Tag Archives: health insurance

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 →

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

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Obamacare's third open enrollment season launched yesterday. Here are six things we know about the program. (Tomorrow: four things we still don't know.) Credit:americanlegislator.org

Oba­macare’s third open enroll­ment sea­son launched yes­ter­day. Here are six things we know about the pro­gram. (Tomor­row: four things we still don’t know.) Credit:americanlegislator.org

Obamacare’s third open enroll­ment sea­son has kicked off, begin­ning the next chap­ter in its tur­bu­lent his­to­ry.  Today’s post dis­cuss­es what we know about Oba­macare.  Tomorrow’s will dis­cuss what we still don’t know.

What We Know

Few­er peo­ple are unin­sured. How many few­er is a mat­ter of dis­pute, but the improve­ment is sub­stan­tial by any mea­sure.  HHS Sec­re­tary Sylvia Bur­well cred­its Oba­macare with reduc­ing the num­ber of unin­sured peo­ple by 17.6 mil­lion since 2010.   And though you’ll like­ly hear this num­ber repeat­ed (and often round­ed up to 18 mil­lion), it’s almost cer­tain­ly exag­ger­at­ed.   Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Obamacare: The More You Pay, The Less You Get

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Obamacare enrollment increased this year, but only the poorest among the uninsured have so far signed up. [Credit: Arkansas Times]

Oba­macare enroll­ment increased this year, but only the poor­est among the unin­sured have so far signed up. [Cred­it: Arkansas Times]

Can gov­ern­ment get peo­ple to buy a prod­uct that mil­lions think isn’t worth the price?

That’s the ques­tion that health care ana­lysts are ask­ing as they pore over the results of the Oba­macare open sea­son that con­clud­ed on Feb­ru­ary 15. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Why Obamacare Subsidies Matter

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Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court yesterday as judges heard arguments over the legality of Obamacare subsidies. [Credit: AP]

Pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side the Supreme Court yes­ter­day as judges heard argu­ments over the legal­i­ty of Oba­macare sub­si­dies. [Cred­it: AP]

The future of Oba­macare hangs on the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in King v. Bur­well for a very good rea­son: unless health insur­ance is sub­si­dized, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans don’t want it, even if they can afford it. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The Lawsuit Boehner Should Bring

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The House has authorized the Speaker to sue the Administration for overreaching in its Obamacare implementation. He should sue over its corporate welfare provisions. [Credit: rightspeak.net]

The House has autho­rized the Speak­er to sue the Admin­is­tra­tion for over­reach­ing in its Oba­macare imple­men­ta­tion. He should sue over its cor­po­rate wel­fare pro­vi­sions. [Cred­it: rightspeak.net]

Hi Chet –
After speak­ing at length today with Jeanne and our oth­er pol­i­cy folks, I do not think I have any more to add. They seem to have giv­en you 80 per­cent of what you request­ed and I am not in a posi­tion to sec­ond guess there [sic] analy­sis.
Sin­cere­ly,
Valerie

“Valerie” would be Valerie Jar­rett, one of Pres­i­dent Obama’s clos­est advis­ers. “Chet” would be Chet Bur­rell, CEO of Care­First Blue Cross. In the April 15 email, Jar­rett advised the insur­ance exec­u­tive that he would have to live with 80 per­cent of what his indus­try asked the White House for.

A month lat­er, the Admin­is­tra­tion relent­ed and gave the indus­try 100 per­cent of what it asked for – a reg­u­la­tion that will involve the give­away of an addi­tion­al $1 bil­lion in tax­pay­er funds to insur­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Oba­macare exchanges.

If the Speak­er intends to file a law­suit against the Admin­is­tra­tion for abuse of pow­er, as a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed last evening by the House autho­rizes him to do, he should sue over this. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Obamacare: Should Taxpayers Take the Risk of Subsidies?

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I testified on Obamacare yesterday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I tes­ti­fied on Oba­macare yes­ter­day before the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Committee.

I tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day before the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee on a some­what tech­ni­cal pro­vi­sion of Oba­macare.  The pro­vi­sion estab­lish­es “risk cor­ri­dors,” which lim­it prof­its and loss­es of insur­ers that sell through the exchanges.  Plans that make “excess prof­its” must pay into the risk cor­ri­dor fund; those that suf­fer “excess loss­es” receive mon­ey from that fund.   Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Curly Howard And Our Health Care System

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Curly Howard didn't design our healthcare system, but his plumbing misadventure helps explain why it's such a mess -- before and after Obamacare. [Credit: wondersinthedark.com]

Curly Howard did­n’t design our health­care sys­tem, but his plumb­ing mis­ad­ven­ture helps explain why it’s such a mess — before and after Oba­macare. [Cred­it: wondersinthedark.com]

Curly Howard didn’t design the US health­care sys­tem. Or Oba­macare. Or Repub­li­can pro­pos­als to replace it. But he could have.

Howard, the most cre­ative of the Three Stooges, set out to fix a leak­ing pipe. His solu­tion: add a length of pipe. Each time he did, the flow of water was tem­porar­i­ly inter­rupt­ed, only to resume, this time out of the pipe he’d just added. Unde­terred, he added anoth­er length of pipe. By the end of the episode, a frus­trat­ed and sog­gy Curly is enmeshed in pipes. And still the water flows.

So it is with health­care. The leak, in this case, is the basic premise of insur­ance – that risk is inevitable and its cost must show up some­where. Curly’s pipe is reg­u­la­tion – the unceas­ing attempts by gov­ern­ment to divert and dis­guise the cost of that risk. The sys­tem that result­ed from per­pet­u­al inter­ven­tion resem­bles the one Curly pro­duced – cost­ly, cum­ber­some, inef­fi­cient and con­fus­ing. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

A Modest (And Potentially Bipartisan) Obamacare Proposal

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Here are three changes Congress should make to Obamacare: 1) no cancellations; 2) no bailouts; 3) no tax on the uninsured. [Credit: thinkquest.org]

Here are three changes Con­gress should make to Oba­macare: 1) no can­cel­la­tions; 2) no bailouts; 3) no tax on the unin­sured. [Cred­it: thinkquest.org]

Here’s a crazy idea: Repub­li­cans and at least some Democ­rats say they sup­port mak­ing changes to Oba­macare; why doesn’t Con­gress give vot­ers a pleas­ant sur­prise and change it?

These changes would be polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar, rel­a­tive­ly mod­est and enjoy at least some bipar­ti­san sup­port. Although the pre­vail­ing polit­i­cal cli­mate makes it hard for law­mak­ers to do any­thing of sub­stance, mak­ing the health care law more friend­ly to con­sumers and less accom­mo­dat­ing to cor­po­rate inter­ests would appeal to vot­ers across the spec­trum. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Obamacare’s Comfort Food For The Insurance Industry

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The President huddled with health insurance executives last month, part of a White House effort to assure them that the government has their back. (Credit: LA Times)

The Pres­i­dent hud­dled with health insur­ance exec­u­tives last month, part of a White House effort to assure them that the gov­ern­ment has their back. (Cred­it: LA Times)

The healthcare.gov web­site now works to the Admin­is­tra­tion’s sat­is­fac­tion.  While only 30 per­cent of users could enroll when the site first launched, it’s now up to 80 per­cent.

Frus­trat­ing one in five poten­tial cus­tomers, evi­dent­ly the gold stan­dard for the White House, is viewed less favor­ably by pri­vate insur­ers.  It’s among the rea­sons that the health care law is caus­ing such anx­i­ety in the C‑suites of insur­ance com­pa­nies that are hop­ing to prof­it by sell­ing poli­cies through the exchanges. Which is why White House meet­ings with insur­ance exec­u­tives are hap­pen­ing more fre­quent­ly than Cab­i­net meet­ings. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Blaming Insurers: Why Valerie Jarrett is Wrong

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Valerie Jarrett last night blamed insurers for cancelling policies. But it was the Administration itself that broke the President's promise to let people keep the coverage they like. (Credit: justpiper.com)

Valerie Jar­rett last night blamed insur­ers for can­celling poli­cies. But it was the Admin­is­tra­tion itself that broke the Pres­i­den­t’s promise to let peo­ple keep the cov­er­age they like. (Cred­it: justpiper.com)

Valerie Jar­rett last night sent the fol­low­ing tweet: “FACT: Noth­ing in #Oba­macare forces peo­ple out of their health plans. No change is required unless insur­ance com­pa­nies change exist­ing plans.”

Jarrett’s tweet sig­nals that the White House is now blam­ing insur­ers for can­celling cov­er­age for hun­dreds of thou­sands — and per­haps mil­lions — of Amer­i­cans. This is utter­ly men­da­cious. The text of Oba­macare, as Jar­rett sug­gests, explic­it­ly gives peo­ple the right to keep their exist­ing cov­er­age. But in an inex­plic­a­ble action, the Admin­is­tra­tion in 2010 issued a reg­u­la­tion that stripped peo­ple of that right and made it ille­gal for many insur­ers to renew cov­er­age for next year. Con­tin­ue read­ing →