Tag Archives: exchanges

CBO’s Alternate Facts About Obamacare

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Millions may lose cov­er­age next year if Con­gress does not repeal Oba­macare.

That’s not what this week’s Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office (CBO) analy­sis says, but it is real­i­ty. CBO’s esti­mat­ing mod­els seem imper­vi­ous to reality.

In the real world, the Oba­macare exchanges are in cri­sis, mil­lions of unin­sured peo­ple will­ing­ly pay or avoid IRS penal­ties, and con­sumers strug­gle with ris­ing pre­mi­ums and cost-shar­ing require­ments.  Read more on Nation­al Review Online.

It’s Time To Shut Down Healthcare.gov

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Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970s, stu­dents at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy car­ried out what is reput­ed to be the first e‑commerce trans­ac­tion: the sale of an unde­ter­mined quan­ti­ty of marijuana.

This year, glob­al online retail sales are pro­ject­ed to exceed $2.4 tril­lion. By 2020, e‑commerce will account for 14.6 per­cent of all retail pur­chas­es, near­ly dou­bling its mar­ket share in just five years. Con­sumers shop online for every­thing from cars to car insurance.

Which rais­es the ques­tion: Do we real­ly need HealthCare.gov?  Read more on The Hill.

Insurance Industry Campaigns To Keep Unlawful ObamaCare Cash

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When is a gov­ern­ment pro­gram not a gov­ern­ment program?

When the insur­ance indus­try says it isn’t.

In its effort to keep bil­lions in unlaw­ful Oba­macare cor­po­rate sub­si­dies flow­ing, the indus­try is try­ing to per­suade Con­gress that it receives no fed­er­al funds through the fed­er­al “rein­sur­ance” pro­gram. Good luck with that.  Read more.

Obamacare Consensus: Insurers Need Government Handouts

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Congress and the courts are losing patience with the government's lawless implementation of Obamacare, which involves unlawful expenditures to subsidize insurance companies. [Credit:forbes.com]

Oba­macare’s sur­vival depends on gov­ern­ment hand­outs to insur­ers. [Credit:forbes.com]

The Com­mon­wealth Fund recent­ly released a study of the Oba­macare indi­vid­ual mar­ket.  It found that cor­po­rate sub­si­dies like the rein­sur­ance pro­gram have played a “cru­cial role in help­ing insur­ers tran­si­tion.”  Because that “tran­si­tion” has so far gone poor­ly, the authors rec­om­mend that pol­i­cy­mak­ers not allow the rein­sur­ance pro­gram to expire at the end of the year, as required under cur­rent law. They believe that the hand­outs should con­tin­ue “until the reformed mar­ket has matured.”  To find out why that’s a ter­ri­ble idea, click here.

Obamacare’s Tax-Subsidized Failure

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Here’s some bad news for the insur­ance indus­try: Unex­pect­ed­ly gen­er­ous cor­po­rate sub­si­dies didn’t save com­pa­nies sell­ing Oba­macare poli­cies from bleed­ing red ink.

The worse news: Those sub­si­dies are set to expire in 2017, mean­ing that insur­ers will have to make ends meet with­out bil­lions in hand­outs.  Read more at Nation­al Review Online.

You can also read the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter study that Bri­an Blase, Ed Haislmaier and I wrote here.

Will HHS Get Away With A $3.5 Billion Heist?

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CMS administrator Andy Slavitt has a $3.5 billion problem. Will Congress and presidential candidates talk about it? [Credit:nextgov]

CMS admin­is­tra­tor Andy Slavitt is plan­ning to short the U.S. Trea­sury $3.5 bil­lion. Will Con­gress and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates talk about it? [Credit:nextgov]

The Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) announced Fri­day night that it was in the process of short­ing the U.S. Trea­sury $3.5 billion.

Well, they didn’t exact­ly announce it.  You had to read between the lines. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

What We Know And Don’t Know About Obamacare, Part II

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More than five years after its enactment there still are many questions about whether Obamacare is working. Here are four of them.

More than five years after its enact­ment there still are many ques­tions about whether Oba­macare is work­ing. Here are four of them.

My pre­vi­ous post dis­cussed what we know about Oba­macare as its third open enroll­ment sea­son begins.  Here are four major ques­tions about the future of Oba­macare that remain unanswered.

Can insur­ance com­pa­nies make mon­ey in the exchanges with­out cor­po­rate wel­fare? Oba­macare con­tains some very expen­sive sweet­en­ers to entice insur­ance com­pa­nies to sell through the exchanges. These include risk cor­ri­dor pay­ments and $20 bil­lion over three years in inapt­ly named “rein­sur­ance” pay­ments, mon­ey gov­ern­ment takes from par­tic­i­pants in group health plans and gives to insur­ers that par­tic­i­pate in the exchanges. Both are sched­uled to end in 2017.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Is Obamacare What We Deserve?

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Many who signed up for Obamacare coverage

Some who signed up for Oba­macare cov­er­age had been unin­sured for years.  That cov­er­age could unrav­el if the Supreme Court rules next month that the Admin­is­tra­tion unlaw­ful­ly sub­si­dized their cov­er­age. [Cred­it: Mia­mi Herald]

For 20 years, I was afraid.  Afraid of get­ting sick and not hav­ing health insur­ance.  But when I got can­cer, I final­ly had a health plan that I could afford.  With­out it, I wouldn’t be here…I’ll always remem­ber how afford­able health care saved my life.  I believe every­one deserves the same chance I had.  Don’t you?  Julie, the pro­tag­o­nist of a recent ad pro­mot­ing Obamacare

The Supreme Court next month will issue a rul­ing that could result in Julie los­ing the health insur­ance cov­er­age she feels she deserves. Con­tin­ue read­ing →