As the one-year anniversary of Obamacare's implementation approaches, it is receiving failing grades from both media and medical practitioners.
The website Healthcare.gov opened for business on October 1, 2013, but hardly anyone was able to log on. Then there were privacy issues.
But months later, the administration was claiming 8.1 million new signups — more than it had initially predicted.
Still, the
New York Post gave Obamacare an overall "F" one year in, even though it admitted it has yet to become the disaster Republicans warned of.
About 800,000 of those 8.1 million signups either never paid their premiums or dropped their coverage. But the government never asked how many who signed up through online exchanges actually had previously been uninsured and how many were simply changing plans. And 41 million Americans remain uninsured.
Also, 6 million Americans lost their old insurance plans because of Obamacare as their old plans didn't meet Obamacare guidelines. A study by the National Center for Public Policy Research found that the average Obamacare policy was worse than the one it replaced, the Post reports. Adding to the trouble, many employer-based plans, which had received a temporary reprieve from the rules, may have to be changed starting in 2015.
Obama claimed while campaigning that his plan would save the average family $2,500 a year in premiums. Republicans predicted premiums would skyrocket. They haven't, but there still haven't been savings for most people.
The Congressional Budget Office has stopped trying to score the cost of Obamacare, the Post reports, mainly because the administration keeps making changes to law. The current best guess on cost is $2.63 trillion over 10 years. New taxes will cover $1.38 trillion of that, and additional debt will cover $1.25 trillion.
Employers also are cutting jobs or moving to more part-timers, according to surveys of banks across the country. And many businesses are raising prices to make up for added Obamacare costs.
In addition to the Post's report card, a recent survey by the
Physician's Foundation reported that almost half of those surveyed, 46 percent, gave the Affordable Care Act a "D" or "F." Only about 25 percent gave it an "A" or "B."
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