24 Mar 2014 On ObamaCare’s 4th Anniversary, It’s Clear There Are More Losers than Winners

Under ObamaCare, Patients, Insurance Consumers, Low-Income Workers, Physicians, Employees, and Medical Device Manufacturers Have Suffered

“To keep track of the losers, you need a scorecard. To keep track of the winners, you need a search party,” says Health Expert David Hogberg

Washington, D.C. – “This is an unhappy 4th anniversary for ObamaCare,” says David Hogberg, Ph.D., senior fellow for health care policy at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“To keep track of the losers under ObamaCare, you need a scorecard. To keep track of the winners, you need a search party,” he notes in a new blog post for the National Center, “ObamaCare’s 4th Anniversary: Winners and Losers and Losers and Losers and…“

“The most obvious losers are people who lost their insurance despite the president’s promise that if you like your plan you can keep your plan,” said Dr. Hogberg “Many of them have had to go on the exchange where they’ve often found higher premiums, higher out-of-pocket costs, and ‘skinny networks’ of physicians and hospitals.”

Some of those have suffered even worse, as they have had treatment delayed or incurred large medical bills because of glitches on the ObamaCare exchanges.

Other losers include physicians who can no longer start their own hospitals, religious freedom, employees who will likely see their work hours reduced, low-income workers who have incentives to stay low-income workers, and the medical device industry, which faces a 2.5 percent tax on gross sales.

“Patients may be the ones who suffer the most as they will have less access to high-quality physician-owned hospitals or less access to new medical devices,” said Dr. Hogberg.

“The winners, like those with pre-existing conditions who purchased insurance on the exchange, have been few and far between,” says Hogberg.

Dr. Hogberg also has an new article published today on the Federalist, “The ‘No Obamacare Horror Stories’ Fairy Tale: For Many, Suffering Under ObamaCare is All Too Real.”

Other health care publications by Dr. Hogberg are available here, and his March 11 testimony at the U.S. Senate on the problems with government-run health care systems can be viewed here.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.

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