Crosstalk: September 16, 2016

In spite of all we were told about Obamacare and how it would improve health care for the nation, the statistics say otherwise. For example, as of September 13th, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 28 million 966 thousand people were uninsured for the entire year of 2015. Premiums haven't gone down. In fact, they've skyrocketed. Employers have either cut employees, cut health benefits or reduced full-time employees to part-time status. The situation is so bad that states that created their own health insurance exchanges are abandoning them. Even Obamacare insurance providers are 'abandoning ship'.

Due to these revelations, Crosstalk invited Twila Brase back to present an update on Obamacare for listeners. Twila is the president and co-founder of Citizens Council for Health Freedom, a patient-centered national health freedom organization existing to protect health care choices, individualized patient care and medical and genetic privacy rights. Twila is a certified public health nurse. She also provides daily commentary on the Health Freedom Minute.

Twila believes that we are witnessing the collapse of Obamacare, however, she described it as a slow earthquake because there are people who are trying to keep the system from completely collapsing. For example, insurance companies have been leaving but there is a 'toe hold' aspect. This means that if an insurance company leaves Obamacare completely, they are out for 5 years. In order to make sure that doesn't happen, some insurers may actually be keeping a few of their plans or a few of their states so that they can attempt to negotiate with the administration to get all the money that Obamacare promised them but aren't getting.

The problem is that Obamacare was put forth as a budget-neutral program. The insurance companies were supposed to get a certain amount of money so whatever came in would be paid out. That amount was never the amount that insurance companies said they lost. For 2014, Twila noted that the money insurance companies asked for was 2.9 billion dollars. They were only paid in the 300 million category. In other words, insurers only received 12.8% of what they asked for. Obviously, insurers want a bailout.

That's how bad it's become for insurers. What does this mean for those insured? Jim pointed to an example from Senator John Thune who recently indicated that the 2017 health insurance premiums are coming out in his state of South Dakota. If you're a 40 year old non-smoker in a Silver Plan, the rate of increase is going to be 36%. It gets worse. Twila said that Minnesota has one plan that shows a 122% increase. These are requests that need to be finalized but in the end she still believes people will see unbelievable increases. So now the deductibles won't be the only outrageous part of Obamacare, now people will have to deal with high premiums as well.

In the end, Twila believes the goal is single-payer health care, run by the health plans in collusion with the government. Find out more, including details concerning Twila's alternative 'Wedge of Health Freedom', when you review this information-packed edition of Crosstalk.