The Hogwash Report 98.0

The ObamaCare Hoax...

Here’s the question. Did President Obama really think his signature “accomplishment,” the Affordable Care Act would save Americans an average of $2,800 a year in health insurance premiums, was he just lying, or was he just colossally wrong?

Should the eponymous ObamaCare really have been labeled ObamaDon’tCare, given that it’s highly likely that nobody saved the $2,800 a year that he promised.

The Hogwash Report asked AI that question: Did the Affordable Care Act save Americans the $2,800 a year that Obama promised?

Here’s the reply:

“No, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not save the average American $2,800 per year; instead, recent analyses show enhanced premium tax credits—which may expire—have subsidized ACA enrollees an average of $705 to $1,016 annually in premium payments for 2024-2026, not overall healthcare spending. While the ACA has contributed to lower deficits and expanded coverage, individual savings vary and don’t align with the $2,800 figure mentioned.”

There’s a reason it’s called “artificial intelligence.” Some of it is just made up. The subsidies were approved by the Democrats because the premiums were too high for the folks who took the Obama bait. It’s very debatable — AI’s claim that the ACA has contributed to lower federal deficits.

The Congressional Budget Office initially projected the ACA would reduce the deficit over the long run, but later changes to the law and it’s implementation have altered the fiscal impact.

Congress repealed the “Cadillac tax” that Obama had included. It was to tax people who kept their better insurance policies. The unions were against that, so the Dems had to cave. That reduced ACA’s total savings.

Then came the Inflation Reduction Act which temporarily gave more money away with premium tax credits, which has increased federal spending. Those premium tax credits are a part of what’s keeping the government shut down at this time. The Democrats want them to be permanent.

If the average American had saved $2,800 a year for the last 12 years, they could pay cash for a new car.

They Said What???

An unlikely institution — the Washington Post editorial board — has experienced an epiphany.

After 15 years of cheering on ObamaCare, even often defending it, a WAPO editorial this week contained this starkly contrasted sentence:

“The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable.”

This WAPO statement goes on our list of things we never thought we would see.

Joseph Vazquez, writing for NewsBusters.org, said, “Gee, that’s an awfully different tone than the liberal rag was striking in 2024 (just last year) when the editorial board celebrated how ‘Obamacare is working brilliantly — for now.’ That’s despite the fact that premiums for individual market plans doubled in costs and ‘the per enrollee cost of Medicaid expansion is nearly 60 percent greater than what experts projected’, as the Paragon Health Institute summarized in an October 2024 study.”

When the Republicans were trying to repeal the act so it could be ‘’fixed’’ in 2017, FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, took a look at Obama’s Whoppers, in an article similarly titled and written by Eugene Kiely.

First on their list of whoppers came from an Obama town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he said this, “I just want to be completely clear about this; I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren’t listening — if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.”

Many, many companies across the country saw ObamaDon’tCare as an opportunity to jettison their health care plans in favor of the ACA offerings. Many employees lost the health care plan they wanted to keep.

In October 2013, ACA Marketplace opened for business and many individuals policyholders began to receive cancellation notices from their insurance companies.

CBS News reported “some Americans are being surprised, not only that they are being booted off their current plans, but at how much they’re being asked to pay for new ones.

Many employees had their corporate insurance plans changed to accept the higher out-of-pocket limit in the ACA than significantly lower out of pocket limits in their current plan.

The Johnny-Come-Lately WAPO editorialists this week acknowledged that Obama’s experts “assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.”

The Democrats, in 2021, tried to fix the mess with enhanced premium tax credits for ACA enrollees. The tax credits were extended through the end of 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act (also a misnomer).

The enhanced tax credits both increased the amount of financial assistance already eligible to enrollees, but it also made middle-income enrollees with income four times the federal poverty level eligible for premium tax credits.

That drew more than 13 million more people into the ACA Marketplace.

Now, the Democrats are desperate to keep those tax credits from expiring at the end of the year. As Ronald Reagan said, “There’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.”

So, let’s note here that without the added supplements in 2021, many people would not have been able to afford the Affordable Care Act at that time. The Washington Post editorial board should have known then that the Affordable Care Act was unaffordable without continued government subsidies.

The other thing that ObamaDon’tCare missed was the huge inflation in health care costs that came on the coattails of his prized program. healthsystemtracker.org says costs have increased by one-third since the ACA dawned. The Hogwash Report thinks that’s a low-ball estimate.

Also, in 2013 Republicans were chided for claiming that even with the ACA, 15 million people would still be without health care. Boy were they wrong. Roughly 30 million people are without health care today, nearly 10 percent of the population.

What was billed as the greatest advancement in medical care, since Medicare began taking care of the elderly, is in dire need of overhaul.

The costs are 30 percent higher but hospitals are struggling to stay open, thanks to the government’s and private insurer’s payment schedules, which often are pennies on the dollar to what the services are billed at.

Fellow Substacker Michael Swartz clearly pointed out, in his post this week, how health insurance is out of control and unaffordable.

“Yes, health insurance is expensive, but have you ever considered that the reason the coverage is so pricey is because it’s being forced to cover everything from a trip to the doctor’s office for a sniffle to someone’s twisted whim that they were born in the wrong body and need the meds and surgery to give them the body they believe should be theirs?”

We have moved closer and closer to the kind of medical services that we have long seen in Canada’s health system, where many procedures have to be scheduled weeks or months out because there are not enough surgical suites, equipment, or doctors to keep up with the demand. Doctor appointments are no longer immediately available. The Democrats keep pushing for socialized health care. We must resist that.

The government’s answer — everybody paying more money — doesn’t seem to be the answer.

Other Things We Never Thought We Would See:

I sat at a restaurant last week and for the first time I was directed by the menu to scan a QR code to see the prices.

The need for the National Guard to help cities control their crime.

People cheering the assassination of someone killed because of their job or their political or spiritual beliefs.

Comey charged.

Political activists sitting as judges.

Someone named Bad Bunny offered millions to perform at the Super Bowl.

Anti-Americans seated in Congress.

Beef prices this high.

Send us your list in the comment section.

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