Tag Archives: political parties

More Obamacare, or Is It Obamacare IT?

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…or does it matter?

Here are some examples that Paul Bedard, writing for the Washington Examiner, described:

  • CNNMoney reported one family “found a bronze-level plan for roughly $357 a month, after their subsidy…[b]ut it comes with a $12,600 family deductible”
  • Enormous rate increases.  A research group found that a 30-year-old male nonsmoker “will see his lowest cost insurance option increase 260%”
  • Some who already buy their own insurance are seeing their policies non-renewed, with replacement offers only for expensive new policies.  The Christian Science Monitor reported on a North Carolina family who had been buying Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance for $380-a-month.  “BCBS is offering them a new plan for three times the cost, $1,124.50 a month…with an $11,000 deductible”
  • A California couple [told the Fresno Bee] that the Obamacare policy suggested to them included a 40% increase in their doctor’s office co-pay.  “Our co-pay skyrocketed from 0% to 40%, and the maximum out-of-pocket increased an additional $2,300”
  • Kaiser Health News found a lack of competition in some pockets of the country.  “18% of counties have only one insurer offering plans, and 33% of counties have only two insurers competing”
  • Little uniformity to premiums charged around the nation.  “For instance,” Kaiser also reported, “Cigna is offering 50-year-olds one of its midlevel plans for $614 if they live in Flagstaff, AZ; that same plan, with different hospitals and doctors, will cost $428 in Phoenix and $395 in Nashville.”

Whether these (especially the deductibles and the enormous premiums) are actual costs to be inflicted or more IT failures to match up government-snooped personal information accurately, the train wreck is in progress.

Really, What Default?

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President Barack Obama and his…colleagues…in the Senate keep threatening national default if those Evil, Anarchist, Terrorist Jihadi Republicans don’t promptly shape up and pass a budget, raise the debt ceiling, and otherwise give him a blank check.  One of his more recent threats is this:

…if Republicans aren’t willing to set aside their partisan concerns in order to do what’s right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting.

Let’s look at some numbers:

So much for default.  Federal revenues exceed debt payments by roughly 12:1.  There’s a double potful of money left over, too, even by DC standards—nearly $2.5 trillion.

What other major expenses are there?

  • Social Security and Medicare payouts in 2012 (close enough to 2013 outlays for this discussion) were a combined $1.4 trillion.
  • Medicaid and CHIP transfers to the states in 2012 ran to $260 billion.

(Incidentally, the various Social Security System trust funds had some $2.6 trillion on hand as of 2012.  Although payroll tax revenues aren’t enough to cover outlays, so that pile is being drawn down, there’s plenty to last through quite a long delay in raising the debt ceiling.  Let’s assume for the sake of this illustration, though, that the SS/Medicare outlays are being paid out of the general revenues.)

Our debt payments are easily covered (so no default) and so are our entitlement payments (so our seniors and our poor are taken care of), and we have $840 billion in annual Federal revenues left to spend on such minor matters as national defense, Federal payroll, scheduled payments to government contractors, and so on.

Certainly, those Federal revenues come in in fits and starts, but that’s the environment any private sector business faces all the time.  They plan ahead so they can deal with those uneven flows.  The Federal government can do such planning, also.

The only way a default will happen will be if Obama decides not to make the debt payments.  The only way our seniors and poor will be hurt will be if Obama decides to withhold payments to them.  His only purpose for doing such shameful things is to make a political point, to heap blame on Republicans for his own failures.

One last thing: it’s interesting to note that he’s threatened to veto a House proposal to mandate prioritizing Federal outlays.

More Obamacare Fallout

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Among the requirements of Obamacare is this: insurance companies selling individual health plans no longer can sell cheaper, bare-bones plans for very low premiums; instead, these companies must offer a mandated bundle of “benefits”—regardless of whether those “benefits” are wanted, or even needed, by the purchaser.  Of course, the premiums for these broader, less useful policies are far higher, too.  As a result, and because they don’t consider the gains from the resulting insurance market worth the cost of the changes,

Aetna, American Family Mutual Insurance, Humana, Independence American Insurance Company, Reserve National Insurance Company, Standard Security Life Insurance Company of New York, Companion Life Insurance, and United Security Life and Health Insurance have all informed the [Nebraska] insurance department of their intent to stop selling health insurance to individuals—and in some cases—groups.

In the Nebraska health insurance market, these companies are small players, but they’re major companies in the health insurance industry.  Their example will be carefully watched, and the remaining players are, rather tautologically, small companies.

The Cornhusker Kickback bought a lot, didn’t it?  The kickback later was rescinded, certainly, but the vote that was bought with it was not refunded.  And here we are.

An Evil Banker Steps In

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At a meeting of the Institute of International Finance on Saturday, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase & Co CEO, said…his bank would fund the $6 billion to $8 billion in [Social Security payments] that the bank processes each week for its clients, even if the government doesn’t actually pay those obligations.
…
“Instead of the government putting it in, we are.  We’ll let them overdraft for it and won’t charge them for it, and then hopefully the government will give us the funds back[.]”

Just like a predecessor Evil (JPM) Banker did 100 years ago, during the Panic of 1907.

The Mendacity of Obamacare

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The Federal government, speaking through HHS officials directly responsible for managing Obamacare, is laying off the first two weeks’…glitches…to unexpectedly high initial use attempts.  They’re claiming the delays and problems are the result of nine million visitors as of last Friday (4 October at the time they were talking).  This compares with the two million users who tried HealthCare.gov through last Sunday (6 Oct) according to an estimate by comScore.

HHS says the high rate of initial use was “unexpected.”  Never mind that the Feds have been pushing the magical wonderfulness of Obamacare for three years and that there are 40 million (or 30 million, or…) Americans who don’t have health insurance and desperately need and want it.

ComScore also estimates that about 125,000 of those two million made it to the end of the account creation process, but they had no idea of how many of that small number actually bought a health insurance policy.  This compares with HHS’ outright refusal (as recently as today) to say how many have actually bought health insurance through HealthCare.gov.

And there’s this gem:

Federal officials had debated internally whether to allow users to view plans without applying, according to people familiar with the process.

An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.

Hmm….