When Mayor Richard Daley decided to end the several decade’s rule by his family over the city of Chicago, it finished a legacy that saw the city re-make itself in the wake of post-World War II, and go through the changes that came from the tumultuous Civil Rights Era of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
But over the past decade when Chicago became home to the Obama machine under his former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, the municipality has erupted in a combination of economic, fiscal, and criminal chaos. And on July 12 when Illinois became the latest state to have their primary medical co-op shut down its doors thanks to Obamacare, it solidified the legacy for the President and Chicago son of a landscape where failed pensions, crime, education, and fiscal destruction are the aftermath of Obama’s eight year tenure in the Oval Office.
The Illinois Insurance Department moved Tuesday to shut down Land of Lincoln because of its unstable financial health, leaving about 49,000 policyholders in a lurch. They will lose coverage in the coming months, but neither regulators nor the company have said exactly when.
Policyholders will be able to buy insurance from a different carrier to cover them for the rest of 2016, according to the state Insurance Department. But switching plans is going to cost them.
The co-pays and deductibles enrollees have been paying since January will not transfer to new plans. A new plan will reset deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums paid by consumers. - Chicago Tribune
Illinois now joins Oregon, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Nevada in having state run healthcare exchanges go bankrupt and have to shut down, and the costs to consumers have risen so high since the Affordable Care Act was implemented that the President is now even talking about scrapping it and calling for a government run single payer system.
President Obama is calling on Congress to add a “public option” to ObamaCare to improve his signature health law.
The pitch from Obama comes after he abandoned pursuit of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers during the long legislative battle over healthcare because of opposition from some Democrats in Congress.
“Public programs like Medicare often deliver care more cost-effectively by curtailing administrative overhead and securing better prices from providers,” Obama writes in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“The public plan did not make it into the final legislation. Now, based on experience with the ACA, I think Congress should revisit a public plan to compete alongside private insurers in areas of the country where competition is limited,” writes the president.
The new embrace from the president also comes amid what appears to be a concerted push by the Democratic Party to rally around the public option. - The Hill
Despite Obama’s call for gun control, his own hometown remains one of the most dangerous places in the U.S. for gun violence, even as they have their own laws which restrict individual ownership of firearms. And this is coupled with a deficit of tens of billions of dollars for public and private pensions, and an education system that has seen dozens of schools shut down for lack of funds.
When the history books are written, only the ideological and mentally ill archivers will pretend that the eight years of Barack Obama’s tenure were successful, or even fruitful. But looking at the complete picture of Obama’s legacy in the Oval Office, no President has done worse for America, or the city he hailed from, and the consequences of his actions will resonate for decades to come.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com,Roguemoney.net, and To the Death Media, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Wednesday afternoons giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.