Kathleen Sebelius Obamacare Senate testimony November 6, 2013, Sebelius continues Orwellian spin, Many lose health insurance, Premiums and deductibles rise, People’s cancer or diabetes or Parkinson
“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”…Barack Obama
“millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.”…NBC News October 29, 2013
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″
For a momemt let’s forget the crony capitalism involved in developing the Obamacare website.
Let’s ignore the incompetence in the government interaction with the software developers.
Let’s also ignore the security issues.
Let’s even ignore the impact on the economy and jobs.
As revealed at Citizen WElls on multiple occasions, the impact on our health care system and the public depending on it is the scariest part of Obamacare.
Kathleen Sebelius provided testimony about Obamacare before the Senate Finance Committee on November 6, 2013. Here are some exerpts.
Sebelius:
“I recognize that there is an even higher level of accountability, accountability to the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling Americans who deserve better health care. The impact on the lives of everyday people is getting lost. I know this because I hear their stories, as I’m sure many of you do.”
“Now, some have asked why not just delay implementation of the new law until all of the problems are fixed. And there is a pretty straightforward answer. Delaying the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t delay people’s cancer or diabetes or Parkinson, didn’t delay the need for mental health services or cholesterol
screenings or prenatal care. Delaying the Affordable Care Act doesn’t delay the foreclosure notices for families forced into bankruptcy by unpayable medical bills. It doesn’t delay the higher cost all of us pay when uninsured Americans are left with no choice but to rely on emergency rooms for care.
So for millions of Americans, delay is not an option. People’s lives depend on this. Too many hardworking people have been waiting for too long for the ability to obtain affordable health insurance. We want to save families from going bankrupt if we want to save the lives of more of our friends and neighbors by allowing them to detect medical issuers early. If we want to keep prices down, delay is not an option.”
“you can keep your plan. The vast majority of Americans who are insured are in the employer market or in public plans or in veterans’ plans, and the — those plans have stayed in place and continue to offer benefits.
The 11 million people who are in the individual market, a majority of those individuals will keep plans that now will have stronger coverage and others will have to choose if they have a brand new plan and not a grandfathered — have to choose of a plan that they no longer get medically underwritten –”
Sebelius interchanges:
“SEN. PORTMAN: Let me ask you a final question, and it’s about covering the uninsured. We’ve talked about the promises on you can keep the coverage, the cost being less rather than more. We haven’t talked about coverage. Is it true that after all this sound and fury and all this bureaucracy and 19 new taxes and
over a trillion dollars of new spending and so on, that still 30 million Americans 10 years from now, after full implementation of this, will not have healthcare insurance. Is that accurate?
SEC. SEBELIUS: I hope that’s not the case.
SEN. PORTMAN: You hope it’s not, but do you believe it’s accurate? Because that’s what the Congressional Budget Office tells us.”
“SENATOR PATRICK TOOMEY (R-PA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Sebelius.
As concerned as I am about the huge problems with the website, I’m more concerned with some of the underlying fundamental design problems with this legislation that are starting to manifest themselves, and I want to share with you just a few short emails from the hundreds and — probably, actually, thousands and thousands of emails that I’ve received from Pennsylvanians conveying some of the concern. And in particular, how the false promises are affecting real people; in this case, my constituents.
I got an email on October 11th from a dad from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and I’m going to quote this.
He said, “I recieved notice last week that my health care will more than triple. Currently I am paying $265 a month for me and my two young sons. On January 1st, 2014, my monthly premium will be $836 a month.” He said, “The president promised you can keep your plan and families will save $2,500 per year. I
can keep my plan; I just can’t afford it. I do qualify for subsidies — 80 bucks a month.” Well, there was a promise that families were going to save money with this. It’s clearly not the case for this family from Bucks County.
There’s another promise which has been alluded to several times, which we all know famously the president and others have said: If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance. A woman from
Lancaster County sent me an email. And it’s short. I’ll quote it. She says, “I’m a two-time breast cancer survivor and I’m facing the loss of insurance as of March 1st, 2014. President Obama said that if we liked our insurance we’d be able to keep it. That was obviously untrue,” end quote.
A third promise that we repeatedly heard was that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. I got an email on October 7th from a woman from West Moreland County. And I’ll quote. She said, “I’ve been self-employed for 13 years and have never been without health insurance. Three years ago I was diagnosed
with multiple sclerosis. Having an expensive pre-existing condition was not a problem for me as I had never let my insurance lapse. My medication cost without insurance would be $4,000 per month.
“I received notice several weeks ago that they were now going to cancel my plan and were doing so as of January 1st, and I had to sign up for a new coverage through the health insurance exchange. If my coverage is not in place before January 1, I’ll have to go without my medications. This may cause permanent
disability: blindness, inability to walk, speech problems. I’m not disabled now, nor am I on Social Security disability. Any plan I find that would cover me channels me right back to signing up through the exchange.
I’m a small business owner and a productive member of society. I own my own house. Now I’m in trouble.”
We called this woman and we discussed this. It turned out there were two options available to her through the exchange. One option would allow her to continue to see the doctors that have been treating her. The other option would cover the medication she needed. Neither option would cover both.
These anecdotes I think — well, it’s clear to me they’ve been repeated many, many times, I think millions of times across the country. And it’s a huge problem. So I guess my question for you is, I understand that this
administration is never going to want to repeal this bill. I get that. I understand that you’ve delayed whole sections of it but don’t seem to want to delay the individual mandate, for instance.
My question is, are there any changes you want to recommend that we could make to this bill so that the promises that were made by the president, by yourself, by others for these people — promises which clearly are not being kept — could actually, in fact, be kept? Are there any that you’d be willing to recommend to us?
SEC. SEBELIUS: Well, Senator, I’d be happy to work with members of Congress who want to achieve the goals of the bill, which are to provide, for the first time, affordable health coverage for millions of people who don’t have it. And an additional goal of the bill I would say is to, in the marketplace, the last remaining
market where people have been denied coverage — because about a quarter of the people who seek insurance can’t get it at all, medically underwritten, denied because of a pre-existing condition — where they have an opportunity to move forward.
And if there’s some frameworks that you have in mind — what I really want to do is get the program up and running and get information to people about how they can take advantage of the –”
http://www.nationaljournal.com/free/document/4730
From Citizen Wells November 5, 2013.
“A San Diego woman says she has been kicked off her insurance plan due to Obamacare while battling Stage 4 gallbladder cancer.
“I had great cancer doctors and health insurance,” Edie Littlefield Sundby wrote in a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed. “My plan was canceled. Now I worry how long I’ll live.”
“For almost seven years I have fought and survived Stage 4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2 percent after diagnosis,” she said.
Her op-ed, which received significant attention from conservatives online, comes as millions of Americans are being dropped from their health insurance plans because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
Sundby will be released from her current plan effective Dec. 31. She said her only options going forward are to either enroll in Obamacare and lose her cancer doctors, or to start her treatment all over again with a new provider at rates that are approximately 40 to 50 percent more expensive.
Worse than just losing her doctors through Obamacare, Sundby said, is that nothing available through the government-run program comes even close to comparing with what she had through her private insurer.”
“Dean and Mary Lou Griffin sit their home in Chadds Ford, Pa. on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013. The Griffins liked the health insurance they purchased for themselves three years ago and thought he would be able to keep the plan even after the federal Affordable Care Act took effect. But they recently received a letter notifying him the plan was being cancelled because it didn’t cover certain benefits required under the new law. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
MIAMI – Dean Griffin liked the health insurance he purchased for himself and his wife three years ago and thought he’d be able to keep the plan even after the federal Affordable Care Act took effect.
But the 64-year-old recently received a letter notifying him the plan was being cancelled because it didn’t cover certain benefits required under the law.
The Griffins, who live near Philadelphia, pay $770 monthly for their soon-to-be-terminated health care plan with a $2,500 deductible. The cheapest plan they found on their state insurance exchange was a so-called bronze plan charging a $1,275 monthly premium with deductibles totalling $12,700. It covers only providers in Pennsylvania, so the couple, who live near Delaware, won’t be able to see doctors they’ve used for more than a decade.”
Citizen WElls 