More lies!

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said: “We have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over. … I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am President, they won’t find a job in my White House.”

At least a dozen former lobbyists got top jobs in his administration at the beginning of his presidency, according to Politico, and National Public Radio reported the Obama administration was granting waivers to lobbyists to circumvent the ban.

Obama Care was sold to American voters as solving a number of health-care crises. We were told health care costs are rising too fast, but Obama Care will “bend the cost curve down.” Too many Americans cannot afford health insurance, but Obama Care will lower insurance costs by $2,500 per family. Obama Care will solve the pre-existing conditions crisis. With Obama Care, we get all these crises solved, we can keep our existing insurance policy or doctor, and Obama Care will cost less than a trillion dollars over a decade. What a bargain!

As most of these Obama Care promises have fallen by the wayside, the Obama administration has had to emphasize the still undiscredited crises, such as pre-existing conditions. The problem is that the administration could find such a crisis only by lying with statistics.

Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) incredibly determined that almost half the American population could be ineligible for health insurance due to a preexisting condition. This sure sounds like a crisis, but the HHS simply counted all Americans with asthma, bad backs, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic diseases that theoretically could be a reason to deny coverage or charge a higher premium.

So all the HHS study shows is the large number of Americans with chronic diseases that could theoretically affect their insurability. (We do not know how much double counting there is of people with more than one chronic disease). But how many Americans with chronic illnesses are really threatened by pre-existing conditions?

According to the latest Census Bureau data, 309 million Americans have health insurance. Of these 4 percent are covered by directly purchased insurance alone. The remaining 96 percent are covered by government or company insurance or some combination. Government health insurance does not allow discrimination based on preexisting conditions. Company insurance typically does not either, insofar as the risk pool is already incorporated in the premiums, and there are portability requirements in moving from company to company.

Thus 12 million people purchased private direct purchased health insurance on the eve of Obama Care. Insurance industry studies show that one in eight applicants for private health insurance have preexisting conditions that affect their eligibility or premiums. This gives a total of 1.5 million Americans who were denied health insurance or paid higher premiums due to pre-existing conditions.

The Obama administration has lied with statistics! Instead of 150 million, there are 1.5 million Americans, who “cannot get insurance or must pay higher premiums due to pre-existing conditions.” The pre-existing conditions crisis becomes a gnat bite when things are measured correctly. How to Lie with Statistics of the 1960s showed how to fudge statistics a little, not to exaggerate by a hundred-fold. The Obama administration has taken this to a new level befitting the 21st century.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/10/08/lying-with-statistics-obamas-pre-existing-conditions-crisis/

Socialism has killed-off many successful nations.