Category Archives: markets

Progressives and “Disruptive”

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This is what President Barack Obama had to say (besides his sham “apology,” I mean) in his NBC News interview last week:

I think we, in good faith, have been trying to take on a health care system that has been broken for a very long time.  And what we’ve been trying to do is to change it in the least disruptive way possible.  …  There were folks on the right who said, “Let’s just get rid of– you know, employer deductions for health care.  And give people– a tax credit and they can go buy their own health care in their own market.”  That would have been more disruptive.

Because letting free Americans choose for themselves instead of accepting the diktats of Progressive Government is disruptive.  Sure.

Disruptive for whom, exactly?

More Lies

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…of my President.

If you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law’s passed.  So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act you are grandfathered in on that plan.  But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they have got to change it to a higher standard.

That’s what President Barack Obama is claiming now that his original lie has been exposed, with 2 million Americans, and counting, losing their existing insurance policies.  Now he’s lying about his lie, as with this example, made at Faneuil Hall in Boston last Monday.

No, Mr President.  You said no such thing.  What you did say was

I you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.  Period.

No caveats.  No “except if we change our minds later.”

Further, aside from your current lie denying that you said your earlier lie, your new lie also ignores the fact that your Obamacare requires the insurance company to change their existing plans so as to meet your standard—which means that plan no longer meets your grandfather criteria.  I’ve already been over your arrogance in presuming to Know Better what is adequate insurance than the person who’s buying it, whose money it is being spent on it.

There’s also this new lie about HealthCare.gov, Obama’s new ObamaMart.  Obama is claiming, through his Press Secretary, Jay Carney, that consumers who are having trouble getting through that HealthCare.gov Web site now have their problems solved: they can send in paper applications, or they can get on the phone to a “trained operator standing by” and complete an application in all of 25 minutes.

What Obama is carefully ignoring with this new one is that that paper application, and that telephone application, both have to be entered into the system—through HealthCare.gov.

Folks need to remember this over the primary season this summer and then again this fall.

Who Gets to Decide?

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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?

EMANUEL: For two reasons: first of all, if she goes in and that insurance doesn’t cover enough…

WALLACE: But she likes her plan.

EMANUEL: But we’re cost shifting.

Plainly our Know Better Progressive Government is the only one qualified to decide.  Not us, not about our insurance, not about our money.

Losing Insurance vs Gaining Insurance

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CBS News has been busily gathering hard numbers on this—at least on the losing side, since President Barack Obama and his HHS Secretary are too terrified to release any gaining numbers.

CBS’ Jan Crawford said that CBS News has checked with actual insurance companies; she’s found that in four states alone, the numbers are huge—in just the first few weeks of the ObamaMart rollout:

California: 279,000 had their insurance policies cancelled out from under them

Michigan: 140,000

Florida: 300,000

New Jersey: 800,000

Adding in the cats and dogs, and 2 million Americans have had their insurance policies cancelled, and the number is rising[Period]

This compares, again with data gleaned from insurance companies, and unrefuted by the Obama administration, with 6 folks who signed up on the first day and some 250—total—who’d signed up through the third day after ObamaMart’s rollout.

CBS also takes care to note that this is driven by the Obamacare law, not by Evil Insurance:

Obamacare forces them to drop many of their plans that don’t meet the law’s 10 minimum standards, including maternity care, emergency visits, mental health treatment, and even pediatric dental care.

Because a man needs maternity care, and an empty-nest couple needs that pediatric dental care.

Also,

That means consumers have to sign on to new plans even if they don’t want or need the more generous coverage.  Industry experts say about half the people getting the letters will pay more—and half will pay less, thanks to taxpayer subsidies.

The subsidies also mean that those who are paying more are paying even more more in order to pay those subsidies.  Those subsidies, after all, are funded both by Obamacare taxes and by artificially inflated premiums against which those subsidies are balanced.  Yes, even those who get the subsidies “need” them because of those artificially inflated premiums.

Hmm….

What’s So Terrifying?

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In the face of CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner’s (she of the Federal government (!) organization charged with the task of integrating the various software packages that go into Obamacare’s disastrously failed HealthCare.gov) refusal to provide, under oath, actual enrollment numbers to the House Ways and Means Committee last Friday, coupled with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ similar refusal, Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R, MI) now is threatening to subpoena the data, and to require those data to be delivered not just in a one time good deal response, but daily, as of 1700 that day.

These folks refuse all releases short of that subpoena, instead promising to release the first numbers in mid-November.  So far, to their credit, they’ve not said “Period,” but we can look forward to their stonewalling the subpoena.

Their refusal and their 6-week delay, at the least, drive the question: of what are they so afraid that they can’t bring themselves to release the data they have?  And they certainly have the data now: insurance companies have the data; they’re the ones having to service the signed-up-for policies.  Sebelius and Tavenner certainly have the data now: they’re in the HealthCare.gov databases used for collating and transmitting to the servicing insurance companies the sign-up actions.  Hackers have access to these data, why can’t a Congressional committee exercising its oversight duty?  Why can’t we Americans on whom this project has been foisted over our loud, long objections?

It’s not just the Ways and Means Committee that’s being stonewalled, either.  Also last week, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R, CA) was forced to subpoena HHS in order to get documentation “related to technical problems with HealthCare.gov, the testing that went into the website, and the number of people who have enrolled and attempted to enroll” through HealthCare.gov because Sebelius is hiding those data, also.  Which drives a similar question: of what is the administration afraid here, that they’re so resistant to releasing these data?

What are these folks covering up?

An interesting aside:

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll that says the number of people who say they understand how the law affects their own family is up 8 points to 55%.  However, the per centage of people who have a generally unfavorable opinion of the law remained virtually unchanged at 44%, indicating that people don’t seem to like the law any better, even as they learn more about it.

This is weak porridge on which to draw firm conclusions, but it’s certainly indicative of where further inquiry would yield value.