Easter Morning Obamacare Schadenfreude

Obamacare Schadenfreude is risen to--day, A-A-A-A-Alleluia.



From the heretic liberal, Mickey Kaus: Obamacare’s Core Flaw?

Risk-filled sump, update: If everyone knew the risk pool on the Obamacare exchanges would be sicker-than-normal — as the last sentence of this NYT piece suggests — then why throw the hapless unsubsidized people (e.g. singles making $46,000) into that pool, where their policies will inevitably be more expensive, with more restrictions, than if they were in a more normal pool? Did Obamacare’s designers think they’d be happy about it? This seems like the program’s core flaw, no? It’s why, despite all the seemingly impressive numbers, Obamacare leaves a bad taste. …

Obamacare Number Games: How Many Enrollees, Really?

To listen to Obamacare supporters, Kathleen Sebelius leaves her post as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services with her head held high, as her legacy now includes shepherding across the finish line a major expansion of health insurance for low-income, previously uninsured Americans. Howard Dean says the Republicans would be foolish to attack Obamacare in this year’s campaign, now that the program has achieved so much success

Carl Sagan spoke of “billions and trillions”; now the president and the Obamacare support media can talk of millions and millions newly insured.

But how many millions?

Prior to the opening of the exchanges in October 2013, President Obama claimed that the ability of families to keep children on their health insurance policies through age 26 had already added three million people to the ranks of the insured. This claim appears to be nonsense. Avik Roy — one of the few journalists who has actually been examining the data and drawing his own conclusions rather than regurgitating or looking to justify each of the administration’s assertions — estimates that the actual number of newly covered young people is less than one-third of the number claimed, and perhaps far less.

In fact, the percentage of uninsured Americans aged 18 to 24 has not changed at all from 2008 — prior to the economic collapse — through 2013. And of course, the change in policy did not come free. Roy estimates that family plans now cost $160 to $480 a year more due to the new coverage — and that is for all families, including all those without children who are newly covered. Also, as with all the other “free things” offered on the screening side due to Obamacare, none of it is free as someone else has to pay for them...

Statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics.  Who's right here?  Based on history, one would have to conclude that the administration and it's allies are bending the statistics to the point of breaking to prove that Obamacare is working.

And what good is it to enroll and pay your premiums if you can't get a doctor? Problems with narrow networks continue to manifest themselves. The new "medical homeless": More Covered California Patients Say They Can’t See A Doctor

While open enrollment for coverage under the Affordable Care Act is closed, many of the newly insured are finding they can’t find doctors, landing them into a state described as “medical homelessness.”

Rotacare, a free clinic for the uninsured in Mountain View, is dealing with the problem firsthand.

Mirella Nguyen works at the clinic said staffers dutifully helped uninsured clients sign up for Obamacare so they would no longer need the free clinic. But months later, the clinic’s former patients are coming back to the clinic begging for help. “They’re coming back to us now and saying I can’t find a doctor, “said Nguyen.

Thinn Ong was thrilled to qualify for a subsidy on the health care exchange. She is paying $200 a month in premiums. But the single mother of two is asking, what for? “Yeah, I sign it. I got it. But where’s my doctor? Who’s my doctor? I don’t know,” said a frustrated Ong.

Things like this are why the democrats New York Times is tearing it's hair in frustration:
Democrats Confront Vexing Politics Over the Health Care Law

When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans.

But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact.

Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal. . .

Trouble for Democrats: More Senate seats are at risk

Democrats are finding that their path to keeping control of the U.S. Senate this year is getting bumpier.

At least four states where Democrats hold Senate seats that once were seen as fairly safe are now considered in play: Michigan, Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire.
They join seven states with Democratic incumbents where analysts see decent bets for Republican pickups: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried all seven in 2012.

The new four are now battlegrounds for the same reasons that plague Democrats elsewhere. The Affordable Care Act is detested in many circles. Anyone associated with Washington is often toxic. And popular Republicans who are running for other offices are often on the ballot.

“The common thread is that there’s a Democrat in the White House who’s not that popular,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan research group at the University of Virginia. “It wouldn’t be surprising if any of those states went Republican.’

And it won't help if they lose Senators to a preventable stupidity, either:

Actions may speak louder than words, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal took that mentality to the extreme on Friday.

The Connecticut Democrat was standing behind Milford Mayor Ben Blake on the town's Metro-North station platform as the two held a press conference on railway safety. Complete with easels and charts, Blake was laying out the MTA's safety violations, which total 139 over the last 10 years, worth $552,000 in fines.

I wonder what that yellow line the good Senator is standing on is for?

Courtesy of Theo's The best description of Obamacare so far:

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said: "We have to pass it, to find out what's in it"?

A physician said: "That's the definition of a stool sample."