I wanted to vomit yesterday. We're back to this tired game again. The Obamacare messaging wars will never end, and they will never get old. It's another part of the left's sustained gaslighting campaign. Biden touted the number of Americans who now have insurance through Obamacare. This was never the original intention of Obamacare—it was all marketed as legislation that would cut costs, some $2 trillion over a decade. That didn't happen.
Remember when Obama said, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it"? That was PolitiFact's 2013 Lie of the Year. What about affordability? Biden spoke at length about this flanked by Obama and Kamala Harris on the stage. Not true.
Guy has written at length for years about how this bill is not affordable to the working and middle classes. The premiums are immense and unsustainable. As Trump noted, you'd have to get hit by a Komatsu tractor to receive the benefits of this law. Even CNN admitted that Obamacare is not within reach for the middle class:
For the 85% of enrollees with lower incomes, federal subsidies make the premiums somewhat more affordable. Those even closer to the poverty line can get additional subsidies that reduce the deductibles, which can run into the thousands of dollars.
But for many middle class Americans -- a single person earning more than $47,520 or a family of four with an income of $97,200 -- the pricey premiums and deductibles mean health care coverage remains out of reach.
"The middle class are getting squeezed," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "They aren't getting subsidies and these deductibles are hard to afford."
This schism is turning Obamacare into another government benefit program for lower- and moderate-income Americans. The typical enrollee has an income of only 165% of the federal poverty level, or $40,000 for a family of four.
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Take Irene Solesky of Towson, Maryland. A mortgage underwriter, Solesky and her husband earn too much to receive a subsidy. So next year, they will have to pay $1,351 a month for a CareFirst Bronze plan for themselves and their two sons. On top of that, they face a $13,100 family deductible.
"It's a catastrophic policy as far as I'm concerned," said Solesky, 55, noting her Obamacare policy costs twice as much as her mortgage. "Medical insurance was meant to keep medical expenses from driving you in financial ruin, not for the medical insurance to drive you in financial ruin."
Before the Obamacare exchanges opened in 2014, Solesky had an individual insurance plan that cost her $215 a month to cover herself and her two sons. The deductible was $5,000. But the carrier wouldn't cover her husband because he had high blood pressure.
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Now, is this system supposed to be unsustainable so Democrats can make a case for single-payer? Many have made that argument. Democrats could come and say that we tried a "free market" approach. It didn't work, so now we must do single-payer healthcare, which is the Holy Grail of liberal domestic agenda items. Luckily, states that have attempted to enact a state-based single-payer system have been torpedoed by, you guessed it, the cost of the bills.
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