Obamacare Schadenfreude with a Sore Thumb

I have a bad case of "Bass Thumb" from lipping so many Striped Bass this morning, which is why this post is later than usual.  I get no sympathy at home though. I wonder if it's covered under Obamacare?

What 7.1 Million?  RAND study: By our estimate, 3.9 million people signed up for ObamaCare, not 7.1 million like the White House says

A caveat right off the bat: RAND’s estimate only runs through March 28 whereas the actual deadline for signing up was March 31st. Given the crush of traffic on Healthcare.gov in late March, many more people could have signed up over those last three days than were captured by these numbers. On the other hand, the White House was claiming six million sign-ups as of March 27. There’s no way to reconcile that with RAND’s data.

One of them is wrong. Maybe both, in fact.

There’s a big spike in Medicaid, just as everyone expected. There’s a less big but still seven-digit drop in coverage on the individual market, as people discovered that if you like your plan, you might not be able to keep it. There’s not quite four million sign-ups on the new ObamaCare exchanges, not seven million and change like Obama insisted in the Rose Garden. And then there’s that eye-popping “ESI” category. That’s “employer-sponsored insurance,” the sort of coverage that 100 million people already have through their jobs. Er, why would eight million people have suddenly gained that type of coverage last year when the U.S. labor force assuredly didn’t expand by eight million? Good question. . . 

Do the Obamacare taxes have people scurrying to take better or cheaper health insurance from work, or is it just the improving economy?

How much does Obamacare really cost? Only a couple of trillion (with a "t")

Over at the newly launched vox.com, Sarah Kliff has a piece attempting to offer an easy explanation of President Obama's health care law. Kliff is always worth reading on health care policy, but when describing the cost of Obamacare, she writes, “Expanding health coverage to millions of Americans is expensive; it will cost more than $1 trillion over the next decade.” In reality, the Congressional Budget Office estimated this February that the cost would be slightly more than $2 trillion.

It’s important to keep in mind that there are several categories that have been generally cited as representing the cost of Obamacare: the gross cost, the net cost and the deficit effect.

When CBO analysts most recently looked at the gross cost of expanding Medicaid and giving subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance through the new exchanges -- the bulk of the law's spending -- they came up with slightly more than $2 trillion for 2015 through 2024.

After deducting some offsets from the law — such as penalty payments from employers and individuals due to insurance mandates — CBO estimated the net cost at nearly $1.5 trillion.
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When referring to the “cost” of Obamacare, the fair thing to do is cite the $2 trillion figure — and no, that isn’t just because it’s a higher number. The gross figure represents how much the federal government will have to spend on expanding coverage through Obamacare, at least according to the CBO. If the government weren’t spending $2 trillion on insurance coverage, that’s money that could be going to reducing the deficit, spending more on infrastructure or a host of other theoretical policies.

A trillion here, a trillion there; pretty soon you're talking about real money (my, how times have changed).  But it's going to save us money, right?

Obamacare causing insurance prices to skyrocket Umm, no.

Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, is out with his latest estimates of how Obamacare is affecting health insurance premiums around the country. Though the employer market is difficult to calculate and data is hard to come by, he’s made estimates for the small group and individual markets.

If you’ve felt like your insurance has gotten more expensive, well, you’re right: Gottliebestimated an 11% increase in price in the small group and a 12% increase in the individual market. And it looks like it’ll keep getting worse.

Obamacare's next obstacle: Confusion as people use it

. . .Some of the missed points and mixed-up details could bite the administration almost immediately as people start using their new plans and blame surprises on the White House. Other lingering public misconceptions could feed Republican attacks through the November midterm elections.

Here are six big danger points:

1. I’m sick! Why can’t I get covered? - Coverage of pre-existing conditions was a big selling point of the law, but not everyone realizes that they can’t just sign up the minute a condition is diagnosed. The regular dates and deadlines for enrolling still apply, no matter when you get appendicitis. . .

2. The $95 mandate myth - “You have to pause and say, ‘It’s not one Ben Franklin, it’s probably closer to three,’” said Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. Customers constantly walked in and declared that they were going to forgo coverage and cough up the $95 penalty, he said. Then they’d learn that it was actually $95 or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater. In 2016, the amount increases to $695 or 2.5 percent of income. . .

3. I can’t afford Obamacare - Four in 10 uninsured Americans still don’t know that the Affordable Care Act offers financial assistance to low- and moderate-income individuals, according to that Kaiser poll. Plus, many of the GOP attacks on the law that people hear are about its cost. . .

4. “Sort of a bait and switch” - People who end up making more than they anticipated during the year, and don’t realize that they should report it, may have to pay back some of their tax credit when they file their taxes. But for many people, matching up what they got versus what they should have gotten is going to be “highly problematic,” said Jackson Hewitt’s Haile. . .

5. It’s not free? - Many people who signed up for Obamacare are insured for the first time — or the first time in a long time — and they are now confronting an array of befuddling terms. They don’t necessarily understand that a monthly premium isn’t the only bill they have to pay. The co-pays, deductibles and other costs they’ll encounter when they go see a provider could be a real shock. . .

6. The reality of costs - Remember that “save $2,500 on your insurance” promise that presidential candidate Obama made in 2008? It took a few different forms and was couched with different time frames. Sometimes it was promised by the end of Obama’s first term. But all the nuances of economic modeling and different cost-growth curves never made it into the sound bites. People with insurance heard promises of big savings and — except for some on the exchanges — they haven’t experienced that. . .

Debunking a few more Obamacare falsehoods

Last week, during his speech at the White House proclaiming the success of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama said that the ACA’s effort “didn’t have billions of dollars in commercials like some critics did,” and that “we didn’t make a hard sell” for the law.

He also said that 7.1 million people had signed up for the law
It’s pretty clear by now that most things President Obama says about his signature law are false. For example, April 1 was the deadline to sign up for coverage. Except that it wasn’t. Here are three more falsehoods in just the three claims made above.

First, that 7.1 million might be only 858,000, for example. It certainly isn’t 7.1 million. But, hey, who’s counting in a law that’s been delayed, changed, modified, tweaked, and given non-existent deadlines?

Second, if you think President Obama didn’t “make a hard sell” on the Affordable Care Act, you’re living in a dream world. How many speeches, press releases, campaign stops, Executive Orders, and other measures were used by the White House over the last four-plus years to patch together the law’s alleged success? Just the 2010 and 2012 elections, as well as the 2014 elections so far, have seen untold amounts of money, time, and press thrown at convincing the American people that Obamacare’s a great law.

Finally, over at The Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler has taken on Obama’s “billions of dollars” claim, and found it lacking:

“If you are asking me, have billions of dollars been spent on ads attacking the ACA, the answer is no,” said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence with oversight of its Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG). “Several hundred million dollars, yes. Really an unprecedented sum. But not billions.”

Latest ObamaCare surprise: Most won't be able to buy health insurance until end of year

There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.

"It's all closed down. You cannot buy a policy that is a qualified policy for the purpose of the ACA (the Affordable Care Act) until next year on January 1," says John DiVito, president of Flexbenefit which has 2,500 brokers.

John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas adds, "People are not going to be able to buy individual and family policies, and that's part of ObamaCare. And what makes it so surprising is the whole point of ObamaCare was to encourage people to get insurance, and now the market has been completely closed down for the next seven months."

That means that with few exceptions, tens of millions of people will be locked out of the health insurance market for the rest of this year.
. . .
There is one way consumers can still sign up, but only under limited circumstances.

"If you have a qualifying event, a life qualifying event, which means you get married, you get divorced, you get fired from your job" says Goodman. Or you have a child, or lose a spouse or have a change in income.

"It has to be one of those kinds of events,” he adds. “And if you don’t have that, you're not going to be able to buy insurance."

Barring any of those so-called life events, tens of millions will remain uninsured and won't be able to buy health insurance, no matter how hard they try.

Rasmussen: 53% Expect Quality of Care To Suffer Under Health Care Law

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters have at least a somewhat unfavorable opinion of the health care law, with 43% who view it Very Unfavorably. Just 39% have a favorable view of the law, including 16% with a Very Favorable one. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Despite the Obama administration’s claim that it has exceeded its March 31 goal of signing up seven million Americans through new health insurance exchanges, overall unfavorables for the health care law are up from 54% two weeks ago. Most voters have had an unfavorable opinion of the law in regular surveys since the beginning of last year. But the latest finding matches the all-time high first reached in mid-November. Favorables fell to a record low of 36% in that same survey.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters now believe the quality of health care will get worse under the new law. That’s up six points from 47% a month ago and the highest level of pessimism since mid-March 2011. Twenty-four percent (24%) predict that health care will get better as a result of the law. Seventeen percent (17%) expect the level of care to stay about the same.

Only 24% idiots? I thought it was higher than that.

Healthcare cuts canceled after Dem complaints

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.

The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.

Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.

The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.

Medicare Advantage plans are a very popular "option" to standard Medicare, and the cuts to them, made to help fund the other subsidies in Obamacare were very unpopular with seniors.  Now the deficit just gets bigger.

Why Obama’s Presidency Has to Be All About Race Now

Barack Obama’s presidency is failing. Despite what he and his cheerleaders in the press think, he is still losing the argument over ObamaCare. The program has posted a few non-catastrophic enrollment numbers lately, but a lot of the public has already made up their minds. They never liked the program much to begin with, and now that they know what’s in it, they like it even less. The economic recovery, such as it is, continues to be slow, painful, and jobless. The president’s foreign policy is spinning out of control in all directions.

So the left is doing what they always do when their policies fail: make everything about race, instead. If the Obama presidency itself is what’s failing, then his whole presidency—the one that was supposed to usher in a post-racial era—must be all about race, too.

Hence a long article by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine informing us that yes, Obama’s term in office was really about race all along: “if you…set out to write a social history of the Obama years, one that captured the day-to-day experience of political life, you would find that race has saturated everything as perhaps never before.” . . .

Is this supposed to be change?

From Smitty at The Other McCain: On Opposing Fundamentally Flawed Ideas

From the WSJ, emphasis mine:

In the latest “doc fix” for Medicare payments last week, Republicans tucked in a provision repealing an arbitrary $2,000 cap on deductibles in small-business health insurance. In a rational world beating White House industrial policy and allowing more consumer choice would qualify as a modest conservative victory. But some Republicans have convinced themselves that the only tolerable change to ObamaCare is to make it worse.

ObamaCare has never been other than a Progressive cramdown. It is the crapstone of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, represents the nadir of the 9th & 10th Amendments, and is thus the source of infinite butt-hurt.

There is no arguing with cancer itself. There is some room to discuss treatment, and the balance of treatment risks on the road to recovery.
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Reform and recovery will come when we admit that Progress is toast, and it’s time for a new course for the country. The Left apparently hopes to wear down honest people with lies. Ain’t nobody got TIME for that!