The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an integral part of Obama Care. The administration’s propaganda implies that it’s designed to put consumers back in charge of their health care.

That sounds nice, if only it were true.

The Act touts key beneficial aspects of the “Patient’s Bill of Rights” without mentioning the downside. We will look at some of both.

Benefits promised by the Obama Administration, and the problems associated with them include:

Coverage

• Benefit: Ends Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions for Children
  • The Problem: Someone must pay for all benefits offered. If this expense is not mitigated on the front end, it will be taxed on the back end.
• Benefit: Keeps Young Adults Covered: If you’re under 26, you may be eligible to be covered under your parent’s health plan.
  • More adults who should be paying for their own insurance will be able to “pool out” to lower cost programs through mom and dad.
    • The Problem: The same as above—someone has to pay for the benefits offered. It isn’t free. It will never be free.
  • Benefit: Obama Care ends Arbitrary withdrawals of insurance coverage so insurers can’t cancel your coverage just because you made an honest mistake
    • This one has no negative. It should be in all healthcare systems. It is fair and has often been abused by commercial insurers.
  • Benefit: Guarantees Your Right to Appeal: You now have the right to ask that your plan reconsider its denial of payment
    • The Problem: This is not new. You have always been able to have your claim reconsidered. This portion of the law implies that you will have an advocate that goes to bat for you if you need them. Not so. The burden is on you like it has always been.

Costs:

• Benefit: Ends Lifetime limits on coverage
  • Problem: If the loss to the insurer cannot be mitigated or controlled in on the front end, premiums and taxes will be utilized to subsidize those losses on the back end.
• Benefit: Reviews premium increases
  • Starting in September 2011, healthcare insurers must justify any rate increases of 10% or more before the increase may take effect.
    • The Problem: State regulators will approve or reject what they perceive as unreasonable or excessive rate increases. This is one of the back-end measures of mitigating loss without disclosure. Control of the rates and whether the insurance company takes a loss is now under government control. The purpose is directly drawn from the outcome. The Obama administration will be able to put the insurance companies out of business so that they (in a socialized medicine format) can monopolize the industry. In other words, your choices don’t broaden—they disappear.

Care:

• Benefit: Covers preventive care at no cost to you
  • The Problem: Not a downside, right? Unless of course the government is compiling pertinent data to determine your survivability. Why would they do such a thing? So they can mitigate their losses under a subsidy funded by your tax dollars. Sound like a conspiracy theory? The fact is, this is already in place—right now.
• Benefit: Protects your ability to keep the doctor of your choice
  • The Problem: You are free to use whatever doctor you chose, as long as he/she is in the government-approved network.
  • Until Obama Care, you went to see your PCP and he/she would provide a referral to whatever specialist you and your doctor determined you needed. This design was to control, not increase medical expenses. Obama Care has removed this gatekeeper step.
    • The Problem: You have relinquished your ability to you’re your healthcare overseen by a medical provider you trust. The government hasn’t taken control, they have simply eliminated this step so that you can get used to not having an advocate at your disposal. Later, they will fill that gap with a method of their choosing. For example, individuals with little or no medical training are currently making decisions on your care by following algorithms.
• Benefit: Removes insurance company barriers to emergency services
  • The Problem: This speaks to your ability to see a provider outside your network if you need emergency care while travelling. This is a good idea. That’s why private and commercial insurers adopted this policy ten years ago. It’s old news—really old news.

It’s also important to look at some of the definitions used by the Affordable Care Act.

• A doctor of your choice means:
  • A doctor you chose within the Network. The definition of doctor of your choice and Network are intentionally ambiguous and vaguely defined. The reason for this is that they are constantly being changed. There has a two-fold purpose.
    • The Obama Care advocates want you to forget what your definition of your doctor is before they introduce their definition. If you place two items side by side on a table, it’s easy to tell the subtleties between them. If you take an item away completely for a few years, and replace it with something vaguely similar three years later, it’s hard to recall what the original looked like.
    • If you don’t like the new definitions of Network and your doctor, it will be too late to do anything about it by the time they are implemented
• State Regulators
  • These have yet to be defined. They are already making decisions, but their scope is far too broad. In a nutshell, however, they will become the new (non-doctor) gatekeepers.

Healthcare was due for an overhaul—I agree. But this is not what this country needs. Obama Care has created a culture of medical care entitlement that I will discuss on Wednesday. This is real, this is critical, and it is a social cancer threatening to destroy our nation.

The president is telling you great things are coming. For Obama Care it just isn’t true. It can’t be. It isn’t and never will be funded. But then again, that was the design from the start.