FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2015
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion / Local
— Guest Opinion —
Inflatable colon raises colon
cancer awareness at Marvin’s
Paying dearly
for “affordable”
health care
By Sen. Doug Whitsett
We are now more than six years into
the presidency of Barack Obama. The
products of his signature redistribution-of-
wealth programs are becoming all too ap-
parent, with devastating consequences for
states like Oregon that rushed to be among
the first in the nation to implement them.
President Obama promoted the 2010 fed-
eral Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act to the public as a critically needed
program to provide health care insurance
to the poor. He claimed that its execution
would reduce the cost of delivering medi-
cal care; thereby, making it affordable for
every American.
So how is that working?
Obama said last week that “the law
is working better than we expected and
actually ended up costing less than people
expected.” Incredibly, he made those
comments in the state of Tennessee, where
three of the largest insurers are request-
ing insurance premium increases next
year. Those increases will be 36.3 percent
for BlueCross BlueShield, 18 percent
for United Healthcare and 11 percent for
Cigna Humana. Community Health Alli-
ance Mutual is requesting a 32.8 percent
increase for one line of insurance and
Time Insurance Company is requesting a
46.9 percent increase for another.
This recent Associated Press article
discusses the impacts of the Medicaid
expansion included in the Affordable Care
Act on the future budgets of several states.
Kentucky, for example, revised its Med-
icaid cost estimate from $33 million to $74
million for the 2017 fiscal year. That cost
could climb to as high as $363 million by
2021.This more than ten-fold cost increase
appears to be anything but affordable for
anyone.
The article also states, that starting in
2017, Oregon will have spent the nearly
$2 billion it received in federal aid to serve
as an Obamacare pilot program. It quotes
the Senate co-chair of the budget-writing
Ways and Means Committee as stating that
Oregon’s share of the Medicaid budget
may cost an additional $500 million be-
tween 2017 and 2019.
That sharp cost increase has two primary
causes. According to Oregon Health Au-
thority officials, Medicaid enrollment has
already increased by about 200,000 more
than was predicted in the fall of 2014. Fur-
ther, the federal government only agreed
to cover the costs of the Medicaid expan-
sion until 2017. The State’s share of the
Medicaid budget is likely to rise from 6.2
to 10 percent by the year 2020. Decreasing
the federal contribution to 90 percent will
increase the Oregon contribution share by
nearly two-thirds.
Those escalating costs to Oregon taxpay-
ers were covered in another article.
Oregon officials originally estimated that
222,700 people would sign up for cover-
age as part of the Medicaid expansion.
The official figure is now estimated to be
386,000. Even that figure continues to
escalate and may be based on the flawed
2014 estimate.
A 2013 report assumed that the expan-
sion would cost the state $217 million in
2017-19, substantially less than the $369
million it is now projected to cost. That
change in assumptions represents a 70 per-
cent cost increase. The Senate Co-chair’s
estimate represents a potential 130 percent
cost increase.
Obamacare’s prices continue to surge
elsewhere across the country. This year,
health insurance premiums averaged
double-digit increases. Projected cost esca-
lation is even higher for next year. Nearly
every state has multiple insurance plans
that are requesting rate increases of 10
percent of more, according to information
posted on www.healthcare.gov.
For instance, premiums for Health
Management Organizations (HMOs) are
predicted to be 19 percent more expen-
sive. The premiums for Exclusive Pro-
vider Plans are expected to increase by 20
percent. The average premium in 2016, for
all health insurance plans, is estimated to
skyrocket by 14 percent!
At least part of the enormous escala-
tion in premium costs is caused by the
anticipated termination of two Obamacare
tax subsidies provided to health insur-
ance companies. Currently, taxpayers are
bearing the cost of “risk corridors” for
patients who spend more on health care
than providers predicted. Taxpayers are
also heavily subsidizing the most costly
patients through a “reinsurance” program.
According to the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, these two subsidies ar-
Submitted Photo
Senator Doug Whitsett represents
Oregon’s senate district 28.
tificially lowered Obamacare health insur-
ance premiums between 10 and 15 percent
last year. Consumers will be responsible
for the full premiums when these two sub-
sidy programs end at the end of 2016.
People who are not covered through a
job, a spouse or another government-fund-
ed program are eligible to purchase insur-
ance through an Obamacare exchange.
About three-fourths of those who are
eligible for the full income tax subsidy that
provides essentially free health care insur-
ance have enrolled in the program. How-
ever, among those who are not eligible for
fully tax-subsidized insurance premiums,
the percentage of individuals and families
participating nosedives.
Sign-up for Obamacare exchanges falls
to only 41 percent among those whose
income is between 151 and 200 percent
of the federal poverty line. Participation
continues to plummet to 30 percent as
earnings increase between 201 and 250
percent of the poverty level, to 20 percent
for those earning between 251 and 300
percent of the poverty level, and to 16
percent for those earning more than 301
percent of the federal poverty level.
People are choosing to absorb the sig-
nificant tax penalties for not purchasing
insurance, rather than to pay the exorbitant
cost of insurance through the Obamacare
exchanges. In fact, according to the federal
Health and Human Services agency, only
about one-third of the eligible people are
currently participating.
In short, those who allegedly cannot
afford health insurance are receiving free
coverage, while most of the rest are going
without insurance, because they cannot
afford the premiums.
Moreover, the Obamacare model is
based on an incorrect assumption of
monumental proportions. It assumes that
younger people will pay more for health
insurance premiums in order to subsidize
older people who generally use more
medical care. But the fastest growing seg-
ment of Obamacare enrollees is the lower-
income younger generation. Instead of
paying in an excess of funding, that cohort
is taking money out of the system by ac-
cessing essentially free medical insurance.
The scheme is fiscally unsustainable.
Obama took office just as the deep
economic recession was officially ending.
According to the Congressional Budget
Office, since that time our nation is expe-
riencing the slowest economic recovery
in more than a century. In my opinion,
Obama’s vigorous anti-capitalism and
redistribution of wealth polices have been
a major factor in curtailing the recovery in
the United States.
In contrast, during the same period, the
global spread of free-market capitalism
has lifted tens of millions of families out
of poverty in other nations.
Obamacare is at the heart of his anti-
capitalism agenda. It is designed to na-
tionalize more than 40 percent of our free
market economy by ultimately creating a
single-pay medical care system funded by
American taxpayers. The sad truth is, his
agenda is working.
Its provisions are forcing the rapid
consolidation of health care insurers and
providers into mega-corporations willing
and able to bend to federal decrees. Subse-
quent steps will include folding the entire
health insurance sector under the control
of federal agencies, as he has already ac-
complished with student loans and with
home mortgages through Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac.
The final step will be to complete the
unionization of the entire medical care
provider workforce. In the end, the federal
government will have total control of the
40 percent of our economy that is cur-
rently providing health care, as well as
employing that entire workforce as public
employees who are required to belong to
public employee unions.
To me, the message is clear!
A free society owes every citizen the
chance to work, to compete, to innovate
and the opportunity to succeed. The
Obama administration’s redistribution
of wealth earned by others, ultimately,
benefits no one.
Please remember, if we do not stand up
for rural Oregon no one will.
Submitted Photo.
Something one doesn’t see everyday: Scott Maliwauki, Justin Scott, Shasta
Scott, Chanc Carpenter, and Wendy Johnson take a walk inside the big inflat-
able colon.
St. Luke’s Hospital’s
Mt. States Tumor Institute
and the Marvin Wood
Products Shape-up Com-
mittee brought something
bigger than life to Marvin’s
on July 1st—an inflatable
colon!
Now this might sound
like something full of hot
air, but the truth is only
59 percent of the Oregon
residents who should be
screened actually are.
Marvin’s Shape-up Com-
mittee, a team of five
employees, gives monthly
presentations to promote
and improve health aware-
ness with employees.
Dawn Callaham, MSTI
Community Cancer Educa-
tion Coordinator and Lori
Steele, Nurse Navigator
gave a short presenta-
tion on colorectal cancer,
followed by an employee
walk through the inflatable
colon.
Marvin employees saw
how normal colon tissue
progresses to polyps and
becomes advanced colon
cancer which could be pre-
vented through detection
during a colonoscopy and a
simple procedure.
At Marvin Wood Prod-
ucts employees receive
a reduction in medical
insurance rates if they
participate in advanced
screenings including being
screened for colon cancer
when they turn 50 years
of age.
There are other op-
tions for screening, but a
colonoscopy is, in reality
one of the best tools avail-
able to detect cancer in the
colon.
Colon cancers can begin
as noncancerous polyps
in the lining of the large
intestine. Detecting polyps
and removing them pre-
vents them from becoming
malignant tumors.
— Letters to the Editor —
Never voting for Walden again
running staff thru his La Grande office
that has no clue as to what’s going on,
and we keep having to start from scratch
because of Greg’s poor leadership.
The man is so spineless, so useless,
that he can’t even hold one simple agency
like the US Forest Service accountable,
or find out what they are planning for the
people of Eastern Oregon’s access to their
mountains. It’s either that, or he’s actually
helping them through assisting in the stall-
ing or releasing the information.
I am done! And I hope you will be, too.
John George
Bates
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To the Editor:
I personally will never vote for Greg
Walden again, ever! He refuse to act and
keeps moving staff in and out of his La
Grande office that will not act upon the
Forest Service to enact change on the
planning process that targets to restrict
and remove our motorized access from
our mountains.
If you vote for the man you are openly
supporting your restriction and closure
from the mountains and I would hope
you would share this with everyone from
Joseph to Medford.
I’ve made this public for a reason, share
it wide and share it far. The man keeps
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Copyright © 2014
YOUR ELECTED
OFFICIALS
President Barack Obama
202.456.1414
202.456.2461 fax
Whitehouse.gov/contact
US Sen. Jeff Merkley
503.326.3386
503.326.2900 fax
Merkley.Senate.gov
US Sen. Ron Wyden
541.962.7691
Wyden.Senate.gov
US Rep. Greg Walden
541.624.2400
541.624.2402 fax
Walden.House.gov
Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown
503.378.3111
Governor.Oregon.gov
State Rep. Cliff Bentz
503.986.1460
State Sen. Ted Ferrioli
541.490.6528
Baker County
Commissioners Bill Harvey;
Mark Bennett; Tim Kerns
541.523.8200
541.523.8201