Tag: healthcare

Finding out what’s in it: The fourteenth of the original twenty-three Obamacare state health insurance co-ops has announced it is closing shop.

I like this quote from the article:

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, which advocates for free-market solutions in the health industry, said those who wanted the co-ops to be part of Obamacare believed “if they didn’t have a profit, they could charge less money, provide more service.” But she said the cascade of failures “is an indictment of the idealistic notion that you could put people in charge of billions of dollars who have little or no experience in the insurance industry.”

Across the country, the federal government loaned $2.4 billion to launch the co-ops [emphasis mine]

In other words, Obamacare was written and run by people didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing, but they not only went ahead with it, but then handed out billions in taxpayer money to their friends, money that will never be returned. Pretty good gig, if you can get it!

Finding out what’s in it: Within three months of signing up for Obamacare more than 13%, or 1.6 million people, in 2016 have dropped coverage by not paying their premiums.

The AP story at the link is decidedly partisan in its tone, trying to make excuses for the disaster that is Obamacare. After proudly claiming that “the health law’s online insurance markets are now working smoothly,” it than is forced to note the following:

Enrollment has been lower than hoped for, and customers turned out to be sicker than expected. Some major insurance companies have cut back their participation, and 13 of 23 nonprofit insurance co-ops created under the law have folded. Premiums for 2017 are expected to be significantly higher.

Other than these minor details, Obamacare is wonderful! That’s why more than 1 in 10 quit paying their premiums within three months, probably because they simply can’t afford it. I wonder how many more decide to give up their health insurance as the year progresses. I suspect that by the time the open enrollment period arrives in November, the number who have dropped coverage will rise above 30% or higher.

Let me add one more thing: I also suspect that many of the people who drop Obamacare do so as soon as they’ve paid their taxes. This way, they pay the premium for as little time as possible, can demonstrate to the IRS that they have insurance and thus avoid the Obamacare mandate fine (or tax, depending the day you ask the Obama administration what it is), and then avoid paying the premium for the rest of the year. It’s called gaming the system, something that happens routinely when governments try to impose unwieldy and unaffordable rules to ordinary life.

Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare, Blue Cross Blue Shield is losing money in states across the nation, forcing them to request rate increases of more than 50 to 65 percent.

If the federal government does approve these rate increases, expect most oif their customer base to vanish. If they don’t get these rate increases, expect them to abandon the market in those states.

So much for Obama’s promise that Obamacare would bend the cost curve downward, cutting rates by $2500 per family. Too bad no one told him his numbers were completely bogus and that Obamacare would increase everyone’s cost, and possibly destroy the health insurance industry. Oh wait… that was what those evil tea partiers and conservatives were saying.

Finding out what’s in it: Blue Cross Blue Shield has decided to stop selling health insurance through Obamacare in 2016.

“Based on current medical claim trends, Blue Cross is projecting a total loss of more than $500 million in the individual [health plan] segment over three years,” the insurer said in an emailed statement. The Blues reported a loss of $265 million on insurance operations from individual market plans in 2015. The insurer said claims for medical care far exceeded premium revenue for those plans

Gee, too bad no one said that this law was unworkable and was going to cause big losses in the health insurance industry. Oh wait… Didn’t most tea party and conservatives say that repeatedly? And loudly? And were ignored pointedly by Democrats?

Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare health insurance premiums will go up again next year, as much as 60 percent in some cases.

This story isn’t really news. As predicted by every conservative and tea party person before Obamacare was passed in 2010, as Obamacare has kicked in and as it has forced insurance companies to pay for the healthcare of the sick who never paid for health insurance previously, they are forced to raise their rates to cover the costs. These increases are only the start. Worse, they are getting so burdensome that soon no one will be able to afford health insurance at all, which will make it impossible for that insurance to protect anyone.

Finding out what’s in it: New data strongly suggests that this week’s very bad jobs report is the result of Obamacare.

The economic recovery since 2008 is the weakest since World War II. More people are out of the workforce than ever in history. And the number of people doing part-time work has skyrocketed. Wonder why?

Analysts at Goldman Sachs have noticed this trend for some time, and put the blame on Obamacare. “The evidence suggests that the [Affordable Care Act] has at least modestly elevated involuntary part-time employment,” Goldman Sachs economist Alec Philips wrote in a research note published on Wednesday. Obamacare had the greatest impact on industries that traditionally do not offer strong health insurance coverage, such as retail stores and the hospitality industry. Phillips noted that these have the highest levels of involuntary part-time workers, and believes that the ACA has forced “a few hundred thousand” to take cuts in hours or accept part-time work as a result.

In other words, businesses have had either two choices to avoid the unaffordable costs of Obamacare: stop hiring, or hire only part-time workers. The result has been a stagnant economy where workers are either making less or nothing at all.

Fortunately, come November we will have a real choice: Pick a Democrat who was part of the effort to bring us this law, or pick a Democrat who says he has changed but keeps saying things that suggest othewise! Ain’t that just grand?

Because of the skyrocketing costs for healthcare due to Obamacare, it is now far cheaper to simply pay cash for many medical procedures, bypassing health insurance completely.

“This is one of the dirty little secrets of healthcare,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “If your insurance has a high deductible, you should always ask the cash price.”

Cash prices are intended for uninsured patients — and are frequently still much higher than insured rates. But cash prices for many common procedures have come down thanks to changing regulations and consumers increasingly being able to shop around for cheaper providers. Blood tests can be performed at CVS MinuteClinics and other pharmacies, for instance. Or as I reported a few years ago, MRIs are available from independent providers for as little as $300, whereas many hospitals will charge thousands of dollars.

The article’s main example is the case where the cost for blood tests, through insurance, was more than $80, while the cash price was only $15, and was still sufficient for the lab to make a profit.

Finding out what’s in it: Ohio’s Obamacare co-op announced this week that it is shutting down, making it the 13 of 23 co-ops to fail.

The company recorded an underwriting loss of $80 million in 2015 despite the $129 million in taxpayer-backed loans granted to the co-op by the federal government. InHealth Mutual was also placed under “enhanced oversight,” one of three tools the Department of Health and Human Services has to monitor co-ops in financial distress. When a co-op is placed under enhanced oversight, it means the company is consistently underperforming and allows the department to give detailed and more frequent reviews of the loan recipient’s operations and financial status. According to Columbus Business First, medical claims were coming in at a rate of $3 million per week and the company would have had to raise premiums by 60 percent in 2017 to keep up. If InHealth Mutual were to stay in business through the end of 2016, projections show that the company would have posted losses of $20 million.

Ohio’s failed co-op is added to the list of 12 co-ops that have already failed in Arizona, Michigan, Utah, Kentucky, New York, Nevada, Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina, and a co-op that served both Iowa and Nebraska. [emphasis mine]

Gee, it sure would have been helpful if, before Obamacare was shoved down our throats by Obama and the Democratic Party, there had been someone to point out that this Obamacare co-op model could not work financially and was bound to fail. Oh wait! Wasn’t that exactly what every conservative pundit and politician was saying back in 2010?

Obviously, this all means we must vote Democratic again, as they are the only ones who really know what must be done!

Finding out what’s in it: An IRS ruling from 2013, based on Obamacare and now going into effect, will force small businesses that offer alternatives to health insurances to drop those alternatives, or face hefty fines.

This ruling applies to businesses with fewer than 50 employees, who supposedly were going to be unaffected by Obamacare. Previously, they could offer their employees stipends to buy insurance themselves, as individuals. Obamacare bans this, requiring the business to either join Obamacare, which is too expensive, or face fines if they provide the stipends. So, the wonderful law that Obama and the Democrats passed instead leaves these workers with less than they had before.

Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare, health insurance companies across the nation are requesting rate increases next year ranging from 8 to 65%, with the average increase running about 24%.

Too bad no one predicted this, except for every conservative think tank, every Republican politician, and the entire Tea Party movement. Luckily, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party had our backs, and ignored those predictions. Otherwise, where would we be?

Finding out what’s in it: A Harvard research study has found that the program in Obamacare designed to improve hospital care has had no effect, and essentially is not working.

Or, to put it another way, in exchange for increasing regulations and cost, we have gotten nothing in return.

Gee, I seem to remember a lot of unwashed, uneducated rubes from the backwaters of flyover country saying loudly that these programs in Obamacare would not work, back in 2010. Too bad these brilliant Harvard experts considered themselves too smart to pay any attention.

Finding out what’s in it: The Food and Drug Administration has released its final regulations on how restaurants must write their menus as mandated by Obamacare.

The final guidance includes a 96-word definition of “combination meal” and a 163-word definition of “restaurant-type food.” The government also goes into when “Aunt Cora’s French toast breakfast” must have its calories listed and tells restaurants not to use plus or minus signs on their menus because they are too “confusing” to Americans.

But drawing the biggest criticism is the government’s definition of menu and strict rules for calorie labeling of toppings. The government considers a menu to be the “primary writing of the covered establishment from which a customer makes an order selection, including, but not limited to, breakfast, lunch and dinner menus; dessert menus; beverage menus, children’s menus, other specialty menus (such as catering), electronic menus, and menus on the Internet.” The full definition is 171 words. Merriam-Webster has a 12-word definition for menu.

The phrase “from which a customer makes an order selection” opened the door for coupons and advertisements to be included in the mandate. The FDA said calories must be listed on coupons if they have the restaurant’s phone number, and advertisements can be “considered a menu.”

There’s more at the link. Read it all to find out how deeply Obamacare is working to organize and regulate our lives.

But don’t worry. The same people who wrote the law are going to be running things after November. They will surely fix it!

Finding out what’s in it: Because of significant loses due to Obamacare, the nation’s largest health insurance company, UnitedHealth, will cut participation in all but a handful of public health exchanges next year

CEO Stephen Hemsley said Tuesday that the company expects losses from its exchange business to total more than $1 billion for this year and last. He added that the company cannot continue to broadly serve the market created by the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion due partly to the higher risk that comes with its customers. The state-based exchanges are a key element behind the Affordable Care Act’s push to expand insurance coverage. But insurers have struggled with higher than expected claims from that business.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it now expects to lose $650 million this year on its exchange business, up from its previous projection for $525 million. The insurer lost $475 million in 2015, a spokesman said. UnitedHealth has already decided to pull out of Arkansas, Georgia and Michigan in 2017, and Hemsley told analysts during a Tuesday morning conference call that his company will not carry financial exposure from the exchanges into 2017.

And why have they been losing so much money? It seems that only sick people are signing up, resulting in expensive claims that the insurance companies cannot afford to pay because they have too-few healthy customers buying their insurance. And why do they have too few healthy customers? They can’t avoid the higher prices for insurance that Obamacare has forced upon them.

This monstrous law, which the American public never wanted, should never have been passed. The sooner it can be repealed, the better for everyone.

Finding out what’s in it: Healthcare insurance companies are warning that because of Obamacare they either must be allowed to raise rates significantly or they will have to close down.

The rate increases will be on top of gigantic increases already imposed. Read it all. None of the news is good, and it is only going to get worse.

Finding out what’s in it: Federal investigators have found significant security problems with the Obamacare health insurance websites in the states of California, Kentucky, and Vermont.

The GAO report examined the three states’ systems from October 2013 to March 2015 and released an abbreviated, public version of its findings last month without identifying the states. On Thursday, the GAO revealed the states’ names in response to a Freedom of Information request from the AP.

According to the GAO, one state did not encrypt passwords, potentially making it easy for hackers to gain access to individual accounts. One state did not properly use a filter to block hostile attempts to visit the website. And one state did not use the proper encryption on its servers, making it easier for hackers to get in. The report did not say which state had what problem.

According to the story, it appears that nothing has been done in two of the three states to fix the problem. Worse, the study suggests similar problems exist at other state websites.

Hey, let’s solve the problem by voting for Clinton or Sanders! Both say the solution is to give the governments that screwed up here more power, money, and control. What could go wrong?

Finding out what’s in it: Link here.

I haven’t described this time any specific discovery about this monstrous law because the article at the link describes too many different examples where the law is failing. Here’s just one to give you a taste:

Insurers say they’ve also been hurt by customers who appear to be waiting until they become sick to buy coverage. The companies blame liberal enforcement of the ACA’s special enrollment exceptions. The law provides an annual enrollment window for several weeks starting in the fall. This is the main chance most people have to enroll or change coverage. But customers can enroll outside that window if insurance needs change because they’ve moved, gotten married or had a child, among other exemptions.

Exchanges have not been asking for birth certificates, marriage licenses or other proof of these life-changing events. Insurers say that leaves them vulnerable. The Montana Health Co-Op had a severely ill customer in a hospital sign up for its coverage in October and then drop a $250,000 bill on the insurer. CEO Jerry Dworak said he asked the exchange operator for details on whether the patient had a legitimate reason for the special enrollment. The exchange would only say that the patient changed ZIP codes.

“They’ve got to do something about the special enrollment because we just got killed on that,” Dworak said.

Read it all. The story also describes how the law’s health exchanges are failing, how healthy people are not signing up, how the law has caused health costs to skyrocket, and how it is causing heath insurance businesses to go bankrupt.

Other than these minor details, however, we all have been able to keep the insurance plans we like, and costs per family have dropped by $2500, just as Barack Obama promised! Let’s hire as our next President his former Secretary of State, who actually first conceived a similar Hillarycare proposal in the 1990s!

Finding out what’s in it: A GAO report has found that the Obamacare bureaucracy gave out millions of dollars in subsidies to more than 35,000 applicants who did not qualify.

Worse, the GAO decided to test the system directly, and created twelve fake applicants whose applications had problems that should have prevented them from receiving subsidies The result?

It was able to secure $2,500 a month subsidies for 11 of those applicants. When CMS [the bureaucracy administering Obamacare] asked for documents to resolve inconsistencies in the files, GAO either sent fake documents or simply didn’t send anything. In both cases, CMS sent letters acknowledging receipt of documents and stating the matter had been resolved. Again, this was the case even when GAO had sent nothing in response to the initial CMS query. In the end, GAO was able to keep all 11 fictitious applicants on subsidies throughout 2014, each one directing about $30,000 in federal funds to an insurer under false pretenses. And it’s worth noting that, later on in the report, GAO makes clear it created this fake applicants with no prior or inside knowledge of any verification procedures that might be applied. This was something that anyone could have done.

There’s more at the link, such as the fact that the bureaucracy also decided, quite arbitrarily, to send subsidies to applicants who claimed they were not in prison, even if those applicants were on the official database of individuals in prison (and thus not qualified for subsidies according to the law).

But hey, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and even Donald Trump want to use the government to administer health care. Trump might say he wants to get rid of Obamacare, but he also wants the government to run the system he will create to replace it. What could possibly go wrong?

Finding out what’s in it: Independent studies have found that the average cost for health insurance under Obamacare in 2016 will be about $300 a month for the program’s silver plan.

That’s not the biggest problem, according to analysts. For many, their health insurance has dramatically changed under Obamacare. Deductibles and out of pocket expenses are higher, so many of their medical expenses are no longer covered. Some consumers who say they had good, affordable plans prior to the Affordable Care Act say they can no longer afford the new plans, which are substandard in terms of what they cover.

Obviously, this means the voters should throw their support to the Democratic Party and any one of their presidential candidates, all of whom have promised to fix this disaster of a law with even more government-imposed rules.