This is a tough call to make: “Congressional Democrats led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are quietly working to repeal the “Cadillac tax,” a 40 percent excise on certain expensive health-insurance policies enacted as part of the so-called Affordable Care Act, which grows less affordable by the minute.” Continue reading Democrats desperately trying to quietly kill their inane ‘Cadillac tax.’
Tag: obamacare
My RedState post on Obamacare and the War on Nuns.
Found here. Short version: it’s a bad idea to go after nuns. But apparently since the geniuses over at the White House absolutely had to give it the old college try – and over abortion, no less! – the Supreme Court is going to have to straighten this whole mess out. Huzzah.
Utah nonprofit co-op’s collapse illustrates Obamacare’s Big Lie.
Via @Freddoso, this is possibly even a bigger deal than it looks. Basically, Arches Health Plan (the Utah Obamacare nonprofit co-op) has been essentially turned off, on very little notice. Over 65,000 people will pretty much lose immediately lose their insurance over this.
[The] 35,000 people who bought Arches [Health Plan cooperative] plans via the exchange or from insurance brokers or agents will now have to find new health insurance for 2016. The co-op also has to stop writing new policies for businesses immediately, Utah Insurance Commissioner Todd Kiser said. Arches insures 31,000 people through employer-sponsored plans, a spokeswoman said.
It was either turn it off, or watch it collapse on its own: Arches was locked into the same death spiral that has been plaguing state nonprofit Obamacare co-ops. Turns out that taking a ‘temporary’ government subsidy right from the beginning apparently does nothing for your eventual profitability except mask for a while the uncomfortable fact that you’re never going to be profitable. Who knew?
…Yes, that was a rhetorical question.
Continue reading Utah nonprofit co-op’s collapse illustrates Obamacare’s Big Lie.
Obamacare proves that the Democratic party loves the poor!
No, really. Democratic politicians love poor people, Republican politicians love rich people. That’s why Republican politicians work to encourage more rich people, and why Democratic politicians keep trying to create as many poor people as possible:
The lowest-cost bronze plans available on HealthCare.gov will see premiums jump an average 12.7% in 2016, an IBD analysis reveals. On top of that, deductibles for the cheapest plans will rise an average $420, or 7.4%, to $5,653.
Coming on top of double-digit premium hikes, the jump in patients’ out-of-pocket costs when they seek medical care reflects the difficulty of providing affordable coverage to enrollees that many insurers have said are using more care than expected.
Continue reading Obamacare proves that the Democratic party loves the poor!
New York Times: the Obamacare employer mandate is basically useless.
Via @BrianFaughnan comes this tale of yet another thing about Obamacare that doesn’t work as intended, or indeed at all. The New York Times walks us through the math (Math. What a concept!). So why are a lot of employer-mandate health plans getting single-digit percentage signups? Well…
The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. [Golden Corral owner Billy] Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.
The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee’s annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers’ relatives make, there are several “safe harbors” they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees’ wages.) Mr. Sewell’s insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing — or able — to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.
Continue reading New York Times: the Obamacare employer mandate is basically useless.
Quote of the Day, This Is One Reason I Fought Obamacare All The Way Down edition.
Via Instapundit comes this sober assessment of the ultimate fate of Obamacare: ” The program may be shaping up as a modest expansion of Medicaid, coupled with a more robust version of the old high-risk pools.” …Can we just establish something, here? ‘Expanding Medicaid,’ as Medicaid is currently configured (and the Democrats did pretty much nothing to reconfigure it), does not actually help poor people. It hides them – because, hey, they’ve got health care insurance now! …Which doctors don’t want to take, and when the doctors do take it the coverage isn’t very good, and there’s no driving urge on the Left’s part to fix things because, hey, Medicaid is health insurance!
…Which doctors don’t want to take, and when the doctors do take it the coverage isn’t very good, and there’s no driving urge on the Left’s part to fix things because, hey, Medicaid is health insurance!
…Which doctors don’t want to take, and when the doctors do take it the coverage isn’t very good, and there’s no driving urge on the Left’s part to fix things because, hey, Medicaid is health insurance!
…See where I’m going with this?
Kentucky’s federally-subsidized Obamacare co-op to close.
Why? Because the subsidy is drying up, of course: “Kentucky Health Cooperative, a nonprofit insurer known as a co-op, explained that it could not stay financially afloat after learning of a low payment from an Obamacare program called “risk corridors.”” The short version: the Democrats set up a program where higher-performing insurers would be fined for doing well, and that money would then be given to lower-performing insurers to prop them up. SHOCKINGLY*, this turned out to be unsustainable: this administration apparently can only pay out about one-eighth of the funds that were requested by the aforementioned lower-performing insurers. And since apparently the co-op in Kentucky can’t function without that money, it will be going belly-up. Fifth co-op to do that nationwide, by the way: and most of the rest are in the red, too. Continue reading Kentucky’s federally-subsidized Obamacare co-op to close.
Obamacare still not popular, so of course Hillary Clinton will defend it.
In the annals of LEAST SURPRISING NEWS IN AMERICAN POLITICS, EVER comes this not-even-remotely-a-bombshell report: “[Johns Hopkins University sociologists] Stephen L. Morgan and Minhyoung Kang found the ACA’s passage caused a sharp drop in support for health-care spending across party lines and might have ushered in a broader conservative “cold front” when it comes to other issues.” Emphasis the Washington Post’s: I get the feeling that they were surprised, at least. I imagine that it might have even come as a nasty shock to some of them.
Mind you, the WaPo is continuing to take refuge in the arguments that individual elements of the law are popular, and that “most Americans do not want to repeal the law.” As to the first, the truth of the matter is that Americans continue to hate Obamacare; and as for the second… well, the only pollster who seems to be consistently asking about repeal is Quinnipiac, and they’re getting an even split down the middle. Which means that “most Americans do not want to repeal the law” is precisely as true as “most Americans do not want to keep the law.” Continue reading Obamacare still not popular, so of course Hillary Clinton will defend it.
Looks likes Obamacare is still spluttering and staggering along, there.
(H/T: Instapundit) Oopsie.
In its latest enrollment report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says 9.9 million were still enrolled in ObamaCare exchange plans.
That’s almost 2 million fewer than the administration claimed in the spring, when it bragged that 11.7 million had signed up, and way below the Congressional Budget Office’s earlier forecast of 13 million.
Actually, it gets even more embarrassing than that: the administration had earlier – as in, last year – projected that there would be 25 million signups by the end of 2017. That is… looking increasingly unlikely to happen. In fact, I am not entirely certain whether the administration will make its revised adjusted modified 2015 target number of 9.1 million. I’m not saying that it won’t; just that it may not be the easiest target number in the world for the Obama administration to hit. Continue reading Looks likes Obamacare is still spluttering and staggering along, there.
Nevada Obamacare nonprofit (read: ‘subsidized’) insurer goes bankrupt.
Note that this is not the state Obamacare exchange itself: Nevada Health Co-Op was set up to be a competitor to actual, honest-to-God insurance companies. Sixty-six million dollars of your tax money later, it’s blown up in the Obama administration’s face: “Nevada Health CO-OP, which launched in 2012 with two federal loans totaling $65.9 million, will shutter its operation and will not offer coverage for 2016.” Which means that anybody who signed up for a program with Nevada Health is going to get a special Christmas gift from the administration: several weeks of desperately trying to arrange new coverage during the holiday season! Yay! Continue reading Nevada Obamacare nonprofit (read: ‘subsidized’) insurer goes bankrupt.