ABOUT THOSE ENROLLEES …
At this point, the fact versus fiction on U.S. president Barack Obama‘s socialized medicine monstrosity is nauseatingly clear. The law didn’t reduce costs. It isn’t going to reduce the deficit. And if you liked your old plan, it turns out you can’t keep it.
Nancy Pelosi once said that Obamacare had to be passed in order to be understood (we’re paraphrasing), and slowly but surely people are starting to understand it … which is one reason Obama’s popularity is at a record low.
(Now let’s just hope the Supreme Court understands the law).
Our friend Rick Manning over at Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has a great piece up this week diving into the nuts and bolts of Obamacare’s biggest failed promise – the notion that healthy young subscribers would sign up in droves to subsidize the law’s “free” coverage.
It turns out huge percentages of individuals who signed up for Obamacare aren’t paying premiums, though – including roughly 30 percent of those who signed up for coverage with insurer Aetna.
Why not? Because the coverage isn’t worth the cost.
“The problem of Obamacare subscribers dropping from the system is likely to become more acute in 2015 as health insurers are announcing rate increases that continue to far exceed inflation,” Manning wrote, adding that “as health insurance continues to take a larger bite out of people’s earnings, it is not unreasonable to expect that more and more of the individuals who have signed up for coverage will opt to pay a much smaller fine for failing to have insurance and take their chances that they won’t face catastrophic illness.”
Why does this matter? Because if people decline coverage due to rising costs (even if it means paying a penalty), providers’ have to totally rework their risk factors, etc. And they have to find some way to make up the gaps that keep them compliant with Obamacare’s mandates.
The liberal authors of this legislation realized this possibility/ probability. That’s why under Obamacare, insurers are eligible for taxpayer-funded bailouts against these losses. As Manning explains, one section of the law provides for “risk corridors” related to the law’s expanded coverage. These “risk corridors” impose an affirmative obligation on taxpayers to subsidize any financial losses related to compliance with the law.
Crazy, huh?
“The Washington, D.C. merry go round continues with those who help to write the laws protected from business losses with bailouts provided by the rest of us,” Manning concluded. “A completely predictable outcome of any legislation whether any lawmakers read it or not.”
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) has sponsored legislation that would repeal the bailout clause of Obamacare. Despite our misgivings about him, we support that effort.
48 comments
I can’t understand why this is happening. It seemed like such a “bad” idea on paper.
Because the God-damned cockroaches were too busy devouring themselves to understand the realities of the matter.
You have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, what a cunt.
“what a cunt.”
I’ll just bet you are a real prize . . .
a cunt is a beautiful thing.
Compared to what? The Republican let them die plan.
Joe Wilson was spot on with his assessment/outburst.
Yeah – Joe Wilson is really someone to be proud of . . .
Proud or not, he was right.
“Proud or not, he was right”
What was he right about?
The relevant section of the law, also known as Obamacare, is Section 1312 (f)(3), which reads:
“Access limited to lawful residents. If an individual is not, or is not reasonably expected to be for the entire period for which enrollment is sought, a citizen or national of the United States or an alien lawfully present in the United States, the individual shall not be treated as a qualified individual and may not be covered under a qualified health plan in the individual market that is offered through an Exchange.
And yet at least 4,000 illegal aliens (that we know about) have in fact signed up. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372566/obamacare-illegals-michelle-malkin
http://conservative-daily.com/2014/03/31/obamacare-navigators-sign-up-illegal-aliens-to-pad-numbers/
They’re also being funneled into state run medical plans in droves. Once they overwhelm the state plans you can rest assured that an adoption will be found. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/09/us/obamacare-undocumented-immigrants/
If they are giving rebates on the honor system, they sure don’t know if an illegal alien is signing up through an exchange.
Shhhh, don’t confuse SC with all this, “You lie” is more applicable to the Obama administration than any other in history.
• “First, if you … already have health insurance, … nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”
• “I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.”
• “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period.”
• “The middle-class will realize greater security, not higher taxes.”
• “However long we are keepers of the public trust we should never forget that we are here as public servants and public service is a privilege. It’s not about advantaging yourself. It’s not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients. It’s not about advancing an ideological agenda or the special interests of any organization. Public service is, simply and absolutely, about advancing the interests of Americans.”
• “For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.”
• “The Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent, and of holding it accountable. And I expect members of my administration not simply to live up to the letter but also the spirit of this law.”
This is on of my favorites:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, “the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” ~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006
“Shhhh, don’t confuse SC with all this. . .”
LOL I’m not confused about anything.
“And yet at least 4,000 illegal aliens . . .”
Nationalreview.com and conservative-daily.com – I’m sure they hate President Obama just as much as you – but he got elected – TWICE – suck on that for a while! LOL
Nice segue!
One of them was written up by Michelle Malkin, who is quite the hateful little troll of a Fox News contributor. She’s not as annoying as Ann Coulter but she treats pretty much every last person who has an opposing viewpoint as if she has a personal vendetta against them.
And then she does things like this cringe-worthy piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vam1joGzmec
Because Oregon’s health insurance exchange website has been offline and its software architects under investigation for possible fraud, the Oregon Obamacare drones have been processing each and every application manually.
Oregon chose to go with their own exchange, and they’ve had an even worse rollout than the federal exchange did. (So bad, in fact, that Oregon has contemplated openly about just giving up and defaulting to the federal exchange.) This causes them to have to process things manually, and so they fuck up and sign up people that shouldn’t have been signed up.
If you are trying to stretch this into “Obama specifically made sure illegals would be covered under Obamacare” or even that Oregon’s badly broken exchange is representative of other states’ exchanges, most of which have been quite successful, I believe Joe Wilson’s words apply more to you.
You know as well as I do that this president, if allowed, will stretch the words “…lawful residents…” so far that neither word will have any real meaning. And like it or not, they were enrolled in Obamacare.
You know as well as I do that this president will stretch “…lawful
residents…” so far that neither word will have any real meaning.
You know as well as I do
Know what? That Obama’s going to do something, because reasons? That’s not an assumption I buy into.
If he does do this, then the judicial branch is extremely likely to stop him anyways. They’re already battling a court case that could go either way over bad wording. Here, the wording is crystal clear. There’s only so far he could stretch “lawful resident” before SCOTUS would shake their heads at it.
right wing.
Americans for Limited Government, no doubt an unbiased source.
It’s Koch-approved!
Uh-huh. Let’s see now . . . Rick Manning . . . Americans for Limited Government . . . well, sure – I’ll believe good old Rick!
I read WaPo Wonkblog for facts pertaining to numbers.
Why this comes as a surprise to anyone with a brain cell is beyond me.
Our Gubamint attempted to take over 1/7th -1/8th of the economy, when they realized that wasn’t possible they bastardized their already bad plan making it worse in an attempt to insure 16,000,000-30,000,000 “uninsured Americans” depending on whose bovine excreta you listened to.
What happened was a bunch of folks (“the people”, not Will) lost their insurance, 1-2,000,000 folks who had insurance were shifted into “Gubamint insurance” and maybe 4-5,000,000 new folks got some insurance all of whom could have just been picked up on Medicaid. The program needed youths to sign up and they have for the most part sat this one out.
If SCOTUS rules against the assistance program Obamacare, the signature effort of the administration is toast. If SCOTUS rules for the assistance, the federal Budget is toast.
Will can you lose the freaking metrosexual hyperlink colors – dark blue is readily identifiable and much easier to read than “mango citrus” or “baby puke green” or whatever the hell color you’ve used here.
What I wish SCOTUS would rule against is the government use of mercenaries.
How many billions do you think go to that?
Not nearly as many billions as you think, compared to the cost of my pension after 30+ years of service, mercenaries are cheap.
I’d like to see us firm a foreign legion.
With over 2,000 pages of law and over 18,000 pages of regulation, nothing but a breeding ground for unintended consequences.
That’s right – if something has too many pages then we can’t do it – maybe you ought to go back to coloring books . . .
No Dumb@$$, if it’s F*#ked Up Bull-S#!t we should not do it…all the pages just helped you Filthy Pieces of S#!t fool the stupid, like you…
“No Dumb@$$, if it’s F*#ked Up Bull-S#!t we should not do it…all the pages just helped you Filthy Pieces of S#!t fool the stupid, like you”
I tried to decipher your post on Google Translate but kept getting a pop-up that said “Sorry – we don’t speak Dumbass” . .
You’re a “DUMB” @$$….of course you don’t “SPEAK”…DUMB-@$$!!!…LMAO….FITS, Obama and the DNC do it for you….Hahahaha…
Are you telling me there have been no unintended consequences?
Also, of those 2,000 pages a number of them reference changes to be made to other parts of other laws. To fully understand the whole of the law you would have to read many hundreds if not thousands of pages of existing law. I saw on one page that it referenced law X, page Y, line Z – “change “or” to “and””. You would have to read through that whole section of the other law to understand the significance of that apparently minor change.
A large national group of medical providers, that I am associated with, paid two law firms (differing specialties) to review the ACA. Both firms came back with the same report-continued employment for attorneys as long as the act was in place. Contradictions, inaccuracies, and omissions are prevalent throughout the document.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/libertarian-accidentally-shows-obamacare-success.html
Shhhh. Don’t confuse The Colonel with any of this . . .LOL
That graph looks great until you look at the scale, a whopping 1% gain overall AFTER a 4% loss with the initiation of Obamacare.
That graph is bull shit. People who signed up are N-O-T paying their premiums.
Is FITS now telling us he is against, before he was for it..
I D*#n sure don’t remember much noise from FITS about Obamacare pre-2012. He was too busy Bashing Romney, who said he’d move to repeal Obamacare his first day in office.
FITS is a good example of a dishonest, corrupt and dangerous media. People like FITS are why the country, and the world is in a mess.
SC’s leaders in the General Assembly has used every trick in hiding our states huge costs associated with the public employee healthcare plans.
Did they already factor in 2015’s cost increases? What about 2016? 2017?
SC can not hide the truth any longer. Local penny sales tax increases will not cover county healthcare costs. If passed, they break even just to make up for monies cut from local governments by the State.
SC’s taxpayers can not afford empty promises of unfunded lifetime pensions and paying 80% to 100% for the 400,000 plus state, county, city employees.
Legislate 30 hour work weeks, drop the taxpayer subsidized healthcare, open up exchanges for Obamacare purchases, drop the state sales tax to 4%, allow counties to add up to 4% on the sales tax that they keep, increase minimum wages to 12.00 an hour, allow salried employees time and half for all hours over 30 a week, and open 4 riverboat casinos in Rockhill, Hilton Head, Seneca, and Cayce. And open up medicaid to single male households who qualify.
No, that’s a fart, and it stinks to high heaven.
Obamacare is the reason. Obamacare is the signature domestic policy Democrats passed when they had the majority in both chambers without a single Republican vote.
Obamacare is the law.
The Obamacare employer mandate, which includes SC, SC counties, SC county municipals, must offer healthcare to their employees. Your doctors are no more, your hospitals will close, insurer competition will evaporate, your plan costs will increase year over year while your choices will decrease.
Guess what? SC can not afford Obamacare for 400,000 public employees. On that note, private citizens can not afford Obamacare with a federal minimum wage. In fact, when the employer mandate kicks in, SC businesses will drop full coverage plans and opt for minimum healthcare plans under the law for FTE employees. It is estimates ATT can save 1.8 billion a year and pay only 600 million a year in penalties. How much is SC taxpayers paying to subsidize your BC/BS plan as a public worker? ATT is paying 2.4 billion a year in subsidized full coverage for 244,000 employees. SC has 400,000 employees!
SC needs revenue. SC citizens need more paycheck. Your state subsidized full coverage is breaking our balls.
SC’s pension plans are U-N-D-E-R-F-U-N-D-E-D,
South Carolina Retirement System: 34.5% underfunded
Police Officers Retirement System: 25.5% underfunded
Retirement System for General Assembly: 36.3% underfunded
Retirement System for Judges/Solicitors: 33.8% underfunded
National Guard Retirement System: 64.1% underfunded
WTF do you want? My plan allows the state and counties to raise the revenue to save your pension plan. You have to buy health coverage from an exchange. Citizens get decent paychecks to pay for their healthcare and save for retirement. Without offering healthcare, SC can afford to bump those salaries. Our roads and bridges are dilapidated because money is being skimmed, no, suck out to pay for SC’s healthcare and pensions. The reckoning is here and now when Obamacare takes full force in 2015.
Let’s just give the country to the rich… why do we keep resisting?
What a funny article. Wrong on all counts:
The latest June 17th, 2014, CBO report continues to state that the ACA reduces the budget deficit.
Nancy Pelosi’s quote while speaking to reporters was: “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.” Funny how so many sites leave the all important ‘away from the fog of controversy’ wording out, which, of course, makes the statement actually understandable. Reporters were getting bombarded at the time from conservative news outlets and she thought that after the bill was signed they could review the Law more calmly ‘away from the fog of controversy’. This had nothing to do with complexity. Only a partisan fool continues to believe that based on the full quote.
IBD article debunked regarding Aetna. See: http://acasignups.net/14/08/11/scary-unexpected-aca-attrition-report-neither-scary-nor-unexpected – follow the simple math and see that 30% amount is double counted. Actual payment rates are 86%-93% at the moment on an Exchange enrollment total that surpassed 9M last week. Which means, worst case, 7.74M Exchange members have paid.
Wrong again as to folks liking their plans. A recent CommonWealth Fund report stated that 74% of Republicans like their Exchange policy: http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/264499/speedreads-74-percent-of-republicans-are-happy-with-their-new-obamacare-plans
As to rising costs, Price Waterhouse Coopers showed the national weighted average at 8.2% increase, well below double digits anticipated by naysayers: http://www.pwc.com/us/en/health-industries/health-research-institute/aca-state-exchanges.jhtml
And California has a weighted average of only 4.2% increase: http://online.wsj.com/articles/california-sees-health-law-premiums-rising-4-2-in-2015-1406841981
Finally, Risk corridors are a three year feature of the ACA where insurers with policies that may too much profit add money to a fund while insurers that take on sicker people and make less profit can take from the fund. It was done as the Exchanges were new and no one had actuarial data initially. The government will backstop the fund but will also reap all the money in the fund at the end of three years. So if overall costs are more than anticipated by insurance companies, the government is on the hook for some funds and if the overall costs are LESS than anticipated by insurance companies, the Federal Government gets a nice payout at the end of three years.
Not so crazy when you look at it that way, huh?
Again, everything in this article is biased and debunked.