Obama signed off, on March 10, 2003, on a law named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. This plan includes many goals, a few are: to allow young people to stay on parents insurance until the age of 25, prevent insurance companies from dropping people who get sick, allow people with pre-existing conditions to have health insurance, expand Medicaid availability, and prevent insurance companies from gender discrimination. ObamaCare does not replace Medicare, Medicaid, or Private Insurance. It expands Medicaid, but states decide whether or not to go through with the expansion.

To make sense of health insurance, it helps to understand the difference between Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. Medicare is a federal (central government) program for the elderly (65 or older) and for people with specific diseases or disabilities. Medicaid applies to people with low incomes, run by both Federal and State governments. Private insurers create health care plans, run outside of the federal and state governments.

Obama also created a law, called the Employer Mandate, that requires larger companies, with 50 or more employees, to insure their employees. Otherwise, they must pay a fee. People who do not receive health care insurance from their employers typically pay a higher price for healthcare.

The money to fulfill our health insurance needs comes from increased taxes and an increase in the amount the wealthy have to pay. As one can imagine, we do not yet have universal healthcare, we are far from it.

From this topic, people tend to split up into two sectors, those in support of healthcare as a guaranteed right that people must pay for through tax money versus those in support of the free enterprise system (private insurance promoting competition). With any topic as complicated as healthcare, there comes a time to decide whether or not to enforce new policies, keep the old the same, or refresh the old. Especially with Obama’s health care plans rising to 25% in 2017.

As we know, plans do not always offer the benefits that they propose. It is important to view perspectives from people who have experienced both the benefits and drawbacks of ObamaCare. I asked my Father, Dr. John Reckling, a physician who has worked in the medical field for many years, to describe his opinions and experiences with Obamacare.

Q: Did you notice an increase in your clientele after Obama instituted the Affordable Healthcare Act?

A:   I saw a decrease in patients after ObamaCare. Many people lost their insurance through work. Some people lost their jobs when companies moved employees to part-time or eliminated their position, to save on health care costs.  This happened to many of my patients.  People that are insured through OC have very high deductibles. So, they can’t go to the doctor until they get the deductible paid off – which in Wyoming, where there is only one OC insurer, is up to $7500.  The deductible costs are in addition to monthly premiums up to $1200 for a family.  So a family has to have health care bills reaching $21,900 (12x$1200 for premium + $7500 deductible) before the insurance kicks in.  This is unaffordable.  Also, OC only allows only certain providers in their networks, other providers choose not to participate as the reimbursement is so horrible.  The result is many doctors don’t see OC patients.

Q: If I remember correctly, you are not a fan of ObamaCare. Could you explain why?

A: The government brags about adding 20 million people to the ranks of the insured, which is totally misleading.  They neglect to factor in how many people lost their insurance because of OC, how many people can’t use the insurance they have now because the deductibles became so unaffordable, and that a huge percentage of the 20 million are not actually on OC as they are now on Medicaid.  OC raised the poverty line where people can qualify for Medicaid and gave states huge, but temporary, subsidies to expand Medicaid.  These people are not on OC.

OC is not just a mechanism for providing health insurance.  It is a massive government oversight and regulation program of health care that micromanages everything I do in the office.  The result is a massive increase in overhead costs for me to comply with the silly rules, while at the same time I have seen a drop in patient numbers.  The net effect is a 33% drop in income for me.  Many doctors have had to close their practices or have retired early (like Doctor Sorenson whom I work with).  I spend much more of my time with patients typing on a computer and entering data rather than actually doing anything to help a patient.  A recent AMA study indicated doctors spend 2 hours on the computer for every 1 hour spent in patient care.  In addition to bankrupting physicians, forcing them into retirement, and causing record levels of burnout, it is harming patients.  Fewer patients can see me per day when they are sick because I am wasting twice as much time per patient doing silly busy work.

Q:  Do you think this plan should be eliminated entirely or reconstructed in a fresh way?

  A:  OC cannot be fixed.  It needs to be eliminated completely.  The government needs to get out of my exam rooms.  Acceptable solutions that might help include selling insurance across state lines (increasing competition eg. look at car insurance ads on TV), tort reform (would eliminate a lot of costly and unnecessary care), and government reform.  The reason we have unaffordable health care is because of our government’s half-hearted attempts at making things better over past 50 yrs.  Each time they make well-intentioned reforms they end up causing more problems than good.  A simple solution would be to adopt a program similar to that used by almost every other country.  A program like this offers a single government run program for the poor, individuals can buy in if they want. If they don’t want this, they can buy private insurance.  This is how France, Germany, New Zealand and several other countries operate.  Our current government offers numerous  programs that don’t really work: Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare advantage, OC, Champas, Tricare, Veterans health, Indian health, and public health.  All these programs each have their own bloated, inefficient bureaucracies, costly budgets, and confusing rules and regulations.  Eliminating all of this and replacing with a single system would be a move in the right direction.