Jan 1 2014 - Obamacare

[airboy]

Couple of relevant facts about Obamacare at the start of the year.

1] 50% or less of the people who actually purchased insurance have paid a premium yet.  What the Obama Administration and the Mass Media is claiming in terms of numbers of people "with insurance," actually have not completed the purchase.
Why is this important? - Like car insurance, until you pay your first premium you don't have coverage.

2] A large percentage (50%?) of the newly "insured" have just been added to Medicare roles.  This is 100% financed by government and is not "private" insurance.  The actual financial impact on the Federal Government is not known yet.  All are government estimates - and like most predictions about the future are likely to be wrong.

3] A substantial (but unknown) number of people think they have insurance, but the back-end of the website actually did not connect with insurers.  These people will never get a bill, or coverage until this is fixed.

4] Many of the plans which were purchased were "bronze" plans with very high deductibles.  It remains to be seen how these people will react when they buy medical coverage and then find out they foot 100% of the bill for the first $2,000, $3,000 or even $6,000 dollars of expenses.

5] It remains to be seen if the IRS software will actually integrate into the overall Obamacare system.  Since many of the penalties for not obtaining coverage depend on the integration of the IRS & the Obamacare information - this may or may not work out.

6] The Obamacare system rests on a couple of legs.  a] Lots of people get free insurance via medicare.  b] Those with expensive preexisting conditions get a big subsidy from the "minimum benefits" and "inability to refuse coverage" mandated on the insurance market.  c] Older people use more health care, and are also subsidized by "b" above.  d] Obamacare depends on lots of young, healthy people paying into the system to allow all of the subsidies for the low income, people in poor health, and elderly to get relatively cheap insurance.

Lots of young people signing up for a bad insurance deal is essential for the whole system to work.  The insurance rates for the young have gone way up, and the system has to have lots of these people paying into the system and using relatively little medical care for the finances to come close to working as planned.

7] Late in the year the Employer Mandate kicks in.  But the standard Obamacare Plan mandates that the majority of employer paid insurance must change - and those changes will cost more money.  This will kick in for the large percentage of the US market who get health insurance through their employer.

8] Last, all insurance prices will have to be adjusted based on actual market behavior (and not government estimates) and those new prices set for people to sign up for health insurance in late 2014 for coverage in 2015.  If the government estimates were wrong, those costs could be substantially higher in 2015 than they were for coverage in 2014.


I've tried to just objectively list the facts on the ground on January 1 without political commentary.  I'm guessing that what is actually happening is quite different from what most US citizens think is happening on Obamacare.

[Bison]

This law just needs to go away.  Seriously.  It is single handedly pushing the executive branch ever closer to becoming a permanently dictatorial branch.

[LongBlade]

This law just needs to go away.  Seriously.  It is single handedly pushing the executive branch ever closer to becoming a permanently dictatorial branch.

Airboy's #7 will do ensure Obamacare will be scrubbed from the public record.

Right now there are lots of scary stories about people losing their health care. However, it's "only" a small percentage. It's enough to raise awareness, but not enough to frighten the entire electorate.

Come next fall when the real changes hit the majority of the public, there will be enormous political repercussions.

[GDS_Starfury]

thats when the worst aspects of the law with be deferred again until later.   ::)

[Bison]

thats when the worst aspects of the law with be deferred again until later.   ::)

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

[BanzaiCat]

I had ten lifetimes' worth of fill dealing with medicare and medicaid patients back when I worked as an EMT. SO many of them did NOT need ambulance services/were not medically necessary, and yet they'd constantly receive the services, and our company would bill them/get paid for it. I know the company was less than happy with me because I'd constantly write "not medically necessary" in my run reports. I wanted it in there in case something went to court - one thing the supervisors told us that sunk in was to be REALLY good at report writing because you never know, in five years you might be on the stand.

Also, somewhat related to this post...saw this the other day:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/reddit-user-posts-55000-hospital-bill-appendectomy/story?id=21384393

I can't recall the exact link to the exact story that was passed to me, because some of the replies were pretty classic, such as the Australian replying that he'd had an appendectomy a year or so previously and paid exactly zero for it and the hospital stay. I don't get how other countries can pull this off but we can't. (I know, I know...)

Not that I'm for any of this socialist free health care crap - not in THIS country, anyway, because there are so many useless leeches living off our system as it is now, they'd cause the entire thing to collapse on itself.

[LongBlade]

thats when the worst aspects of the law with be deferred again until later.   ::)

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

There are already a bunch of stage AGs who are preparing to go to court to stop the administration from arbitrarily changing the law.

[Staggerwing]

All AGs are on stage. The trick is in figuring out how to feed them the right script lines.

and actually, wouldn't that be 'AsG'?