Tag Archives: political parties

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 the President Didn’t Know

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As Fox News puts it, “a string of embarrassing episodes for the Obama administration that the president didn’t seem to know about until the public did” is making a number of folks wonder about the quality, or the mendacity, of the staff with whom President Barack Obama has surrounded himself.

I have a different question.  Call me cynical, but on what basis do we conclude that Obama actually didn’t know in advance about IRS abuses of conservative groups, NSA overreaches, the likelihood of disaster for his Obamacare rollout, the risk to and the threat against his State Department’s Benghazi consulate, his DoJ’s search-and-seizure of press phone records, …?

Why do we believe that Obama didn’t know full well about these problems?  Besides his own claim that all he does is read the newspapers, I mean?

Conflict of Interest

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…or just rank cynicism by a Progressive Know Better government?

President Obama on Wednesday defended his signature health care law in a speech from Boston, saying that people who are losing their insurance plans because of the law should start shopping around for better coverage.

Never mind that these people already had good enough coverage, by definition: it’s the coverage these folks had bought voluntarily.  But President Barack Obama has a solution for all those folks being dumped, willy-nilly, into the market for insurance: shop in his newly opened ObamaMart store.

And

The cancellation notices apply to people whose plans changed after the law was implemented or don’t meet new coverage requirements.  The president said those changes ensure that all Americans are able to get quality coverage.

Never mind that those changes to perfectly fine policies were required in order to meet Obamacare-mandated standards.  Or that those compliance-required changes violated the Obamacare terms for grandfathering so the original policies couldn’t be grandfathered.  But it’s OK; folks who lost their policies can go shop in that newly opened—only by happenstance opened just now, mind you—new store: Obama’s ObamaMart.

And the explicit pitch:

So if you’re getting one of these letters, just shop around in the new marketplace.  That’s what it’s for.

The new marketplace: ObamaMart.

And this: “Only 5% of Americans are in the private insurance market, are getting cancellation notices.”  Only 14 million Americans.  Those 5% are only a small amount of people, according to Juan Williams on last Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier.  But, hey, they can shop around again, so they don’t matter in the larger picture proffered by a Progressive Know Better Government.  They’re unfortunate, but unavoidable, collateral damage in getting the government’s store up and running.  For the greater good.

And for the good of ObamaMart.

Maternity Care in Dental Coverage?

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I tried to find out what dental coverage was available in my little corner of Texas under Obamacare, so I tried out Healthcare.gov again.  Imagine my surprise when I selected Dental|Texas|You and your spouse and got this:

Yep.  “All plans must offer the same essential health benefits,” including maternity and newborn care.  Because when I go in for a tooth cleaning or a root canal, I need that maternity coverage.

Yessiree, Bob.

Now some will say the law doesn’t actually require that; Obama’s HealthCare Store is what’s messed up.

Yessiree, Bob.

The Usual Whine

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius—she of the previous party engagement excuse for declining to testify last week about Obamacare’s rollout failure—now is suggesting, with an absolutely straight face (say what you will about the lady; she’s a consummate actress), that Republicans, with their efforts to interfere with the infliction of Obamacare, contributed to Healthcare.gov’s failed rollout.

That’s because, you see, it was Republicans who were overseeing the writing and testing of all that bad code—both on the front end, where we can’t get in easily, and on the back end that manages data transfer to the insurers, claim processing and payment, and so on.

In an ideal world, there would have been a lot more testing, but we did not have the luxury of that.  And the law said the go-time was Oct. 1.  And frankly, a political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could…was not an ideal atmosphere.

[Emphasis added.]  Here’s her confession that her choices were politically made.  Aside from her decision to press with “the law said 1 Oct,” she had three years of development and testing available to her.  Her decision to dispense with adequate testing, and her decision to hew to a date on a calendar for rollout were purely political ones.

Evil Republicans.  Shiny.  Shut up.