chatham

Oct 19 2014, 08:29 PM

Why is the NYT telling the truth about obamacare?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/unable-to-meet-the-deductible-or-the-doctor.html?_r=0

chatham

Oct 19 2014, 08:29 PM

Why is the NYT telling the truth about obamacare?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/unable-to-meet-the-deductible-or-the-doctor.html?_r=0

Quote:

 

... A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average deductible for individual coverage in employer-sponsored plans was $1,217 this year.

In comparison, the average deductible for a bronze plan on the exchange — the least expensive coverage — was $5,081 for an individual and $10,386 for a family, according to HealthPocket, a consulting firm. Silver plans, which were the most popular option this year, had average deductibles of $2,907 for an individual and $6,078 for a family.

Quote:

 

http://kff.org/health-costs/press-release/employer-sponsored-family-health-premiums-rise-3-percent-in-2014/

Employer-Sponsored Family Health Premiums Rise 3 Percent in 2014

Workers Now Face Deductibles Averaging $1,217, Up 47 Percent Since 2009

[...]

The 16th annual Kaiser/HRET survey of more than 2,000 small and large employers provides a detailed picture of the status and trends in employer-sponsored health insurance costs and coverage. In addition to the full report and summary of findings being released today, the journal Health Affairs is publishing a Web First article with select findings.

Deductibles and Cost Sharing

This year, 80 percent of all covered workers face a general annual deductible, with the average deductible reaching $1,217. Workers typically must pay this deductible before most services are covered by their health plan. Since 2009, the average deductible has risen 47 percent from $826.

[...]

Quote:

 

https://www.politicopro.com/login/
Obamacare Termination Issue Could Muddle Renewals

Consumers who already have an Obamacare plan could face a messy situation early next year if they pick a different insurer for their 2015 coverage because HealthCare.gov won’t be telling companies whom to terminate. In some cases, industry sources worry, a person could be double billed for premiums because two carriers have the individual on their books on Jan. 1. Other consumers could be erroneously cut from their plans after Dec. 31 if inaccuracies in the federal exchange database lead to companies getting bad information on renewals, said one insurance official who has been briefed on the issue...

Mason

Oct 21 2014, 02:22 AM

O-Admin pays for study (for the courts), Study says Obamacare will quickly go into Death spiral if tax subsidies are not upheld.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/21/hhs-funded-study-obamacare-will-suffer-death-spiral-if-subsidies-fail/

Quote:

 

The Obama administration has funded a new study by top consulting firm RAND Health that startlingly finds that if taxpayer subsidies are eliminated, Obamacare exchanges will fall into a “death spiral.”

The study comes in the wake of a number of lawsuits which are challenging the Obama administration’s implementation of Obamacare subsidies. Three lawsuits have made it to U.S. Circuit Courts, just one step from the Supreme Court, arguing that the text of the Affordable Care Act allows premium subsidies for state-run exchanges only.

The report was sponsored by HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, which, among other duties, compiles the enrollment statistics each month during open enrollment for Obamacare exchanges. Given the ongoing controversy over Obamacare subsidies, HHS sponsoring the study could be a sign that the administration is beginning to worry about its prospects.

The administration’s motivations aside, the key finding from the report belies HHS’s pro-Obamacare position. Eliminating premium subsidies entirely would “cause large declines in enrollment and substantial increases in premiums,” RAND Health concluded. In short — Americans are far less likely to want Obamacare coverage, or to be able to afford it, when taxpayers aren’t footing the bill.

“In scenarios in which the tax credits are eliminated, our model predicts a near ‘death spiral,’ with very sharp premium increases and drastic declines in individual market enrollment,” the study concluded.

Obamacare supporters will tout that well-intentioned premium subsidies are working. But if the health-care law can’t survive without taxpayers supporting Obamacare enrollees, the point remains that the Affordable Care Act is failing in its promise to control the actual cost of health care and health insurance.

RAND found that without the ACA’s subsidies, the cost of premiums will rise by 43.3 percent and Obamacare enrollment will fall by a whopping 68 percent. That would mean 11.3 million more Americans would be uninsured.
No idea where they got these numbers. If 11.3 million is 68%, they're using an enrollment of 16.6 million, not a number I have ever seen reported.

“Low-risk individuals of any age may need a tax credit to incentivize them to sign up,” the study concluded, in what may seem common sense to the health-care law’s conservative opposition. “As a result, premium tax credits encourage the enrollment of low-risk individuals, who improve the risk pool and bring down premiums.”

In short, if someone doesn’t feel they need pricey health insurance, the study found, they probably won’t buy it — unless there are hefty taxpayer subsidies lowering their bottom line, or an individual mandate issuing a significant penalty on those who fail to sign up for coverage.

If the individual mandate forcing people to purchase coverage, instead of subsidies, falls by the wayside, the number of people who purchase individual health insurance outside the exchange would fall by over 20 percent — causing premiums for those that remain to increase by 7 percent. If the mandate were overturned, 8.2 million Americans wouldn’t be purchasing health insurance, RAND found.

The study also discovered that apart from premium subsidies and the individual mandate, the presence of young adults also plays a role in keeping the cost of exchange coverage down. For every 1 percentage point reduction in the share of young adult enrollees in the individual market, RAND expects a 0.44 percent increase in premiums.

After the first open enrollment period, the administration is 11 percent behind its goal of 39 percent of Obamacare enrollees nationally qualifying as ‘young invincibles’ (although that may have fallen since 700,000 people dropped their Obamacare coverage over the last six months). That would make exchange premiums 4.84 percent higher on average today than they would have been had the administration attracted the level of interest from young adults they had anticipated.

As implemented so far, Obamacare’s made many changes to the health insurance market. The individual mandate, for one, has been upheld by the highest courts, but taxpayer subsidies in federally-run exchanges — which accounts for over 5 million out of 7.3 million enrollees — are still facing serious legal challenges. If the Obama administration fails to uphold its position, it could put the exchanges in an extremely precarious position.

Quote:

 

http://online.wsj.com/articles/carvins-obamacare-tour-de-force-1413846120

Carvin’s ObamaCare Tour de Force
His reply brief to the government leaves the Supreme Court no legal reason to dodge the case on federal subsidies

In 2011 after the first appeals circuit struck down the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, the White House asked the Supreme Court to take the case as soon as possible and “put these challenges to rest.” There was no value in waiting on the merits to percolate in other courts, liberals argued then, given the grave practical consequences for this landmark social legislation.

So observes Jones Day attorney Michael Carvin in his corker of a reply brief asking the High Court to accept King v. Burwell, an equally consequential challenge to ObamaCare. Yet now the White House is asking the Court to wait, and wait, and wait, which Mr. Carvin calls “irresponsible” and “out of touch with reality.” The 12-page document is a master class in legal persuasion and deserves more readers. Document: http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/14-114-reply-brief-10-14-14.pdf

King and the related Halbig case are “strikingly simple,” Mr. Carvin writes. Though the ObamaCare statute authorizes insurance subsidies only on exchanges established by states, the White House is offering them on the exchanges run by the federal government as well. A panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled this gambit illegal in July, only to be vacated by the full court that Majority Leader Harry Reid blew up the Senate filibuster to pack with liberal jurists for precisely this contingency.

“The Government is content to leave the spigots of cash open and the Nation in limbo in the hopes that (i) the en banc D.C. Circuit reverses the Halbig panel, and (ii) no other Circuit enforces the Act’s plain text,” Mr. Carvin writes. Should either assumption fail, the delay serves no one’s best interests, especially since the Court will have to intervene later “when the stakes will be even higher.”

Turning to the merits review that the White House is trying to evade, Mr. Carvin dismantles “unexplained statutory references, garbled explication, and minutiae of irrelevant provisions—to give the appearance of respectable statutory construction.” He notes that Justice Elena Kagan held this May in the 5-4 decision Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community that the Administration cannot “revise legislation” and that its arguments were “unpersuasive on their own terms.”

“Tellingly,” Mr. Carvin continues, “the Government also ignores that Jonathan Gruber—the ACA architect whose work it cited in every brief below but is nowhere mentioned now—articulated the incentive purpose of [the original subsidy language] as early as 2012.” Mr. Carvin leaves the Justices with no plausible legal reason to dodge the case.

Quote:

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2014/10/20/obamacare-on-shaky-ground-as-court-battle-looms/
Obamacare on Shaky Ground as Court Battle Looms

....First, the power to tax rests with the legislature. The Obama Administration can’t simply decide to exempt certain people from tax by giving them credits to help them purchase insurance coverage.

Indeed, a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision explicitly held that “exemptions from taxation are not to be implied; they must be unambiguously proved.”