| Healthcare Bill Part III; Obamacare | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 3 2014, 02:20 PM (48,601 Views) | |
| kbp | Jan 29 2015, 09:38 PM Post #1561 |
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Somebody here suspected they were working up to this revised revision to cheer about the good news. They found SUCCESS a month before the deadline... yeah Burwell. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/politics/health-care-enrollment-appears-to-be-near-goal.html Health Care Enrollment Appears to Be Near Goal The Obama administration said Tuesday that 9.5 million people had signed up to receive health coverage through public marketplaces in 2015, with less than a month to go before the enrollment deadline. [Not the WH, Burwell, CMS, or HHS ...the announcement came from the OBAMA administration!] At first glance, the report suggests that the administration has achieved its goal of having 9.1 million people enrolled at the end of this year. But in 2014, more than 15 percent of people who selected health plans in the public marketplaces failed to pay their share of premiums and were therefore not on the rolls at the end of the year. Officials said they thought that similar attrition could occur this year. [Yeah, and they face the dropouts that find out about the deductible ...a headcount they do not share openly.] Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, said that more than 7.1 million people had selected or been automatically re-enrolled in plans through the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, and that 2.4 million were signed up in states running their own exchanges. [I thought the announcement came from the OBAMA administration???] [...] In federal and state exchanges, about 26 percent of those signing up were 18 to 34 years old. Insurers see younger customers as particularly desirable because they tend to be healthy and their premiums can help cover medical claims for older, less healthy subscribers. Roughly one in five Americans age 18 to 34 still have no health insurance, according to government data. [The younger they are, the quicker they'll freak out about the deductible!] In September, the administration reported that 7.3 million people had coverage and had paid their premiums in 2014. The current open enrollment period began Nov. 15 and ends Feb. 15. [Only the NYT would do that! The head count was 6.9, after deducting the 400,000 dental plans. Cheering Barry!] The White House predicts a surge of enrollments just before the deadline. But federal officials have a long way to go to meet projections by the Congressional Budget Office, which said on Monday that the number of people in the exchanges would rise to 12 million this year, 21 million in 2016 and 25 million for each of the three years after that. [NO!!!! The original goal was 13 million. See 2nd link in my signature.] [...] Health plans are classified in five categories, depending on the share of care costs covered by the insurance. The administration said that 70 percent of people in the federal marketplace had selected the midlevel silver plan, while 19 percent had chosen bronze plans, which typically have lower premiums but higher deductibles and more out-of-pocket costs. [silver pays 70%, bronze pays 60%] Of the people obtaining coverage for 2015 through the federal marketplace, 4.1 million selected or were assigned to the same plans they had in 2014, and three million were customers choosing plans for the first time. [That 4.1 seems a little weak for 37 States. Recall they count you after you select a plan, pay or not.] [...] |
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| kbp | Jan 29 2015, 10:38 PM Post #1562 |
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The cheering grows louder......by the millions ...in 37 states The HHS exchanges are looking at having about 7+/- million enrollments. That's less than 2.2% of the nations population, counting ONLY legal citizens. 7 million divided by 37 STATES is an average of 189,000 per state. They're cheering about this, trying to explain how the red states are losing, while it costs us trillions. . Edited by kbp, Jan 29 2015, 10:39 PM.
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| kbp | Jan 30 2015, 07:33 AM Post #1563 |
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http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2015/rwjf417633 Characteristics of Those Affected by a Supreme Court Finding for the Plaintiff in King v. Burwell That link is a pdf. The left is desperate and preaching doom for the right if they do not fix the problem if the court takes away the illegally distributed FREE MONEY. What a strategy in their effort to fix the law, which I feel was in place before the law was passed. The numbers are interesting, though I am not clear on where they got the total enrollment that could lose the FREE MONEY. They have 9,346,000 as the number that could lose coverage. I assume they use fairly accurate percentages when they divide them into categories like age, income, race, region, education, health status, employment status, small-firm worker, and self-employed. Note that they show almost 60% (5,488,000) as being in the south, which is what a few have said will bite the GOP if they do not fix the problem. I'm not sure how many voters are within that head count, as the lower income group that is eligible for FREE MONEY is less likely to be very active in politics. Judging from many articles on the topic, I sense the left is hoping to buy new voters with the complaint that the right took away their FREE MONEY. I'm wondering if the right will gain after the enrollees get hit with deductibles for treatments they may not have sought if they had not been promised free health care! Also, for any that try to avoid pdf's like I do, here is the html version from google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dBAFksM4T40J:www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2015/rwjf417633+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us |
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| kbp | Jan 30 2015, 07:44 AM Post #1564 |
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obamacare-renewals-20150129-story.html Covered California renewal rate tops 90%  alifornia officials say more than 90% of Obamacare customers renewed their policy for 2015, but the state still faces an uphill climb to reach its goal of 1.7 million enrolled before next month's sign-up deadline.. The state's insurance exchange reported renewal figures for the first time Wednesday along with an update on new enrollment. Covered California said more than 1 million enrollees were eligible for renewal last month, and 944,060 have chosen to renew. An additional 273,111 Californians have newly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act, putting the state's overall tally at 1.2 million as of Jan. 26. [...] Although many existing customers shopped around for 2015 coverage, very few actually switched health plans. The state said only 6% of policyholders, or about 54,000, changed insurers. I wonder how many of the 94% letting the automatic re-enrollment manage their coverage will be hit with premium increases?] [...] Covered California, like other state exchanges across the country, had already suffered substantial attrition in the first year. After the first open enrollment ended in April, the state announced 1.4 million had signed up. But many of them didn't pay their initial premium or found coverage elsewhere, leaving about 1.1 million in the exchange by October. Officials said that number was reduced further to roughly 1 million because 85,000 people became eligible for Medi-Cal because of changes in their income. [California was hit hard with that no-pay crowd. No mention of how many dropped out because the out-of-pocket hit them.] [...] |
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| kbp | Jan 30 2015, 07:57 AM Post #1565 |
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LOMA! I like Nelson's wording there! They're trying so hard to show INTENT as a tool to illustrate ambiguity in order to legally have the opportunity to then use INTENT. The only tool they have to show INTENT is after-the-fact statements from those involved and previous proposed laws that make it clear the intent was to use incentives to obtain State cooperation. |
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| kbp | Jan 31 2015, 08:02 AM Post #1566 |
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| wingedwheel | Jan 31 2015, 09:06 AM Post #1567 |
Not Pictured Above
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I am shocked the GOP is going to get blamed if the court decision goes the way it should. 
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| Baldo | Jan 31 2015, 12:47 PM Post #1568 |
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Nearly Half of Uninsured Say Obamacare Too Expensive Despite President Barack Obama’s promise that Obamacare plans would cost less than the average cell phone or cable bill, a new study finds that nearly half of the nation’s uninsured say Obamacare is too expensive. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study, which was released on Thursday, reported that 48% of uninsured Americans say they remain uninsured because Obamacare prices are too high. Another 7% said they were ineligible for Obamacare due to their immigration status. The Kaiser study comes on the heels of an announcement by the Treasury Department that as many as 6 million Americans could be forced to pay an Obamacare tax penalty for not getting insurance last year. Administration officials also conceded that between 15 to 20 million Americans will have to factor Obamacare into their tax calculations when completing their 2014 income tax returns. Obamacare will cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 trillion over the next ten years. Obama’s signature legislative achievement remains deeply unpopular. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just 39% of Americans support Obamacare...snipped http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/30/nearly-half-of-uninsured-say-obamacare-too-expensive/ |
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| LTC8K6 | Jan 31 2015, 06:44 PM Post #1569 |
Assistant to The Devil Himself
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So charge the rest of us more... Come on, we know that game well... |
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| Baldo | Jan 31 2015, 09:22 PM Post #1570 |
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White House Seeks to Limit Health Law’s Tax Troubles http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/us/politics/white-house-seeks-to-limit-health-laws-tax-troubles.html?_r=0 |
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| kbp | Feb 1 2015, 08:19 AM Post #1571 |
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Excerpts from the study:
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| kbp | Feb 1 2015, 08:36 AM Post #1572 |
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Bits of the article in no certain order... Looks like the tax preparation companies will be busier this year! The Medicaid expansion and coverage thru private policies handled at health insurance exchanges are like two separate laws tossed into one. I am not aware of any exemption for people in States that did not expand Medicaid coverage in the law. They would have needed to anticipate the SCOTUS ruling on the Medicaid expansion to have included that exemption, as the original law would have forced ALL States to expand it for fear of losing 100% of Medicaid had they not cooperated. How can the Administration re-write tax law? ...never mind!! |
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| kbp | Feb 1 2015, 09:17 AM Post #1573 |
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http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150127/NEWS/301279914/aca-clear-on-allowing-subsidies-obama-administration-tells-high-court ACA clear on allowing subsidies, Obama administration tells high court By Lisa Schencker | January 27, 2015 The nation's healthcare reform law is clear in allowing Americans in all states to get insurance premium tax credits as Congress intended, the Obama administration argues in its main brief filed with the Supreme Court in the widely watched King v. Burwell (PDF) case. “I think it's a very powerful brief,” said Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and supporter of the law. “I think what the government's brief does is to say this case is about the text of the statute, but the entire text of the statute, not just four words.” But Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies for the libertarian Cato Institute and a key influence behind the legal challenge, said the brief “very helpfully shows just how silly the government's case is.” Cannon has filed an amicus brief in the case siding with the law's challengers. The brief, filed last week, lays out the administration's arguments in the closely watched case, which many say has the potential to sink the law itself. The case centers on the question of whether the IRS is correct to interpret the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to allow premium tax credits for consumers in states that have not established their own insurance exchanges and are instead relying on the federal HealthCare.gov exchange. Petitioners in the case argue that a sentence in the law that says the credits are available to Americans who enrolled through an exchange “established by the state” means the credits should not be available everywhere. They argue it's implausible that Congress would have wanted to leave the law's interpretation up to the IRS. The administration, however, in its new brief, makes a number of arguments, including that the law is clear, when read fully, in allowing tax credits in all states. The brief cites a number of other places in the law that the administration says prove that the credits were meant to be available to individuals in all states. “If you look at the entire text of the 1,000-page statute there are many provisions in the statute, and frankly the administration could have cited many more … that just don't make sense unless you read the statute the way it's written, which is that the federally facilitated exchanges are a fallback that Congress created because it realized that not all states would establish exchanges,” Jost said. [yeah...yeah.. except they would NOT be "absurd" and will work fine as written if subsidies are only provided in exchanges established by States!] The administration also calls the phrase “established by the state” a “term of art” that includes the federally established exchange.  It's a valid argument, said Nicholas Bagley, an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan and supporter of the law. There's a great deal of evidence within the text of the law that Congress simply used that phrase as a “convenient reference for exchanges of whatever kind,” Bagley said. 'The giggle test' But Cannon said the argument that the words are a term of art “does not pass the giggle test.” “I would not be surprised if one or more of the justices took the government to task for making such a silly argument,” Cannon said. The administration also argues in its brief that wide availability of tax credits is essential to the law's insurance market reforms. If tax credits were to disappear in states without their own exchanges, most of the people now relying on those credits would be exempt from the requirement to purchase coverage because they would no longer be able to afford it, according to the government. That, in turn, would lead to too few people in the insurance market, which would lead to so-called “death spirals” of premium increases and enrollment decreases, according to the government. “Petitioners' contrary rendering of the act—which rests on a contextual misreading of a single phrase in two subclauses of Section 36B and an implausible account of the act's design and history—would thwart the act's core reforms in the 34 states that exercised their statutory prerogative to allow HHS to establish exchanges for them,” according to the government's brief. “Those states would face the very death spirals the act was structured to avoid, and insurance coverage for millions of their residents would be extinguished.” [If this is the case, why did the HHS not also provide Medicaid expansion in States that refused it in order to provide "coverage for millions of their residents" left without the opportunity to enroll in it? Also, States did not "allow HHS to establish" by simply refusing to establish exchanges themselves.] When an interpretation of a law would overthrow that same law's structure and design “it must be rejected,” the government argues. The brief also argues that the legislative record shows Congress understood the tax credits would be available in all states. “During the time the act was under consideration, no member of Congress ever suggested that tax credits would be available only in states that established their own exchanges—even though the language on which petitioners rely was in draft bills for months before the act was enacted,” according to the brief. “Any such suggestion would have produced a firestorm of controversy, but there was none.” [Unless you read the unpassed bills they borrowed the wording from! That's contrary to the petitioners' brief, filed Dec. 22, which argues that Congress intended to limit the tax credits to those states that established their own exchanges. The law's challengers argue in their brief that Congress wanted tax credits nationwide but also wanted state-established exchanges, and limiting credits to states with their own exchanges was perhaps the only way to get both. The administration also argues in its new brief that though the law is clear, if the court believes it to be ambiguous it should apply the Chevron doctrine upholding the IRS' interpretation. The Chevron doctrine says that federal agencies must follow the letter of the law where the law is clear. But if courts using the Chevron analysis determine a law to be ambiguous, they must defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation. Cannon, however, said the government's argument masks its true purpose. The administration is arguing the law is clear to “create the appearance of an ambiguity,” so the court uses Chevron and defers to the IRS' interpretation, Cannon said. But Bagley called the government's brief “terrific” in laying out the administration's main arguments. “What the government says is, 'We think the statute is clear. Congress didn't mean to withdraw tax credits, but if you don't agree with us, even if you think the statute is ambiguous about whether tax credits are available in states that decline to establish exchanges, the IRS is owed deference,' ” Bagley said. Chevron in case the court reads the plain text in that "term of art" and needs a reason to UNread it!] So far, more than 20 so-called friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in the case siding with the law's challengers, including by a number of conservative groups and the state of Oklahoma. Wednesday is the deadline for amicus briefs in support of the government, Jost said. He expects a host of briefs from states, members of Congress, health insurers, hospitals and academics . |
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| Baldo | Feb 3 2015, 12:31 AM Post #1574 |
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How Government Helped Create the Coming Doctor Shortage For the last five years, attempts to reform America’s health care system have focused primarily on the demand side of the market, and specifically on the market for insurance. Yet, these reforms have not achieved significant improvements in health care outcomes, nor reductions in cost. As health care specialist John C. Goodman has pointed out in Forbes, the slowed growth of health care spending in the United States is a trend that correlates most closely with supply side reforms such as the availability of health savings accounts. Reductions in spending or costs are certainly not an effect of the Affordable Care Act. One of the most critical supply side issues in health care is the supply of qualified doctors. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the number of doctors per capita is in decline for the first time in two generations, and the American Association of Medical Colleges has predicted a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians and 46,000 specialists by 2020. In light of these statistics, it would seem prudent to adopt policies that streamline entry into the health care market, while keeping regulatory costs to a minimum. Regrettably, this is far from the case, with states erecting numerous barriers to would-be health care providers that contribute to the high prices and limited access currently set to cripple the American market. While some of these are familiar and even seem natural to most people, some of the ways in which governments act to restrict doctor supply will come as a surprise to many....snipped ... Conclusion All of these supply side restrictions make it more difficult for the labor market for medical providers to respond to consumers’ needs. When a change in demographics occurs, such as the Baby Boomer generation entering retirement, or when legal reforms such as the Affordable Care Act alter incentives, it can take decades for supply to catch up to demand. By reducing the regulatory burden on physicians, providing more competition among medical boards, and permitting more autonomy for alternative practitioners, patients could see both relief from the coming doctor shortage, as well as lower prices across the board for medical care. http://mises.org/library/how-government-helped-create-coming-doctor-shortage |
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| kbp | Feb 3 2015, 08:49 AM Post #1575 |
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Are we fueling the next crisis? |
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