Obamacare Schadenfreude Keeps on Truckin'

We had a line of storms roll in late last night, lightning, thunder and rain, all of which left us with about a half inch of rain, cloudy skies and winds shifting out of the north and rising.

Obamacare Schadenfreude keeps on going and going.

More than 2 Million (with an "m") Obamacare enrollees policies are at threat of higher prices or cancellation due to "irregularities" in the signups.

A huge new paperwork headache for the government could also be jeopardizing coverage for some of the millions of people who just got health insurance under President Barack Obama's law.

A government document provided to The Associated Press indicates that at least 2 million people enrolled for taxpayer-subsidized private health insurance have data discrepancies in their applications that, if unresolved, could affect what they pay for coverage, or even their legal right to benefits.

The final number affected could well be higher. According to the administration the 2 million figure reflects only consumers who signed up through the federally administered HealthCare.gov website and call centers. The government signed up about 5.4 million people, while state-run websites signed up another 2.6 million.

For consumers, a discrepancy means that the information they supplied, subject to perjury laws, does not match what the government has on record.

For example, someone who underestimated his income, and got too generous a subsidy as a result, could owe the Internal Revenue Service money next year.

The seven-page slide presentation from the Health and Human Services Department was provided to AP as several congressional committees investigate the discrepancies. Most of the data conflicts involve important details on income, citizenship and immigration status — which affect eligibility and subsidies.

An error rate of 25% for a government run system?  Whoda thunk?

From Hotair:

The law says that an enrollee’s coverage will continue for 90 days while a discrepancy is being resolved. According to HHS, fully 40 percent of the 2.1 million affected by this — more than 800,000 people — are now outside that window. Think President Overreach will intervene to give them relief if/when HHS decides that it can’t resolve this problem by the end of summer, as it currently hopes to do? No surprise either that most discrepancies are being resolved in favor of enrollees.

And the fiscal picture for Obamacare continues to get murkier: Fiscal Diagnosis Only Gets Tougher for Health Care Law

Four years after enactment of what is widely viewed as President Barack Obama’s key legislative achievement, however, it’s unclear whether the health care law is still on track to reduce the deficit or whether it may actually end up adding to the federal debt. In fact, the answer to that question has become something of a mystery.

In its latest report on the law, the Congressional Budget Office said it is no longer possible to assess the overall fiscal impact of the law. That conclusion came as a surprise to some fiscal experts in Washington and is drawing concern. And without a clear picture of the law’s overall financing, it could make it politically easier to continue delaying pieces of it, including revenue raisers, because any resulting cost increases might be hidden.

Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s free market-oriented Mercatus Center, calls the CBO’s inability to estimate the net effect of the law “a real problem.”

“The ACA’s financing provisions were assumed to be effective so as to get a favorable score out of CBO upon enactment, but no one is keeping track of whether they’re being enforced,” says Blahous, a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare. “We receive occasional updates on the gross costs of the law, but none on whether the previously projected savings provisions are producing what was originally projected.”

As a result, Blahous says, “there’s no barrier to continually rolling back the financing mechanisms without the effect on the ACA’s finances ever being fully disclosed.”

It was always bait and switch anyway.

No You Can’t Keep Your Plan And Yes You Have To Pay For Other People’s Abortions

How can a government claim to derive its powers “from the consent of the governed” when it deliberately deceives the people whose consent it supposedly requires? The case of a Connecticut family forced to pay a fee to be used to fund others’ elective surgical abortions or face fines under Obamacare is the latest demonstration that the law is a Rube Goldberg machine of impenetrable statutory language designed to confuse.
. . .
As Executive Director of Rhode Island Right to Life, Barth has long warned that some exchanges may offer no plans without elective abortion and that Obamacare secrecy clauses forbid insurers or exchanges from telling customers the truth. Now it is personal.

There are no known abortion free plans on the Connecticut exchange. For the Bracys and every other consumer buying plans in Connecticut, this means that in order to buy an Obamacare-compliant exchange plan they will be required to pay a separate surcharge that the insurer must use solely to pay for abortions. There are indications that people seeking coverage on the exchanges in Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wyoming may face the same dilemma. And every exchange (and insurer) is forbidden to answer the very basic questions of many prospective customers: (1) Does this plan cover abortion? And (2) How much would I be paying for others’ abortions?

Abortion is not my thing, but I don't have any problem with the fact that a majority of the country still opposes abortion on demand, and think that women and families who want them should be responsible for their costs.  Of course, it's Connecticut, so more abortions are probably a good thing.

The found of Staples describes how Obamacare poses a new problem for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Of course, not every small business succeeds. But unshackled entrepreneurs fuel America’s economic growth and create our opportunity society. Small businesses are also the most creative. According to the Small Business Administration, innovative smaller businesses produced 16 times more patents per employee than larger companies also creating intellectual property.

Instead of supporting this type of innovative growth, the president’s health care law stifles it. The employer mandate — requiring employers with 50-plus employees to comply with expensive requirements — was long planned, left unexplained, then delayed. Many companies endured chaos as Washington contorted. Small business owners, always hit harder with the cost of compliance, don’t know what will hit them next.

Now business leaders are discovering a new provision, hidden as a “fee” on health care insurers. This is a tax that will be passed straight onto small businesses and their employees. The small business community calls it the health insurance tax, or HIT, for good reason — this is essentially a tax on Main Street USA. The added cost doesn’t affect big businesses; they self-insure their employees. The HIT only hits the health-insurance marketplace, where most small businesses and the self-employed purchase their health care plans.

The HIT charged to health-insurance companies will be passed on to small business. In turn, those companies, with typically slim profit margins, will pass the HIT on to employees. Since small businesses employ two-thirds of all the US workforce, most Americans will pay the bill. Families will pay up to $500 more each year beginning in 2014. The tax will actually increase over time, causing a greater burden in the years to come.

At Job Creators Network, we are already hearing stories of the HIT’s impact on small businesses. According to the same US Bank Small Business survey, three out of five owners who run a business making $1 million or more annually say the law resulted in higher premiums for their business. Forty-five percent of business owners with at least five employees reported cutting back on new hires. Clearly, the HIT is a major factor.

Gee, I wonder why the economy has been so poor going into the sixth year of the "Obama recovery."

You knew it was coming: