re: The cost of Obamacare... supporters of it.. please feel free to chime in

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Here is my real life example: the hospital “bills” $12,000.00 for a minor procedure on a woman with a gynecologic condition. The woman gasps at the bill when she open the envelope, and then concludes “Thank goodness I have health insurance; everyone needs health insurance.” In reality, the intentionally hard-to-decipher bill cloaks the billing game/tax scam. While the hospital shows the patient the $12,000.00 bill, the hospital has actually agreed to accept far less from the insurance company; this is called an allowable, which in this case was $5000.00. By billing $12K but accepting $5K from the insurance company, the hospital recognizes a $7K phantom loss, which it reports on its tax return, thus maintaining a “non-profit”, tax-exempt status. The individual patient, now with a huge $5000.00 deductible because of Obamacare, must write a check to the hospital for the entire $5000.00, on top of her monthly $250.00 premiums ($3000.00 annually). The patient has come out of pocket $8000.00 with Obamacare style insurance. In stark contrast, if the patient was uninsured, she could have negotiated a direct fee with the hospital for $1200.00.

So, follow the money. The hospital got $5000.00 from the patient plus a $7000.00 tax write-off in return for less than $1200.00 of services/supplies. The insurance company got $3000.00 in premiums from the patient and paid $0 to the hospital, while the patient paid all of the $5000.00 allowable because of the high Obamacare-induced deductible. The patient ended up paying $8000.00 ($5000.00 deductible plus $3000.00 in premiums) for the privilege of paying more than if she had no insurance (the $5000.00 insured negotiated allowable v. the $1200.00 uninsured cash price) and gets no tax benefit for her health care expenses. Understand this: the individual spent $8000.00 with no tax break because she was mandated to buy Obamacare, and she would only have had to spend $1200.00 if she was uninsured. If business gets a tax break, most certainly should the individual as well, but with Obamacare the individual patient is in essence penalized. $6800 of this woman’s livelihood was essentially laundered to sustain a Government-Lobbyist-Insurance Company-Hospital-Drug Company Collusion Scam. The government, insurance company and hospital profit and get tax breaks- from our health, our bodies, and our lives- by manipulating us and scaring us. This is just wrong.

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