Obamacare Schadenfreude - Better Late than Never?

A bit late today.  Late to get up; left home early to buy tickets to a Sheryl Crow concert to be held soon at the local firehouse.  Did some gardening in the sun.  Had lunch, started on the post, and went to beach in the middle (coolish, windy, high tide, few sharks teeth). Got back and picked up where I left off.

The debate about whether Obamacare has really lead to any net health insurance enrollments continues, but evidence from Maryland suggests that here in the state with the second worst website (next to Oregon) the answer is no:

It’s a Loss in Md: 73K Lose Insurance; 60K Enroll on Exchange

The head of the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only 60,000 people have signed up for Obamacare through the state’s exchange - 13,000 less than the number of individuals reported to lose their insurance due to Obamacare. “According to our reports, according to AP, press accounts, 73,000 individuals in Maryland were going to lose their insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, and what you’re telling me is your revised goal is approximately the same number – 75,000. So your revised goal of people you’re gonna sign up is: We’re gonna sign up the people who were kicked off of the Affordable Care Act,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said.

The Carrot or the Stick? Fear of penalty a reason for Obamacare's late surge in California

California officials often cited the high demand for health insurance in explaining this week's last-minute surge for Obamacare.

But some of the people who waited in line for hours this week said another big reason was to avoid paying the health law's penalty for being uninsured.

Chris Roca, 23, waited in line for more than three hours to enroll in a health plan at a sign-up event in Panorama City. But he said he doesn't expect he'll get much use from his insurance.

“I’m just happy I don’t have to pay the penalty,” Roca said.

The Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to have health insurance in 2014, or pay a penalty of $95 per adult or 1% of their adjusted gross income, whichever is greater. Those penalties increase in future years.

Covered CA Accused Of Bait & Switch Over Flawed Doc Lists



 ‘Opie And Anthony’: ‘I Don’t Know Why We’re Not Having A Revolution’ Over Obamacare  Just another couple of liars, according to Harry Reid:

The hosts of SiriusXM Radio’s “Opie and Anthony” show slammed Obamacare for losing their health insurance due to President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Gregg “Opie” Hughes, who has a wife and two kids, went into detail Thursday about receiving an insurance cancellation in the mail for him and his family. “I’m a little annoyed today because I got my insurance cancellations yesterday,” Hughes said. “And I got kids and the wife that needed all that stuff.”

Hughes went on to say that he had “no issue” with his cancelled health insurance and doesn’t “even know where to begin” with the new paperwork.  “I have no (expletive) idea how to even attempt this,” Hughes steamed. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

Hughes described that he had “perfect health insurance” for himself and his family before it got taken away. “Finally, after all these years, I had perfect health insurance and now I have to redo the whole thing. It’s ridiculous,” Hughes said.

Anthony Cumia chimed in talking about how he recently lost his health insurance too due to Obamacare and the mountain of paperwork he now has to deal with.
. . .
Hughes responded: “I don’t know why we’re not having a revolution at this point.”

A friend of mine, who worked as a civilian contractor in the defense field reported:

The company I worked for before retirement, had a discount Medicare Supplement plan and a very good discount Drug plan. Those are being cancelled. Some company I never heard of will be "offering" coverage. Only if you buy from that company do you get a stipend from the company to use to buy that coverage. Otherwise it is off to the open market. When we did our due diligence at retirement, the company discounted plans were less than half the free market coverages. And for my lovely wife the Medicare Part D does not work for us. She blows into the donut hole.

I've deleted the rest of his somewhat NSFW comment. . .

Bug or Feature? Obamacare Is Strangling Unionism

. . .The value in union membership in a consumer-centric economy is increasingly judged like any other service. Fewer members appear motivated by being part of a larger movement intent on remaking society. For the most part society has been remade in the image unions long fought for. After all, Obama delivered government healthcare, the missing apex of the progressive movement’s one hundred year project!

But, unexpectedly Obamacare hurts many people unions thought it would help, including their members. And, it appears unions can’t reverse this reality. Without dues unions are a declining political force. The president’s post-healthcare pivot to protecting the world’s climate at the cost of union jobs; a newly invented goal for progressives, is a non-starter with the rank and file. Who cares? Obama’s new progressives don’t really need union help any more. They’ve got hedge-fund billionaires ready to fund pursuit of the new utopian frontier – ending the use of carbon fuels!. . .

You call this success? 

Even the Red Networks seem to have gotten tired of shilling for Obama:  Networks Snub Obama On Primetime Health Care Address

White House officials sought valuable primetime air for a rare, impromptu Tuesday night address to tout the accomplishment of signing up more than 7 million people under the Affordable Care Act.

But network officials refused to make the kind of accommodation they did previously for the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, for instance, and Obama was left instead cutting into the much smaller audiences ofEllen and other daytime shows.

As Allahpundit suggests:

Maybe it was a pure bottom-line calculation or maybe they concluded that, at this point in his presidency, a direct appeal from The One himself just isn’t going to move the needle much — especially on ObamaCare, where public sentiment has been static (with occasional exceptions) for ages. If they’re going to sacrifice some bucks for The Cause, they want some political bang in return.

House Republicans pass bill redefining full-time work to 40 hours - Why? Obamacare, of course.

House Republicans moved yesterday to correct one of the unintended consequences of ObamaCare, and to challenge Senate Democrats to demonstrate that they want to “fix it rather than nix it.” The definition of full-time work in the Affordable Care Act is 30 hours a week, which provides incentives for employers to limit hours for its employees to less than that — and it’s not just the private sector responding to that incentive. The House passed a new definition of full-time work that raises the threshold to 40 hours a week, and eighteen House Democrats voted for passage:

Eighteen House Democrats voted with Republicans Thursday to change the definition of full-time work as it relates to the Affordable Care Act, signaling that for some members of President Obama’s party the law remains a difficult political issue.
The bill approved Thursday would change the law’s definition of full-time work from 30 hours a week back to 40 hours, a move that Republicans say is necessary as employers continue limiting the hours of part-time workers in anticipation of the law’s employer insurance requirement.

That prompted a veto threat from the White House, and a further demonstration of cluelessness:

Obama threatened to veto the House bill this week, citing a recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said about that 1 million people would lose employer-backed coverage and that the number of uninsured would climb by almost 500,000 if the law’s work definitions were changed. And most congressional Democrats, buoyed by the new enrollment figures, said Thursday that Republicans were merely bending to the will of companies who are using the new law as an excuse to cut workers’ hours and pay.
“It is not Obamacare that decides how much somebody works, it’s the person who runs the company,” Rep. James McDermott (D-Wash.) said Thursday.

Well, yes … and cost and price signals largely direct those decisions. Democrats made it a lot more costly to give workers 30 hours a week. Did they think that would not have any impact on staffing decisions? This takes the tunnel vision created by static analysis to a ridiculously narrow new limit.

Private Health Insurance, Outside Obamacare Marketplaces, Still for Sale

In the months and weeks leading up to March 31, the Obama administration pushed the message through press releases, tweets and blog posts that the last day in March was the final opportunity to get health insurance in 2014. A White House blog post on Monday is typical, beginning with the words, "If you don't have health insurance, today is the last day to get coverage that starts in 2014." Many of the White House's celebrity endorsers proclaimed on Twitter, "TODAY is the Last Day to #GetCovered!" Although exceptions were noted for extraordinary circumstances, certain "life events," and a special extension for those "in line" as of March 31, the impression given was that those who missed the deadline were out of luck.

However, the day after open enrollment for Obamacare ended, the website for Healthcare.gov updated the entry under the topic, "How can I get coverage outside of open enrollment?" A cached version of the page prior to the change speaks of life events, special enrollment periods, and the Medicaid/CHIP options that have no set enrollment period. The updated page, however, includes much more detail, including a section entitled "Private plans outside the Marketplace." This page now reveals what we first reported back on March 3: Open enrollment applies only to the marketplaces, not private insurance in general [emphasis in original]:

Of course.  If a company has a product it wants to sell, and can do so profitably, and it's worthwhile for consumers to buy it, it will be available at virtually any time.  The deadline here was all of the the governments doing.  Do it our way, using our rules on our time plan, peasants.

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