Category Archives: markets

Some Lies of Obamacare

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It seems, now, that President Barack Obama’s administration knew of the potential for the ObamaMart failure as early as last March (but, no, not Obama himself; he only hears about things from the newspapers, not from anyone in his employ).  Then, apparently, they promptly lied about that potential ‘way back then.

Key administration officials at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services received briefings this past spring from McKinsey & Co, a private consulting firm that reviewed more than 200 documents and conducted interviews with HHS staff to identify potential problems before the Oct 1 rollout.

…including insufficient testing and evolving requirements. The report also warned that the program relied too heavily on outside contractors.

And

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Medicare Chief Marilyn Tavenner, and Gary Cohen, a Medicare and Medicaid oversight official, attended a briefing on the firm’s analysis on April 4[.]

Then

Sebelius testified at an oversight committee hearing two weeks after being briefed on the McKinsey report that the implementation of ObamaCare was on track[.]

The seeming lie nature of Sebelius’ testimony—certainly, problems identified in March could have been addressed by Rollout Date—is indicated by the fact that when Healthcare.gov ObamaMart launched, those problems, or problems very like those identified by McKinsey, remained in place, unresolved.

Should It Be?

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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.

Obamacare has the poor subsidizing the better off: young and healthy are required to buy “insurance” they don’t need at inflated prices in order that older Americans can buy “insurance” at artificially depressed prices.

Single men and empty nesters are required to buy “insurance” that covers women’s prenatal and maternity care—as well as the extremely cheap commodity of birth control pills so that women of child-bearing and rearing age can buy these coverages at artificially deflated prices—and get their birth control pill for “free.”

Millions of Americans (5 million and counting in the private individual market, the ObamaFix notwithstanding, with small business policies to follow in a few months and the employer mandate to take effect in a year) are being forced off their insurance policies, policies for which preference has been demonstrated both by Americans’ purchase of them and the hue and cry over their loss, all so that they will be driven into the ObamaMart to buy government-approved “insurance” at much higher premiums and much higher deductibles.

The law’s design is explicit: to redistribute wealth.  Period.  This is a redistribution of wealth from those who don’t have it to those who, if not exactly wealthy, generally are better off and certainly more established.  This is a redistribution of wealth, also, from one group of sort-of-haves to a different group—government preferred—of sort-of-haves.

Blinder Strikes Again

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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.

But from here, as is usual with Blinder, it’s all downhill.  First is his typically Progressive dishonesty in his characterization of those who oppose Obamacare:

…the enemies of health-care reform are telling [Americans] that ObamaCare is a failure.

Of course, because Obamacare is the only way to reform the health insurance industry (which Blinder also dishonestly conflates with health care).  It couldn’t possibly be that there are other ways to achieve reform, like the half-dozen, or so, House offerings that reform through patient-centric—that is to say, individual American-centric—market solutions.  No, Progressives know that Americans are too stupid to make their own decisions.

Then he gets to his point:

The three central elements of ObamaCare are insurance reform, getting (most of) the uninsured covered, and containing the upward spiral in medical-care costs.  Each remains in place.

He sees this as a plus, not the failure that it is.  Sad.  In turn:

There is no insurance reform, only the destruction (leaving aside its nationalization) of the insurance industry.  The price of an “insurance” policy now is completely divorced form the risk being “insured.”  The young are being required to pay inflated prices for policies they do not need, generally do not want, and cannot afford solely and explicitly to pay for the depressed prices the old otherwise would pay.  Single men and empty nesters are being required to purchase prenatal and maternity coverage, children’s dental coverage, even contraceptive coverage (as if this commodity wants “insurance” coverage at all) so that women, in particular, and families generally, who might actually…benefit…from such policies can pay lower rates for them.  The list goes on.  This isn’t insurance, it’s naked wealth redistribution.  Even when there’s no wealth to redistribute.

“Getting most of the uninsured covered?”  That wasn’t the original promise; that started out being “all of the uninsured.”  Whether we wanted the insurance or not.  Aside from that, it’s not even coming close to getting all covered, because of Blinder’s third point:

Costs, of this health welfare program, anyway, are spiraling rapidly out of control.  The premiums available already are well documented to be in the two- and three-digit per centages higher—and that’s just for the premiums.  Deductibles are skyrocketing.  These are costs that have to be paid by the “insuree” before his coverage kicks in.  And it resets every year, while those premiums and the costs of being sick just keep on keepin’ on.

And there’s Blinder’s cynical non sequitur:

Millions of people under the age of 26 are already benefiting by being kept on their parents’ policies.

Yet,

To make universal coverage work, the government needs to bring [young people] into the insurance pool as counterweights to the high-risk people.

Meaning that millions of the young folks Obamacare so desperately needs to buy “insurance” so as to fund artificially low premiums for the rest aren’t buying “insurance;” they’re just jacking up the cost of their parents’ “insurance.”  How does that work, exactly, Alan?  How are these “millions of people under the age of 26” being brought “into the insurance pool as counterweights?”

And his bodice-rending closer:

[T]he status quo ante was so unacceptable.  America cannot be a humane society if we leave 15% of our population uninsured.  America cannot be an efficient society if we spend 50% to 100% more of our incomes on health care than other countries, and yet don’t get better health outcomes.  We can’t let a botched website get in the way of goals that big.

Unfortunately, Progressives like Blinder remain in the way, actively blocking market solutions and individual choice (we’re too stupid to be trusted with our own choices, remember) that actually would bring down the costs of true insurance on the one hand and the costs of health care on the other.  And leave a significant per centage of us without health insurance because that’s our choice.

Progressives Know Better

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President Barack Obama’s “fix” for his disastrous Obamacare and its ObamaMart store was intended to “allow” insurance companies to continue in force existing policies that are noncompliant with his Obamacare law.  I’ll leave aside the Constitutional aspects of his letter to states’ insurance commissioners “specifying that current plans sold to existing customers will not be considered out of compliance with the health care law in 2014[,]” even though most are, by Obamacare design, noncompliant.

The Progressives of the state of Washington have rejected Obama’s move, but for the wrong reasons.

Commissioner Mike Kreidler said on Thursday he won’t be allowing insurance companies to extend their old policies that didn’t meet the requirements of federal health care reform.

Kreidler, a Democrat, says all of them can get better coverage on the new health care exchange.  He says at least half of them will qualify for a subsidy to help them pay the premium.

This state’s Progressives Know Well that Washington’s single men and empty-nest couples need prenatal and maternity coverage.  And they need coverage to pay for the birth control that’s both a commodity and generally not needed, at least by those empty nesters.  This state’s Progressives Know Better what Washington’s citizens need than do those Washington citizens.  Especially since, by Kreidler’s own cynical admission, it won’t be Washington citizens’ money that’s paying a large portion of the added cost.

Kreidler’s move leaves some 290,000 Washingtonians stuck with ObamaMart’s poorer plans, which have higher premiums, albeit largely covered with OPM, and with higher deductibles, which won’t be covered with OPM.

Entrenched

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This administration’s dishonesty vis-à-vis Obamacare and its ObamaMart is very thoroughly so.  Lie on your taxes, lie on your ObamaMart-claimed income to get Obamacare subsidies, lie on your insurance application (especially about your smoking) to get lower premiums before you get your subsidy, the list goes on.

It’s an 11 minute video, but it’s well worth the time.

Keep in mind, too, that these are Obamacare Navigators, carefully selected by HHS.  The dishonest “advice” of these Navigators is being given in full view of the HHS, plainly, with HHS’ prior knowledge and approval.  And the HHS Secretary is President Barack Obama’s immediate subordinate.

 

h/t Power Line