The Obamacare Sign-Up Scam
The administration is over-counting Obamacare insurance sign-ups-and is still unlikely to meet its own enrollment targets.
On September 30, the day before the launch of Obamacare's health insurance exchanges, NBC News asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius what success would look like for the law and its system of government-run insurance portals. "Well, I think success looks like at least seven million people having signed up by the end of March 2014," she said in response.
In the months before the exchanges went (sort of) live, this was a standard answer from the administration. It was based on the Congressional Budget Office's projection of how many people would sign up for private coverage through the law in 2014, and as Politico notes, the administration repeatedly pointed to the figure as an achievable enrollment target for the first year.
But with the release of another round of official Obamacare sign-up data yesterday, it looks rather unlikely that the administration's stated goal will be met. In response, the administration has revised its definition of success in hopes of papering over the law's ongoing failures.
By the end of November, just 364,682 people had selected a private health plan from one of the exchanges. The majority of those—227,478, according to the administration's report—originate in states running their own exchanges. Just 137,204 selected plans in the federal exchange system covering 36 states.
That's a real improvement over the first month, in which the administration reported just 27,000 sign ups in the federal exchange. But it's still far short of where the administration hoped to be by this point. Indeed, it's not even where the administration expected to be by the end of the first month. A memo put out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in September projected 500,000 private enrollments in October, 706,000 in November, and another 2.1 million enrollments in December—totaling some 3.2 million enrollments when coverage begins next year.
In fact, the numbers may well be even lower than the administration's figures suggest. That's because the administration isn't counting enrollments. It's counting "sign ups"—people who have done the equivalent of dropping a health plan into their online shopping cart.
But people aren't actually enrolled in plans until they have both received and paid their first month's bill. That may prove difficult, given that the system has had serious trouble sending enrollment data to insurers, sometimes sending bad data, and sometimes sending no data at all. According to the administration's own figures, about 25 percent of early enrollments in the federal exchange were subject to errors. A report in The Washington Post said the problem affected a third of early sign ups. Earlier this month, the administration said the errors are now in the range of 10 percent, which, given the increasing pace of enrollment, still means that tens of thousands of applications are likely to be flawed or missing. State exchanges are also reportedly having trouble sending correct applicant information to insurers, although it's not clear how widespread the problem is.
Even if there are no data transmission bugs, however, an enrollment still isn't complete until the first month's premium has been paid. This is not a minor concern. As Jon Kingsdale, who ran the Massachusetts health exchange and served as a consultant on Obamacare, wrote in The Washington Post last month, the most difficult administrative task for the Bay State's exchange was tracking and collecting premiums. Under Obamacare, Kingsdale wrote, "premium billing and tracking will be even tougher" than it was in Massachusetts—in part because enrollees will in many cases only be paying part of the bill. The federal government will be paying the rest to insurers through the law's subsidy system. But guess what? The part of the exchange system that is supposed to pay subsidies to insurers hasn't been built yet. (The administration is instead relying on a workaround in which insurers estimate the payments they are owed.)
Nor are people who have signed up rushing to send in payments, according to early reports. Insurance industry consultants told ProPublica's Charles Ornstein this week that so far, health plans have only collected payments from five to 15 percent of enrollees. That figure will surely rise as the deadlines (which vary between states) for payment approach. But in combination with Kingsdale's warnings about the headaches associated with bill collection, it suggests that enrollment is likely to be hampered by lack of payment.
So here's where we're at: 364,682 people had signed up for private plans by November 30, which is about 842,000 short of the administration's end-of-November projection. Information about tens of thousands of those 364,682 sign-ups has either been transmitted inaccurately or not at all to insurers. And so far only a small fraction of the sign-ups which have been correctly transferred to insurers have actually completed the process and paid. (The administration also says that another 803,077 people have enrolled in Medicaid.)
All of which means that we don't know how many people have actually enrolled yet. But the true number is virtually certain to be significantly lower than the administration's sign-up data suggests, and woefully short of the administration's stated goal. Is there any real chance that the exchanges enroll 7 million people in private coverage by the end of March? Probably not.
And that is presumably why the administration is now downplaying the 7 million goal. Instead they are saying that what really matters is not the topline enrollment figure, but the demographic mix of the various plans and risk pools created by the exchanges—how many young and health people are paying into the system relative to the older, sicker population that the young healthies are intended to balance out.
"CBO provided the best proof point that this is a three-year ramp up when they estimated 7 million in the first year," said White House adviser David Simas, according to Politico. "The CBO first-year estimate, however, did not speak to the viability of the markets. What will is the mix of healthy to unhealthy on a market by market, insurer by insurer basis."
Fair enough; it's possible to imagine sustainable insurance pools that are smaller than originally projected. But if that's how the administration is now defining success, then why isn't the administration providing any data on the demographic breakdown of current enrollments? Some early reports from state exchanges suggest that enrollments so far are skewing toward the old. Given the administration's history of leaking better numbers and holding back data that's less likely to help, the fact that no demographic breakdowns for the federal exchange have been released so far suggests that whatever information they have isn't particularly encouraging.
Indeed, the net result of the health law so far may be that more people have lost coverage than gained it. As a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, "A charitable reading suggests that ObamaCare's net enrollment stands at about negative four million." Even assuming that all 364,000 private insurance enrollments actually take, and then adding in another 803,000 Medicaid enrollments, that's still not nearly enough to offset the estimated four to 5.5 million private plan cancellations so far under the law. The administration is clearly desperate to find some way to define Obamacare as a success. But the numbers just don't add up. Whatever success looks like, this isn't it.
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Every milestone they fail to meet, every projection that was massively over-estimated, every disappointment to those who try to use the exchanges, is pure joy. This clusterfuck is indeed the best early Xmas present the moronic incompetent administration could possibly have given. Thanks, Obama! I left you Nilla wafers and fat free soy milk near the tree!
You think this is fun, just wait until January 1, when people who thought they had signed up and were covered turn out not to be.
The Nilla wafers are nice, but soy milk? Is this some passive-aggressive bullshit?
Michelle’s orders.
Passive?!?
It’s all the fault of the wreckers!
It is glorious isn’t it?
Yes all you say is good.
But were they fat free Nilla Wafers ?
If not, meh.
$97/hr pavivdv by Google, I am making a good salary from home $5500-$7000/week , which is amazing, under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone, Here is I started,,,
=================
W???W?W.FB??4???9.C???oM
=================
Peter Suderman : Obamacare Alt text :: 2013 Peyton Manning :: Football.
Suderman’s alt-text is good during regular posting, but fails in the playoffs?
We don’t KNOW Manning will fail in the playoffs this year, hence the 2013 qualifier.
Also, not sure you can call last year a “failure,” given he only lost due to the worst safety play ever.
Manning threw a pick-six in the first quarter, and a brutal INT in overtime. But noooooooo, only one mistake by a DB is the reason the Broncos lost.
I guess the lack of a pass rush on Flacco the whole game didn’t have any impact whatsoever, either.
Manning had some boners in the game, but he wasn’t the only culprit–and yes, if Rahim Moore does his job on that bomb, it’s an interception, not a touchdown.
You win as a team and lose as a team, yet so many commentators seem to want never to assign any blame to Manning.
He’s got an under .500 record in the playoffs, and yet there’s a litany of excuses they would never have used about most other quarterbacks.
yet so many commentators seem to want never to assign any blame to Manning.
and so many fans want to assign all blame to Manning. No game turns on a single play; most hinge on a few, about 3-6, and his picks were among those, along with Moore’s miss.
CHILDREN! Sit down and shut it…Only us Denverites can bitch about the Broncos. And if anyone mentions cold weather playing Manning will drive to your house and punch in the groin.
Nice.
Nobody has time to punch that many groins.
Nobody has time to punch that many groins.
Radley Balko: “Challenge accepted!!”
Nobody in Denver–or in any other NFL city for that matter–has anything to complain about compared to the long-suffering Cleveland fans. If you haven’t seen this already, you’ll get a kick out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRBDMMVctu8
Indeed, the net result of the health law so far may be that more people have lost coverage than gained it. As a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, “A charitable reading suggests that ObamaCare’s net enrollment stands at about negative four million.”
My God, this law is something to behold. Just the sheer amount of incompetence, hubris, and schadenfreude is…it’s just too much for me too process fully.
Oh no it’s not! It’s just so delicious!
More proof that libertarians just want to see people suffer. If you people truly wanted to help people, you’d be getting behind our president and doing everything you can to make this law work.
For example, you can talk up the exchanges to your family during the upcoming holidays. Or discuss it with strangers at the bar.
You know, helpful stuff like that.
God, we’re desperate.
/proglogic
“Or discuss it with strangers at the bar.”
Two of my gift purchases were from places with crummy web sites. In both cases, I had to call, and in both cases, the operators laughed when I asked if the site had been designed by the guy who did the O-care site.
Was it a hearty laugh or one of those “Obamacare is an NSA keyword” kind of chuckles.
Don’t worry, Adam Levine is coming in to fix things:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/…..70780.html
Ahhh, the sexiest man alive. I still don’t get that choice.
Mel Gibson? I can see it.
Harrison Ford? alrightlythen.
Jude Law? hmmmmmmmm.
Hugh Jackman? I’m with you.
Bradly Cooper? Good to go.
Adam Levine, Adam Levine????????
No. Just No.
But he has the whole unshaven stubble thing going with both his head and his beard.
Chicks dig that, right?
+1 Jason Statham
Chicks dig handsome faces, soulful eyes, and fit bods. The stubble is icing on the man cake.
Levine has beady little eyes and no talent.
Thank you. He has no musical talent.
Looks aside, he is also a no talent ass clown. His voice absolutely sucks. He sounds like Kermit the Frog. I actually do a pretty good impression of his singing after a few beers…
It’s a real WTF?!?! He wouldn’t make the standard of my bathroom mirror on just waking up and I’m no Bradley Cooper.
I don’t think there is any “may” about it. So far, the number of people who have lost coverage exceeds the number who have gained it by several orders of magnitude.
Especially when you back out the Medicaid signups which are the main coverage being doled out through the websites.
I would only wager 1 order of magnitude.
You sir, are too charitable.
4 million lost coverage. 365,000 have “enrolled” for private insurance soa far. Perhaps 10% of those have paid, so call it 36,500 have actually acquired insurance.
Pretty dang close to two orders of magnitude, by my math.
Burn the witch!
I was using the 200,000 vs 4,000,000 numbers, but if you got to 20,000 using the “paid” metric then yes, 2. This brings up another point however, and I have been in heated debate about this. Is several 2 or more, 3 or more, or more than 3? We all know a couple SHOULD be 2 and many, lots, a ton, is more than 2…but where exactly should “several fall”.
Personally I think 2 should be included in several. (deep dish/thin crust, cut/uncut, Warty/SF, etc.)
+ several
How can 2 be several? That doesn’t even make sense.
haters gunna hate.
Two can’t be several, it’s already a pair and a couple.
It goes like this, folks:
One, a couple, a few, several, and then lots or a bunch for everything larger than four.
Now you’re just towing the lion. What is the difference between few and several HUH smart guy?
I always thought of “several” as like 5-7.
You left out a multitude.
Actually it goes like this: One, Couple, Few, Many, Alot then it goes One more than that, A couple more than that, A few more than that, etc…..
Several can not be 2. The last time you had sex, would you describe the event as involving “several” people? (Real people. Fantasizing about Warty during the act doesn’t mean you can include him in the count.)
Excellent point BUT several is an ambiguous adjective. In copulation, sans Warty, pair and couple is implied since the act is specifically 2…at a time…SLD etc. So if you have between 2 and 5 inclusive that should be several.
“Several” is defined as more than two but less than many.
Call it 3 – 7.
What we don’t know is how many of the 40,000 who have actually acquired insurance through the exchange were uninsured before. If they were insured before, then you can’t say they “gained” coverage.
So, I’m pretty comfortable with “several” orders of magnitude.
My name is Legion: for we are many…er…several…….
R C Dean|12.12.13 @ 3:33PM|#
“4 million lost coverage.”…
I think you’re optimistic. According to this ( http://www.theblaze.com/storie…..obamacare/ ) 3.5M have lost their insurance in the 23 states counted.
That leaves 27 (or 34 if you’re Obo) uncounted.
Isn’t it fun that we get to argue about how many orders of magnitude the number of losers exceed the number of winners?
One of the more refined ObamaCare schdenfreude pleasures.
Yeah, that is the fun part. They’ll do everything they can now to minimize expectations, and that show is worth paying marquee price on the buttered popcorn.
I digest the tears one shot glass at a time. Only Epi has the constitution to injest them using the beer bong hat.
Good. A non-poll article. We can finally get off topic again.
“A charitable reading suggests that ObamaCare’s net enrollment stands at about negative four million.”
If you think uninsured people are a problem, wait until you see how many uninsured people there are when government runs insurance exchanges.
The only way you can prove you have been insured is when every claim you make has been paid.
and another 2.1 million enrollments in December
This is proof that the administration is loaded with people dumber than illiterates. Almost NOBODY is going to sign up in December for ANYTHING, the LAST thing people are going to do during the hectic holiday hassles is visit a government website.
Progressives have yet to unleash their final weapon in the war of ideas: obnoxious college students repeating talking points verbatim to forbearing family members during winter break.
If they have any family members whose plans have been canceled, I don’t expect their family members to be “forbearing”.
I expect them to tear those idiots a new asshole. I wish I could be there to watch.
Not true. I recently saw a poll somewhere that showed 43% of the people think the government is helpful!
…”the LAST thing people are going to do during the hectic holiday hassles is visit a government website.”
Hey, I always make it a point to visit the local DMV for a dose of holiday cheer each Christmas!
I asked for something from our legal department and their exact quote was “In December?”
Amateurs.
My people are trained to say:
“December? Sure, no problem. We can pencil you in for December, 2014.”
This is why everybody hates lawyers. :-p
Just so they fear me. That’s all I care about.
This is especially true for insurance plans. How in the fuck are you going to meet your annual deductible and come out ahead if you sign up for a policy in the last month of the year?
Apparently I need to change employers, no slow down in legal activity here. Then again I work in discovery, so trouble rolls downhill and pools at my feet. It’s highly likely I’m buried under so much work I can’t even see that everyone has left the building.
On the other hand, my wife and I looked at our state exchange (Oregon – still buggy) and decided which company we wanted. Then we went to the company’s website and signed up there. (You can’t do that if you want a subsidy, but we figured we wouldn’t get one anyway).
We were uninsured before, and were waiting for Obamacare to kick in before signing up (my wife has pre-existing conditions). It would be entirely reasonable to count us as having signed up for Obamacare, but if you just go by how many people signed up via the exchanges, that count would miss us.
For an accurate count, I think you need to compare the number of uninsured people before & after the penaltax kicks in. We’ll just have to stay tuned for that one.
After the penaltax kicks in there will only be those who were already insured, those who have successfully signed up for Obamacare, and criminals. And who cares if criminals have access to health care? Not Americans. Because criminals.
Let’s keep in mind the distinction between “enrolling” on the website (creating an account), applying for insurance, and actually getting the insurance because you paid the first month’s premium.
But amid the rush to enroll as many people as possible by the Dec. 23 deadline, there’s a huge caveat that isn’t getting much public attention: In order for coverage to take effect on Jan. 1, enrollees must pay their first month’s premium on time. (The deadline varies somewhat by state and by insurer.)
. . . .
Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me.
http://cornstein.tumblr.com/po…..king-about
Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who.
If you have healthcare.gov cookies on your machine, you’re enrolled, I hear. Leave it to the gov to cut out the red tape to the point that all you need to do is click on a link. Truly, we live in a golden age.
“Given the administration’s history”…
There is no reason to believe a word that is issued therefrom.
Just got a mass email from my family’s doctors office:
“The South Bay Family -Torrance Memorial Physician Network is a contracted provider with the Anthem Blue Cross EPO and Blue Shield PPO insurance plans within Covered California, the Insurance Exchange. There are other plans available within the Exchange, but the South Bay Family physicians of the Torrance Memorial Physician Network are only contracted for the Anthem Blue Cross EPO and Blue Shield PPO.”
The 2 plans listed above are “Platinum” tier only.
If you like your doctor, you can keep him (if you pony up the dough for platinum).
You had too much health care. You were taking health care away from other people!
Ditto here. We’re looking for a new pediatrician and ObGyn since both only accept the platinum plan that we can’t afford. Heck. The silver just went up another hundred bucks a month, and I haven’t seen a raise in three years. This is really sucking.
My wife’s OB/GYN isn’t taking any of the Covered CA plans. This is the same guy who previously accepted my wife’s $200/semester law school insurance.
It boggles the mind to think that shitty student insurance is better than almost all of the plans sold through the exchange.
Can’t be! The only plans that got canceled were garbage plans!
(Like mine; the new plan is exactly the same except wife and I are now covered for pre-natal and delivery for only an additional $150/mo!)
I cannot tell you how pleased I am, yet again, to be subsidizing other people’s kids.
Even the people who manage to keep their insurance are unlikely to keep their doctor. These assholes have caused so much harm and misery. And it is a sacred duty to constantly throw that in the face of every Progressive. They can whine about wreckers and the evil insurance companies all they want. But they and everyone else knows the truth. And better yet for once they have managed to fuck so many people even Progressives themselves are for once bearing the costs of their idiotic ideology.
My doc went concierge, and I joined his new practice. It’s awesome. If have a simple problem, i.e. strep or an ear infection (which happens quite often when you have a 2 year old sticking his dirty fingers everywhere), I just call him, and there will be meds waiting for me at the pharmacy. No paperwork, no billing, no waiting.
I suspect you will see more of that, which for small treatments is not a bad deal at all.
The best part is that both me and my doctor get to avoid this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt…..-checklist
Wait until people have their doctors asking about their sex lives and putting the results in some creepy government database. That will go over well. This thing is a gift that never seems to quit giving.
YOU ELITIST 1-PERCENTERS WILL PAY!! THE PROLETARIAT WILL SEE TO THAT!
There was an amendment offered at senate finance today that would allow Medicare docs to go boutique. it was tabled. but the fact that it was even offered was telling.
It bears repeating that the website is not the problem.
The rollout is not the problem.
The government decreeing what must be covered in insurance policies, and making it illegal not to buy them is the problem.
In a sense, the website is a blessing. The more difficult it is for a person to engage with this disaster the better.
The great thing about the website is that it is an easily comprehensible first layer of fail. Sets the tone for the deeper layers of fail, which will unfold in due time.
Seriously, I may invest in popcorn futures.
Ahh that glorious feeling of big government derpy derpy derp. The only way this article could have made me feel happier is if they had randomly photoshopped South African Sign Language Guy into the picture.
Actually I hope someone does that to the videos of Obama talking about what a great success Obamacare is/will be, the videos of Sebelius getting grilled by Congress, etc.
I am curious to see what the talking point will be once it becomes clear millions of people will no longer have insurance thanks to this. Right now they are just pretending the web fairy is going to come and make it all better. But come March millions of people are going to be facing fines for not having insurance that was taken away from them by force of law.
“Look over there! War with some punk-ass country! Minimum wage hike! Um, um, um, REPUBLICAN WAR ON WOMEN!!”
Last I checked, they still can’t even ID the South African Sign Language Guy… but maybe this guy could fill in and get the job done?
Indeed, the net result of the health law so far may be that more people have lost coverage than gained it. As a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, “A charitable reading suggests that ObamaCare’s net enrollment stands at about negative four million.”
On 1 October 2014, millions of people who had insurance before Obamacare will no longer have insurance thanks to Obamacare. That is a fuck up so epic no amount of media lying and ass covering will be able to diminish it much less deny it. They shoved this monstrosity down the country’s throat on the premise that those without insurance must be provided with it. Even their low sloped forehead supporters are bright enough to remember that.
“Yes, fewer people have insurance now, but that’s just because they refuse to buy it! The insurance is available to everyone on exchanges in every state. People just refuse to buy it they want to see Obamacare fail. They want to see Obama fail. The only way to ensure that everyone is insured is to move toward a single-payer system. That way everyone pays their fair share and no one gets to freeride.”
People just refuse to buy it because they want to see Obamacare fail.
fixed.
I think you meant, “People just refuse to buy it because they’re racist and want to see Obamacare fail.”
They will probably claim something like that or some variation of “America is just too stupid to understand what is good for them”. Fuck you is really the only answer they have.
Basically over the next year the Democratic Party is going to tell America “fuck you we are taking away your doctor, your health insurance and fining you if you don’t buy the worthless overpriced plan we told you to buy”.
Despite the religious belief by some of the commentators on here to the contrary, America’s response to that is not going to be “we love you and want to let you have single payer”. This thing is going to be a political earthquake.
John|12.12.13 @ 3:58PM|#
“They will probably claim something like that or some variation of “America is just too stupid to understand what is good for them”….
Rousseau taught them well:
“The General Will
[…]The general will is not the will of the majority. Rather, it is the will of the political organism that he sees as an entity with a life of its own. The general will is an additional will, somehow distinct from and other than any individual will or group of individual wills. The general will is, by some means, endowed with goodness and wisdom surpassing the beneficence and wisdom of any person or collection of persons. Society is coordinated and unified by the general will.”
Also don’t forget blaming the insurance companies for misleading everybody.
“That way everyone pays their fair share and no one gets to freeride.”
I hope you were being intentionally ironic, because that is good work if you were. This is the easiest way to explain the distinction of positive vs. negative rights, and to demonstrate the simple truth that positive rights are self-negating: one man’s “positive right” is another man’s obligation to provide it, and vice versa. So if you have to pay for my health care, but I have to pay for yours, then we might as well have a laissez-faire system where everybody pays for himself. QED
For those of you who want to sing along at home:
I don’t think that song is going to create many converts.
That is what is so great about this. The real hardcore deadenders are going to go down with it. Obama is such a cult of personality that they won’t be able to walk away from it and blame him for not giving them single payer. They are going to claim this thing is great and tell the American public to go fuck themselves.
I confess I didn’t make it past the first two lines when I tried to watch the video.
It was that bad. It literally has no redeeming artistic qualities. It’s like Russian Art, only executed by toddlers pulling crayons out of their diapers that may or may not be loaded.
For all I know by the chorus she is stripping and engaging in a threesome with Jessica Alba and 1984 Michelle Pfeiffer, and I missed it. Honestly, I lack the courage to find out. We have found my breaking point.
Would you say a couple of lines or several lines???
A few lines.
drat
That seems to be how it’s shaping up.
There are some people on the single-payer bandwagon, but those are the same people who thought Obama was too much of a centrist.
The partisans, on the other hand, are defending ObamaCare to the death. They are completely on the bandwagon that everyone’s plan was junk until ObamaCare came along and you should all enjoy being forced to pay $5000 extra a year in premiums so you can get “free” preventive care.
And every single Democrat in the Senate effectively cast the deciding vote for this disaster. Any one of them could have stopped it and didn’t. And every single one of them passed on multiple opportunities to delay or repeal it.
I think once the full scope of this disaster becomes clear, it won’t just be Democratic Senators from Red states like Pryor and Landrieu who are dead men walking. There are going to be Democrats from states no one ever dreamed a Democrat could lose whose careers are going to end over this.
There are going to be Democrats from states no one ever dreamed a Democrat could lose whose careers are going to end over this.
Invest in popcorn and Pabst Blue Ribbon futures…..I plan on buying a shitload as what you describe unfolds!
Good times…good fucking times!
“Comments for this video are disabled”
Dang.
As a service to those who clicked on my link, here is something to wash the taste to shit from your ears:
Iron Maiden: Mother of Mercy
Sweet. Up the irons.
Comments are disabled for this video.
But, those people’s plans were “junk”.
So, I suppose they are better off being completely uninsured.
I don’t think they are going to see it that way. I linked to this this morning and sadly it was too late for anyone to comment on beyond sarcasmic explaining how this will just cause everyone to love Progressives more and demand full on communism. But get this
In Durham last month with Obamacare navigators, I sensed not elation at the law’s passage but a general sense of confusion that may help to explain the poll’s finding. “I have to tell people all the time, ‘It’s the Affordable Care Act, not the Free Health Care Act,'” one navigator told me. The same navigator said the consumers who come to him are largely unaware that they will have to pay a penalty if they choose not to purchase insurance.
http://www.nationalreview.com/…..na-johnson
The political fallout from this hasn’t even begun. A large number of people who are about to face the penaltax either think that Obamacare insurance is going to be free or don’t even know there is a fine for not having insurance. Don’t tell me they are going to blame the insurance companies for being fined. They are going to go ballistic.
One sign of how bad things are….
Here in the people’s republic of Massachusetts, the proggies have completely stopped discussing politics in my office. Completely. They used to stride confidently across the land, like officers in the Republican Guard window shopping in downtown Baghdad. Now they are in mufti, pretending to be restaurant owners claiming they spent the war cleaning bedpans in a charity hospital.
You can sense the despair and gloom. They sport the Obama stickers and the Elizabeth Warren stickers. But their cheery optimism has been replaced by a fatalistic gloom. Berlin still has electricity, and outwardly things might look fine, but when the wind is blowing just right, they can hear the guns firing on the Russian positions, and they know it’s only a matter of time.
It is the same in Maryland. Nearly all of my neighbors proudly voted for Obama twice. They used to like to talk about politics so much my wife would get pissed off because she felt they just liked to bait me. All that ended around 1 October of this year. They never bring up politics at all. I get a real sense they are more than a bit embarrassed and feel like Obama made them look like a fool to their friends and family.
Not every liberal or Democrat is like Shreek and Tony. Some of them are a bit brighter and not insane.
Is it really baiting if you enjoy it too? John, I am the demographic most screwed over by this law and I’m at a loss. Every post I’ve read of yours has the same effect on me. I can see the train wreck coming. And yet, I have to buy the ticket and climb aboard.
There is no happy ending on this ride.
I don’t think so. But my wife disagrees.
And I can see the train wreck coming as well. If I didn’t make myself laugh at the thought of these assholes getting at least some cosmic justice, I couldn’t stop crying about the harm done. What a fucking disaster.
The brighter liberals just tend to be intellectually lazy, or are astute enough to know the right things to say to signify social status. I have less respect for them than the naive true believers.
I call them soft liberals Killaz. They are liberal because it is easy in the social circles they run in. It takes a bit of contrarian balls to be a conservative or libertarian in a lot of places, although I suspect that this disaster might change that a bit.
Some early reports from state exchanges suggest that enrollments so far are skewing toward the old.
No doubt the early enrollees skew old and sick. The first people to sign up for anything are going to be the ones who desperately need/want it.
This is what a toxic pool looks like, one that will enter the death spiral next year when premiums have to go way up, driving out another cohort of relatively young and healthy, concentrating costs on a smaller and smaller pool.
I can’t see how they avoid the death spiral. And when that happens next year, what then? They won’t be able to cover it up. The rates will be there for everyone to see. They might be able to extort the insurance companies into not raising their rates until after the midterms. But they won’t be able to do that forever.
When the real death spiral happens millions of people will be left without insurance. I don’t see anyway around effective repeal at that point. It will be hard to fix the damage. But at a minimum the mandate has to go, along with the coverage mandates, along with community rating and the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing coverage. Doing that will be the only way to even begin to get people to be able to buy insurance again. The political pressure to do that will be overwelming. Meanwhile Obama will be vetoing every bill that comes out of Congress that tries to do that. You think his disapproval rating is high now.
As always, I balance out these stories of wrack and ruin, with lovely tales of lush green lawns and happy, dancing proles –
AND an mutherfuckin Interactive Map of Obamacare Success!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/d…..t-map-data
Fuck off Wreckers and Kulaks.
I laugh my ass off when I read that kind of shit. They really think they can lie their way out of it. This is like Bush trying to claim New Orleans wasn’t really flooded. The more they lie and tell people black is white the more people are going to hate them. Keep it up Josh, you pathetic fuck.
Check out the pic of the reporter. What is it with these nerds who think growing a goatee is a sign of masculinity?
And his name is Dylan. What a fucking surprise.
Ah I don’t know…he’s still more masculine looking than Ezra Klein…..or Rachel Maddow.
A memo put out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in September projected 500,000 private enrollments in October, 706,000 in November, and another 2.1 million enrollments in December?totaling some 3.2 million enrollments when coverage begins next year.
Even their wildly optimistic pre-launch projections don’t make up for the number of cancellations.
If Hillary wants to be president, she should stand up now and declare Obamacare to be an unmitigated disaster. There are legions of lefties out there who are just itching to get away from its stink, and they’d love the opportunity to move upwind. If she doesn’t, the democrat nominee is going down in flames in 2016.
The problem is that she was in the Obama administration when it passed and there have to be a thousand sound bites of her lying about how great this thing is. If she did that, the various Obama cultists in the media, and there are many, would destroy her.
I think someone on the left is going to give voice to the various rats wanting the flee the sinking ship. But there is always going to be a huge section of the Democratic Party and a big majority of the media who have way too much of their personal credibility invested in Obama to ever admit this is a disaster. There is going to be a civil war in the Democratic Party over this.
She could pull it off if half the party didn’t consider it their sacred duty to preserve the Black Jesus’ signature accomplishment. If the whole party turned against Obama, she could do it. But that is never going to happen. So all her doing it would do was start the coming DNC civil war. I can’t see her doing that. Hillary is a party man through and through. She is going down with this ship.
As a member of the Canadian tribe, I’m still trying to figure out what you guys are doing. What’s the difference between a Fed and State plan and how does Obamacare fit into this in terms of the law? Basically, Obama said you must have insurance and to get insurance you must pick these plans I have laid out for you – which may or may not be shittier than the one you have now but can’t keep. Is this the gist of it?
there are a few moving parts.
1. employer sponsored coverage.
2. individual coverage. offered through a federal exchange, a state exchange, or neither
3. Medicaid.
all the plans must meet certain criteria, called essential health benefits. that’s what the cancellations are about.
the exchanges are designed to filter your selection and calculate your subsidy and or medicaid eligibility. state’s had the option of building their own exchange, partnering with the feds, or deferring to the feds.
So why aren’t people signing up if it’s supposed to be so good?
two reasons.
they can’t b/c the website.
it’s not as good. they were trying to hide the price through generous subsidies. they also are controlling costs (attempting too anyway) by restricting the provider network.
and you can only get the subsidy if you go through the non-functioning exchange.
[i’m out he door but will be on the am links tomorrow if you wan to discuss further]
Thanks NoVAHockey.
And to think that come 2016 the odds are the Democrats will continue to hold the White House and the Republicans will have neither a rational plan to fix Obamacare, nor electable candidate. Too many of the drones are so hooked on their Govt give-aways they will always vote Democrat and the ones paying for it no longer seem to have a voice in this country.
I guess that is why Obama won by a bigger margin and had a landslide in 2012. Right? He did win by like 12 million or something right?
Ah not exactly. And that was before the public had any idea how bad this was. And people didn’t vote Democrat because they are hooked on government. That is just a lie idiots on the Right tell themselves so they can feel smart. People voted Democrat mostly because they don’t pay much attention and the media does yohmans work lying.
And because Romney is a square. The John Kerry of the Republican Party.
Rational plan? Well, there’s the problem right there. Planning does not an economy make.
Bush got a 2nd term too…
We don’t need to wait for reports on the demographics of the people signing up to know this is a disaster. Low response rates are always the first indicators of adverse selection. The first quarter earnings reports are going to be great fun.
…”Low response rates are always the first indicators of adverse selection.”…
The stated preference has been ‘Oh, yes, I love Obama. I’m going to sign up for whatever since he’s so wonderful!’
The revealed preference not so much…
To get this dumb shit to work, they need to rob lots of young, healthy, relatively successful people.
Good luck with that, shitheads. Reach in and pick their pockets. I hope you find a snake.
*trouser snakes qualify.
US politics, best politics money can buy. The rich get richer and everyone else gets the boot.
http://www.Privacy-Planet.com
I think the biggest mistake that politicians failed to recognize regarding healthcare is that people are willing to spend a boatload of money for a product (health insurance) that they will rarely use and that annually doesn’t justify it’s own cost (yes, except as a hedge against a bad year). The point is that if people are willing to place that much value on such an annually fruitless product then replacing it with something else better be pretty damn good. Obamacare is not that product and it never would be. It’s just more regulations and an added tax so that those without healthcare can have it. People buy insurance as a hedge. Not one person who buys their own insurance (health, car, etc) doesn’t think that they might never see a dime of that in return (they could die suddenly). People don’t naturally want to buy insurance – they do it because they want to be responsible. Obamacare is basically telling them they need to pay more so that those who are unable to be responsible enough to pay for insurance themselves can have it.
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More changes to the SBOA (Save Barak Obama’s Ass) Law.
Whooda thunk?
Looks like this is turning out to be Prohibition II….
Avoid this abortion at all costs….self insure.
If Private Insurers issued Medicaid plans, they would have been canceled for not meeting ACA Mandates.