The Health Insurance Advocate Newsletter
Third Edition 2009
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President Obama and the “Boogie Man”
Mr. Obama delivered his speech to a joint session of Congress on healthcare Wednesday evening and he found his “Boogie Man,” the health insurance companies. He led his speech off with two anecdotal stories, both about people losing their coverage while they were sick. The first story was about a man whose coverage was allegedly dropped because he failed to report gall stones to the insurance company, and he subsequently died due to lack of treatment. The other was about a woman who fai
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And Now the Rest Of The Story
Some of you may recognize the title- it is a phrase coined by radio icon Paul Harvey. I am applying it to President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on his National Healthcare Initiative. You may remember President Obama opening that speech by vilifying the insurance industry with two stories of death caused by rescission of insurance policies to gravely ill policyholders. And now for the rest of the story:
The first example cited by Mr. Obama was Otto S. Raddatz, who had g
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Obama-Care: The Life Expectancy Myth and 17% of GDP
We constantly hear from President Obama and those on the left that we spend 17% of our Gross Domestic Product on healthcare while our Canadian neighbors and European countries spend less and have greater life expectancy!
This is not true and is a gross distortion of the facts. Allow me to illustrate:
If you are 65 or older your prospects for a longer life are 17.1 more years for a male and 20 for females. This is higher than the U.K. or Germany.
Many factors make up the life expectancy measure
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The Great Exchange
In his speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama called for an exchange to increase competition and allow people to buy health insurance like major corporations do at reduced costs. Let’s take a look at the only exchange or connector that is in existence today. That would be the Massachusetts Connector or Exchange which was budgeted to operate in 2009 at $467 million but is currently over-budget at $869 million. The exchange only uses four insurance companies:
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President Obama Eliminates Government Waste in Medicare and Medicaid?
In his speech on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama indicated that he would pay for his new government run healthcare program by eliminating waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. I would ask the President, “why wait?” let’s eliminate it now. In 2007 and 2008, audits conducted by the Medicare trustees noted that $42.7 billion in waste and fraud occurred. If administrations going back to Lyndon Johnson have not been able to get this government healthcare monster under control, where is
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Promises Made by President Obama in his Recent Address Regarding Health Care
In Wednesday night’s speech, Mr. Obama stated that he would secure stability for those who have health insurance; I would refer the President to the Wall Street Journal’s Rasmussen Poll which showed 83% of people with health insurance in this country were satisfied with their coverage and 88% were satisfied with their healthcare provided by their insurance carrier’s authorized providers. It would seem Mr. Obama’s promise of stability is unnecessary and a complete red herring. His
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