"Obamacare"

[star seed 7]

Brietbart died of a coke induced heart attack.  Family values.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

I mean, I'm not even sure why he's pissed anymore. First I heard arguments about how this is going to ruin the availability of doctors because they will just quit and more people will be insured. Now I'm hearing about how less people are going to be insured and doctors are still going to work, but they aren't going to accept the Obamacare patients, and he's still pissed. There's just no pleasing him.

Nah, I'm not pissed anymore. I was pissed back when it was rammed through on a strictly single party vote with legislative gimmicks, bribes, and lies. I was pissed when John Roberts switched his vote and upheld a law which compels every citizen to purchase a product simply for the privilege of breathing air. Now I just find it hilarious watching the epic failure that is Obamacare explode in the Libtards' faces.

Premiums are rising faster than ever due to guaranteed issue, more people are likely uninsured now than before this turd went into effect, I use "went into effect" loosely since Obama has to keep unilaterally delaying components of his own law, doctors are bailing on Obamacare policies because of the reimbursement rates, vastly more people have signed up for expanded Medicaid coverage than private policies, and those who do sign up for private policies are mostly enrolling in high deductible plans that are next to worthless. The list goes on and on, and the schadenfreude is certainly rich.

Not only is it funny, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Whereas before I was concerned about what Obamacare would do to our healthcare system, I'm now mostly optimistic that this may actually be a net positive. 2014 is shaping up to be a bloodbath for the Dems, and Obamacare will likely be so neutered as to become a nullity, if it isn't repealed outright.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the hypocrisy. Example: Obama couldn't use website to sign up for coverage. Turns out, not only will Obama not use the Obamacare coverage he signed up for symbolically, he didn't even use the website. Apparently, the website just isn't secure enough for his personal information!  Not to worry, it's perfectly safe for the rest of us, though.

[gatoveintisiete]

John Roberts leaving this to the electorate to decide may be a blessing in disquise.

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the hypocrisy. Example: Obama couldn't use website to sign up for coverage. Turns out, not only will Obama not use the Obamacare coverage he signed up for symbolically, he didn't even use the website. Apparently, the website just isn't secure enough for his personal information!  Not to worry, it's perfectly safe for the rest of us, though.

Yeah, pretty funny "Let them eat cake" moment.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

The Obama administration is trumpeting that 2.1 million "signed up" for Obamacare by the end of December. It's an abysmal number, considering we're now half-way through open enrollment and, more importantly, this was the deadline for coverage to begin January 1, but how bad is it really?

Well, for starters, the 2.1 million number is phony. The administration refuses to say how many of those 2.1 million people who have "signed up" have actually paid their first month's premium, and are thereby actually covered. According to insurers, something like 50% have not.

Ok, but let's be generous and say that, what, 1.5 million are now covered? Let's go with 1.5 million.

And then you have the roughly 5 million policies that were cancelled due to Obamacare. So now we're at minus 3.5 million.

And if that weren't bad enough, how many of that 1.5 million are actually people who didn't have insurance before? I mean, I'm assuming that a big chunk of that 1.5 million are the people who had their policies cancelled (which is why I'm surprised the number is so low). Again, the White House refuses to disclose this information.

So we've taxed and spent over a trillion dollars, cancelled coverage for millions, and raised premiums for those who had coverage they were perfectly happy with, all to cover what, 500,000 people so far? Less?

[puniraptor]

The Obama administration is trumpeting that 2.1 million "signed up" for Obamacare by the end of December. It's an abysmal number, considering we're now half-way through open enrollment and, more importantly, this was the deadline for coverage to begin January 1, but how bad is it really?

Well, for starters, the 2.1 million number is phony. The administration refuses to say how many of those 2.1 million people who have "signed up" have actually paid their first month's premium, and are thereby actually covered. According to insurers, something like 50% have not.

Ok, but let's be generous and say that, what, 1.5 million are now covered? Let's go with 1.5 million.

And then you have the roughly 5 million policies that were cancelled due to Obamacare. So now we're at minus 3.5 million.

And if that weren't bad enough, how many of that 1.5 million are actually people who didn't have insurance before? I mean, I'm assuming that a big chunk of that 1.5 million are the people who had their policies cancelled (which is why I'm surprised the number is so low). Again, the White House refuses to disclose this information.

So we've taxed and spent over a trillion dollars, cancelled coverage for millions, and raised premiums for those who had coverage they were perfectly happy with, all to cover what, 500,000 people so far? Less?

I will answer your questions in exchange for BSFS scoops

[Rage Against the McKee]

The Obama administration is trumpeting that 2.1 million "signed up" for Obamacare by the end of December. It's an abysmal number, considering we're now half-way through open enrollment and, more importantly, this was the deadline for coverage to begin January 1, but how bad is it really?

Well, for starters, the 2.1 million number is phony. The administration refuses to say how many of those 2.1 million people who have "signed up" have actually paid their first month's premium, and are thereby actually covered. According to insurers, something like 50% have not.

Ok, but let's be generous and say that, what, 1.5 million are now covered? Let's go with 1.5 million.

And then you have the roughly 5 million policies that were cancelled due to Obamacare. So now we're at minus 3.5 million.

And if that weren't bad enough, how many of that 1.5 million are actually people who didn't have insurance before? I mean, I'm assuming that a big chunk of that 1.5 million are the people who had their policies cancelled (which is why I'm surprised the number is so low). Again, the White House refuses to disclose this information.

So we've taxed and spent over a trillion dollars, cancelled coverage for millions, and raised premiums for those who had coverage they were perfectly happy with, all to cover what, 500,000 people so far? Less?

The flaw in your logic is that you are assuming the Obamacare exchanges are the only place to go to find insurance.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

The Obama administration is trumpeting that 2.1 million "signed up" for Obamacare by the end of December. It's an abysmal number, considering we're now half-way through open enrollment and, more importantly, this was the deadline for coverage to begin January 1, but how bad is it really?

Well, for starters, the 2.1 million number is phony. The administration refuses to say how many of those 2.1 million people who have "signed up" have actually paid their first month's premium, and are thereby actually covered. According to insurers, something like 50% have not.

Ok, but let's be generous and say that, what, 1.5 million are now covered? Let's go with 1.5 million.

And then you have the roughly 5 million policies that were cancelled due to Obamacare. So now we're at minus 3.5 million.

And if that weren't bad enough, how many of that 1.5 million are actually people who didn't have insurance before? I mean, I'm assuming that a big chunk of that 1.5 million are the people who had their policies cancelled (which is why I'm surprised the number is so low). Again, the White House refuses to disclose this information.

So we've taxed and spent over a trillion dollars, cancelled coverage for millions, and raised premiums for those who had coverage they were perfectly happy with, all to cover what, 500,000 people so far? Less?

The flaw in your logic is that you are assuming the Obamacare exchanges are the only place to go to find insurance.

Ah yes, I'm sure there are a huge number of people who are buying insurance for the very first time outside the exchanges, without a subsidy. Please get back to us when have a number on that. Make sure to exclude the unicorns.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

I will answer your questions in exchange for BSFS scoops

Sorry dude, I got nothing I haven't already shared. It's gonna be awesome when it happens, but sounds like they haven't raised enough money to make a public announcement yet.

[Rage Against the McKee]

The Obama administration is trumpeting that 2.1 million "signed up" for Obamacare by the end of December. It's an abysmal number, considering we're now half-way through open enrollment and, more importantly, this was the deadline for coverage to begin January 1, but how bad is it really?

Well, for starters, the 2.1 million number is phony. The administration refuses to say how many of those 2.1 million people who have "signed up" have actually paid their first month's premium, and are thereby actually covered. According to insurers, something like 50% have not.

Ok, but let's be generous and say that, what, 1.5 million are now covered? Let's go with 1.5 million.

And then you have the roughly 5 million policies that were cancelled due to Obamacare. So now we're at minus 3.5 million.

And if that weren't bad enough, how many of that 1.5 million are actually people who didn't have insurance before? I mean, I'm assuming that a big chunk of that 1.5 million are the people who had their policies cancelled (which is why I'm surprised the number is so low). Again, the White House refuses to disclose this information.

So we've taxed and spent over a trillion dollars, cancelled coverage for millions, and raised premiums for those who had coverage they were perfectly happy with, all to cover what, 500,000 people so far? Less?

The flaw in your logic is that you are assuming the Obamacare exchanges are the only place to go to find insurance.

Ah yes, I'm sure there are a huge number of people who are buying insurance for the very first time outside the exchanges, without a subsidy. Please get back to us when have a number on that. Make sure to exclude the unicorns.

I'm sure that there are also plenty of people who had their policy cancelled and just decided to purchase a different policy. I don't know the numbers. I'm sure they aren't as good as the president hoped they would be. I'm not going to sit down and try to do the math using enrollment numbers on the Obamacare website, though. That's just dumb.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Megan McArdle is asking the same questions. http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/01/03/3421247/big-questions-lurk-behind-obamacares.html

How many will pay? Jon Kingsdale, who oversaw the implementation of the Massachusetts exchange from 2006 to 2010, wrote in November that “Tracking billing and collections was a much bigger challenge than getting our Web site to work.” Some people will never pay their first month’s premium; others will stop paying quickly thereafter. We won’t really know how many gained insurance through the exchanges for a year or so.

How many of the people buying insurance on the exchanges already had insurance? To state the obvious, few people would have supported a radical overhaul of the individual insurance market if they had thought most of the people who bought insurance through the new exchanges would be folks who already had insurance. Perhaps we’d have done a Medicaid expansion, but not a redo of the private insurance market. We don’t know yet whether most of the 2 million enrollees were already insured, or represent uninsured people who got new insurance, and probably won’t for a while. Which brings me to the next thing we need to know:

How many people who lost insurance thanks to Obamacare mandates renewed policies outside of the exchanges, or obtained insurance elsewhere? Two million is a high number compared with the figures for October and November. But it is a low number compared with the number of people who lost their individual market policies because those policies weren’t in compliance. And we would have expected all those people – estimated to be somewhere in the range of 5 million – to buy new policies by the end of December. So did they get insurance directly through their insurer, or perhaps go on a spouse’s employer policy? Or did they drop insurance entirely?

One of the hurdles to figuring this stuff out is that I don't think the government collects this information. If I were skeptical, I might suspect that government doesn't want to know this information.

[Emo EMAW]

Megan McArdle is asking the same questions. http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/01/03/3421247/big-questions-lurk-behind-obamacares.html

How many will pay? Jon Kingsdale, who oversaw the implementation of the Massachusetts exchange from 2006 to 2010, wrote in November that “Tracking billing and collections was a much bigger challenge than getting our Web site to work.” Some people will never pay their first month’s premium; others will stop paying quickly thereafter. We won’t really know how many gained insurance through the exchanges for a year or so.

How many of the people buying insurance on the exchanges already had insurance? To state the obvious, few people would have supported a radical overhaul of the individual insurance market if they had thought most of the people who bought insurance through the new exchanges would be folks who already had insurance. Perhaps we’d have done a Medicaid expansion, but not a redo of the private insurance market. We don’t know yet whether most of the 2 million enrollees were already insured, or represent uninsured people who got new insurance, and probably won’t for a while. Which brings me to the next thing we need to know:

How many people who lost insurance thanks to Obamacare mandates renewed policies outside of the exchanges, or obtained insurance elsewhere? Two million is a high number compared with the figures for October and November. But it is a low number compared with the number of people who lost their individual market policies because those policies weren’t in compliance. And we would have expected all those people – estimated to be somewhere in the range of 5 million – to buy new policies by the end of December. So did they get insurance directly through their insurer, or perhaps go on a spouse’s employer policy? Or did they drop insurance entirely?

One of the hurdles to figuring this stuff out is that I don't think the government collects this information. If I were skeptical, I might suspect that government doesn't want to know this information.

Not to be argumentative, but the IRS does collect/report the amount of money the employer contributed to employee health care.  I'm sure they could use that data to answer some of these questions.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Megan McArdle is asking the same questions. http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/01/03/3421247/big-questions-lurk-behind-obamacares.html

How many will pay? Jon Kingsdale, who oversaw the implementation of the Massachusetts exchange from 2006 to 2010, wrote in November that “Tracking billing and collections was a much bigger challenge than getting our Web site to work.” Some people will never pay their first month’s premium; others will stop paying quickly thereafter. We won’t really know how many gained insurance through the exchanges for a year or so.

How many of the people buying insurance on the exchanges already had insurance? To state the obvious, few people would have supported a radical overhaul of the individual insurance market if they had thought most of the people who bought insurance through the new exchanges would be folks who already had insurance. Perhaps we’d have done a Medicaid expansion, but not a redo of the private insurance market. We don’t know yet whether most of the 2 million enrollees were already insured, or represent uninsured people who got new insurance, and probably won’t for a while. Which brings me to the next thing we need to know:

How many people who lost insurance thanks to Obamacare mandates renewed policies outside of the exchanges, or obtained insurance elsewhere? Two million is a high number compared with the figures for October and November. But it is a low number compared with the number of people who lost their individual market policies because those policies weren’t in compliance. And we would have expected all those people – estimated to be somewhere in the range of 5 million – to buy new policies by the end of December. So did they get insurance directly through their insurer, or perhaps go on a spouse’s employer policy? Or did they drop insurance entirely?

One of the hurdles to figuring this stuff out is that I don't think the government collects this information. If I were skeptical, I might suspect that government doesn't want to know this information.

Not to be argumentative, but the IRS does collect/report the amount of money the employer contributed to employee health care.  I'm sure they could use that data to answer some of these questions.

Not sure how that would help answer these questions, but you make a good point. The NSA probably collects all this information and more. They probably have an entire room of servers dedicated to recording and cataloging all the phone calls, texts, tweets, etc. about losing or gaining health insurance. In the interest of national security, however, they won't share that info.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Krauthammer wants to go nuclear. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-stop-the-bailout-now/2014/01/02/6b3087a2-73d7-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html

First order of business for the returning Congress: The No Bailout for Insurance Companies Act of 2014.

Make it one line long: “Sections 1341 and 1342 of the Affordable Care Act are hereby repealed.”

End of bill. End of bailout. End of story.

Why do we need it? On Dec. 18, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers was asked what was the administration’s Plan B if, because of adverse selection (enrolling too few young and healthies), the insurance companies face financial difficulty.

Jason Furman wouldn’t bite. “There’s a Plan A,” he replied. Enroll the young.

But of course there’s a Plan B. It’s a government bailout.

Administration officials can’t say it for political reasons. And they don’t have to say it because it’s already in the Affordable Care Act, buried deep.

First, Section 1341, the “reinsurance” fund collected from insurers and self-insuring employers at a nifty $63 a head. (Who do you think the cost is passed on to?) This yields about $20 billion over three years to cover losses.

Then there is Section 1342, the “risk corridor” provision that mandates a major taxpayer payout covering up to 80 percent of insurance-company losses.

Never heard of these? That’s the beauty of passing a bill of such monstrous length. You can insert a chicken soup recipe and no one will notice.

Nancy Pelosi was right: We’d have to pass the damn thing to know what’s in it. Well, now we have and now we know.

The whole scheme was risky enough to begin with — getting enough enrollees and making sure 40 percent were young and healthy. Obamacare is already far behind its own enrollment estimates. But things have gotten worse. The administration has been changing the rules repeatedly — with every scrimmage-line audible raising costs and diminishing revenue.

First, it postponed the employer mandate. Then it exempted from the individual mandate people whose policies were canceled (by Obamacare). And for those who did join the exchanges, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is “strongly encouraging” insurers — during the “transition” — to cover doctors and drugs not included in their clients’ plans.

The insurers were stunned. Told to give free coverage. Deprived of their best customers. Forced to offer stripped-down “catastrophic” plans to people age 30 and over (contrary to the law). These dictates, complained an insurance industry spokesman, could “destabilize” the insurance market.

Translation: How are we going to survive this? Shrinking revenues and rising costs could bring on the “death spiral” — an unbalanced patient pool forcing huge premium increases (to restore revenue) that would further unbalance the patient pool as the young and healthy drop out.

End result? Insolvency — before which the insurance companies will pull out of Obamacare.

Solution? A huge government bailout. It’s Obamacare’s escape hatch. And — surprise, surprise — it’s already baked into the law.

Which is why the GOP needs to act. Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg machine with hundreds of moving parts. Without viable insurance companies doing the work, it falls apart. No bailout, no Obamacare.

Such a bill would be overwhelmingly popular because Americans hate fat-cat bailouts of any kind. Why should their tax dollars be spent not only saving giant insurers but also rescuing this unworkable, unbalanced, unstable, unpopular money-pit of a health-care scheme?

The GOP House should pass it and send it to Harry Reid’s Democratic Senate. Democrats know it could be fatal for Obamacare. The only alternative would be single-payer. And try selling that to the country after the spectacularly incompetent launch of — and subsequent widespread disaffection with — mere semi-nationalization.

Do you really think vulnerable Democrats up for reelection will vote for a bailout? And who better to slay Obamacare than a Democratic Senate — liberalism repudiating its most important creation of the last 50 years.

Want to be even bolder? Attach the anti-bailout bill to the debt ceiling. That and nothing else. Dare the president to stand up and say: “I’m willing to let the country default in order to preserve a massive bailout for insurance companies.”

In the past, Republicans made unrealistic and unpopular debt-ceiling demands — and lost badly. They learned their lesson. Last year, Republicans presented one simple unassailable debt-ceiling demand — that the Senate pass its first budget in four years.

Who could argue with that? The Senate capitulated within two days.

Who can argue with no bailout? Let the Senate Democrats decide: Support the bailout and lose the Senate. Or oppose the bailout and bury Obamacare.

Happy New Year.

Drops mic. CK Out.

[sys]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-healthcare-spending-growth-remains-low-20140106,0,610974.story

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-06/why-u-dot-s-dot-health-spending-has-slowed-down

 

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-healthcare-spending-growth-remains-low-20140106,0,610974.story

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-06/why-u-dot-s-dot-health-spending-has-slowed-down

 

Low mortgage rates and inflation, the silver lining to a shitty economy.

The moderation since the recession ended has little to do with the Affordable Care Act, which passed after the slowdown was already under way, and more to do with a stunted economic recovery and stalled job growth

Or maybe ObamaCare is stalling the economy and thereby restraining healthcare inflation?

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Krauthammer's idea is gaining traction, and insurers are freaking out that their slushfund might dry up and they'll be left with the tab for guaranteed issue.  See, ObamaCare only "works" if the government continues to funnel more and more money to the insurers to fund the increasingly sick and risky pools. It's just Medicaid by other means.

BCBS even issued talking points!

[chum1]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-understands-8-of-obamacare-vigorously-defe,34022/

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

The insurance bailout is even worse than initially thought. Credit Batshit Crazy Pelosi - we certainly are finding out what's in Obamacare now that we've passed it. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bailing-out-health-insurers-and-helping-obamacare_774167.html

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.”  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation.  Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.  It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes).  It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.

But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action.  As Laszewski explains, Obamacare contains a “Reinsurance Program that caps big claim costs for insurers (individual plans only).”  He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”

In other words, insurance purchased through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges isn’t even full-fledged private insurance; rather, it’s a sort of private-public hybrid.  Private insurance companies pay for costs below $45,000, then taxpayers generously pick up the tab—a tab that their president hasn’t ever bothered to tell them he has opened up on their behalf—for four-fifths of the next $200,000-plus worth of costs.  In this way, and so many others, Obamacare takes a major step toward the government monopoly over American medicine (“single payer”) that liberals drool about in their sleep.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2014/01/15/jimmy-kimmel-savages-obamacare-and-uninformed-young-people-who-suppor

[Daddy Claxton]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2014/01/15/jimmy-kimmel-savages-obamacare-and-uninformed-young-people-who-suppor

Love the couple of paragraphs at the end of the article that start with "imagine if news outlets other than conservative ones explained that..."

Imagine if conservatives had any ability to communicate with anyone other than those who already and whole-heartedly agree with them.

[Daddy Claxton]

Dax, are you saying that the Dem's/obama's message is being communicated only via news outlets like msnbc?  Do you disagree that the Dem's/obama's message has been better communicated than that of the opposition?  It's just the stupid electorate, right?

[Daddy Claxton]

 I'm talking about the message about obamacare that was widely supported by the people who apparently don't like now that it is implemented.

I agree that the obamacare message is now being widely criticized, but is the opposition gaining any momentum on its own? 

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Dax, are you saying that the Dem's/obama's message is being communicated only via news outlets like msnbc?  Do you disagree that the Dem's/obama's message has been better communicated than that of the opposition?  It's just the stupid electorate, right?

I would hazard a guess that 99.99% of the electorate receives their information from some sort of media, including media interviews, as opposed to a phone call or meeting with the politicians themselves.

Liberal bias in the media is pervasive. It's everything from an interviewer avoiding or glossing over potentially damaging subjects, taking answers at face value rather than asking challenging follow-up questions (some of that is bias, most is probably just stupidity), the way headlines are worded (compare, for example, the way "Bridgegate" has been reported versus the much worse IRS targeting of conservative groups), and simply choosing what stories to cover and how much to cover them (again, compare coverage of Bridgegate, the closing of a bridge to snarl up traffic, to the Obama admin's closing of roads, scenic views, and monuments during the government shutdown).

Thus, the MSM generally provides the Dems with great assistance in communicating their message. Outlets such as FoxNews, talk radio, blogs, and paid political advertising have helped level the playing field somewhat, but the Dems still enjoy a sizable advantage in media propagandizing.

And for the most part, the MSM absolutely turned a blind eye to criticisms of Obamacare in the run-up to passage.