ObamaCare is not disappearing as a horse-collar around our necks, but it is disappearing as a provider of actual decent health care. Many taxpayers are opting to pay the tax penalty rather than pay exorbitant health insurance premiums, only then to find out that the very high deductibles prevent them from using their health insurance at all. Indeed, many with ObamaCare health insurance cannot afford to actually go to the doctor for health care after their impoverishment by the high premiums. As a result, insurers operating in the ObamaCare exchange health insurance market are generally suffering huge losses. Far too few healthy people are signing up for the ObamaCare abomination, while unhealthy people are signing up.
Consequently, Aetna, United Healthcare, Humana, and others have made huge reductions in the number of markets they plan to serve in 2017. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 31% of the counties in the U.S. will be served by only one insurer in 2017, while another 31% of the counties will have only two insurers under ObamaCare exchanges. 19% of enrollees will have but one insurer to choose from and another 19% will have only two to choose from. Once again, an Obama promise to increase competition in the health insurance market turns out to be a lie. Yes, he might only have made a wrong prediction, but given the known history of his known lies, it is more likely that he knowingly lied about this as well.
As John Goodman has noted, the only plans that have avoided losses are those that offer services after the fashion of Medicaid and are operated by Medicaid contractors. Medicaid level service is well known for its awfulness. About 75% of the plans to be offered in 2017 are estimated to be for either Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) or Exclusive Provider Organizations (EPOs), according to a McKinsey & Co. analysis of regulatory filings for 18 states and the District of Columbia (reported in Wall St. Journal, 1 Sep 2016). So only 25% of the plans will offer a wider choice of health care providers as are usually found in Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs). About 15% of ObamaCare exchange users will have no choice of a PPO available to them at all. This is another case of the falsity of the statement that "If you like your doctor (or hospital), you may keep him."
As recently as March 2015, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was claiming that in 2016 there would be 21 million ObamaCare exchange enrollees. However, in January 2016 the CBO reduced its estimate of 2016 enrollees by 8 million people to 13 million, of whom 11 million would receive subsidies. What is more, the CBO, despite increasing tax penalities, expects the ObamaCare exchange enrollment to maximize at 16 million in 2018 and remain at that level through 2023, despite a growing U.S. population. The White House has now projected an even lower level of 2016 exchange enrollees at 10.4 million.
For the 2014 tax year, 7.5 million taxpayers paid the ObamaCare penalty tax, which was far in excess of government estimates. H&R Block said the average ObamaCare tax penalty was $172 in 2014. The average penalty paid in 2015, was up to $383. While the IRS had released the information on the number of taxpayers paying the penalty for 2014 by early July 2015, that information does not seem to be available yet for the tax year 2015. Perhaps it is too embarrassing to the Obama administration.
In the Fall of 2015, we knew that there were 10.5 million 2014 tax returns eligible for ObamaCare exchange insurance which did not claim having it. 12 million tax returns claimed exemptions from ObamaCare insurance, 5.1 million failed to check having qualifying insurance and paid no penalty tax, and 4.5 million taxpayer tax filings received ObamaCare subsidies. Note that the number of taxpayers paying the ObamaCare fine or penalty tax exceeds the number of taxpayers receiving a subsidy by 3 million returns. About 6% of taxpayers are covered by insurance under ObamaCare exchanges.
About 300,000 taxpayers in 2015 apparently paid the tax penalty despite being eligible for an exemption. This is about all we know about 2015 tax returns on this subject.
According to the CBO, the 11 million receiving ObamaCare subsidies in 2016 represents 3.4% of the population of about 324.4 million people. Many of these people had insurance without a subsidy prior to ObamaCare.
Much of the grief of the insurance companies is due to the fact that about 8 million fewer people have signed up for ObamaCare exchange health insurance in 2016 than had been projected in March of 2015 by the CBO and presumably by the health insurers. These 8 million abstainers are generally much younger and much healthier than those who have signed up. The premiums they were to pay were supposed to act like a transfer payment to those who had more health problems. Even those who by age may be subject to more health problems, but are not now experiencing them, are often not signing up since they know they can do so whenever their health deteriorates. Of course, such people used to actually pay for insurance because they could afford. Thanks to ObamaCare many of them cannot afford it now, so they simply wait to sign up when they need it.
ObamaCare has lowered the quality of health care in the USA greatly. It is now in large part limited to the low quality of Medicaid. People on it have decreasing choices of doctors and hospitals, more limited care due to a greater need for cost-cutting, and they are excluded from many of the better hospitals and doctors, who rightly charge more for their services. These terrible costs, as well as the terrible cost in our liberty, have been incurred in the name of a very small percentage of the population. Meanwhile, 7.5 million taxpayers are paying ObamaCare penalty taxes for absolutely no value to their lives. Another 2 million people are suffering under the higher premiums and deductibles of ObamaCare without getting any subsidy in return.
Prior to the passage of ObamaCare by an undemocratic Democrat dominated Congress and President, the justification in the socialist press was largely based on a claim that 47 million Americans had no health insurance. Now we have ObamaCare and only some unknown fraction of the 13 million people on it in 2016 might have been without insurance if it did not exist. We know from a McKensey & Co. survey in April 2014 that only 22% of the enrollees then signed up and who had paid their premiums had been previously uninsured. If we suppose that the number of previously uninsured on ObamaCare is now 30%, that number is only 3.9 million people or 1.2% of the population. The claim that a problem for 47 million people was to be addressed was almost certainly more than a ten-fold exaggeration.
It is a very sad commentary on Americans that they have not insisted on making this abysmal boondoggle a much greater factor in the 2016 elections than they have. The self-ownership of our minds and bodies deserves much more diligent attention, as does the destruction of much of our health care system.
13 Nov 2016 Update: Very late in the 2016 election campaign, Trump finally started to make a consistent issue of ObamaCare. Had he not done so, it is easy to speculate that he would not have won in several of the states in which his margin of victory was very slender.
Showing posts with label health insurance exchanges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health insurance exchanges. Show all posts
05 September 2016
23 October 2014
A Clearly Rational Federal Court Decision Against the IRS Rule to Offer Subsidies on Federal ObamaCare Exchanges
Among the cases challenging the IRS rule that subsidies for individuals and tax penalties for non-complying individuals and companies would be administered in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, is the case brought by Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma and 35 other states did not choose to establish PPACA or ObamaCare exchanges, as the PPACA law tried to get them to do by taxing every American, but only allowing individual subsidies in those states establishing an ObamaCare exchange. Non-complying states were to be penalized with taxes and the loss of any partial return of that tax money in the form of subsidies. That this was the intent was very clear to those who followed the progress of the PPACA legislation through Congress.
Of course, it was also very clear that PPACA was a revenue bill which violated the constitutional requirement that it originate in the House of Representatives. It is further clear that the only justification for the collectivist claim that the collective gets to dictate how every American maintains his or her body's and mind's health is based on a claim of collectivist ownership of everyone's mind and body. This is a very clear and certain violation of the American Principle of a very limited government dedicated only to the protection of the equal, sovereign right of each and every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I for one am exceedingly furious that the government considers me its slave by depriving me of self-ownership and the right to pursue my own happiness.
United States District Judge Ronald A. White of the Eastern District of Oklahoma ruled on 30 September 2014 that "the IRS Rule is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(A), in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalid implementation of the ACA, and is hereby vacated."
Judge Ronald A. White provided a very rational decision, which is very much appreciated in light of the three judge panel in King v. Burwell who decided that they would not help the plaintiff destroy the PPACA by ruling in accordance with the language of the law. No, instead they decided on the basis of how they claimed Congress intended the law to work while not considering the actual history even of constraints on Congress in forcing the states to comply with handing control over health care insurance to the federal government. Neither did they consider the actual discussions and trades within Congress needed to acquire even sufficient Democrat votes to pass the bill. Similarly, the dissenting judge on the three judge panel that vacated the ObamaCare subsidies and tax penalties in Halbig v. Burwell for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals exercised a similar flight of fancy in interpreting the PPACA.
The Honorable Ronald A. White read the bill as written and said that if Congress had intended the bill to operate otherwise, it would have written the bill differently. What is more, if Congress decides that the application of the law as written is not what it wants, then Congress can readily pass legislation to change the law. This is exactly the way a rational person would expect laws to be applied. Neither the IRS nor the federal courts are the legislative body and neither has the constitutional power to enact or to change laws. How the 3-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court that decided the King v. Burwell case could have decided that the law was ambiguous is incredible. What is more, if it were ambiguous, then it is up to Congress, not the IRS, to eliminate any such ambiguity. Ridiculous consequences would result from any other principle and the People would lose all power to control any government operating as the 4th Circuit Court ruled government should work.
Unfortunately, the entire District of Columbia Circuit Court decided to rule on Halbig v. Burwell and the Democrat appointed judges are now in the majority on that Circuit Court. They will hear the case in December. What is more, the decision by the Honorable Ronald A. White will be appealed to the entire 10th Circuit Court on which 7 of the 12 judges were appointed by Democrats. The case of Indiana v. IRS is also yet to be decided. Given the otherworldly ability of Democrat-appointed judges to misinterpret clear English and to ignore the history of the passage of this law, the People of the United States may not be relieved of the ObamaCare tyranny.
But, the state of Oklahoma, Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, and the Honorable Ronald A. White of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma have all proved themselves Heroes for in their efforts to preserve the rights of the individual in this desperate fight to protect self-ownership against the brutal onslaught of ObamaCare.
Of course, it was also very clear that PPACA was a revenue bill which violated the constitutional requirement that it originate in the House of Representatives. It is further clear that the only justification for the collectivist claim that the collective gets to dictate how every American maintains his or her body's and mind's health is based on a claim of collectivist ownership of everyone's mind and body. This is a very clear and certain violation of the American Principle of a very limited government dedicated only to the protection of the equal, sovereign right of each and every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I for one am exceedingly furious that the government considers me its slave by depriving me of self-ownership and the right to pursue my own happiness.
United States District Judge Ronald A. White of the Eastern District of Oklahoma ruled on 30 September 2014 that "the IRS Rule is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(A), in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalid implementation of the ACA, and is hereby vacated."
Judge Ronald A. White provided a very rational decision, which is very much appreciated in light of the three judge panel in King v. Burwell who decided that they would not help the plaintiff destroy the PPACA by ruling in accordance with the language of the law. No, instead they decided on the basis of how they claimed Congress intended the law to work while not considering the actual history even of constraints on Congress in forcing the states to comply with handing control over health care insurance to the federal government. Neither did they consider the actual discussions and trades within Congress needed to acquire even sufficient Democrat votes to pass the bill. Similarly, the dissenting judge on the three judge panel that vacated the ObamaCare subsidies and tax penalties in Halbig v. Burwell for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals exercised a similar flight of fancy in interpreting the PPACA.
The Honorable Ronald A. White read the bill as written and said that if Congress had intended the bill to operate otherwise, it would have written the bill differently. What is more, if Congress decides that the application of the law as written is not what it wants, then Congress can readily pass legislation to change the law. This is exactly the way a rational person would expect laws to be applied. Neither the IRS nor the federal courts are the legislative body and neither has the constitutional power to enact or to change laws. How the 3-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court that decided the King v. Burwell case could have decided that the law was ambiguous is incredible. What is more, if it were ambiguous, then it is up to Congress, not the IRS, to eliminate any such ambiguity. Ridiculous consequences would result from any other principle and the People would lose all power to control any government operating as the 4th Circuit Court ruled government should work.
Unfortunately, the entire District of Columbia Circuit Court decided to rule on Halbig v. Burwell and the Democrat appointed judges are now in the majority on that Circuit Court. They will hear the case in December. What is more, the decision by the Honorable Ronald A. White will be appealed to the entire 10th Circuit Court on which 7 of the 12 judges were appointed by Democrats. The case of Indiana v. IRS is also yet to be decided. Given the otherworldly ability of Democrat-appointed judges to misinterpret clear English and to ignore the history of the passage of this law, the People of the United States may not be relieved of the ObamaCare tyranny.
But, the state of Oklahoma, Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, and the Honorable Ronald A. White of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma have all proved themselves Heroes for in their efforts to preserve the rights of the individual in this desperate fight to protect self-ownership against the brutal onslaught of ObamaCare.
30 November 2013
Government Continues to Lower Expectations for Pre-paid Health Care Exchanges
The federal government pre-paid medical care exchanges are supposed to be working better today. They are supposed to handle up to 50,000 people on-line at one time now. Since the federal exchanges are claiming you can sign-up for plans beginning on 1 January 2014 until 23 December, this means that counting today, there are 23 days to sign-up. So far in two months, it is thought that about 150,000 have chosen plans. At 50,000 sign-ups per day henceforth a grand upper limit total of another 1,150,000 sign-ups may occur before time has run out. Some people will not sign-up for anything until they have been on-line over the course of several days examining the offerings and then looking into the provider networks elsewhere. The enthusiastically socialist state of Maryland, which operates its own exchange, has a much earlier sign-up deadline of 10 December and a very confusing website.
It is not at all clear that even if one signs up by 23 December on the federally operated exchanges, that one will have an actual plan by 1 January 2014. This is because you do not have a plan until you have paid the company offering the mandated ObamaCare pre-paid medical care plans. The federal exchanges do not yet have a means to enable such payments. Given their track record to-date and the methods they are using to manage the exchanges still, it seems unlikely they will have a working mechanism for making payments to the plan providers before Christmas. So, it seems very certain that fewer than 1,300,000 plans will actually exist on 1 January 2015.
Recall that ObamaCare was passed so that 47 million Americans without health insurance would have pre-paid medical care once it was implemented. Nothing was said about many millions of people who had insurance losing that insurance. As it happens, to-date more than 5.55 million insurance plans have been cancelled and the federal government wants to declare success for ObamaCare if 1.3 million new plans are issued under it. But, this is a net loss of 4.25 million insurance plans, while the supposed 47 million Americans uninsured before will all remain uninsured. Yes, of course some of them will get ObamaCare insurance and more than 4.25 million of the newly cancelled plans will have no replacement. The few state-run exchanges which work better than the federal government exchanges will manage to sign-up a few more of the 4.25 million lost plans, but will not sign up most of them either.
Meanwhile, throughout 2015, tens of millions more health insurance plans offered by small businesses and big businesses will be cancelled or replaced by more expensive plans with much increased employee contributions.
On 1 January 2014, many more Americans will have no health insurance and no pre-paid ObamaCare medical care than the original 47 million claimed uninsured who were the very justification for the wrenching changes to our medical care system including the loss of our doctors and hospitals, especially the better ones, the cost of much increased premiums for most of us, the increase in deductibles for most of us, the need to travel much greater distances to the health care providers for many of us, long waits to see doctors or nurse and pharmacist substitutes, a decrease in medical innovation, a decrease in covered medical procedures, more trips to medical facilities to get through a given medical procedure, decreased medical and financial privacy and security, and the many aggravations of having to choose and learn new health networks and how to do their increased paperwork.
It is not at all clear that even if one signs up by 23 December on the federally operated exchanges, that one will have an actual plan by 1 January 2014. This is because you do not have a plan until you have paid the company offering the mandated ObamaCare pre-paid medical care plans. The federal exchanges do not yet have a means to enable such payments. Given their track record to-date and the methods they are using to manage the exchanges still, it seems unlikely they will have a working mechanism for making payments to the plan providers before Christmas. So, it seems very certain that fewer than 1,300,000 plans will actually exist on 1 January 2015.
Recall that ObamaCare was passed so that 47 million Americans without health insurance would have pre-paid medical care once it was implemented. Nothing was said about many millions of people who had insurance losing that insurance. As it happens, to-date more than 5.55 million insurance plans have been cancelled and the federal government wants to declare success for ObamaCare if 1.3 million new plans are issued under it. But, this is a net loss of 4.25 million insurance plans, while the supposed 47 million Americans uninsured before will all remain uninsured. Yes, of course some of them will get ObamaCare insurance and more than 4.25 million of the newly cancelled plans will have no replacement. The few state-run exchanges which work better than the federal government exchanges will manage to sign-up a few more of the 4.25 million lost plans, but will not sign up most of them either.
Meanwhile, throughout 2015, tens of millions more health insurance plans offered by small businesses and big businesses will be cancelled or replaced by more expensive plans with much increased employee contributions.
On 1 January 2014, many more Americans will have no health insurance and no pre-paid ObamaCare medical care than the original 47 million claimed uninsured who were the very justification for the wrenching changes to our medical care system including the loss of our doctors and hospitals, especially the better ones, the cost of much increased premiums for most of us, the increase in deductibles for most of us, the need to travel much greater distances to the health care providers for many of us, long waits to see doctors or nurse and pharmacist substitutes, a decrease in medical innovation, a decrease in covered medical procedures, more trips to medical facilities to get through a given medical procedure, decreased medical and financial privacy and security, and the many aggravations of having to choose and learn new health networks and how to do their increased paperwork.
26 October 2013
ObamaCare Self-Immolates, but Heavily Taxes Middle Income People
The signature achievement of Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party, the fraudulently named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is undergoing an immediate self-destruction brought on by the unbelievable hubris of party hacks in believing that they could better direct the massive medical and health insurance efforts than the private sector can. The problems run much deeper than health insurance exchanges whose website portals do not work. That is an unsurprising problem given the nature of those in charge of setting them up, but it is only the start of the tsunami of problems being unleashed upon the American People by these preternaturally bloated Progressive Elitist's egos.
Obama told us on Tuesday, 22 October, that thousands of people are signing up for ObamaCare and saving money. Actually, it turns out that most of those who have signed up are really signing up for expanded Medicaid benefits. It also turns out that many who have struggled with the website problems long enough to sign up are those with pre-existing conditions who will often save money under ObamaCare. In addition, a few states are already so heavily regulated by the state with consequent health insurance costs being forced skyhigh, that even the ObamaCare costs are lower. Yet, the costs for all but five states are generally up and often are up by factors of two or more. A Heritage Foundation study by Drew Gonshorowski produced these results:
Only in Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island can you find cost savings under ObamaCare. The rest of the nation is screwed.
For 27 year olds, their rates are going up by 100% or more in the following 10 states:
Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, and Vermont. Nobody actually knows the rates for Virginia because it appears that the ObamaCare website is giving out a number that must be wrong.
Again for 27 year olds, insurance premium rates are going up by more than 50%, but less than 100%, in the following 15 states:
Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Of course, ObamaCare is design to milk the healthy young to pay for the sick and older population. Nonetheless, for adults aged 50 the rates are also generally going up. In the following 13 states and DC, they are going up more than 50%:
Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
An adult aged 50 will see rates go up by more than 25%, but less than 50%, in the following 15 states:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.
So, a 27 year old will see his premium rates going up by more than 50% in 25 states. A 50 year old will see rates going up by more than 25% in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Somehow, I suspect the claims of the Democrat Socialist Party and Obama that ObamaCare was just going to be Hunky-Dorry are ringing, or will soon ring, very hollow. No, they will even be regarded as the lies that I have always said they were.
When ObamaCare was being pushed through Congress, the claim was that there were 47 million uninsured in the USA and desperately in need of affordable health insurance. They said it was everyone's responsibility to see that the uninsured had their medical needs assured by ObamaCare. Now mind you, they did not point out as I did (discussing this here, here, here, and here) that about 10 million Americans do not need insurance since they or a family member are so wealthy that they can readily be self-insured. Maybe 12 million of that number were then illegal aliens. Most of the remainder were healthy young people who even at the lower rates available before ObamaCare did not see a reason to insure themselves. Clearly, ObamaCare does not address any of the needs of the wealthy, the illegal alien, and the healthy young person. It is only addressing the needs of those who are already sick and do not have health insurance and it is doing so at incredible cost to everyone else.
Let us examine how ObamaCare is doing if thousands had actually signed up as Obama says in the first 22 days of the program. Since it has been sold recently as covering 50 million people without insurance and since it is now estimated that about 16 million people who had insurance are losing it due to cancellations saying their policies do not meet ObamaCare mandates, there would be 66 million people who have to sign up for ObamaCare by 31 March 2014. In that 182 day period, 362,637 people a day must sign up, despite Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day! More refined recent claims were that ObamaCare hoped to sign up 30 million of the uninsured. So, that makes the total number of sign-ups a mere 46 million by 31 March 2014, or a mere 252,747 a day. In the 22 days to Obama's speech last week, the total number of sign-ups for insurance was not anywhere near even the one-day necessary average of 252,747. In fact, so few have signed up to date that one can just as well say that 46 million sign-ups have to occur in the remaining 156 days from today, at an average rate of 294,872 a day.
Now stop and think about this. Is it at all likely that 294,872 people a day will sign-up for ObamaCare before 31 March 2014 given the website problems, the high costs, and the high deductibles? There is no way this will happen. No Way! In fact, it was never a likely development from the beginning.
I have been sure that ObamaCare was designed to fail so that a single-payer system would soon replace it. But the facts discussed above now make it clear that the Democrat Socialist Party that is always pushing for new taxes was also trying to create a system almost no one would want a part of so they could charge tens of millions of people the penalty tax for not obtaining the prohibitively expensive ObamaCare with its low quality health care service. This was always primarily a new and massive tax! By clever, insidious design.
One can even understand that Obama paid no attention to the problems of launching ObamaCare because its immediate failure was the equivalent of a huge additional tax increase. It was designed to fail either immediately or in a few years. But the faster it failed, the bigger the tax increase! Obama was either setting up a future single-payer completely nationalized medical care system or he was getting out of the corner he had painted himself into with his pledge not to increase taxes on the Middle Class. It was a win-win situation for him.
ObamaCare was a pretense for an incredible and massive tax increase, which was mostly aimed at the middle class even as the Democrat Socialist Party was pledging no tax increase for the middle class and pretending to care about all the millions suffering without health insurance. ObamaCare was directly a massive power grab over 16 to 18% of the economy and it was also a heavy tax increase to pay for the program. People understood that some people would be hit by the penalty tax, but few understood that it was designed to be a massive tax increase to soak tens of millions of people with middle incomes.
Obama is counting on his abilities as a great con man to keep Americans from understanding this. Eventually, the pain will be so great for so many Americans that I think enough will come to understand the perfidy that fell upon them. They will finally see Obama and the Democrat Socialists as the malevolent liars that they are. They will soon no longer control the Senate and in 2016 they will lose the Presidential election. At last!
I am now reading that the ObamaCare mandated insurance has to be purchased by 31 March 2014, not by 15 March as I had earlier seen reported. I have recalculated the necessary daily average rates of sign-up for everyone to meet the ObamaCare requirement for its approved insurance plans on 30 October. Of course, the actual daily sign-ups since I originally posted this remain vastly lower than the necessary daily average.
Obama told us on Tuesday, 22 October, that thousands of people are signing up for ObamaCare and saving money. Actually, it turns out that most of those who have signed up are really signing up for expanded Medicaid benefits. It also turns out that many who have struggled with the website problems long enough to sign up are those with pre-existing conditions who will often save money under ObamaCare. In addition, a few states are already so heavily regulated by the state with consequent health insurance costs being forced skyhigh, that even the ObamaCare costs are lower. Yet, the costs for all but five states are generally up and often are up by factors of two or more. A Heritage Foundation study by Drew Gonshorowski produced these results:
For 27 year olds, their rates are going up by 100% or more in the following 10 states:
Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, and Vermont. Nobody actually knows the rates for Virginia because it appears that the ObamaCare website is giving out a number that must be wrong.
Again for 27 year olds, insurance premium rates are going up by more than 50%, but less than 100%, in the following 15 states:
Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Of course, ObamaCare is design to milk the healthy young to pay for the sick and older population. Nonetheless, for adults aged 50 the rates are also generally going up. In the following 13 states and DC, they are going up more than 50%:
Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
An adult aged 50 will see rates go up by more than 25%, but less than 50%, in the following 15 states:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.
So, a 27 year old will see his premium rates going up by more than 50% in 25 states. A 50 year old will see rates going up by more than 25% in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Somehow, I suspect the claims of the Democrat Socialist Party and Obama that ObamaCare was just going to be Hunky-Dorry are ringing, or will soon ring, very hollow. No, they will even be regarded as the lies that I have always said they were.
When ObamaCare was being pushed through Congress, the claim was that there were 47 million uninsured in the USA and desperately in need of affordable health insurance. They said it was everyone's responsibility to see that the uninsured had their medical needs assured by ObamaCare. Now mind you, they did not point out as I did (discussing this here, here, here, and here) that about 10 million Americans do not need insurance since they or a family member are so wealthy that they can readily be self-insured. Maybe 12 million of that number were then illegal aliens. Most of the remainder were healthy young people who even at the lower rates available before ObamaCare did not see a reason to insure themselves. Clearly, ObamaCare does not address any of the needs of the wealthy, the illegal alien, and the healthy young person. It is only addressing the needs of those who are already sick and do not have health insurance and it is doing so at incredible cost to everyone else.
Let us examine how ObamaCare is doing if thousands had actually signed up as Obama says in the first 22 days of the program. Since it has been sold recently as covering 50 million people without insurance and since it is now estimated that about 16 million people who had insurance are losing it due to cancellations saying their policies do not meet ObamaCare mandates, there would be 66 million people who have to sign up for ObamaCare by 31 March 2014. In that 182 day period, 362,637 people a day must sign up, despite Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day! More refined recent claims were that ObamaCare hoped to sign up 30 million of the uninsured. So, that makes the total number of sign-ups a mere 46 million by 31 March 2014, or a mere 252,747 a day. In the 22 days to Obama's speech last week, the total number of sign-ups for insurance was not anywhere near even the one-day necessary average of 252,747. In fact, so few have signed up to date that one can just as well say that 46 million sign-ups have to occur in the remaining 156 days from today, at an average rate of 294,872 a day.
Now stop and think about this. Is it at all likely that 294,872 people a day will sign-up for ObamaCare before 31 March 2014 given the website problems, the high costs, and the high deductibles? There is no way this will happen. No Way! In fact, it was never a likely development from the beginning.
I have been sure that ObamaCare was designed to fail so that a single-payer system would soon replace it. But the facts discussed above now make it clear that the Democrat Socialist Party that is always pushing for new taxes was also trying to create a system almost no one would want a part of so they could charge tens of millions of people the penalty tax for not obtaining the prohibitively expensive ObamaCare with its low quality health care service. This was always primarily a new and massive tax! By clever, insidious design.
One can even understand that Obama paid no attention to the problems of launching ObamaCare because its immediate failure was the equivalent of a huge additional tax increase. It was designed to fail either immediately or in a few years. But the faster it failed, the bigger the tax increase! Obama was either setting up a future single-payer completely nationalized medical care system or he was getting out of the corner he had painted himself into with his pledge not to increase taxes on the Middle Class. It was a win-win situation for him.
ObamaCare was a pretense for an incredible and massive tax increase, which was mostly aimed at the middle class even as the Democrat Socialist Party was pledging no tax increase for the middle class and pretending to care about all the millions suffering without health insurance. ObamaCare was directly a massive power grab over 16 to 18% of the economy and it was also a heavy tax increase to pay for the program. People understood that some people would be hit by the penalty tax, but few understood that it was designed to be a massive tax increase to soak tens of millions of people with middle incomes.
Obama is counting on his abilities as a great con man to keep Americans from understanding this. Eventually, the pain will be so great for so many Americans that I think enough will come to understand the perfidy that fell upon them. They will finally see Obama and the Democrat Socialists as the malevolent liars that they are. They will soon no longer control the Senate and in 2016 they will lose the Presidential election. At last!
I am now reading that the ObamaCare mandated insurance has to be purchased by 31 March 2014, not by 15 March as I had earlier seen reported. I have recalculated the necessary daily average rates of sign-up for everyone to meet the ObamaCare requirement for its approved insurance plans on 30 October. Of course, the actual daily sign-ups since I originally posted this remain vastly lower than the necessary daily average.
16 October 2013
Federal ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchange Website Boondoggles
The Obama administration, even more incompetent than most governments, examined the proposal of only one website developer for the ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchange. There are very widespread reports of how difficult it is get on to get cost and benefit information from this website, how inaccurate the subsidy information is, and how difficult it is to use if you do get on it. The Obama regime is not at all transparent in providing numbers on how many Americans have signed up for insurance on the exchanges or what the subsidies will cost the taxpayers.
Now there are reports that the Canadian company whose US subsidiary was given the contract to develop the website was criticized by the Canadian government as incompetent and unreliable. This company had the American ObamaCare Health Insurance website developed in India using Java script, which was a cheap, but totally inadequate way to set up the website for the necessary volume of traffic. Despite the cheap approach, the company went way over budget. Various reports claim that between $400 and $600 million has been spent on the website which is far from capable of doing the job required. John McAfee claims that 15 good programmers could easily have provided an adequate site for $5 million.
In addition to the fact that many people may never be able to sign up for the mandated insurance and will be hit with outrageous penalty taxes as a result, those who try to set up the required accounts before they can learn anything at all about the costs and benefits of the few mandated insurance plans allowed by our draconian, authoritarian government, risk losing everything in their bank accounts. There are no security precautions to keep social security numbers and birth dates along with full names and addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses safe from hackers. Imitation websites can easily be set up and induce people to provide all of this information which are actually easier to find and get on. No one will be surprised that a fake website only takes the usual information demanded by the real websites to set up and account and then fails to give them insurance information. That behavior would be a good copy of the real website behavior. With that required account information, the fake website operators can quickly drain the American citizen's bank account. What a field day for crooks!
See what John McAfee told Fox News.
For all of these risks, one gets rationed and lower quality medical care, which suppresses future medical developments and discourages good, conscientious doctors and other medical care providers. Many of the best doctors and best hospitals are systematically excluded from the few plans operating under ObamaCare because they are deemed too expensive. Of course there is no expense in being killed or inadequately treated by less capable or even incompetent doctors and hospitals! Since my own father was killed by an incompetent, uncaring doctor, I recognize these costs.
It is not enough for the the Obama regime to force us to give up the ownership of our bodies and minds, the health insurance and doctors and hospitals we wish to use, and control over the benefits and costs we are willing to take in health insurance of our own free will. No, the Obama and Democrat Socialist Rulers must also put Americans to great expense either with health insurance plans that are not suitable for them, with tax penalties, or with the danger of losing everything in their bank accounts.
The incompetence and the hubris of the tyrant is once again affirmed. The so-called Progressive Elitists are no better than the monarchs of old, the robber barons, the fascists, the communists, and many a petty dictator or warlord.
Now there are reports that the Canadian company whose US subsidiary was given the contract to develop the website was criticized by the Canadian government as incompetent and unreliable. This company had the American ObamaCare Health Insurance website developed in India using Java script, which was a cheap, but totally inadequate way to set up the website for the necessary volume of traffic. Despite the cheap approach, the company went way over budget. Various reports claim that between $400 and $600 million has been spent on the website which is far from capable of doing the job required. John McAfee claims that 15 good programmers could easily have provided an adequate site for $5 million.
In addition to the fact that many people may never be able to sign up for the mandated insurance and will be hit with outrageous penalty taxes as a result, those who try to set up the required accounts before they can learn anything at all about the costs and benefits of the few mandated insurance plans allowed by our draconian, authoritarian government, risk losing everything in their bank accounts. There are no security precautions to keep social security numbers and birth dates along with full names and addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses safe from hackers. Imitation websites can easily be set up and induce people to provide all of this information which are actually easier to find and get on. No one will be surprised that a fake website only takes the usual information demanded by the real websites to set up and account and then fails to give them insurance information. That behavior would be a good copy of the real website behavior. With that required account information, the fake website operators can quickly drain the American citizen's bank account. What a field day for crooks!
See what John McAfee told Fox News.
For all of these risks, one gets rationed and lower quality medical care, which suppresses future medical developments and discourages good, conscientious doctors and other medical care providers. Many of the best doctors and best hospitals are systematically excluded from the few plans operating under ObamaCare because they are deemed too expensive. Of course there is no expense in being killed or inadequately treated by less capable or even incompetent doctors and hospitals! Since my own father was killed by an incompetent, uncaring doctor, I recognize these costs.
It is not enough for the the Obama regime to force us to give up the ownership of our bodies and minds, the health insurance and doctors and hospitals we wish to use, and control over the benefits and costs we are willing to take in health insurance of our own free will. No, the Obama and Democrat Socialist Rulers must also put Americans to great expense either with health insurance plans that are not suitable for them, with tax penalties, or with the danger of losing everything in their bank accounts.
The incompetence and the hubris of the tyrant is once again affirmed. The so-called Progressive Elitists are no better than the monarchs of old, the robber barons, the fascists, the communists, and many a petty dictator or warlord.
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