Obamacare exchanges in trouble
Finding out what’s in it: Nearly half of the Obamacare exchanges that were set up by state governments are in financial trouble.
Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing costs with other states and pressing state lawmakers for cash infusions. Some are weighing turning over part or all of their troubled marketplaces to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which is now working smoothly.
Note how the only solution suggested is to raise fees, which will end up raising the costs for consumers. These exchanges cost billions to set up, and even now do not have enough money to work right? I am not surprised, as they are a government monopoly, just like the entire Obamacare law, with no competition or incentive to do better. The result is increased cost of medical treatment, with no benefits for anyone.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Finding out what’s in it: Nearly half of the Obamacare exchanges that were set up by state governments are in financial trouble.
Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing costs with other states and pressing state lawmakers for cash infusions. Some are weighing turning over part or all of their troubled marketplaces to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which is now working smoothly.
Note how the only solution suggested is to raise fees, which will end up raising the costs for consumers. These exchanges cost billions to set up, and even now do not have enough money to work right? I am not surprised, as they are a government monopoly, just like the entire Obamacare law, with no competition or incentive to do better. The result is increased cost of medical treatment, with no benefits for anyone.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Would have been cheaper to just give everyone a couple thousand dollars every year to spend on healthcare as they please.
Would have been cheaper just to expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover more of those who needed coverage.
Just up our M/M payments.
Grant those who are just short of getting their own private insurance a tax refund to help pay for the insurance.
And leave everyone else alone.
It would have been ten times cheaper and been able to be enacted far faster and easier than this travesty of a law.
It could have been worse, there is an already existing government healthcare program that could’ve adopted the responsibilities for the Affordable Care Act. That is the veterans Administration. They already have the existing facilities, the structure, and the doctors to mimic for a National run healthcare system.
People mistakenly believe that welfare in all it’s forms, is to help those Poor unfortunate souls in need. If you look where the money is spent, it is obvious that those who “administrate and hand out” the welfare is whom the monies were intended for! They are the real welfare recipients.
Imagine……had only two decades plus of spineless, status-quo republican pols been pro-active in addressing social issues like health care, rather than feign indignation for the cameras in response to the latest, greatest, leftist progressive program du jour.
This has become a hackneyed expression, but the next election cycle is “the most important of our lifetimes.”
If healthcare is a national “failing” because it does not reach equitably through all social strata as progressives proclaim, does it make sense the GOP has not yet crafted a thoughtful immigration policy to stem the bleeding as millions of illegals add to healthcare expenses, while simultaneously diluting our quality of care? Not so much as a modicum of pro-active conservative DNA incorporated in either issue after all these years.
The previous two presidential election cycles *were* the most important of our lifetimes. We the People lost. Not only has America been fundamentally transformed into a tyranny, but our fundamental institutions have been badly ravaged. Obamacare did most of the work.
With Obamacare, freedom of religion is now open to successful attack. Our work ethic is being destroyed through the destruction of the work week — justifying a greater “minimum” wage into a “working” wage (why does a 16-year old, living at home, need a living wage?). Most important, government has created a right for itself to tell us what goods and services we must buy. No other tyranny in history has had the gonads to determine how its subjects are to spend their own hard-earned money (the Tenth Amendment forbid the US from doing so, as this is not a power delegated to the United States by the Constitution). (Obamacare has violated more rights and changed our lives in more ways. Other Obama decrees and forms of unconstitutional governance have done likewise.)
The next several election cycles will be less important, but the importance that they have is that they will determine whether or not We the People *ever* peaceably retrieve our freedoms from our corrupted tyrannical government. As Robert points out, above, it is also an incompetent government.
Welcome to Obama’s America, land of the formerly free.
Edward we are fundamentally in agreement. However, I still maintain the next election cycle is the most important of our lifetime.
It is my opinion the “damage done” is as much attributable to the
Obama / progressive agenda as it is due to hapless efforts to generate effective political opposition. Brazen progressive policies aimed at aggregating the multitude of shallow, single issue voting blocks that typify reactionary left progressives, have experienced little to no opposition from establishment republicans.
This condition referred to above, coupled with the very real impact on the American psyche of over a decade elapsing, wherein traditional American opportunity has been stifled by ever increasing government taxes, regulation, inefficiencies etc. will destroy the “can-do” legacy responsible for building and sustaining this nation.
The memory of such times still burns brightly in many of us. However, the younger generation now coming of age, I fear may never experience the American environment which fostered our exceptionalism lest we win THIS next election.
I think that our disagreement revolves around the importance of the next election cycle. No matter what happens, there cannot be more damage done to the country than was done after the last two cycles, and no matter what happens, we cannot fix all the damage that has occurred in the past half decade or so.
The past two cycles put us onto a path that won’t change very quickly. Think of it as having struck the iceberg, and whatever we do, the ship isn’t getting to its scheduled destination any time soon.
Fundamentally transforming this country to return to freedom, from our current tyranny, will take a very long time, as the electorate has now twice voted for tyranny. Getting enough of them to turn their thinking is not going to happen in the next 18 months, so if the next election is more important than the previous two, we are lost. The ship will sink out from under us, and we can only hope that there are sufficient supplies in the lifeboats for a long wait for rescue. Who is large and strong enough to rescue us is a good question.
Millennia of tyrannical governance throughout the world demonstrates that freedom is difficult to come by. That we have lost ours is bad, and it will be a long struggle to regain it, if we can.
We had been far out in the lead, in the voyage to freedom, and we were the ones showing the way. Before the United States, every country was ruled from the top, not from a free people. It seems that we have been caught in the current that draws us back in the direction of tyranny.