The Republican one "bright" spot?

[Long Run]

They may end up with the worst presidential candidate in history at the head of the ticket, but every Republican running for Congress will have one winning issue. Expect a nuanced policy argument on this, said no political consultant ever.

Health Reform: ObamaCare rates will skyrocket next year, according to its former chief. Enrollment is tumbling this year. And a big insurer is quitting most exchanges. That’s what we learned in just the past few days.

Marilyn Tavenner, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, revealed that she expects ObamaCare premium hikes “to be higher than we saw previous years,” including last year, which saw double-digit rate increases across the country.

Tavenner, for those who don’t know, was head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services until early 2015, which means she helped bring ObamaCare to life. In November 2014, she was boasting how “the Affordable Care Act is working to improve competition and choice among marketplace plans.”

Now that she’s jumped to the other side of the fence, she’s discovered the dark side of the health reform monster she helped unleash.

Why will 2017 rates spike even higher? In addition to the cost of complying with ObamaCare’s insurance regulations and mandates, there’s the fact that the ObamaCare exchanges have failed to attract enough young and healthy people needed to keep premiums down. Plus, two industry bailout programs expire this year, Tavenner notes.

Oh, and she admits that people are gaming ObamaCare just like critics said they would: buying coverage after they get sick — since insurance companies can no longer turn them down or charge them more — then dropping it when they’re done with treatments. “That churn increases premiums. So you have to kind of price over that.”

The timing of these coming rate shocks couldn’t be worse for ObamaCare supporters, since insurers will start announcing premium increases just as the presidential election heats up. Insurers have already requested 18% rate increases in Virginia.

Meanwhile, IBD’s Jed Graham reported on Friday that ObamaCare enrollment has already dropped an average of more than 14% in five states since February — a faster rate of decline than last year — as people get kicked off for not paying premiums.

Finally, we learned on Tuesday that UnitedHealth Group (UNH) is planning to drop out of almost every ObamaCare market it currently serves after losing $1 billion on those policies.

The result will be less competition in those states. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that “more than one in four counties where UnitedHealth participates nationally would see a drop from two insurers to one if the company exits and isn’t replaced by a new entrant.”

Skyrocketing premiums, fewer choices in the marketplace, and people fleeing ObamaCare in droves after signing up. This isn’t exactly what Obama promised when he signed ObamaCare into law.

Democrats running for re-election this year might want to think twice about wrapping their arms around this terminally ill law. And Republicans should be busy crafting a replacement.

http://www.investors.com/politics/edito ... -one-week/

[rubato]

We've been hearing that same wheezy calliope tune for 4 years now "Obamacare is about to fail, ANY MINUTE NOW," except it keeps succeeding.


And the Republican alternative is still "let them die".


They'll be cranking that same tune 20 years from now just like they're still pretending tax cuts raise revenue.


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

...and there was no response to any of the critical points, as expected. Just the same tune as we've been hearing for four years from shillato... "all is well; pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".

So-called Obamacare must, in the end, fail for one simple reason - it attempts to force capitalist insurance companies and enterprises to implement socialist economic policy. It's a mule - incapable of reproducing itself successfully.

Now a single-payer system might be far more likely to live long and - well, maybe not prosper but at least pay for health care for a long time. But as I've posted before about Ohio, the trend of AHCA is to decrease competition and elevate costs - one can hardly wait to find out what happens when the fines start to mount up for all the non-entrants.

[Lord Jim]

...and there was no response to any of the critical points, as expected.

Like any good scientist, rube refuses to consider any information that could negatively impact his preconceived conclusions...

[Scooter]

Hmmm.

Just days after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) went on Meet the Press to fearmonger about Obamacare, yet another study came along to sock it to his desperate Obamacare claims. An independent health policy research program study released Wednesday showed all of his predictions about Obamacare were wrong. Way wrong. Wrong on every single fearmongering prediction and claim they made.

Under Obamacare, nearly 17 million have gotten insurance coverage since the fall of 2013. Seventeen MILLION.

The Rand analysis of their study revealed the facts:

Insurance coverage has increased across all types of insurance since the major provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act took effect, with a total of 16.9 million people becoming newly enrolled through February 2015, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Researchers estimate that from September 2013 to February 2015, 22.8 million Americans became newly insured and 5.9 million lost coverage, for a net of 16.9 million newly insured Americans.

Republicans are running on taking that insurance away?

Republicans like to claim that it’s all Medicaid expansion. Survey says, wrong again.

Among those newly gaining coverage, 9.6 million people enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans, followed by Medicaid (6.5 million), the individual marketplaces (4.1 million), nonmarketplace individual plans (1.2 million) and other insurance sources (1.5 million).

And remember how Republicans sounded the hysteria alarms that Obama was ruining their insurance and nobody would get to keep their insurance?

The study also estimates that 125.2 million Americans — about 80 percent of the nonelderly population that had insurance in September 2013 — experienced no change in the source of insurance during the period, according to findings published online by the journal Health Affairs.

Republicans said Obamacare would cause private employers to stop offering insurance. Survey says, wrong again:

RAND researchers say the findings that the biggest gain in coverage was from employer-sponsored insurance runs counter to predictions that many employers may quit offering insurance in response to the Affordable Care Act and suggests that regardless of whether that occurs, employer-sponsored coverage will remain the nation’s major source of health insurance coverage.

17 million newly insured is a lot of votes. Who do you imagine they are going to vote for, the party that says they didn't deserves coverage and will campaign on the position that they should have been left to die in the street like dogs?

So Republicans plan to campaign on dismantling the ACA? Next thing you know, turkeys are going to be calling for an extra Thanksgiving Day.

[Burning Petard]

Scooter, you fail to take into account one peculiar set of data about American elections.

Most eligible voters do not vote.
And when lots of people do not like someone on the ticket, there is an even lower turn out of voters.

snailgate

[Scooter]

And all I'm saying is, 17 million people who now have insurance, who the Republicans say do not deserve to live healthy lives or indeed to live at all, have a pretty fucking major incentive to vote come November to keep what they have.

[Joe Guy]

I wonder how many of the 17 million newly insured are of voting age...? I'm assuming they counted children of newly insured adults...

[Scooter]

So fine then, every adult with two children newly insured has three times as much motivation to vote to keep that insurance.

Happy now?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Republicans say do not deserve to live healthy lives or indeed to live at all

Alert! bigotato has captured Scooter's keyboard!

[Long Run]

These 17 million people presumably were there when the R's used the unpopularity of the ACA to take over Congress in 2010 and keep it ever since. Most of the new insureds are part of the Medicaid expansion, which was funded on a pipe dream, and of course never needed all the Rube Goldgerg ACA design elements. And it is really the latter part of the ACA that is so unpopular, with its mandates, built-in actuarial demise, hidden and not so hidden taxes, etc.

[oldr_n_wsr]

And how many of those 17 million had insurance previously but turned to the ACA when it was set up? And how many had been dropped by their companies plans for whatever reason (reduced hours/workforce)?

Along with UHC pulling out, there were more than a few government set up (aka funded) insurers/co-ops that have gone belly up and further weaken competition on the exchanges.

[Scooter]

These 17 million people presumably were there when the R's used the unpopularity of the ACA to take over Congress in 2010 and keep it ever since.

Uh, no, since as the study said, they acquired coverage between 2013 and 2015.

Most of the new insureds are part of the Medicaid expansion

Wrong again, as the study shows. Perhaps actually reading the post before responding with your pre-programmed talking points might help.

I'm sorry that that insurance companies you continually shill for here are no longer able to charge ridiculous premiums for useless coverage, which we all know is your real beef with the ACA. I don't know how much that costs you personally because I don't know how they compensate you, but clearly your ox is being gored somehow.

[Long Run]

Among those newly gaining coverage, 9.6 million people enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans, followed by Medicaid (6.5 million), the individual marketplaces (4.1 million), nonmarketplace individual plans (1.2 million) and other insurance sources (1.5 million).

You can look at these numbers in different ways. One is to say "look at all the new insureds". Certainly, this shows everything is not going down the drain today. (And clearly, there are good things in the ACA that should be kept when it is substantially revised in the next year or so). However, take the 9.6 million newly enrolled in employer plans -- how much is this the ACA employer mandate versus more employers hiring new employees and adding them to their plans? Job growth has actually been very strong during this measuring period (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES00000 ... w=net_1mth). That is, what number of these new insureds under employer plans would have been added simply because the economy has continued to get better? On the other hand, we know the Medicaid expansion numbers and the ACA marketplace numbers are ACA related, and based on that we can say Medicaid expansion is the major driver of newly insureds. And, hey, this is not necessarily a bad thing (it's one of the things that should generally remain in place with modifications).

The RAND study estimates 11.2 million Americans are insured through new state and federal marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act, including 4.1 million who are newly covered and 7.1 million people who transitioned to marketplace plans from another source of coverage.

In addition, among the 12.6 million Americans newly enrolled in Medicaid, 6.5 million were previously uninsured and 6.1 million were previously insured.

Again, look at the numbers -- more newly added in Medicaid than through the marketplaces.

And Old'r that seems to be at least a partial answer to your questions: of the 11.2 million in the ACA marketplace, 7.1 million had coverage elsewhere before; and of the 12.6 million newly enrolled in Medicaid, 6.1 million had prior coverage. So, the ACA took 6.1 million people who were paying for their own insurance (through their jobs or privately) and had the taxpayers pick up the bill. I know a couple of people in this category and while it is nice for them, I know they can still afford to pay their own coverage that the taxpayers are now covering, so a mixed bag on that.

[Scooter]

When I take the numbers and put them in a meat grinder and stir up what come out, I can pretend they mean what I want them to

FTFY

[Long Run]

When I take the numbers and put them in a meat grinder and stir up what come out, I can pretend they mean what I want them to

FTFY

As opposed to the analysis from knee-jerk liberal blogspot you cite?

[Scooter]

The only numbers they posted were from direct quotations of the RAND Corporation study. And your spin came from where, exactly?

It's funny how you attempt to claim that the ACA is shit because most of the growth in insurance coverage came from strong employment growth, after years of claiming that the ACA was killing job creation. How many more sides of your mouth can we expect you to speak out of?

[Scooter]