Obamacare Schadenfreude "Left" Overs

We'll give Hillary a day off from nagging about her numerous criminal enterprises, her bad personal appeal, and her absolutely atrocious policy prescriptions, and instead focus on that other Democratic train wreck, Obamacare:

When you've lost both Harvard and NPR: NPR and  Harvard say: Obamacare is a complete failure

National Public Radio collaborated with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to survey Americans’ recent experience with health care. As to the Affordable Care Act, the survey’s findings are damning. They suggest that Obamacare has been worse than a complete waste of money.

But Obama himself? Obama to SXSW: Government Has Failed You But You Should Trust It Anyway

Obama began by admitting something not often heard from Washington, D.C., establishment figures like a sitting commander in chief: "Our government's not working, our politics aren't working as well as they should," he said. When the interviewer prodded him with a question about how Washington, in contrast to the tech sector, is "big and bloated and slow and risk averse," Obama didn't disagree, and in fact offered the audience a note of humor and self-awareness.

"Let me give you an example of the big and the bloated and the frustrating," he said. "You may recall that I passed this law called the Affordable Care Act to give people access to health insurance—and then the website didn't work. And this was a little embarrassing for me because, you know, I was the cool early adopter president, and my entire campaign had been premised on having really cool technology."

Obamacare enrollment dropped off 25% over the course of 2015

New figures released Friday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) show that the number of people who dropped their Obamacare plans during 2015 was greater than anticipated. The Hill reports on the actual numbers versus the enrollment target by the Obama administration:

The administration’s target was for 9.1 million people to have “effectuated” coverage at the end of 2015, meaning they were paying their premiums. However, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday that 8.8 million people were enrolled at the end of the year instead.
That is a drop of almost 25 percent compared to the 11.7 million people who were signed up at the beginning of 2015.

The press release put out by CMS doesn’t mention the failure to meet expectations, only the increase in enrollment from the previous year.
. . .
As to why the number of people dropping out was larger than expected, the tail end of the press release notes a significant number of people were dropped from coverage because of inconsistencies in their applications relating to citizenship or immigration status:

Meanwhile, the government's level of coercion to join the program continues to ramp up, as planned. H&R Block: Customers paying twice as much to satisfy Obamacare penalty. Insurance so good they have to threaten you to take it, or else.

Obamacare to begin rating network size of health plans

HHS is moving to make it easier for consumers to find out the size of the network of doctors and hospitals they are joining when they sign up for a health plan on the Obamacare exchange. The New York Times reported on the changes being made Sunday:

The Obama administration, responding to consumer complaints, says it will begin rating health insurance plans based on how many doctors and hospitals they include in their networks…
Many health plans offered in the public marketplaces provide a limited choice of doctors and hospitals, and some insurers narrowed their networks this year by excluding some doctors and dropping popular teaching hospitals.
Consumers have grumbled about the changes, and some say they have had difficulty finding medical specialists. But cost-conscious consumers have gravitated to these plans because they tend to offer lower premiums than health plans providing a greater choice of doctors and hospitals.

The Times notes that consumers have “grumbled” about the narrow networks but doesn’t point out narrow networks are not some unexpected new outcome of Obamacare. In fact, this aspect of the President’s policy was an inevitable part of the design and has been reported on for several years already.

One of the greater failures in Obamacare have been the "co-ops", the federal attempt to put more of the healthcare insurance under the control of left wing activists, who've proven themselves prettym much incompetent at running health care insurance. Senate report: HHS kept shoveling money into ObamaCare co-ops it knew were failing. A billion here, a billion there. All of that tax money you loaned to the Obamacare co-ops? That’s probably gone. Consider it money spent on education on socialism. And who got hurt? The usual targets: Docs, Hospitals May Go Unpaid In Obamacare Co-Op Flops. Be reassured, no federal bureaucrats were harmed in this crash.

“Affordable” care in Minnesota for you — but not for your kids

Entitlement programs in general spend tomorrow’s money on payments today — in essence, picking the pockets of our children and grandchildren for our own benefit. Here in Minnesota, the state takes that more literally. The NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities reports that families who qualified for MNsure’s Medicaid program are finding out that they’re getting coverage for free now, but leaving their children with tax liens that run into the tens of thousands of dollars

Look kids! "Free" Health Care!