About 30 people signed two petitions opposing the Affordable Health Care act after a luncheon on the subject Nov. 10 at Ninepipes Lodge.

CPA Joe Balyeat, who served as Chairman of Montana’s Senate committee overseeing insurance mandates believes sweeping legislation has failed.

One of the petitions urges congress to repeal Obamacare, and the other urges Gov. Bullock and the state Legislature not to expand Medicaid.

The Lake County Republican Women sponsored the luncheon.

Since 1990, culminating with Obamacare, progressives destroyed health insurance by rearranging who pays for it, Balyeat said.

Americans with health insurance paid fixed, smaller payments to protect themselves from catastrophic health events, he said.

Now, Obamacare spreads a few people’s high medical costs onto everyone else’s back.

Balyeat said the new legislation does that three ways:     

1. No pre-existing condition exclusions – Even people waiting till after they’re sick to buy insurance can’t be refused.

2. Community rating – With limited exceptions, unhealthy people can’t be charged more than healthy people.

3. All policies must cover all issues; i.e., a 60-year-old man’s policy must cover pregnancy, nuns’ policies must cover abortion, and nobody can choose which illnesses to cover.

    “This turns insurance’s mathematical sense into nonsense,” he said. “No one who understands financial math will buy insurance costing twice what the actuarial equation dictates, except the chronically sick. Because the healthy won’t voluntarily buy it.”

So, too many healthy people will opt to pay the penalty rather than take on higher monthly bills with outrageous deductibles, he said. And other will use one of the 21 exemptions to avoid the penalties.

Vice President Dorothy Ashcraft, who is past president, is concerned that the middle class is funding 75 percent of the costs for the act.

“There was so much information. It didn’t feel partisan and everything was factual,” she said. “It was very informative.”

She said President Obama believed younger people would sign up but that didn’t happen.

Many stayed after the formal talk to ask questions, she said.