How the Affordable Care Act raises prices and limits medical choices.

[gwb-trading]

Quote from DHOHHI:

As much incompetence as we've seen in the development and rollout of Odumbocare I'm waiting for the day when they say the database was hacked. Hope for your sake it doesn't happen but I'd bet it will occur at some point.

Here is the bet I would take.... I believe that anyone who signed up at healthcare.gov in the first week of enrollment had their information stolen. Based on information in IT forums, the basic database security patches were not put into place until a week after enrollment opened. This is almost a guarantee that all the first weeks' information was stolen by hackers since any low-skill person with a kiddie script would be able to steal it.

I am just waiting until the government admits it. I expect that this won't happen until the March 2014 enrollment deadlines are long gone.

The only good news --- not very many people were able to successfully sign-up the first week, this helps limit the damage.

 

[DHOHHI]

Quote from gwb-trading:

Here is the bet I would take.... I believe that anyone who signed up at healthcare.gov in the first week of enrollment had their information stolen. Based on information in IT forums, the basic database security patches were not put into place until a week after enrollment opened. This is almost a guarantee that all the first weeks' information was stolen by hackers since any low-skill person with a kiddie script would be able to steal it.

I am just waiting until the government admits it. I expect that this won't happen until the March 2014 enrollment deadlines are long gone.

The only good news --- not very many people were able to successfully sign-up the first week, this helps limit the damage.

But the government would have to provide anyone affected with 'free' credit monitoring for some period of time. So it might be free to those affected but it's just more red ink for the government as they'd be forced to pay for the services. Anyone working for a corporation who bungled the design, development, implementation and had massive cost overruns would have been shown the door. But with government there is no real constraint on spending. Cost overruns are par for the course.

 

[Lucrum]

The federal government is already scheduled to subsidize private insurers to the tune of more than a trillion dollars over the next decade in an attempt to “keep insurance premiums low” (feel free to laugh at the irony). It’s one of the reasons insurance companies were eager to go along with Obamacare in the first place. But according to a new report, because of Obama’s illegal “fix” that allows insurance companies to keep existing plans for another year, many insurance companies are losing money yet again because only unhealthy customers are keeping or returning to their recently illegal plans. The solution? You guessed it! Another federal government subsidy!

From the NYT:

The White House is offering more money to insurance companies as an incentive for them to let people keep insurance policies that were to have been canceled next year.

The administration floated several proposals on Monday to “help offset the loss in premium revenue and profit” that it said might occur if insurers went along with President Obama’s request to reinstate canceled policies.

Millions of people have received notices saying their policies were being canceled because they did not comply with minimum coverage requirements of the new health care law.

In a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, the administration acknowledged that insurers had a valid concern: They may be stuck with sicker, higher-cost customers in the new insurance exchanges because healthier Americans will stay on their existing health plans for another year...

http://poorrichardsnews.com/post/68882489386/super-feds-now-subsidizing-insurers-losing-money-due

 

[Yannis]

Stunning hypocrisy from Democrats in wake of ObamaCare's broken promises
By Scott Brown, Former US Senator

President Obama watches as Todd Park (L), Assistant to the president and Chief Technology Officer, shows him information on a tablet during a meeting in the Oval Office, in this April 15, 2013 handout photograph obtained on October 24, 2013. Park, the chief technology officer for the White House and a top adviser to Obama, now finds himself among a handful of officials with targets on their backs as Republicans try to root out who is responsible for the glitch-ridden rollout of Healthcare.gov. (Reuters)

Hypocrisy and double standards are two things that disgust and infuriate all Americans, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum.

Unfortunately, these qualities are far too prevalent in our political culture today, and are prime reasons why Washington and the politicians that work there are held in such low regard.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the implementation and implosion of ObamaCare.

During the debate over the deeply flawed bill in 2009 and 2010, voters were repeatedly assured by President Obama and his congressional allies that everyone who liked their current health care plan would be able to keep it. “Period.”

Now, as the new law implodes before our eyes, millions of Americans have received letters of cancellation. With approximately five million people across the country expected to lose their current plan and millions more to follow, when all the smoke clears, it’s clear that the Democrats broke their promise to the American people.

Many other Americans are experiencing fewer medical options as insurers restrict their choice of doctors and hospitals in order to keep costs low.

Some of the country’s top medical facilities are being excluded from the new exchange system, meaning patients who have been getting treatment from doctors they like all of a sudden find themselves out of luck.

For example, in New Hampshire, only 16 of the state’s 26 hospitals are available on the federal exchange, meaning patients must either pay more to keep their current doctor or seek inferior care elsewhere.

Neither is a good option.

New Hampshire is not alone. Across the country, some of the best hospitals are not available on plans on the exchange, leaving patients with difficult choices and unwanted sometimes, life threatening decisions.

Rather than join with Republicans and immediately repeal this catastrophe before it gets any worse, Democrats are stubbornly digging in their heels.

They know that backing away from President Obama’s signature achievement would be a huge embarrassment for the White House, and they’re unwilling to buck their party leadership.

Instead, they’re hiding behind meaningless show votes in Congress, offering half-hearted and meaningless attempts to reinstate cancelled plans or delay implementation of some of the particularly onerous new federal regulations.

All these false efforts will do is add to the increased costs and put things off until after the 2014 elections.

No one is mistaking these transparent moves as profiles in courage.

ObamaCare became the law of the land because every single Democratic Senator fell in line with their party bosses and voted for it. For any sitting member of the Senate to somehow now suggest that they are fighting to protect their constituents from this “trainwreck” is completely hypocritical.

If they were really interested in sparing their constituents from ObamaCare’s harmful impact, they should have stood up when they could have stopped the whole thing from becoming law.

They could have also voted to allow for the protection or “grandfathering” of the older policies.

They did neither.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that politicians in Washington have access to many special perks and privileges unavailable to the general public when attempting to navigate ObamaCare.

Beyond having more top-flight plans to choose from, senators have access to what the New York Times recently described as “concierge-type services” and “in-person support sessions” available only to members of Congress.

Democrats who voted for ObamaCare are therefore not exposed to the same frustrations of a broken website and complicated red tape that millions of everyday people are being forced to work through.

The hypocrisy is stunning. Saddling the rest of the country with complicated rules they didn’t want and don’t need in pursuit of a health care takeover that will hurt patient care, limit options and devastate our economy is no way to run a country.

Not only is President Obama to blame here, so too are every single one of the Democratic senators who forced this fiasco on the American people.

The president is not going to face voters again, but his congressional enablers and supporters will in less than a year. When they do, it’s going to be an unpleasant experience for any incumbent having to explain their deciding vote and continued support for the ongoing disaster of ObamaCare.

 

[Yannis]

Obamacare: Echoes of Stalinism Past
By Peter Morici

D-day arrived for Obamacare Saturday, and began with an 11-hour shutdown of HealthCare.gov — the problem-plagued website intended to provide easy access to affordable insurance for millions of Americans.

The contraption is functioning better but is still terribly inadequate. It can only handle 50,000 users at a time, well short of the volume needed to assist the millions of Americans who must purchase health insurance by year end or face fines.

Those eligible for subsidies must use the system, but often the system can’t verify eligibility for aid. Many are in limbo — applications already initiated are stalled, lost or otherwise can’t be completed.

Editor’s Note: Obama’s Budget Takes Aim at Retired Americans

Healthcare.gov software to get insurance companies paid subsidies is not functioning effectively, and the small business site that was to offer group coverage has been postponed one year.

Eventually Jeffrey Zients will have this monster fulfilling all its functions, but likely it will be a balky, frustrating website, much like other federal websites or those run by private firms enjoying monopoly power.

Health insurance will be right up there with dealing with tax filing. Bureaucrats will have easy access to sensitive personal data, which Obama administration political moles can use to target, harass and sometimes destroy critics, and simply occupy millions of hours of citizens’ time that could be used more productively.

Welcome to statism — the ants of capitalism herded into a bureaucratic hell to serve the masters of a grander design.

All this aside, let’s look at the list of promises that will remain unfulfilled when the website is fully repaired, no matter how well it may run:

•If you like your insurance, you can keep it.
•If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her.
•If you need help finding the coverage you need, we will make it easy.
•By organizing the healthcare market under the guiding hand of the omnipotent state, we will make insurance cheaper.

The first two promises are forever broken. Insurance companies can’t bring back most policies the Affordable Care Act declared illegal, a presidential edict notwithstanding.

And insurance companies are slashing doctors and hospitals from their networks to meet arbitrary Obamacare mandates.

Folks who had perfectly adequate policies, which were delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars in life-saving benefits from specialized physicians for cancer treatment and other complex illnesses, have lost those benefits and been offered replacement policies cluttered with unneeded services. For example, pediatric vision care for childless couples in their 50s and birth-control benefits for nuns.

Many Americans face death when old policies lapse and can no longer pay for the care they need. But as a Washington lawyer and ardent support of the president assuaged me, some sacrifice is needed by a few for the progress of the many.

Echoes of Stalin’s casualties building the Moscow subway!

Overall, premium costs are rocketing for many Americans, not because their old coverage was inadequate or because new coverage is better, but because they are in markets now served by fewer providers and less competition than before. Businesses are forced to jettison full-time positions in favor or part-time workers to avoid paying health benefits they can no longer afford and avoid penalties that will be imposed beginning in 2015.

Americans are burdened with about 20 new taxes and fees and higher premiums and co-pays for insurance policies that work about the same or worse for most middle-class families — the folks the president and his fellow Democrats say they want to help.

It took a triumph of hubris for the president to believe he could sign a single law that would replace markets in a U.S. healthcare sector as large as the economy of France.

Only God can make a tree, and in his creation, only the invisible hand can make a market.

When the government tries to replace free markets, it plays God — and does so very badly.

 

[Yannis]

Obama defends redistribution
by Chris Stirewalt

OBAMA DEFENDS REDISTRIBUTION - President Obama today heads to the liberal Center for American Progress to talk about ObamaCare and the economy. And while the president will certainly hit talking points about how Americans, one day freed of concerns over health insurance, can pursue their dreams of higher education and economic betterment, the basic message is likely to be the same one he has made in his other “major” economic addresses over the years: the need for more redistribution of wealth to deal with income inequality. Remember that while the redistributive properties of ObamaCare are causing mainstream Americans to recoil from the president and his health law, redistribution is its cardinal virtue to many on the left.

Obama has pursued his policy aims with dogged persistency since taking office and has made no secret of his central aim of shifting wealth. The surprise from many reporters at seeing millions of health insurance policies vaporized and in seeing premiums for those already covered leap astronomically indicates either massive inattention or a facile response to a story they can no longer ignore. Obama’s law turns insurance companies into vehicles for redistribution: heavily regulated, highly protected public utilities with a social-engineering mission. The fact that Obama is emphasizing this point now suggests he knows just how bad the days ahead will be for his law and his party. By hardening the resolve of the third of Americans standing with him on ObamaCare, Obama hopes to make good on his promise to have the law go into effect despite massive opposition and survive at least until the end of his term.

Obama sends his missionaries - President Obama will today dispatch an army of 160 youth leaders from across the country to sell his health law. The president will give the gathering of activists, ages 18 to 35, their talking points at the White House this afternoon. The event is part of the administration’s renewed efforts to promote the unpopular health law to young people.

Thrilling! - After years of waiting, MSNBC host Chris Matthews will finally get an interview with President Obama. Well, sort of. Matthews will moderate a session with Obama at American University where the president will take questions from students about the health law.

ADMINISTRATION ADMITS DEFEAT ON OBAMACARE BACKEND - With millions facing lapses in insurance coverage because of ObamaCare, the administration is admitting another technical defeat. Unable to complete the portion of the system that connects enrollees with the insurers, the administration announced a “workaround” Tuesday. From Reuters: “Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to ‘true up’ payments…”

DEMS DIVIDED ON OBAMACARE UNDO - While insurance commissioners in Republican led states have been willing to oblige President Obama’s quasi reversal of his regulations banning millions of insurance policies, Democrat led states are resisting. At least 21 of 30 states with Republican governors have taken up the president’s offer to undo his regulations for one year. WSJ finds, “Some Democratic-led states have been more reluctant. They are concerned it could undermine the success of the law by keeping consumers from the new health-insurance exchanges. Policyholders who want to keep their plans, which are typically less comprehensive than the new plans, are believed to be healthier people.”

If you like your plan, you can… keep something like it at a higher price - Some insurers are automatically enrolling those that hold policies that are illegal under ObamaCare to similar plans. Daily Caller reports the results are automatic switches to plans that could potentially cost consumers 80 percent more. Insurers have 90 days to inform customers of changes, with many companies noting they have few options in preventing coverage gaps.

Schoen skeptical - Democratic pollster and Fox News Contributor Doug Schoen considers for Fox News Opinion how President Obama’s latest ObamaCare campaign may play out. “It remains very much an open question whether the president will be able to solidify his legacy during this 20-day press offensive or whether by doubling down, Mr. Obama will seal the fate of the Democratic Party in the 2014 election and beyond.”

 

[Yannis]

The New Obamacare Red Herring
By Elizabeth MacDonald

Beware of the new argument from backers of health reform that people are seeing policies canceled due to “ordinary turnover in both individual and small group plans before there was an Obamacare law,” as one pundit put it recently.

Those arguments are incorrect. The law and its enactment are fueling the cancellations of millions of policies across the country. Here’s what’s going on.

The Federal Register on June 17, 2010, noted an estimate that says “a variety of studies indicate that between 40% and 67% of policies are in effect for less than one year,” referring to individual policies that turn over.

But the Register went on to say that “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40% to 67% range.” That means those policies will not be compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and therefore won’t be grandfathered because their cost-sharing items like co-payments are out of whack with the new law’s standards.

The cancellations that will result from those discrepancies, as has been reported, could affect 10 million people in the individual market. Moreover, anywhere from 60.8 million to 107.6 million people covered by employer plans could also see their policies cancelled or changed because they don’t comply with the new law, based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Register.

FOX News analyst John Escherich dug deep into the Federal Register and government analysis about the law. Here’s what he says: “The Administration knew that the grandfather rules they were writing, in combination with the standard and anticipated practices of insurance companies, would lead to millions upon millions of plans being canceled. And this was almost certainly the intention of the Administration all along. The law doesn’t ‘work’ as it is intended to if millions of people are allowed to stay on grandfathered, non-ACA compliant insurance plans. The cancellations and changes to insurance plans were a natural and anticipated result of the ACA."

To date there is no delay in the individual mandate tax. Yet there have been delays and/or cancellations for items like the following: the employer mandate; the cap on out of pocket expenses; half of the law’s deadlines; and income verification for tax credits.

What’s been doled out: more than 1,470 waivers for favored groups like unions; the preservation of subsidies for members of Congress in the exchanges; personal health insurance help for members of Congress, and more.

The irony is the law’s enactment was loaded with trade-offs just like the law itself is built on trade-offs, meaning, healthier people are paying more in their insurance policies to help cover the sick uninsured. Insurance is not as affordable now as the Affordable Care Act proponents will have you believe, as premiums, deductibles and co-payments are spiking higher across the country.

Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, nailed it when he said that the law enacts utopian benefits nobody can afford while uninsuring the insured. The health reform law mandates that people must buy coverage with essential benefits that they may not want or need, including maternity and newborn care or pediatric eyeglasses even if they are senior citizens.

Remember this: on the millions of policies getting canceled in the individual market President Barack Obama said: “Even if it's a small percentage of people. I mean, we're talkin' about 5% of the population.”

 

[kid.fx.cross]

Quote from DHOHHI:

As much incompetence as we've seen in the development and rollout of Odumbocare I'm waiting for the day when they say the database was hacked. Hope for your sake it doesn't happen but I'd bet it will occur at some point.

Where I live (South Carolina) we had our database that contains all tax returns hacked a couple years ago. Governmental agencies are quite challenged IMO ... you'd think all sensitive data would be encrypted but not the case.

well, they asked for your estimated income for 2014. And make you swear under "penalty of law" that you are telling the truth. Since I was having a very bad day in the market, I figured, "If it keeps going like this, my income for 2014 will be zero." So that's what I put on my application. I have no intention of ever signing up. I was just curious what a premium and deductible and co pay was. If my info gets hacked, all they are going to know is they are hacking someone with zero income.

Tell Tale sign is if your spam starts changing.

 

[kid.fx.cross]

otherwise, notice how eerily quiet the insurance companies are? Even those that have opted out. This thing couldn't have passed over their objections. I don't know enough about it to have an informed opinion. But something tells me, a few years down the road they are going to be collecting increased premiums and profits paid for in subsidies by the good old American Taxpayer.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from kid.fx.cross:

otherwise, notice how eerily quiet the insurance companies are? Even those that have opted out. This thing couldn't have passed over their objections. I don't know enough about it to have an informed opinion. But something tells me, a few years down the road they are going to be collecting increased premiums and profits paid for in subsidies by the good old American Taxpayer.

Of course, they're looking at millions of new customers.

And if you (not you) don't like subsidizing masses of poor people, don't have masses of poor people. It's not like there's a currency shortage.