the Affordable Care Act, based on a uniquely twisted interpretation of CCC 2211 [“Health care must be seen “as a basic right belonging to all human beings” (the US Bishops) and that the “political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure….the right to medical care”. (CCC2211)] Note the CCC never uses the word “government healthcare” nor a “government-controlled insurance plan” (scheme?) of wealth-redistribution. This twisted interpretation betrays the socialist leanings of the plans proponents as well as episcopal luminaries like Bp. Stephen Blaire, namely those who claim healthcare must be delivered by only by the Great Beast of State.
The fact that our bishops and many Catholics can only see the fulfillment of Catholic social concern through the sole power and agency of the socialist state is stunning—all the more so, given the CC’s history of private Catholic hospital foundations and skilled nursing care in this country. The error here is fundamental, it is philosophical.
“No Catholic could subscribe even to moderate socialism.” —John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, n. 34 (1961]
Yet another issue in the Statist Catholic’s proud march to oblivion is the 2013 report on Medicare by its own trustees: Social Security Disability’s fund for medicare will be bankrupt by 2016; Medicare by 2022. Yet Medicare’s doctor and hospital reimbursement funding was cut by over $800B under Obamacare, so that many MD’s are refusing new Medicare patients.
On a parallel basis, Medic-aid is bankrupting the states with the Affordable Care Act’s many mandates of additional coverage: states can resort to either reducing even further MD’s reimbursement amounts (which even now are only about 60% of private insurances), or cut coverage and eligibility. So, the US Bishops’ mad rush for “government healthcare” as a mandated “right” actually has destroyed coverage for the lower-income population, hurting the very people they purport to help. And yet here is another irony: states which spend more on Medic-aid, such as New York (it is 60% above the average), show a poorer quality of healthcare service. It is not an irony: centralized power and control of an industry always destroys quality and service. It is called socialism.
“You are aware that the goal of this most iniquitous plot of today is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism,…” (“Nostris and Nobiscum”, Pius XI, encyclical, Dec. 8, 1849)
For financial reasons evil elected persons in the government will start supporting EUTHANASIA for the aged, the mentally ill, and those physically impaired – because they are worthless to society in their opinion.
(The IRS will know everything about you and your family members. They eventually will use this information for oppression and perhaps persecution.)
US Bishops, Priests, and Nuns should stay out of public politics. They know not what they do. They are not trained/educated for this purpose.
THEY HAVE NO IDEA of they CONSEQUENCES of their ACTIONS..
When the government controls health care – you must play by their rules.
Jesus did not teach that government should be the responsible party.
This needs repeating –
” You are aware that the goal of this most iniquitous plot of today is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism,…” (“Nostris and Nobiscum”, Pius XI, encyclical, Dec. 8, 1849)
JOE, may I add that “for financial reasons” brain injured patients are labeled “brain” dead in order to legally cut out their vital organs. It is mind boggling how many people have already been tortured prior to their death during the gristly procedure of organ harvesting. This is a multi-billion industry. God help us! In Communist China, countless political prisoners are known to have met this fate, regardless of brain injury.
FYI,: a slight typo correction: the encyclical quoted is “Nostis et Nobiscum” (=”You know, as we know…”, 1st lines of the encyclical..) by “Pio Nono”, now Blessed, Pius IX (9th), Dec. 8, 1849. Were Pio Nono to be alive today, I often wonder what he would say to the present “Church Faithful.” (Or: Has the Church changed? Hmm.?)
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announcement 2/4/2014:
“The Affordable Care Act will also reduce the number of fulltime workers by more than 2 million in coming years, congressional budget analysts said in the most detailed analysis of the law’s impact on jobs. The CBO said the law’s impact on jobs would be mostly felt starting after 2016. The agency previously estimated that the economy would have 800,000 fewer jobs as a result of the law. The impact is likely to be most felt, the CBO said, among low-wage workers. The agency said that most of the effect would come from Americans deciding not to seek work as a result of the ACA’s impact on the economy. Some workers may forgo employment, while others may reduce hours, for a equivalent of at least 2 million fulltime workers dropping out of the labor force.”