The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare)

So let me get this straight, you want to completely ignore all of the promises made by Obama to get the bill passed? You keep calling the expectation of fulfilled promises by Obama "naive" when it applies to the ACA, why? The American people heard those constantly repeated promises and believed Obama was trustworthy and let him pass it, even stayed silent when Obama had to use sketchy tactics after he lost his super majority because they trusted him to keep his promises. My stand is based on the "bait and switch" tactics used by Obama and the Democrat leadership to promise us one thing, and to give us something completely different. I am going to lay out the point by number and I would ask you to address those promises and explain why Americans should not hold Obama accountable for those failed promises. 1. Obama promised many, many times that under the ACA Americans would be allowed to keep doctors and insurance they liked. This was a core promise because many Americans liked their doctors and healthcare plans they already had and did not want the Government to take away those close personal relationships. This key lie is what kept Americans from openly opposing the passage of the ACA and was listed as the lie of the year by Politifact who is normally very friendly to Obama and Democrat agendas: http://www.politifact.com... 2. One of the key selling points of the ACA was how we had to get everyone into the game and not letting people to go without health insurance and to just go to the emergency room when they were sick because those emergency rooms were mandated to help people even without health insurance. Those emergency room visits cost many times more than standard medical care and it was a key point in selling Obamacare as a cost savings measure shifting Americans into regular doctor office visits instead of using the much higher cost emergency room visits: http://www.usatoday.com... 3. Also let's remember that a Insurance card is not the same thing as medical care, in the link above they give one of the reasons for the massive increase of people going to the emergency room is they can't find a doctor to take their insurance so they end up in the emergency room. All along the stated goal was to get everyone healthcare but they are not getting healthcare, but they do have a pretty piece of plastic because of the ACA. 4. Obama promised that the average family would see an average "reduction" of healthcare premiums of $2,500 per year, he made that promise many, many times and started making it way back to his first debates against Hillary: "Point number two is that I am actually not interested in just capping premiums. I want to lower premiums by about an average of $2,500 per family, per year, because people right now cannot afford it" ~Obama http://votesmart.org... The average family has not seen any reduction of premiums, a very small percentage of people are getting subsidies sure, but the premiums themselves have all gone way up and most Americans do not get any subsidy to counter those severely increased rates. http://abcnews.go.com... 5. The stated goal of the ACA was to get everyone insured and paying into pools to help lower premiums. This was the reason Obama was given the rating of "full flop" by politifact after parts of the ACA came out with an individual mandate when Obama had slammed Hillary on the campaign trail because her plan had an individual mandate and Obama;s plan did not have an individual mandate. http://www.politifact.com... So after so many hard promises were made to never have individual mandates with Obamacare, why did Obama flip-flop? Because getting everyone insured was how they had to balance and cover the costs to sell the plan, they gave pretty promises of lower premiums and cost savings based on all Americans getting insured but that did not happen in reality and that is why we see the huge increases in premiums as noted in my link for #4. Averages for the uninsured is still around 30 million people some sources say a little higher, some a little lower depending on their political leanings but certainly no matter how you slice it, we have spent a massive amount of money to only reduce the uninsured number by 6% or so. http://www.washingtonpost.com... 6. Subsidy confusion is a big part of the ACA, buried deep in the bill where almost all Americans have no clue about is a bad side of the Government subsidies, if any of your situation changes during the year, pay increases, divorce, job changes or even moving to a new area could drastically change your eligibility and the IRS will hit you with a penalty at the end of the year. http://www.politico.com... 7. The ACA created a lot of new taxes and while some seem reasonable to most Americans such as higher taxes on people making over $200,000 a year (known as the middle class) some of them just seem strange as in the new 10% tax on tanning services, where did they come up with that? A 2.3% excise tax on medical equipment with a base cost over $100. Now stop and think about that for a second, when was the last time you saw medical equipment that was less than $100? This is just another embedded tax that will drive up costs and some in the industry are saying it is costing jobs: http://thehill.com... Even Elizabeth Warren has said the device tax should be eliminated. Now I will address the few points my opponent has offered in support of the Obamacare we got instead of the one we were promised. A. "The entire objective of Obamacare was, and is to reduce Healthcare insurance, and it has, indisputably done so. You didn't even include a reference, you made a untrue and incorrect statement out of personal opinion." *Reply: As I listed on #4 above, even if lower insurance premiums was the "entire objective" (I have completely destroyed that claim) That goal was also a huge failure because costs are going way up after Obamacare so even based on your wrong claim of objective the ACA is a big failure. Also, it is you not providing any support for your incorrecxt and untrue statements, only I have been providing links supporting my assertions that are credible. B. "and it did not lower taxpayer costs so in all areas". That was not a objective. Quite simply, it was to insure and provide cheaper insurance, not "Save money". Again, you make a fallacious statement without reference."" *Reply: Again, insurance is not cheaper as already proven and as I point out on numbers 2, 4 and 5. lower Emergency room costs to the Government, lower premiums, lower costs in general were promises (read objectives) made all along and I have given several links to prove this. If you have a link proving there was never supposed to be any savings of any kind then please provide that link, no radical sites please. C. Between 8 million and 11.4 million American Citizens have enrolled/received tax breaks/received subsidies for Health insurance(1). I that's a failure, I want to know what success is. Name in any respect, how the ACA failed horribly. *Reply: It is a failure because that number is mostly existing insured Americans shifting to new policies, it does not reflect the complete failure to insure the uninsured, lower premiums and costs.