abb

Apr 30 2014, 07:48 PM

Found: The lamest anti-Obamacare column of all (thus far)

Michael Hiltzik

1:53 PM PDT, April 28, 2014
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As we've recently observed, conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act have pulled out the stops to paint the law as an unmitigated disaster--notwithstanding its documented gains in health insurance coverage for millions of Americans nationwide.

But we think we've found the dopiest entry in this competitive field. Tip your hat to Michael F. Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute, who wins the prize with a piece entitled "ACA Exchanges at risk." Cannon is director of health policy studies at Cato, which is a little scary. His column appeared April 22 on the opinion page of the Los Angeles Register (whatever that is) and also is published on the Cato website.

Its theme is that Obamacare "creates so many incentives for enrollees to drop their coverage" that this year's enrollment numbers can't be sustained. The piece goes even further, stating that people are financially better off if they drop their coverage and "wait until they get sick to re-enroll."

That argument places Cannon squarely in the disreputable camp of conservatives who advise Americans not to sign up for Obamacare because there's no downside to going without coverage. That was the implicit point made recently by the right-wing blogger Matt Drudge, who says he'll never sign up for Obamacare and claimed (implausibly) that he had already paid his 2014 penalty for shunning the ACA's legally mandated individual health coverage.

It should be obvious that advising anyone to go without health insurance, especially when it's been made affordable by the ACA, is the height of irresponsibility. That's even more true when the advice is based on nonsense.

So let's take a gander at where Cannon, Cato's health policy expert, goes off the rails.

First, he claims that "for most healthy people, going uninsured before Obamacare, at least for a time, was already a safe bet.... The odds that they would have to deal with unmet medical needs, or unpaid medical bills, were low."

That's true, up to a point. Of course the flaw in this reasoning is that the time span dividing healthfulness from dire medical need can be a nanosecond--the time it takes to be hit by a car, feel a sudden chest pain, or to take a phone call from a doctor bearing a cancer diagnosis. You want to roll the dice, go ahead. Just remember that you are rolling the dice.

Then Cannon gets really ghoulish. "Suppose the day after you cancel your health insurance, you receive a serious diagnosis like diabetes, or cancer," he posits. No problem! Under Obamacare, you can't be denied insurance coverage or charged extra for that illness!

On the other hand, Cannon concedes, you may have to wait until open enrollment for the following year to sign up, which means your coverage won't start until next January.

Big deal, Cannon suggests. What's the risk that you'll have to wait, say, 11 months to see a doctor for your cancer? How many cancers kill people that fast, anyway? "You may have to wait until January for that coverage to take effect," he writes, "but even so the downside risk of going uninsured is much smaller."

Anyway, he says, there are plenty of ways to sign up for coverage without waiting a year. For example:

--Get married. "Newly married couples can enroll in an Exchange plan on their wedding day," he observes. (You can get divorced the day after enrollment, he advises.) And happily, "states that recognize gay marriage have effectively doubled the pool of potential 'Obamacare spouses.'"

--Move to a new state. You can sign up on its exchange when you take residence.

--"If you live in one of the 25 or so states implementing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, you can get coverage immediately by reducing your income below 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($16,102 for a single adult). You can then restore your income when you enroll in an Exchange plan in January."

--Get pregnant. You can enroll in an exchange the day your baby is born. (Of course, this works only for about half the U.S. population.)

--Rely on "friends, family, or the kindness of strangers." (Yes, he actually wrote this.)

As it happens, Cannon left out a couple of options. You can get yourself fired; loss of a job makes you immediately eligible for an exchange plan. Alternatively, you can become a member of an Indian tribe; tribal members can sign up for exchange plans throughout the year. (This may not be an option for everybody.)

So to sum up, here are the ways the Cato Institute proposes for you to scam Obamacare: You can get married, have a kid, impoverish yourself so you qualify for Medicaid, or commit fraud. If you've been diagnosed with a dire disease, you can uproot yourself and move to another state.

These are the options, Cannon says, for "rational" people. Cato and its health policy expert plainly have a different definition for "rational" from the rest of us. But why would a truly rational person take their advice?

• 
  
• (1) That argument places Cannon squarely in the disreputable camp of conservatives who advise Americans not to sign up for Obamacare because there's no downside to going without coverage. (2) That was the implicit point made recently by the right-wing blogger Matt Drudge, who says he'll never sign up for Obamacare and claimed (implausibly) that he had already paid his 2014 penalty for shunning the ACA's legally mandated individual health coverage.
  
  (3) It should be obvious that advising anyone to go without health insurance, especially when it's been made affordable by the ACA, is the height of irresponsibility. (4) That's even more true when the advice is based on nonsense.

• 
  
• President Barack Obama says he has enrolled 7.1 million Americans through his new health insurance Exchanges. If so, that may prove to be the easy part: Obamacare creates so many incentives for enrollees to drop their coverage that maintaining those enrollment numbers may start to resemble something like pushing millions of people up a greased poll.
  
  For Obamacare to work, people must enroll and stay enrolled. An estimated20 percent of those who signed up have yet to pay their first premium, and as many as 5 percent stopped paying after the first month. If too many drop out, premiums could climb until the Exchanges collapse.

chatham

May 1 2014, 08:54 AM

Quote:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/30/obamacare-economy_n_5242767.html?1398899223&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) - As the U.S. economy teetered on the brink of contraction in the first quarter, one thing stood out. Healthcare spending increased at its fastest pace in more than three decades.

That surge is attributed to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Because of Obamacare, the nation narrowly avoided its first decline in output in three years.

"GDP growth would have ... been negative were it not for healthcare spending," said Harm Bandholz, chief economist at UniCredit Research in New York.

Healthcare spending increased at a 9.9 percent annual rate, the quickest since the third quarter of 1980, and it contributed 1.1 percentage points to GDP growth.

The economy expanded at only a 0.1 percent rate in the first quarter, held back by a drop in exports and business investment, which economists attributed to a harsh winter. A sharp slowdown in the pace of inventory accumulation was also a drag.

The gauge of healthcare spending published on Wednesday is simply an estimate based on Medicaid benefits, ACA insurance exchange enrollments, and other related information. Firm data will not be available until June, and the government could well revise its figures for both healthcare and overall GDP.
[They've mixed healthcare spending and health insurance spending to reach this total increase. That is NOT a reliable conglomeration of numbers to use! Healthcare spending increases could reflect more people using their coverage plus inflation in the cost for care. A portion of the increase in spending for health insurance coverage and Medicaid coverage is an increase in costs paid for by the taxpayers. If that were a good thing for the economy, then it must be better to spend a hundred times that much!]

About eight million people have so far signed up for healthcare insurance under the law, and the jump in healthcare spending had already been flagged in the government's monthly income and consumer spending data.

White House economic adviser Jason Furman said the increase should not be a cause for alarm.

"Any upward pressure on healthcare spending growth from expanding insurance coverage will cease once coverage stabilizes at its new, higher level, so it does not affect the longer-term outlook for spending growth," he said in a statement.
[Total BS!]

Obamacare provides coverage for residents who previously did not have health insurance, as well as subsidies to those who cannot afford monthly premiums. These transfers are helping to free-up income and more people are making visits to hospitals.
[...as the balance of the US population has LESS disposable income to spend, which is NOT good for the US Economy!]

Economists said both the subsidies and hospital visits were contributing to the surge in healthcare spending.
[More hospital visits is a good thing if you want higher premiums!]

"You have those two separate things that are working; the challenge is we don't know the split between newly insured and previously insured," said Alec Phillips, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Washington.

Healthcare spending could rise again in the second quarter, but probably not at the first-quarter's rapid pace.
[Prolly correct, as we will not know of the premium increases until after the end of June.]

Through February, estimated personal income from Medicaid and other social benefits - the category where the tax subsidies through the health exchanges show up - was running ahead of the actual increase in healthcare consumption.
[Is this idiot classifying "Medicaid and other social benefits" (subsidies) as "personal income" here??????? Are those receiving entitlement funds classified as employees of Uncle Sam?]

"That kind of implies that there may be at least a little bit more in terms of growth in health consumption from essentially those new benefits that have been provided," said Phillips. "With that said it also implies that we have probably seen a decent amount of it already."

Government transfers, including health insurance premium subsidies, boosted personal income in the first-quarter.

kbp

May 1 2014, 10:10 AM

Committee Learns Who’s Paid for Obamacare: As of April 15, Only 67 Percent of Enrollees in Federal Marketplace Had Paid First Month’s Premium

Baldo

May 1 2014, 12:09 PM

Many Obamacare enrollees haven't paid their premiums yet - why not?

snip

Marc Boutin, executive vice president of the nonprofit National Health Council, said that getting nearly seven in 10 enrollees to pay just two weeks after the open enrollment period closed "seems quite positive." While more comprehensive data will come in later, he called it "a really good indication of the direction we're going."

"You have to recognize it's a new payment for many people, and it's not uncommon for people to miss that first payment or be confused about when to pay it," he said. From here, "I think the numbers are just going to go up."

snip

Baldo

May 1 2014, 01:57 PM

Carney On Obamacare Enrollments: 'We Don't Have Hard Numbers, But We Dispute Their Numbers'

We Have To Pass The Numbers To Find Out What's Wrong With Them

In today's press briefing, Jay Carney was asked about the number of Obamacare premium payments that have been made. In other words, the total number of people actually, factually covered, not including window shoppers and unpaid accounts.

"We dispute their numbers. We don't have hard, concrete numbers, but we dispute them," the press secretary reasonably explained.

The question followed a report from the House Energy Committee on how many enrollees had actually paid for their chosen Obamacare plans. The report stated, “as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process.” Just one quarter of those who had paid into the system were young people aged 18 to 34 – the group the Obama administration most requires to sign up in order to provide solvency to the failing system. The bulk of those who signed up came from the 35-64 age group.

Carney says this is not data that is traditionally shared with government and emphasizes that the data is coming from "profit-making" companies. Chuck Todd was asking specifically about how many people included in the White House's own reported numbers as successful Obamacare enrollees - the number 8 million that is being touted and bragged about every day - aren't actually covered by insurance at this time, and whether that might change their success line by up to or in excess of one million people....snipped

www.truthrevolt.org/news/carney-obamacare-enrollments-we-dont-have-hard-numbers-we-dispute-their-numbers

Sorry Baghdad Bob, move on over. We have a new point leader

• 
  
• • If you live in one of the 25 or so states implementing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, like California, you can get coverage immediately by temporarily reducing your income below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, about $16,000 for single adults. Once January rolls around, you can enroll in an exchange plan and boost your income back to where it was. Depending on how often the state verifies Medicaid eligibility, you could return to your previous income even sooner.
  
  • If you don’t live in a Medicaid-expansion state, you can get covered immediately by moving to one, like this Idaho family did.
  
  • If you’re pregnant, you can get exchange coverage for both you and your child effective the day your child is born. You can enroll while you recover in the maternity ward. If you prefer immediate coverage for prenatal care and such, you can use one of the above strategies to enroll in Medicaid.
  
  • Newly married couples can get exchange coverage beginning the first day of the month following their nuptials, or even sooner. Just as some married couples get “Medicaid divorces” to qualify for government nursing-home subsidies, we may soon see uninsured singles with a sudden need for coverage entering into “Obamacare marriages,” and then divorcing when they become eligible to enroll on their own in January.
  
  • If you move to another state, or even within your own state, you can get exchange coverage beginning in about a month or less.
  
  • If you’re under age 26, you may be able to get coverage before January under a parent’s health plan.