A Trickle of Obamacare Schadenfreude

This stuff just keeps appearing, kind of like the water from an earthen dam with a gopher hole:

Obama tells plant manager his health-care costs are rising because he doesn’t know how to shop

During the Q&A segment of the event, on general manager revealed that the Affordable Care Act has not led to decreases in health care costs for all American businesses and families, even though that’s what Obama and its supporters promised. No, this general manager at Millennium Steel has found quite the opposite and wonders when the decreases might start:

I am the general manager at Millennium Steel. we are honored to have you. One of the questions I had is about the health care costs. We are seeing almost a double-digit increase in health-care costs every year. Do you think that trend is going to go down, and what can we do to control that trend?

If only this person in charge of buying health insurance for employees understood how well Obamacare is working in the real world. The president helpfully offers that this manager is probably just shopping incorrectly. Please excuse the run-on sentences.

That is interesting. You’re going to have to talk to Henry because — no, no, no, this is serious. The question is whether you guys are shopping effectively enough, because it turns out that this year and in fact over the course of the last four years, premiums have gone up at the slowest rate in 50 years. So health care [costs] have actually… slowed down significantly, and it is having an effect both on businesses and families and the federal debt, because most of the federal debt, when folks talk about we got to drive down the debt, do something about the debt, it turns out that most of the federal deficit and the federal debt over the last decade has come from health-care costs going up so high among which means Medicare and Medicaid costs start going up, and that has gobbled up a bigger and bigger share of the federal budget. Because health care costs are going up much more slowly than expected, so far we anticipate we are going to save about $188 billion over the next 10 years… in reduced health care costs.

If a Republican did this, it would be called blaming the victim.

Next Round of Obamacare Signups Likely to be More Difficult:

The second round of enrollment under the nation’s health-care law promises to be tougher than the first. Many of those eager to get covered already did, including those with health conditions that had prevented them from getting insurance in the past.

About 30 million to 40 million people remain uninsured in the United States, according to various surveys.

“When you look at those who remain uninsured, they are in many ways harder to reach,” said Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a nonprofit group that signs up consumers for new health coverage. “This is really about doubling down and reaching those folks who didn’t get the message the first time.”

 Some people got the message, and just didn't like it:

Alva, 28, works part time at a video store and is about to graduate from California State University at Northridge. Getting insured is about the last thing on his mind.

“It’s not a priority,” the television and cinema arts student said. “I am not interested in paying for health insurance right now.”

And there is a time crunch — the second round of open enrollment lasts only three months, about half the time as before.

Not a good thing if you're going after the procrastinator demographic (which they are).

And if you don't like HealthcareDotGov, well you can go to Walmart: 

Wal-Mart announced Monday that it will dive deeper into the health-care market, unveiling an initiative to allow customers to compare and enroll in health insurance plans in thousands of its stores.

Wal-Mart is teaming with DirectHealth.com, an online insurance comparison site and independent health insurance agency, to set up counters in its stores where consumers can talk to licensed agents about plan options.

“Our goal is to be the number one health-care provider in the industry,” said Labeed Diab, president of health and wellness for Wal-Mart U.S. “And the more we broaden our assortment, the more we broaden our offering, the more we educate the customer WalMart is a great place to create a one-stop shop.”

What do you want to bet that Walmart will have a better selection of cheaper insurance than the government? And how much do you want to bet that the federal government will go after them for threatening their wannabe monopoly on it?

My question is how can they buy health insurance from China?