More Friday Obamacare Schadenfreude

News of the continuing slow motion crash of the United States Healthcare Insurance system caused by the avalanche of Obamacare regulations onto the tracks continues.

Older Hill aides shocked by Obamacare prices

Veteran House Democratic aides are sick over the insurance prices they’ll pay under Obamacare, and they’re scrambling to find a cure.

“In a shock to the system, the older staff in my office (folks over 59) have now found out their personal health insurance costs (even with the government contribution) have gone up 3-4 times what they were paying before,” Minh Ta, chief of staff to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), wrote to fellow Democratic chiefs of staff in an email message obtained by POLITICO. “Simply unacceptable.”

In the email, Ta noted that older congressional staffs may leave their jobs because of the change to their health insurance.

That tuts my leid. Can you imagine the hardship of being forced into the same healthcare system that they're forcing everyone else into?  Since I strongly suspect that democratic aides and interns wrote most of the actual legislation (when it wasn't handed to them in electronic cut and pastable pieces by democratic interest groups), I have zero sympathy for them.

New York Times Columist Fears Obamacare could put the stake in liberalisms heart:

This system requires coordination of over 288 policy options (an average of eight insurers are competing for business in 36 states), each with three or more levels of coverage, while simultaneously calculating beneficiary income, tax credit eligibility, subsidy levels, deductibles, not to mention protecting applicant privacy, insuring web security and managing a host of other data points.

A malfunction at any one of these junctures could prove fatal.
...
The seven million people officials initially estimated would sign up for the Obamacare insurance exchanges this year are putting their well-being and that of their families in the hands of government bureaucracies armed with demonstrably inadequate technological expertise.

The chaos surrounding efforts to activate HealthCare.gov reinforces a key conservative meme: that whatever the test is, government will fail it. Insofar as voters experience their interaction with government as frustrating and unreliable, the brunt of political damage will hit Democrats, both as the party of government and as the party of Obamacare.

Cumulatively, recent developments surrounding the rollout of Obamacare strengthen the most damaging conservative portrayals of liberalism and of big government – that on one hand government is too much a part of our lives, too invasive, too big, too scary, too regulatory, too in your face, and on the other hand it is incompetent, bureaucratic and expropriatory.

Yep.  Good analysis. Now stop making excuses.

Of course, what's happening with Obamacare now is like the first wave of a tsunami, incredibly destructive on it own, but a mere warning of the destructive power of the second and third:

Second wave of health plan cancellations looms

A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking time bomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancellations next fall -- right before the mid-term elections.

The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader.

An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the administration anticipates half to two-thirds of small businesses would have policies canceled or be compelled to send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. They predict up to 100 million small and large business policies could be canceled next year.

In a country of 319 million people, we could have 100 million cancellations.  Considering how many people will remain uninsured after Obamacare's generous estimates, and the number of dependents covered on other  plans, that implies that virtually all of Americas insurance plans will be cancelled and forced into the

But, but, the President said, "if you like you're plan, you can keep it.  If you like your doctor, you can keep him."  He said it over and over, and it was repeated by democratic supporters.

Of course, that depends on how the  regulatory apparatus interpret the 2000 page law, and how they choose to enforce it.

You do know by now, of course, that the Senate, led by Senator Harry Reid voted on partisan lines to eliminate the filibuster of judicial nominees other than the Supreme Court.  There are those who think that this is a means of getting the DC Appeals Court packed with a majority of liberal judges who will view the law favorably, and allow the reach of law to become more pervasive:

“President Obama and the administration refuse to follow the plain text of the law, and the D.C. Circuit is the court of appeals that has been holding the administration accountable."

Cruz said the rule change, which passed Thursday with 50 Democratic votes, “was designed to pack that court with judges that they believe will be a rubber stamp.”

The vote to pass the rules change was 52-48, with the two independents, Sens. Angus King (Maine) and Bernie sanders (Vt.), voting with the Democrats and three Democrats voting against the change.

The addition of three Democratic-appointed judges to the 11-seat court will shift its ideological balance, which had been tilted to the right. This could have significant implications for the new healthcare law because the court has primary jurisdiction over many federal regulatory matters.

Other Republican senators also expressed concern that a Democratic bias on the court will make it harder to halt the implementation of ObamaCare.

Which the democrats may come to regret, if the implementation of the law, and it's cost continues to annoy voters.

Former Democratic Rep. Harold Ford (TN) appeared on Morning Joe today and said that the problems with the Healthcare.gov website are just the beginning (which most people have already realized). He cites the coming shortage of doctors as one of the next major problems facing Obamacare.

“The fundamental problem now is what happens with Democrats in the House and the Senate who are up for re-election, and how they have to respond and behave around this,” Ford said. “The website problems I thought, a week or two ago, were more isolated than they are. I happen to think it could be a more systemic challenge. And there may need to be a greater honesty — not an honesty, I’m not saying that people aren’t being honest — but a greater acceptance that they may have to step back and shut the whole thing down.”

An important part of the Obama coalition has been women.  But women are overwhelmingly the human interface of  of health care in the United States, the people shop for doctors, plans, etc, and, more than men, the users.  Could it be that women are starting to see that Obamacare has raised their costs, and limited their care options? One can hope.

Why women are so over Obama

During a six-week period of time that no one could have imagined, President Obama became the man who fell to earth. Much of the commentary since the launch of Obamacare has rightfully centered on the remarkable collapse of the program and the even more shocking and utter management failure of this presidential-legacy issue by Mr. Obama and his inner circle. While the downward shift in support by most Americans in light of the fiasco is not surprising, the retreat of women from the president is most significant.

Why are women finally beginning to reject Mr. Obama? Because he betrayed their trust. It’s personal. With the truth of Obamacare on the table for all to see, including the higher premiums, the canceled policies, the excluded doctors and hospitals, the original targeted marketing of Obamacare to women has now been exposed as the cynical and manipulative fraud it really was. It would have been bad enough, but perhaps forgivable, had Mr. Obama simply been wrong or made a major mistake. To have flagrantly lied, though, about an issue fundamental to our health and future, is particularly unacceptable to women — the very people on whom he has relied for his elections and for support of his legislative agenda.

Aces lays it all out:

Let's review. Obamacare's problems:

(1) The website is broken.

(2) The payment and accounting and administration back-end is unwritten, untested, and out of time.

(3) They are seriously out of time to do something about those 3.5 to 5 million people whose insurance has been cancelled. To be covered by Jan 1, they have to get a new plan by Dec 15, which means 140,000 to 200,000 of them need to be enrolling every day between now and then, including weekends and the Thangsfrickingiving holiday, which ain't gonna happen ya'll.

(4) Adverse selection a.k.a. the death spiral a.k.a. the shit spiral is coming. See Ace's post last night on the Kentucky exchange's obvious precursor to the shit spiral.

(5) Next year we get to do this same song and dance with the group plans as the employer mandate kicks in. . .

Read 'em all

More from Ace's.

OK, fellow Morons, gather 'round, because I'm going to provide a simple demonstration of why Obamacare is so much different than all the tropes the Left uses to try to scare voters away from those eeeeevil Rethuglicans. While I must admit up front that this is a self-selected group that visits Ace of Spades daily, it is also a very large group. So, let's do a simple experiment.

First, let's visit the standard Left shrieking points.

1) How many of you know someone who died in Hurricane Katrina? (Just thought I'd get that out of the way.)

2) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was a valid registered voter and who was denied the chance to vote due to Voter ID laws?

3) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was unable to afford birth control due to a lack of health insurance?

4) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was denied the chance to have an abortion, due to state regulations?
....Now for the flip side:

8) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who had their existing health insurance policy cancelled as a result of Obamacare, and who are now looking at options that are more expensive and have higher deductibles? (My own hand goes up.)

9) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who works for a business whose health insurance coverage is either going to be eliminated or become more expensive as a result of Obamacare?

Show of hands, everyone?

Yep, what I pretty much thought.

Note that most of the Left's boogiemen -- items 1-7 -- are just that -- largely imaginary, except for the occasional OFA worker who gets press coverage for her 15 minutes of fame. But I suspect that the vast majority of the voting population can't answer yes to question 1-7.

On the other hand, between now and November 2014, I am willing to bet that the vast majority of the voting population will answer yes to questions 8 and 9. And that is why, in spite of the Left's desperate attempts to find some equivalents between the burgeoning Obamacare debacle and the sins of the Right (as they define them), it's really no contest.

 Stay tuned.