Obamacare Schadenfreude on a Full Stomach

We got up early this morning to meet friends with whom we used to work for a bi-weekly breakfast at the local BE (not many breakfast choices in Prince Frederick, and we have a great waitress who's the best show in town).  I broke out of my sausage, eggs and biscuit routine and had the special "cinnamon" pancake stack.  Too big, even I couldn't finish it all.  Worked some of it off by running around to have a chain saw fixed, and drop by the local Wally World for some medicine and boat supplies.

It's a mild, cloudy day here, some chance of rain, maybe even lightning and thunder later. We'll find out I suppose.

Let's see what's in todays catch of Obamacare Schadenfreude; hmm, looks like a typical fishing trip, a few dinks.

Ex-Obama Flack Thinks the Personal Mandate is on the Chopping Block: Gibbs predicts employer mandate will be killed

“I don’t think the employer mandate will go into effect. It’s a small part of the law. I think it will be one of the first things to go,” he said to a notably surprised audience.

The employer mandate has been delayed twice, he noted. The vast majority of employers with 100 or more employees offer health insurance, and there aren’t many employers who fall into the mandate window, he said.

Killing the employer mandate would be one way to improve the law — and there are a handful of other “common sense” improvements needed as well, he said.

That's because it was so well thought out when it was voted on.

U.S. insurers fear backlash over new Obamacare rate increases

"I do think that it's likely premium rate shocks are coming. I think they begin to make themselves at least partially known in 2015 and fully known in 2016," said Chet Burrell, chief executive officer of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. "That will be different in different parts of the country. I don't think it will be uniformly the same."

"Do the premiums need to rise, just to cover the cost, to such a level that it creates both political heat, regulatory heat, finger-pointing, accusation?" Burrell said at the Reuters Health Summit in Washington on Tuesday. "If that happened, then the environment becomes very difficult and it doesn't in a sense matter that you worked out all the details. You're at each others' throats because it just costs so much."

I have negligible sympathy for the insurance companies; they went to bed with the Administration and woke up with fleas. Remember, they promised this would save us all $2,500 per family.  They lied, health insurance died.

Obamacare’s Next Challenge: IRS Verification

. . . Under the new health law, the IRS is responsible for enforcing 45 new provisions including issuing penalties to Americans who are without health coverage after the open enrollment deadline, which ended on March 31. In addition, the agency is charged with verifying whether people who were approved for subsidies actually qualify and then helping to distribute those billions of subsidy dollars to people who purchased coverage on the state and federal exchanges, among other things.

Administering the subsidies will be a heavy lift for an agency that claims to already be overburdened and under-budgeted. “Since we are mandated to implement ACA, that means our budget level for other major projects like updating our IT systems has been shelved,” Koskinen said. . .

Screw 'em. dismantle the 501(c)(3) tax exempt division, (let everyone who claims one have it) and put all those bureaucrats on Obamacare penalty tax enforcement.  They can do nothing there as well as they do it in their current positions.

Meanwhile, the data from the enrollments from the people who actually collect the money and pay the doctors is starting to trickle in: 15-20 Percent Aren't Paying Obamacare Premiums, Insurer Says

One of the biggest players in Obamacare's exchanges says 15 to 20 percent of its new customers aren't paying their first premium—which means they're not actually covered.

The latest data come from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members—known collectively as "Blues" plans—are participating in the exchanges in almost every state. Roughly 80 to 85 percent of people who selected a Blues plan through the exchanges went on to pay their first month's premium, a BCBSA spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The new statistics, particularly from such a large carrier, help define how many people are actually getting covered under the Affordable Care Act.

The Blues' experience is in line with anecdotal estimates from other insurance executives, who indicated earlier in the enrollment process that they received payments from about 80 percent of people who selected their plans.
. . .
If the nationwide payment rate, across all carriers, remains at 80 to 85 percent, the 7.1 million sign-ups Obama announced Tuesday would translate into somewhere between 5.7 and 6 million people who are actually covered.

Obamacare's target group is the young and/or irresponsible. They're just living up to that. I'm shocked it's as high as it is.

Actual Headline: ‘Dems don’t spike ball on ObamaCare’

Wait, what? Did this “reporter” miss the Rose Garden end zone dance the other day? How the debate over ObamaCare was over, how it was such a massive success once they allegedly forced 7 million people into this mess?
They didn’t spike the ball? Hello!

Democrats on Capitol Hill are treading carefully in the wake of this week’s surprise enrollment success for President Obama’s healthcare reform law.
While lawmakers are hailing the news that 7.1 million people have gained insurance through ObamaCare exchanges ahead of the first enrollment deadline — a number exceeding the initial goal set by the administration — many are also eager to direct the focus away from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and concentrate instead on bread-and-butter economic issues ahead of November’s midterms.
“Elections are always about jobs,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday. “So I think that, while … we’re proud of the Affordable Care Act, we now pivot to job creation.”

Wait, pivoting to jobs? But ObamaCare was supposed to create 4 millions jobs according to … Nancy Pelosi and was supposed to magically create 400,000 upon passage alone four years ago.

Remember, the CBO estimated that Obamacare will result in the equivalent of the loss of 2.3 million jobs due to lack of work incentives, and shortened hours as employers try to dodge the mandate.

From Peggy Noonan: Obamacare - A Catastrophe Like No Other

. . .As I say, put aside the argument, step back and view the thing at a distance. Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess. It is also utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and government administration.

Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said—blithely, mindlessly, but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi's statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn't understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she'd done. This is how we make laws now.

Her comments alarmed congressional Republicans but inspired Democrats, who for the next three years would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they'd read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents. The White House, on the other hand, seems to have understood what the bill would do, and lied in a way so specific it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how. "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period." "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period." That of course was the president, misrepresenting the facts of his signature legislative effort. That was historic, too. If you liked your doctor, your plan, your network, your coverage, your deductible you could not keep it. Your existing policy had to pass muster with the administration, which would fight to the death to ensure that 60-year-old women have pediatric dental coverage.

The leaders of our government have not felt, throughout the process, that they had any responsibility to be honest and forthcoming about the major aspects of the program, from its exact nature to its exact cost. We are not being told the cost of anything—all those ads, all the consultants and computer work, even the cost of the essential program itself.

What the bill declared it would do—insure tens of millions of uninsured Americans—it has not done. There are still tens of millions uninsured Americans. On the other hand, it has terrorized millions who did have insurance and lost it, or who still have insurance and may lose it.

The program is unique in that it touches on an intimate and very human part of life, the health of one's body, and yet normal people have been almost wholly excluded from the debate. This surely was not a bug but a feature. Given a program whose complexity is so utter and defeating that it defies any normal human attempt at comprehension, two things will happen. Those inclined to like the spirit of the thing will support it on the assumption the government knows what its doing. And the opposition will find it difficult to effectively oppose—or repeal the thing—because of the program's bureaucratic density and complexity. It's like wrestling a manic, many-armed squid in ink-darkened water.

Social Security was simple. You'd pay into the system quite honestly and up front, and you'd receive from the system once you were of retirement age. If you supported or opposed the program you knew exactly what you were supporting or opposing. The hidden, secretive nature of ObamaCare is a major reason for the opposition it has engendered.

The program is unique in that the bill that was signed four years ago, on March 23, 2010, is not the law, or rather program, that now exists. Parts of it have been changed or delayed 30 times. It is telling that the president rebuffed Congress when it asked to work with him on alterations, but had no qualms about doing them by executive fiat.

The program today, which affects a sixth of the U.S. economy, is not what was passed by the U.S. Congress. On Wednesday Robert Gibbs, who helped elect the president in 2008 and served as his first press secretary, predicted more changes to come. He told a business group in Colorado that the employer mandate would likely be scrapped entirely.

He added that the program needed an "additional layer" or "cheaper" coverage and admitted he wasn't sure the individual mandate had been the right way to go.

Finally, the program's supporters have gone on quite a rhetorical journey, from "This is an excellent bill, and opponents hate the needy" to "People will love it once they have it" to "We may need some changes" to "I've co-sponsored a bill to make needed alternations" to "This will be seen by posterity as an advance in human freedom." . . .

Cartoons via Theo's Cartoon Roundup.