YOUR AD HERE »

Jack Gutschenritter: Obamacare blocks insurance profiteers

As I read the opinions and related comments about Obamacare, I cannot help but want to shake some people awake. The public “clarity of thought” needs to improve on this subject.

I have sat on management boards where for several years consecutively we were faced with outrageous health care insurance premium increases … like 25 percent per year. This was just a few years ago. It was ridiculous.

It is not a coincidence that the biggest, fanciest buildings being built/occupied were owned by these same insurance companies. These companies are mentioned in newspaper articles for being the greatest places to work because they offered free restaurant-quality meals at lunch to all employees, beautiful workout facilities for employees, a whole string of perks most businesses can’t even think of offering and executive salaries that were outrageous.



The situation was simply mega-profit taking, and we the public were being held hostage. This is why the government had to step in for the public interest.

Obamacare fixes the profiteering, and the insurance industry hates it. They despise it. They throw money at politicians’ re-election campaigns to stop it. They hire lobbyists to disable it. The lobbyists hire shills to rabble-rouse and get susceptible people fired up to fight against their own best interest.



The shills put labels on it of “Big Government,” “Another Government Program” and “Public Handouts.” Certain people of susceptibility in our society buy this rhetoric, get angry and speak out against Obamacare, just as the shills designed their actions to do. The health insurance companies get their money’s worth out of their lobbyists when private individuals start pressuring for essentially what the insurance companies want and previously had (huge profits). This is the tried and true methodology used since Karl Rove and the Koch brothers made it a popular strategy.

GOP governors are also doing their best to make Obamacare fail for political reasons. While all states were encouraged to set up insurance exchanges, many GOP states chose not to. This greatly impedes private individuals from benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. This is sheer political motivation at play, at the expense of citizenry. And many people living in those states don’t even understand what their governors did to them.

Certain insurance companies have sent cancellation notices to policy holders. The motive again is to sabotage Obamacare. My insurance company has not done this, and I am free to choose insurance coverage of my choice. It is hugely important that existing conditions are no longer legally allowed for consideration when buying insurance, past claims cannot impact future premiums, and children younger than age 26 can be covered on their parent’s plan (it is not free, as some erroneously say).

This is not a government-run insurance program as some would have you think. It is a government-facilitated program limiting private profit taking, to allow affordable access to private health care insurance.

I urge my friends to see what is really going on here and not to buy the line of those that would love to get back to making huge profits in health care. Just to be clear … it is not our hospitals and caregivers that are the villains here. It is the insurance industry and those groups and political parties that choose to align themselves with them.

Jack Gutschenritter

Steamboat Springs


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Steamboat and Routt County make the Steamboat Pilot & Today’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.