A Cost of Obamacare

Posted on 30 November 2013 by eehines

Anecdotal, certainly, but anecdotes are data, and they can accumulate into trends. This one comes from Fox News‘ “Kelly File.”

One late-middle-aged family with two college-age children were paying $500/mo for a health insurance plan that suited their needs. President Barack Obama’s Obamacare, though, termed that plan inadequate and so illegal: the family got one of those ubiquitous cancelation letters. The new health “insurance” plan they got runs them $1,250/mo.

With that explosion in their pocketbook, this family did what any American family does and what the Obama administration refuses to do seriously: they budgeted.

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How Does This Work?

Posted on 27 November 2013 by eehines

The CMS has a Request for Proposal out [emphasis added]:

Solicitation Number: RFP-CMS-RMADA-2014
Notice Type: Modification/Amendment
Synopsis: Added: Nov 20, 2013 1:17 pm

The purpose is to develop a Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design, and Analysis (RMADA) IDIQ [Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contracting/procurement type] to respond to expanded needs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (ACA) and Health Care reform ACT (HCERA). The work awarded under the RMADA will involve the design, implementation and evaluation of a broad range of research and/or payment and service delivery models to test their potential for reducing expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and uninsured beneficiaries while maintaining or improving quality of care.

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Another Failed Government Farm Policy

Posted on 22 November 2013 by eehines

The US government is being forced to support sugar companies even though taxpayers are already footing a $280 million bill stemming from loans the companies can’t repay.

The loans are all part of the Feds’ farm policy of propping up sugar prices. So 300 million American sugar consumers can pay artificially high prices to benefit a few sugar farmers.

All told, Alexandra Wexler wrote in her Wall Street Journal article at the above link,

processors defaulted on $171.5 million in 2013, even after the USDA spent $106.7 million buying sugar to boost prices.

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Wealth Redistribution, Industrial Style

Posted on 21 November 2013 by eehines

…additionally, with industry as helpless victim, a taxpayer bailout. It’s an Obama two-fer: spreading the money around and bailing out an industry.

Built in to Obamacare, it turns out, is another form of wealth redistribution. In order to guarantee every insurance company a profit (as opposed to, more properly, engendering an economic environment within which every insurance company has an opportunity for a profit), Obamacare has embedded in it something called a “risk corridor.” Here’s Power Line‘s description of what this corridor is:

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Should It Be?

Posted on 18 November 2013 by eehines

Fox News asked, over the weekend, whether ObamaCare can be saved. But the real question is whether it should be—that hasn’t been established, yet.

Indeed, the basic question is whether this country should be providing universal health welfare—which is what Obamacare attempts to do; this law eliminates any insurance aspect from its purported health “insurance” program—at all.

Obamacare, as it stands, is not what Americans want. Poll after poll, across the three years since the law’s enactment, demonstrate this. The law’s internal contradictions, quite apart from its masquerade as insurance, make its efficacy—its very legitimacy—nonexistent.

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Blinder Strikes Again

Posted on 18 November 2013 by eehines

Professor Alan Blinder (Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University) opened his Wall Street Journal op-ed, this time, with a correct statement.

But a badly designed website doesn’t signify a badly designed policy. The goals, principles and major design features of the ACA are barely affected by the government’s health-exchange website catastrophe. If you liked the basic ideas before, you still should. If you didn’t, you still shouldn’t.

True enough, the ObamaMart Web site is just the front end of Obamacare (it’s also the back end, handling all of your personal financial and medical history and doing so in an enormously error-prone fashion and so far with no security at all—security has never been seriously tested), it is not Obamacare itself.

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Lies of my President, Revisited

Posted on 15 November 2013 by eehines

Recall President Barack Obama’s original lie, from mid-July 2009:

If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.

Then, when the insurance cancelation notices went out, and Obamacare “insurance” plans didn’t include our doctors in their networks, he lied about his lie. He had this, for instance, through his Press Secretary Jay Carney:

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Government’s Existence and the Economy

Posted on 13 November 2013 by eehines

The jobs and GDP reports last week had a couple of interesting tidbits in it, aside from reflecting the continued anemic, below trend recovery in which our economy is mired, courtesy of this administration’s policies. These reports covered October and the third quarter, respectively. Now, what momentous things happened that month? Yes, yes, the ObamaMart rollout, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. The Democrats’ shutdown of the Federal government happened that month. Also, the sequester cap on Federal spending continued that month. Here are some of those tidbits:

BLM said private employers added 212,000 jobs on the month

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Who Gets to Decide?

Posted on 8 November 2013 by eehines

White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer claimed Sunday on ABC’s This Week that millions of Americans lost insurance their insurance policies because ObamaCare had deemed them inadequate.

[I]f the president were to allow people to have those plans…or insurance companies to keep selling barebones plans…he’d be violating even more important promise to the American people, that everyone would have a guarantee to access of quality…health insurance[.]

Ex-Obama advisor Dr Ezekiel Emanuel (and University of Pennsylvania Vice Provost) said much the same thing on Sunday’s Fox News Sunday.

WALLACE: Dr. Emanuel, simple question—why does Betsy Tadder need you or President Obama telling her what insurance she needs?

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Obamacare and the Sequester

Posted on 30 October 2013 by eehines

Sequester—that invention of President Barack Obama, with which he intended to extort Republicans and Conservatives into acceding to his taxing, spending, and borrowing economic policy—is starting to cause trouble for Obamacare, now. The sequester is blocking a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays under Obamacare.

Amy Payne, writing for The Foundry, quoted Chris Jacobs in The Wall Street Journal on impacts:

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