The Obamacare Debacle – Part II

In last week’s post, I shared the letter I received from my health insurance company telling me that – despite what our President promised – I could not keep my perfectly-good healthcare plan, even though my beautiful wife Michele and I have liked it ever since we first bought it years ago.

I don’t know if President Obama read my post and the dozens of comments in response to it from you, my loyal readers, but sure enough the very next day he announced his promise to find a way for me and millions of other lied-to Americans to be able to keep our perfectly-good plans that we like.

That’s why we received this email from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois on Sunday:

President Obama announced yesterday that some individual policy members and small groups (2-50) may be allowed to remain with their current 2013 policy for an additional year. We are reviewing yesterday’s announcement and will determine next steps as we keep our members informed of their options both on and off the exchange. This may change the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that all non-grandfathered health plans must be compliant with certain benefit changes in 2014.

We will continue to work with federal and state agencies on how this approach will be implemented and will comply with any new requirements. Our primary goal remains maintaining access to quality, affordable health care for our members. We will continue to support solutions that ensure there are no disruptions in health insurance for our existing members. We will soon reach out to members who may have new options as a result of this announcement.

Do I believe that President Obama will follow through on this latest “announcement” of his? Of course not – last time I checked, he’s still a politician.

But it would be nice not to have to go through the whole “choosing a healthcare plan” process all over again, after years of just being happy with our current healthcare plan and letting it automatically renew.

So I’ll (foolishly?) keep my fingers crossed…

Meanwhile, I learned several lessons from the comments in response to last week’s post, including…

• Many of my friends have created, promoted and executed multi-million dollar online launches. All of them did it with a miniscule amount of time, money and media support – compared to the recent embarrassing Obamacare launch.

Let’s put it this way…

If a business had three-and-a-half years to put together an online launch, with a $500 million website programming budget and support from the country’s most powerful media outlets and celebrities, AND prospects were actually threatened with fines and IRS enforcement if they didn’t buy its product, could you even imagine in your worst nightmares that (a) the business would actually go through with the launch without extensive testing and security assurances, and (b) there would be more of Snow White’s dwarfs than sales of their product on the first day of the launch?

As Stuart Patterson said in his comment: “I really think Our Government Has No Business In Business other than to protect our freedom to conduct business as entrepreneurs and citizens.”

• Bernard Mixon commented: “America has lied and continues to lie to me all my life.”

Lately, all kinds of people in politics and the media have publicly pronounced that they knew all along that Americans wouldn’t be able to keep our perfectly-good healthcare plans if we liked them.

Really? So why didn’t any of these blowhards make a big stink about this fact while our scandal-ridden leader spent the past three-plus years making what these people now claim they knew was a patently false statement?

If you want a refresher – or just 2:53 of comic relief – here’s a compilation video…

• As Ace Luciano and Sydney Barrows pointed out: If any salesperson or business owner treated its clients the way our federal government is treating us – with lies, broken promises, bait-and-switch tactics, extortion, a “we-know-what-you-need-better-than-you-do” attitude and a completely unsecure, hacker’s-paradise malfunctioning website on top of everything – we would either be fired or out of business in a heartbeat.

And yet our too-big-to-succeed federal government keeps growing and growing, bumbling and stumbling its way through various shameful and botched attempts to perform basic business functions, while its “salesmen” continue to violate even the most minimal standards of ethics and decency.

• Bryan “The Financial Coach” Binkholder thought I was “wayyyyyy too smart” to believe Obama’s continual lies that I could keep my perfectly-good healthcare plan just because I liked it.

As I wrote in my reply to his comment: “You’ve made me realize that I need to pay more attention to financial matters…. Here’s the important problem this has revealed: Entrepreneurs are often visionaries who are not meant to deal with details, so we MUST engage expert advisors to help us navigate important financial issues.”

The Obamacare Disaster is no laughing matter, and this is no time to force-feed our nation a massive social welfare program that will cause tremendous damage to an already weak and frail economy. Millions of good people are already being harmed – with many more still to come – by this “but-it’s-the-right-thing-to-do” disastrous program.

On Sunday, a story surfaced that a woman that our President recently celebrated as a shining example of someone who was helped by his signature program actually turned out to be one of its many victims. That is truly pathetic and disgraceful for our President in particular and our government as a whole.

Here’s the bottom-line…

The main lessons in all of this are:

1. Entrepreneurs, business owners and sales professionals should feel proud and celebrate the fact that we take responsibility for our own successes and failures in life, and don’t depend on the government or anyone else to provide for us or determine our future.
2. Honesty and integrity are the key to long-term business success. On this, the day after the 150th anniversary of Abe Lincoln’s iconic Gettysburg Address, we remember his famous quote, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” It would be nice if modern politicians remembered this, too.

Always resist the temptation to over-promise and/or make false statements – no matter how badly you want to make a sale of a product or service.

3. Always test technology, and don’t be afraid to postpone any sales event if you aren’t ready.
4. This entire Obamacare disaster and the resulting lack of trust in our federal government will undoubtedly have a continuing stifling effect on our overall economy. This means that it is more important than ever for all business owners, entrepreneurs and sales professionals to implement effective marketing and business strategies to avoid further frustration and disappointment due to what will now be an even longer and slower economic recovery for our nation.
5. The main function of an entrepreneur is to create profit, so make sure to follow the advice of a financial expert to make sure you keep more of what you make FOR yourself and your family, and AWAY from the Big Government and Big Banks.

So… What business lessons do YOU get out of The Obamacare Debacle?