OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: 16.4M HAVE GAINED HEALTH INSURANCE

[OnyxCollie]

9. Consumers getting 'skinned' by health insurers -Wendell Potter

Consumers getting 'skinned' by health insurers -Wendell Potter

"Our marketing folks came up with an almost Orwellian name for this cost shifting —consumer driven health care. In retrospect, it was a brilliant strategy, and one that got virtually no pushback from lawmakers or regulators. Little by little, year after year — and long before many people outside of Illinois had ever heard of Barack Obama — Americans began putting more of their skin in the health care game. They had no choice.

The strategy has been so successful that insurers are back in Wall Street’s good graces. Their profits keep breaking records, and so does the price of their stock.

But what’s good for them has been anything but good for a growing number of Americans. Out-of-pocket expenses have gotten so high that nearly half of American families don’t have enough money in the bank to pay their deductibles if they get really sick.

That was one of the findings of last week’s report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which decided to look into how the skin-in-the-game strategy is affecting family budgets. KFF’s researchers found that 49 percent of American households wouldn’t have enough liquid assets to meet what their out-of-pocket obligations would be if they were in a plan with a $2,500 individual deductible and $5,000 family deductible."

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/16/16905/consumers-getting-skinned-health-insurers

Thanks, Obama.