What are the facts about Obamacare?

Obamacare.

Actually the Democrats in Congress officially named it the Affordable Care Act.

I ask affordable for who?

The lead paragraph in a story Monday on Bloomberg.com read as follows:

“U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius criticized Republican state leaders warning of big premium increases due to the Affordable Care Act, saying today that their numbers are ‘just factually incorrect.’”

In the three years since this legislation became law, my health-care premiums increased as follows: Year 1 they went up 8 percent. Year 2 they went up by almost 13 percent. This year they increased by almost 20 percent.

Those are facts, Secretary Sebelius.

Here are some other numbers of interest.

According to their published financial statements, Ascension Health (a not-for-profit Catholic health-care system — which means they pay no taxes) reported making a profit from “operations” in 2012 of $934 MILLION! That’s an increase of 121 percent compared to 2011 when they reported a profit of only $422 million from operations.

Assets at year end 2012 were $23.8 billion, up by $4.2 billion from $19.6 billion in 2011.

They are a member of the Catholic Health Association.

That organization supported the passage of the Affordable Care Act over the objections of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The head of that organization Sister Carol Keehan attended the signing ceremony and was actually given one of the pens that President Obama used to sign the bill as a token of thanks for her support.

Ascension Health and other members of her association kept their not-for-profit status in spite of collectively making billions of dollars a year in profits.

One of the first special-interest groups to rush into the White House when the Affordable Care Act was being written was the trade association for the big pharmaceutical companies who had been repeatedly and unmercifully targeted by the Democrats for years for making what they described as “obscene profits.”

Remember when Democrats encouraged people to buy their prescription drugs from Canada because they were cheaper.

The most transparent administration in history has never provided details of what went on in that meeting — but here is what we do know.

Afterwards the pharmaceutical companies went out and spent almost $100 million in advertising in support of that legislation, running most of that money through Obama’s most trusted adviser David Axelrod’s old advertising firm, where his son worked.

Have you ever heard a Democrat since encouraging Americans to buy their subscription drugs from Canada? Or rail against the “obscene profits” being made by pharmaceutical companies?  

Latest published yearend report from Pfizer — one of the bigger pharmaceutical companies shows that for their fiscal year 2012 that they reported an income of just over 14.6 BILLION DOLLARS.

Secretary Sebelius — those are facts.

Novak is a resident of Polebridge.