Admittedly the law is hilarious, though the consequences of it are rather sad.
Showing posts with label obamacare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obamacare. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Apparently Democrats are reading the polls about Obamacare. Even after the election are there many Democrats who say that Obamacare is working the way that they claimed it would work? From The Hill Newspaper:
Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill.
The Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, laments the complexity of legislation the Senate passed five years ago.
He wonders in hindsight whether the law was made overly complicated to satisfy the political concerns of a few Democratic centrists who have since left Congress.
“We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,” Harkin told The Hill. “So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.
“What we did is we muddled through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively,” he added. . . .
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Jonathan Gruber: This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. Score the mandate as taxes and the bill dies. OK, so it was written to do that. . . .
Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.
And you know it is a second best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right we could make it all transparent, but I would rather have this law than not. . . .
Certainly there is voter ignorance, but Gruber's admission that they purposely hid information from voters is maddening. Sometime voters are wrong, though Gruber seems to think that is the common state of things, but in this case I believe that voters were smarter than this economist. But the open lying about what was in the bill is amazing.
For more on Jonathan Gruber see these posts.
UPDATE: Jon Gruber now says that he just misspoke when he made the above comments.
For more on Jonathan Gruber see these posts.
UPDATE: Jon Gruber now says that he just misspoke when he made the above comments.
"The comments in the video were made at an academic conference," Gruber said on "Ronan Farrow Daily." "I was speaking off the cuff. I basically spoke inappropriately. I regret having made those comments." . . .
On Tuesday, Gruber said he only meant that much of ObamaCare's financing was done through the tax code, calling that more "politically palatable" than other means.People can watch the above video themselves and judge whether Gruber simply wasn't speaking clearly.
"That was the only point I was making," he said. . . . .
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The difference in price between Obamacare plans and these alternative ones provides strong evidence that Obamacare increased insurance costs and that the higher premiums are due to all the new regulations. In any case, this death spiral implies even greater increases in insurance premiums. From Fox News:
A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral.
The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed.
“Applications rose 30 percent compared to last year,” eHealthInsurance.com Enrollment Specialist Carrie McLean told FoxNews.com.
Other providers said they also see rapid growth in the plans, which have a typical monthly premium of just over $100, compared to traditional plans that cost an average of $271.
“It’s because the product is typically half the cost of ACA plans, and you can chose any doctor or hospital,” Health Insurance Innovations CEO Mike Kosloske told FoxNews.com. . . .This article was written by my son, Maxim.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
From EducationViews.org:
Since the launch of Obamacare, at least 122 colleges and universities across the nation have cut student and faculty work hours to skirt the federal law’s mandate requiring employers to provide healthcare for people who work 30 hours or more per week.
Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.
A long and growing list of 450 companies, school districts, colleges and institutions that have slashed and capped work hours to comply with the employer mandate – which goes into effect next year – has been compiled by Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily, whose tally chronicles employers both public and private. . . . .
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Obamacare has a funny way of reducing the number of people without health insurance. From the Associate Press:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation's largest private employer.
Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart's total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011.
The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. . . .
Saturday, October 4, 2014
From Fox News:
A Texas union’s dirty laundry -- aired out in court when workers charged they were cheated out of overtime pay – also shows the labor organization ripped off taxpayers under a $1.3 million contract to sign people up for ObamaCare, a watchdog group is claiming.
Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a "navigator," enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage. The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in some cases, paid them to recruit union members. The watchdog group discovered the alleged discrepancy in court papers filed by union workers suing the labor organization for unpaid overtime.
“Southern United Neighborhoods and ULU Local 100, both rebranded ACORN entities, present a risk of violating the law – this time by potentially misusing over $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars for union activities instead of enrolling individuals in the Affordable Care Act,” Daniel Epstein, executive director for Cause of Action said to FoxNews.com.
Epstein and his group sent a letter to the federal Health and Human Services Inspector General this week asking that SUN and the union be investigated for fraud. . . .
Thursday, October 2, 2014
President Obama has pushed back the dates for health insurance renewal until after the election, but still some information is going to come out before the election. Will people be as clear of the implications as they would be if they actually saw the bills before the election? Undoubtedly "no." But still some information is starting to get out. From The Hill newspaper:
Alaskans buying health insurance through their state exchange can expect a price spike of more than 30 percent on average, news that could hurt Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who voted for ObamaCare,
Alaska Public Media reports that the two health insurance companies supplying plans on the state exchange will dramatically increase their plans' average costs next year.
Republicans have long predicted that a spike in insurance costs driven by ObamaCare's state exchanges would occur this fall, and while that prediction has failed to materialize in many states, in Alaska, it looks like they were prescient — and that it might hurt Begich's campaign. . . .
Friday, September 26, 2014
Those tax refunds that people thought that they were getting apparently aren't going to come through. Nice that this timing will be after the election. From USA Today:
Those affected took advance payments of the premium tax credit for health insurance. Some married couples could owe $600 or $1,500 or $2,500 or even more. It might feel like a raw deal for some who are already suffocating under the escalating costs of health insurance.
"Health insurance is confusing enough, and now they're adding the complexities of the Tax Code," said Lorena Bencsik, a member of the Michigan Association of CPAs and owner of Prime Numbers in Ferndale.
When you file that 2014 tax return next year, the Internal Revenue Service will compare your actual income for the year with the amount you estimated when applying for exchange-based health insurance under the health insurance law. . . .
Monday, August 25, 2014
This is one of the rules that was supposed to go into effect this last January. As we get closer to January 1st, more and more people are going to be forced back to less than 30 hours of work a week. As one teacher points out in this news story on WTAJ (CBS TV in Altoona, PA), what happens when the primary teacher is sick for a week? The students can't even have the same substitute for the same week.
Friday, July 25, 2014
It is rare for a prominent academic to so blatantly lie repeatedly for purely political purposes. Unfortunately, for MIT's Jonathan Gruber there are videos to prove it. Here is a video of Gruber in January 2012 where he makes it completely clear that only state run insurance exchanges get federal subsidies (see discussion starting at 31:55 in video):
Well, that was then and this is now. This past week on MSNBC Gruber can be seen claiming that there was never any intention to limit federal subsidies to state run exchanges and that the exclusion of the subsidy was just a result of an unintentional "typo" (video available here, transcript from Grabien).
JONATHAN GRUBER: What’s important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.It is crystal clear that the subsidy was limited to only state run insurance exchanges to force states to set up their own exchanges.
Well, that was then and this is now. This past week on MSNBC Gruber can be seen claiming that there was never any intention to limit federal subsidies to state run exchanges and that the exclusion of the subsidy was just a result of an unintentional "typo" (video available here, transcript from Grabien).
MATTHEWS: "Why would Democrats put in a poison pill that says, 'oh, if you don't have a state exchange you can't give subsidies and you can't have the individual mandate so the bill is dead.' Why do that? Where is the logic?"
GRUBER: "Someone wrote today a clever thing. When we fight about the Constitution we wonder what the framers really mean. We don't have to wonder. We know what the framers meant. We can ask them. We can go to the people who wrote it and say did you ever intend this as a poison pill or is it a typo every single one says it's a typo? And every single one of them will say this is just a typo. So there is no mystery here. There is no wondering about original intent in writing the law. This is just a typo. And if the courts pass it and it makes it to the Supreme Court, we are talking about 7 million Americans who would become uninsured because of this typo, if they really interpret it this way. It's just crazy."Gruber is racking up a long list of whoopers: promises that Obamacare would "for sure" lower health insurance costs, hiding that he was being paid $400,000 from the Obama administration to help work on and promote Obamacare while pretending to be a purely independent analyst, and possibly changing his positions on health care issues after he started working for the Obama administration.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
From the Washington Post:
What Mark Pauly, Scott Harrington, and Adam Leive of the Wharton School have done is to figure out how much non-elderly individuals spent on insurance before the ACA and then compared these figures with what they’ll spend after the ACA. They did this by using survey data for 2010 through 2012 from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey that show how much people spent on health care, including premiums and out of pocket payments. By looking at the total spent rather than just on premiums, the data reflect the fact that someone who buys a policy with a low premium can expect to have higher out of pocket costs, and vice versa. They report their findings in a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
For post-ACA prices, they looked at the premiums for the various levels of coverage (these levels are classified according to various metals: bronze, silver, gold and platinum) and estimated out of pocket payments according to data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The data were tabulated by age and gender for the bronze and the two lowest price silver plans.
After crunching the numbers, they found that people who buy the bronze or silver plans on the federal exchanges will spend a moderate amount more — from $694 to $1,165 a year, or 14 to 24 percent — on premiums and out of pocket expenses than they did before the health reform took effect.
However, that average figure masks a huge redistribution of the costs to older women from nearly everyone else.
Total expected premiums and out of pocket expenses rose by 50 percent for women age 55 to 64 — a much larger increase than for any other group — for policies on the federal exchanges relative to prices that individuals who bought individual insurance before health care reform went into effect.
Women age 55 to 64 will pay from $2,185 to $2,738 more in premiums and out of pocket expenses under the new health insurance environment than they did pre-ACA.
Premiums for the second-lowest silver policy are 67 percent higher for a 55 to 64-year-old woman than they were pre-ACA. . . .
Saturday, May 24, 2014
There is a reason why the Obama administration has pushed back the second-year start of enrollment to Nov. 15, 2014, from Oct. 15. From Fox News
But remember this news story from last October where CNN reported that the Obama Administration warned insurance companies not to discuss Obamacare problems.
But remember this news story from last October where CNN reported that the Obama Administration warned insurance companies not to discuss Obamacare problems.
DREW GRIFFIN: “Anderson, what's going on is behind the scenes attempt by the White House to at least keep insurers from publicly criticizing what is happening under this Affordable Care Act rollout. Basically if you speak out, if you are quoted, you're going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet. Several sources tell me and my colleague Chris Frates that insurance executives are being told to keep quiet. Bob Laszewski who heads the Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consulting firm for big insurance and an outspoken critic of ObamaCare, says he is getting calls from these executives who want him to speak out, Anderson, for them about the problems because they feel defenseless against the White House P.R. team. Laszewski told me today, ‘The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.’ And sources telling us they feared White House retribution.” ANDERSON COOPER: “So, I mean, what specifically are, do they say that they're being told to keep quiet about?” GRIFFIN: “About the fact that clarifications were made to the Affordable Care Act after the law was passed and those clarifications are forcing the insurance industry to drop insurance plans that do not meet ObamaCare requirements. There's a lot of coverage now required in these plans. That was not part of many people's private health care plans. Those are the people, Anderson, who are being dropped and despite all the rhetoric, I should say, from the president, you simply cannot keep your current health care plan if it does not meet these requirements. Laszewski says the insurance industry is embarrassed about cancelling the plans but in an interview last week he told me the Administration was warned about this very scenario and ignored the advice.”Meanwhile, you are already seeing huge increases in the cost of insurance premiums even before the problem discussed above goes into effect.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
With even the Obama administration admitting that 27 veterans have died because of the waiting list scam, Democrats even having a hard time with the VA now. But a few years ago, while these problems were festering, liberals were pointing to the VA as the example that we should all follow. As to the Obama administration's explanation On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” NBC News chief Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski claimed, “You have a VA that is overwhelmed and under-resourced,” John Merline points out that was incorrect.
Paul Krugman in 2011 wrote of the VA’s “huge success story”:
Paul Krugman in 2011 wrote of the VA’s “huge success story”:
Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense. . . . Yes, this is ‘socialized medicine’… But it works, and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of US health care more broadly. . . .
Nicholas Kristof of the Times wrote in 2009:
Take the hospital system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health system in the United States. It is fully government run, much more “socialized medicine” than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effectiveelements in the American medical establishment. . . .
Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton wrote in the pages of the Times:
Remarkably, Americans of all political stripes have long reserved for our veterans the purest form of socialized medicine, the vast health system operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (generally known as the V.A. health system). If socialized medicine is as bad as so many on this side of the Atlantic claim, why have both political parties ruling this land deemed socialized medicine the best health system for military veterans? Or do they just not care about them? . . .
Ironically, President Obama now explains that the current problems are nothing surprising, with the VA’s issues go back years:
[A]ll of us, whether here in Washington or all across the country, have to stay focused on the larger mission, which is upholding our sacred trust to all of our veterans, bringing the VA system into the 21st century, which is not an easy task…. caring for our veterans is not an issue that popped up in recent weeks. Some of the problems with respect to how veterans are able to access the benefits that they've earned, that's not a new issue. . . .Click to make the screen shot from the website from when Obama was president-elect larger.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
Note that this 115,000 number likely seems to be an over estimate because after the Obama administration had a hard time getting people to enter the program it cut the insurance premiums so much that it was actually cheaper for people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance than for healthy individuals.
Still the issue is question is if you want to help out 115,000 people, why not provide those individuals with a subsidy rather than changing health insurance for everyone?
Still the issue is question is if you want to help out 115,000 people, why not provide those individuals with a subsidy rather than changing health insurance for everyone?
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
- From the oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
- MR. CLEMENT: . . . If they take away the health care insurance, they are going to have to increase the wages to make up for that. And they're going to have to pay the $2,000 penalty on top of it, plus they're going to have to violate their their own interest which is, we actually we believe it's important to provide our employees with qualified health care.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: Okay, the last is important. But just assume hypothetically that it's a wash, that the employer would be in about the same position if he paid the penalty and the employer pardon me, an employee went out and got the insurance and that the employee's wages were raised slightly and then it's and that it's a wash so far as the employer are concerned, other than the employer's religious objection, but just on the financial standpoint. Can we assume that as a hypothetical. Then what would your case be?
If Hobby Lobby were really indifferent between these two outcomes, would they be willing to spend all the money and time on fighting this case in court? There is the general issue of revealed preferences, and in this case employers are clearly indicating which choice they prefer by their actions. If it wasn't for the law, we know which choice they would prefer. We also know how that choice changes with the law in place.
Finally, Clement is clearly right that in order for Hobby Lobby's employees to be the same, they would not only have to have higher wages to compensate them for the lost insurance, but the firm would also have to pay $2,000 per employee. $2,000 per employee might not seem like much to the Justices, but say an employee is receiving $40,000 per year. Everything else equal in terms of insurance, would they be indifferent to their wages being cut by 5% to $38,000?
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
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