Obamacare Schadenfreude - A Bit Late

Another cold, nasty day in slower MD, with the approach of yet another Tropical Winter Storm, this one named Ulysses by the Weather Channel.  Currently ravaging the Carolina's and Virginia with both rain, and the dread "icy mix", we expect a glancing blow this afternoon as it turns to go offshore.    But that's not my excuse for the late Obamacare Schadenfreude.  We had a morning breakfast with friends, followed by an appointment with a Health Care professional, and then errands that kept us away from home well past noon. Now, that delayed schadenfreude.

You know Obamacare, the program allegedly designed to bring health insurance to the uninsured? Yeah, that one.  It turns out the Obama administration can't tell you how many previously uninsured are signing up, because, well, they don't actually track that number:

How many uninsured people are signing up?

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the health care law will reduce the number of uninsured people by about 24 million over the next few years, and that about 6 million previously uninsured people will gain coverage through the law’s exchanges this year. So, is enrollment on track to meet that goal? Overall enrollment is looking pretty decent, but how many of the people who have signed up were previously uninsured?

“That’s not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way,” Cohen told the insurance-industry crowd on Thursday when asked how many of the roughly 4 million enrollees were previously uninsured.

New York state is collecting that data, and it says about 70 percent of its enrollees were not covered before, while about 30 percent are changing their coverage rather than gaining it.

I think this as another "Three Dog Night" statistic.  Don't Turn on the Lights 'cause I don't wanna see!

How is the enrollment going? New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys find

One of the surveys, by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., shows that among people who are uninsured and do not intend to get a health plan through one of the exchanges, the biggest factor is that they believe they cannot afford it.

The McKinsey survey shows that of people who had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces by last month, about one-fourth described themselves as having been without insurance for most of the past year. That 27 percent, while low, compares with 11 percent a month earlier.

The survey also attempted to measure what has been another fuzzy matter: how many actually have the insurance for which they signed up. Under federal rules, coverage begins only if someone has started to pay their monthly insurance premiums. Just over half of uninsured people said they had started to pay, compared with nearly nine in 10 of those signing up on the exchanges who said they were simply switching from one health plan to another.

So to summarize, few of the the truly uninsured want the Obamacare insurance, and are willing to pay for it.  Previously insured people dumped off their insurance by Obamacare are much more likely to enroll and pay for it.

The second survey, by researchers at the Urban Institute and based on slightly older data from December, shows that awareness of the new marketplaces is fairly widespread but that those with a lower income and those who are uninsured are less likely to know about this avenue to health coverage than other people.

Shockingly, poorer, people are less well informed. Which is cause and which is effect?  

Extending the Obamacare Cancelled Policy Moratorium––One More Contortion in the Pretzel

The administration has confirmed that the individual policies that were supposed to be cancelled because of Obamacare can now remain in force another two years.

For months I have been saying millions of individual health insurance policies will be cancelled by year-end––most deferred until December because of the carriers' early renewal programs and because of President Obama's request the policies be extended in the states that have allowed it.

The administration, even today, as well as supporters of the new health law, have long downplayed the number of these "junk policy" cancellations as being insignificant.

Apparently, these cancelled policies are good enough and their number large enough to make a difference come the November 2014 elections. . . 

From Megan McArdle, the one-armed economist from Bloomberg: Will Obama Ever Enforce His Health Law?

The Barack Obama administration announced yesterday that it was extending the “grandfathering” of noncompliant health-care plans fortwo more years. In other words, everything is proceeding as I have foreseen:

The law still lacks the political legitimacy to survive in the long term. And in a bid to increase that legitimacy, the administration has set two very dangerous precedents: It has convinced voters that no unpopular provisions should ever be allowed to take effect, and it has asserted an executive right to rewrite the law, which Republicans can just as easily use to unravel this tangled web altogether.
Many of the commentators I’ve read seem to think that the worst is over, as far as unpopular surprises. In fact, the worst is yet to come.

I wrote that in January, when the administration had so far evinced no willingness to inflict any pain on anyone, even if the pain was needed to make the law work. A month and a half later, this record is even stronger.

This latest maneuver is supposed to help midterm Democrats, who are facing a very tough landscape in November. But there will always be an election coming that Democrats will want to win. The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to activate the unpopular parts of the law. Especially if Republicans gain the trifecta -- House, Senate, presidency -- they are going to have no incentive to save Obamacare by sacrificing their own political fortunes.

However, despite the law's manifest unpopularity, Hillary Clinton is determined to see it enforced:

Hillary Clinton showed more signs of flexibility Wednesday on how Obamacare is implemented, but she insisted the law is too important to “turn the clock back.”
In a question-and-answer session following a lecture at UCLA, Clinton suggested she’s open to different ways of achieving the health law’s goals. She praised Arkansas — the state where she and her husband rose to political fame — for carrying out a new approach to expanding Medicaid coverage, by using the federal money to buy private health insurance for more than 100,000 low-income residents.

Meanwhile, Michelle is claiming that they have God on their side:

In Miami, the first lady, dressed in a black patterned wrap-style dress, spoke to nearly a dozen enrollees and application counselors individually, high-fiving some for getting insurance, asking how long the process took (about 20 minutes for individuals and up to 45 minutes for a family). She encouraged counselors to stay busy and enroll as many people as possible. . . .
“These places are not easy places to run, but you are doing God’s work.”

Imagine the main stream media high dudgeon if a Republican claimed to be doing God's work.

In Harry Reid's (D) home state of Nevada, 10,000 casino workers are threatening to strike over the consequences of Obamacare:

Contract negotiations are stalled for thousands of workers at casinos on the Strip and in downtown Las Vegas to the point where they may go on strike — and the sticking point is Obamacare.

On Feb. 20, thousands of housekeepers, porters, cooks, cocktail servers, and others represented by Nevada’s largest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, voted to end a contract extension the workers agreed to last summer. The union wants to maintain its current benefits — including health care coverage at no cost to workers, pensions, and guaranteed 40-hour workweeks.

Rising health care costs due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act could put those benefits in jeopardy, the union says.

“The biggest hurdle to reaching settlements in Vegas is the new costs imposed on our health plan by Obamacare,” Donald “D” Taylor, president of Unite Here, the parent union of CU Local 226, told BuzzFeed in a statement. “Even though the president and Congress promised we could keep our health plan, the reality is, unless the law is fixed, that won’t be true.”

Another example of "voting has consequences.  Suckers.

The House of Representatives votes to let slackers off the hook: Bill to Make the Fine $0 for Violating the Individual Mandate Passes by 90 Votes

The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday afternoon to make the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate $0 for this year, and it did so by the wide margin of 90 votes (250 to 160). That’s 83 more than the 7-vote margin (219 to 212) by which Obamacare passed the House four Marches ago. Moreover, 27 Democrats voted for today’s legislation—27 more than the number of Republicans who voted for Obamacare when it passed. In all, 223 Republicans voted for today’s bill, while only one—Paul Broun of Georgia—voted against it. . . .

The bill is, of course, entirely a symbolic gesture, the Senate will not pass it, nor will would the preznit sign it.  However, when people start complaining about their tax return being hit for $95 or 1% of their adjusted gross income, be sure to remind them.

But all this creative destruction so you could get good healthcare choices at low prices, right?  Well, no, it turns out the Administration's supporters point of view is that less choice is better: In Health Care, Choice Is Overrated

Our own experience today is that it is not.