Latest Obamacare Fixes Unnerve Insurance Industry on Deadline Day

The health insurance industry is uneasy over the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that individuals who lost existing coverage under the Affordable Care Act will not be obligated to purchase coverage by Monday.
 

Insurers were counting on these customers for their bottom line, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement said: "If you have been notified that your individual market policy will not be renewed, you will be eligible for a hardship exemption and will be able to enroll in [bare-bones] catastrophic coverage."

Monday, Dec. 23, is the last day to sign up through the Healthcare.Gov and state health exchanges for insurance coverage beginning Jan. 1. For the coverage to take effect, policyholders must pay their first premium directly to the insurer by Jan. 10, USA Today reported.

Consumers will have until March 31 to purchase coverage for 2014 without having to pay a penalty.

The insurance industry's chief Washington lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, is concerned that exempting people from having to be in the exchanges is an erosion of the "individual mandate" requiring Americans to have health insurance.

Thursday's HHS announcement "was of particular concern because we were worried about the message with respect to individuals having a path around the mandate; that was the first time that the administration had said anything like that," Ignagni told the Journal.

The industry had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it was first proposed. After it became law in 2010, Ignagni said insurers "mobilized our best people . . . to provide thoughtful advice."

Nearly 750,000 people had visited the federal HealthCare.gov site over the weekend through Sunday afternoon.

Via: Newsmax

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It's Official—HHS Says Obamacare Is a Hardship

The latest announcement from the Obama Administration has confirmed what so many Americans already know: Obamacare is a hardship.

With millions of reported insurance cancellations, unbalanced by just 400,000 sign-ups for coverage on the Administration’s excuse for a website, the White House is or should be in full panic mode. And issuing more government rules to correct the consequences of their unworkable government rules is the only thing they seem to know how to do.

Thus, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary is now exercising her authority to grant a “hardship” exemption to the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. The Administration announced that those who have had their previous policies canceled will now qualify for a “temporary” hardship exemption (no exact time frame is given) from the individual mandate. Thus, as the law allows, those who get a “hardship exemption” are now able to purchase a catastrophic plan—typically only available to those under age 30. This is supposed to be beneficial because catastrophic plans have cheaper premiums, as Secretary Sebelius estimates, on average about 20 percent lower than other plans available on the exchange.

Under the Affordable Care Act, however, catastrophic plans have the highest deductibles allowed—$6,350 for self-only coverage—before the plan pays benefits. In addition,catastrophic plans are not eligible for subsidies in the exchanges.

The Administration’s latest action begs a crucial question: Is this a workable option for the people who had their coverage canceled? First, to qualify, of course, you must have had your policy canceled. You must also state that you found no other options “affordable.” Apparently, this means that no other plan was “affordable” despite the possibility of getting taxpayer subsidies for those other plans. Verification is going to be a challenge.

Via: The Foundry

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White House Continues To Dismantle Obamacare, “Temporarily” Suspend Individual Mandate For People Who Had Their Plans Cancelled…

Today, the Obama administration announced that people whose insurance plans were cancelled this year will “temporarily” be exempted from the individual mandate. Here’s how they’re doing it — and what it means for the law.

1. The individual mandate includes a “hardship exemption.” People who qualify can either ignore the individual mandate altogether or purchase a cheap, bare-bones catastrophic insurance plan that’s typically only available to people under age 30.

2. According to HHS, the exemption covers people who “experienced financial or domestic circumstances, including an unexpected natural or human-caused event, such that he or she had a significant, unexpected increase in essential expenses that prevented him or her from obtaining coverage under a qualified health plan.”

3. Today, the administration agreed with a group of senators, led by Mark Warner of Virginia, who argued that having your insurance plan canceled counted as “an unexpected natural or human-caused event.” For these people, in other words, Obamacare itself is the hardship. You can read Sebelius’s full letter here. HHS’s formal guidance is here.

Via: Washington Post

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Obama has shown how a future GOP president can gut Obamacare

 I owe Mitt Romney an apology.

During the 2012 Republican presidential primary season, I repeatedly criticized Romney — and personally challenged him during his editorial board meeting with the Washington Examiner — for promising that if elected, on day one of his presidency, he would grant Obamacare waivers to all 50 states.

As I reported, under the text of the law, the ability to offer waivers to states was subject to many restrictions and wouldn’t even be an option until 2017, four years after his hypothetical swearing in.

Though I still believe I was right about what the statute said, as it turns out, I was being old-fashioned by taking the letter of the law so literally.

Having watched President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the past several months unilaterally alter or outright ignore major portions of the law, I now believe that a future Republican president would have greater latitude to gut Obamacare than I once thought possible.

The changes instituted by the Obama administration in response to implementation snags have ranged from perfectly legal areas of administrative discretion stemming from the vast regulatory powers granted to the HHS secretary under Obamacare, to more creative interpretations of that discretion, to Obama simply choosing to ignore parts of the law that became inconvenient.

Obama has turned his signature legislative accomplishment into a constantly evolving wikilaw, with editing privileges restricted to himself and a few administration officials.

He’s largely been able to get away with it due to the difficulties posed by gaining standing in court for legal challenges.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Obamacare Insurance Workaround Reveals Law that Remains Unfinished, Unaccountable, and Unworkable

The latest tweak reveals how much of the health law's basic architecture is still incomplete.

In October, when it became clear that Obamacare's online enrollment system wasn't functioning, President Obama gave a speech in which he told people who wanted to sign up to contact call centers instead, or fill out pen and paper applications.

This week, the administration announced that it would be employing another manual workaround, this time for critical insurer payment systems. In this case, it's not because the payment system is broken. Instead, it’s because the part of the system that is supposed to both calculate how much money the government owes insurers in premium subsidy and cost-sharing payments and make the appropriate payments simply hasn't been built yet.

What hasn't been built can’t be used, but insurers need to be paid in order for the system to function. So the administration has decided to require insurers to estimate how much they are owed and submit payment requests manually. Later, after the systems are built, the plan is to sort out the details and figure out the exact amounts that should have been billed, then reconcile any differences.

Because it deals with the insurance industry side of the system, this temporary, technical tweak will probably garner far less attention than the ongoing problems with the consumer side of the federal exchange system. But the on-the-fly patch offers a revealing moment for the law all the same, one that highlights how unfinished, unaccountable, and unworkable the health law continues to be.

Via: Reason.com

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Next up: Obamacare worst-case scenario?

Enrollment surge or no enrollment surge, the next Obamacare challenge is a big one: How will the White House make sure all those people with canceled policies get new coverage by Jan. 1?

At the rate the signups are going — even with the speedier, newly functioning Obamacare website — the administration has a vast distance to travel before the estimated 4 to 5 million people with canceled policies get new health coverage.

In fact, health care experts say, it’s not out of the question that the Obama administration could face the worst-case scenario on Jan. 1: the number of uninsured Americans actually goes up.

(Also on POLITICO: White House aims to build on HealthCare.gov’s numbers)

That’s a long shot, and there are plenty of reasons why it might not happen, since there are other ways those people could replace their health coverage, like signing up directly with insurers. Not all of the policies will expire in December. And even if the ranks of the uninsured did increase, it could be such a brief event that no one would ever be able to confirm it.

But even with all the variables, one thing is for certain: the Obama administration has one seriously long road to travel from the signups it has now to the number who will likely need to replace their coverage. That’s a bad place to be, given that the point of the law was to cover more people, not fewer people.

Via: Politico

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ANALYSIS FINDS COST OF OBAMACARE WEBSITE IS WAY MORE THAN ANYONE PREDICTED

The to-date cost of the glitchy Obamacare website has topped $1 billion, easily surpassing the $394 million originally estimated by the Government Accountability Office, according to aBloomberg Government analysis.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Getty Images)

It’s important to note that the Bloomberg analysis runs through Sept. 30, just before the 16-day partial government shutdown. So the final cost may be more than $1 billion.

Perhaps more shocking than the site’s likely price tag is the fact that roughly one-third of that amount was spent on contracts awarded in the six months leading up to the site’s disastrous Oct. 1 launch – when those at the top were reportedly aware of the site’s many problems.

“The torrent of late spending — almost $352 million of $1 billion in awards to the top 10 contractors — indicates the magnitude of the work still to be done as opening day approached,” Bloomberg’s Peter Gosselin reported, “and helps explain the information technology problems that have dogged the exchange system since its launch.”

The Bloomberg figure may come as a shock to many Americans. Indeed, despite the GAO stating clearly that its data was incomplete, the $394 million estimate has been widely reported as the official cost of the launch of the Affordable Care Act.

Via: The Blaze

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OBAMACARE SIGN UPS FALL 85% SHORT OF GOAL

Bloomberg puts the best spin possible on the number of November ObamaCare sign ups (these are not yet official enrollees who have paid their first month's premium) through the federal exchange that covers 36 states. But 100,000 is still dismal. Added together with the 27,000 October federal signs ups, and what you have is ObamaCare at only 15% of its two-month goal.

Thanks to RomneyCare, when the Administration set its two-month enrollment goal at 800,000 for the federal exchange, they did so knowing signs ups are slow in the early months. Still, after two months, the federal exchange is 85% short.

NBC's Chuck Todd reports that with the state exchanges, November ObamaCare sign ups totaled somewhere between 200,000 to 250,000.

If you are generous and assume the number is 250,000, and add that to October's 100,000 sign ups; with almost 40% of the enrollment period gone, ObamaCare is only at 5% of its ultimate goal of 7 million.

That 7 million number is not arbitrary. That is the number needed to make the program financially viable.

The distinction between "sign ups' and "enrolled" is important. Putting ObamaCare in your shopping cart is only the first step. Deciding to follow through from there with an actual payment is the only step that matters. The official enrollment number could fall far short of the sign up number.

Via: Breitbart

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Two Years Old and Not Part of the Family? (Updated)

The Obamacare elves have been busy doling out holiday tips on how to talk about signing onto the Affordable Care Act website while huddled around the yuletide fire singing secular songs with uninsured family members.

One tip the tip-givers forgot to include in the "Healthcare for the Holidays" Guide to Getting Insured was how to explain to those with children under the age of two that family insurance plans in the New York health exchange do not cover the littlest members of the family.

Wait! Maybe Peter Singer, colleague of Barack Obama's Science and Technology Czar John Holdren, had some input in the 'under two' individual policy idea and New York is a pilot state. Singer, a bioethics professor at Michelle Obama's alma mater, Princeton University, is of the opinion that disposing of children up to age two is fine because newborns and toddlers lack the "essential characteristics of personhood," which Singer says are rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness.

So until Americans decide whether they're going to keep the little rug rats, maybe Obamacare advisors thought it would be best to prevent the little ones from mucking up the family plan.

Does requiring a two-year-old to have their own health insurance policy sound like a joke?  Well it's no joke, because that's exactly what happened to self-employed title insurance business owner Cornelius Kelly and his pediatrician wife Jennifer. 

Via: American Thinker

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Report: White House Discussed Scrapping Entire ObamaCare Website

The abysmal rollout of the Obamacare individual mandate last month exposed a website so badly flawed that White House officials considered junking it altogether, according to a detailed account of the inner workings of the healthcare plan's debacle.

 

While President Barack Obama touted publicly that "interest way exceeded expectations, and that's the good news" during the first weekend of the rollout, White House officials were considering another question, The New York Times reports in a front page article Sunday — "Should we just take the website down altogether for a time so it can be fixed?"

The question was dismissed by Todd Park, the administration's chief technology officer, because, he said, HealthCare.com had to be up and running for one simple reason — "To see where the problems are," the Times reports.

Via: Fox News

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Allen West: White House ‘sounds like a very cheap retailer’ hawking Obamacare

Former Florida congressman Allen West mocked the news that the Obamacare website would be down for maintenance the night of its long-awaited Dec. 1 fix, warning that the White House’s repeated excuses make it sound “like a very cheap retailer.”

On Fox News Channel’s On The Record Friday night, West told Harris Faulker that the Obama administration’s decision to delay the website fix further was “incredible.”

“They should not have put their own set mandate on it,” he said, “because now everyone is watching them. And for them to continually come back and say that we can only take 50 thousand or as you just reported, [the website] is going to be down — this is eroding the confidence and the credibility not just of the Obama administration, but of President Obama himself.”

West added that the political ramifications for the Democratic party as a whole would be “chilling.”

The former congressman also had harsh words for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after Faulker read a holiday-shopping themed message from the secretary to consumers: ”The product is popular,” Sebelius wrote, “so avoid the lines and shop HealthCare.gov during off-peak hours (mornings/nights/weekends)… There are 23 shopping days in December (for coverage starting January 1, 2014). No need to rush.”

“Isn’t it very amazing that we have a United States federal government that is starting to sound like a very cheap retailer?” West said. “I don’t think that, once again, helps the confidence and the credibility of this administration. No poll-tested, market-driven little gimmick is going to solve this issue. The American people are very concerned.”

West also outlined a few Republican fixes for the health care law, including establishing high-risk pools and breaking down “state-by-state mini-monopolies” to promote competition.

Via: Daily Caller

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Heritage releases witty Thanksgiving cards poking fun at Obamacare, ‘Let’s Move’

What do you have to be thankful for this year? Your family? Your job? That the First Lady isn’t keeping a watchful eye on how much pumpkin pie you eat?

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank , has released a set of six Thanksgiving cards that poke fun at the Affordable Care Act and Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative that promotes healthy eating and exercise. The cards are a cheeky way to “express exactly what we can all be thankful for this year,” according to the website.

The Heritage email blast also recommended sending a card to “that really annoying liberal in your life.”

One of the cards makes fun of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, while another card mocks the glitches of HealthCare.gov. See a couple of the cards below, and check out the Heritage website to see them all — and send one or two to your friends and family!

Via: Red Alert Politics

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Sebelius on HealthCare.gov Fix: 'This Isn't a Magic Turn On The On-Switch'

(CNSNews.com) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday thanked local elected officials for their efforts to promote Obamacare in their states and communities.

"We are now eight weeks into open enrollment. I can tell you two things, that we are definitely on track to gave a significantly different user experience by the end of this month," Sebelius said on a conference call. "But just so you all know, this isn't a magic turn on the on-switch. The experience is vastly improved each and every day.

"We are seeing more and more enrollment each and every day, very different kind of user issues. So we've added hardware. We've added software. We're continuing to work on the parts of the website that were too confusing to people. And well beyond December 1st those improvements will continue.

"We get feedback on a regular basis from user experiences. We want to continue to update this. But I would urge you and your folks on the ground to not hesitate to recommend that people go to healthcare.gov and get signed up because that experience is currently working much better, and it will continue to work much better."

In response to a question (she took only three), Sebelius said she doesn't have demographic information about who is -- and who isn't -- signing up.

"We hope to add this to our statistics very soon, but we really don't have the breakdown by age and ZIP code and area. I could tell you that the outreach efforts need to be focused on general populations in terms of likely uninsured and -- but young and healthy individuals who are in that uninsured category sometimes take the most work to get their attention and get their focus."

Via: CNS News

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Chris Matthews: 'Vulture' Conservatives Commit 'Verbal Terror' on 'Great' Obama

Chris Matthews appears to have a Mad Libs-style list of the worst insults he hurls at conservative. On Wednesday, he chose "verbal terror" to smear everyone on the right who disagrees with all of the "great things" Barack Obama wants to do. The Hardball anchor opened his show by hyperbolically warning, "Political armageddon!" According to Matthews, the fight between the President and conservatives is not a conflict of ideas.

Rather, "it's a battle between a President who wants to do great things -- extend health care to the tens of millions of working people, many of them poor, ending two wars in Afghanistan" and an "almost totally negative force arrayed and barking against him, a campaign of verbal terror and negativity aimed at denying tens of millions decent health care." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In the simplistic world of an MSNBC host, "it's a strange, unbalanced battle between a man who wants to do great things and an enemy aimed at ensuring he does not."

Matthews has no problem with using extremist language to demonize his enemies. On July 31, 2013, he labeled Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee "terrorists."

On March 2, 2009, the host wondered if then-Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius would survive the "terrorism of the anti-abortion people" who opposed her.

Via: Newsbusters

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O’Keefe video captures nonprofit Obamacare enrollment group conspiring to engage in political activity

Watch the video below!

An official with the nonprofit Obamacare enrollment group Enroll America conspired to give people’s personal information to what he thought was a political action committee, according to James O’Keefe’s latest video, provided to The Daily Caller.

Enroll America, which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to fundraising for, is a “nonpartisan” 501(c)(3) nonprofit that critics accuse of working as an unofficial Obamacare navigator across the country.

Enroll America’s Texas state communications lead Christopher Tarango conspired to provide a list of potential Obamacare enrollees, obtained through the “commit cards” that the group hands out door to door to help them pick insurance plans, to an O’Keefe investigator posing as the representative of a political action committee.

Via Daily Caller

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Affordable Care Act: lessons on innovation rollouts, expectations and naysayers

You are managing a new innovation, with billions at stake and a deadline looming. But people with their noses in the details are telling you that you can forget about getting it done on time.

Your gut tells you to push past the naysayers, rally the troops and do the impossible. But what if the naysayers are right?

The recent troubles with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, which has put Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and others on the hot seat, have brought this classic management dilemma into focus.

Leadership and management experts seem to agree that success in this situation – the ability to know when problems are real and deadlines and quality are in jeopardy – depends on a culture that expects results but demands the truth.

“You need to have a management team that’s comfortable with exposing problems as soon as they become aware of them,” said Patrick Magoon, CEO and president of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Magoon knows big projects. He oversaw the construction of the hospital’s $855 million new home, completed on time and under budget last year.

“Everybody knows there are going to be problems,” he said. “There are going to be issues. It all comes out in the wash sooner or later. How you handle that first problem is important, because it sets the tone.”

Leonard Gingerella, clinical professor of entrepreneurship at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business, said it’s important to establish expectations and benchmarks ahead of time.

"If you start with a lie, you're going to end with a lie," he said. "You have to insist on really strong performance criteria."

Via: Chicago Tribune

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HHS Plans to Spend Up to $7B to Find Ways to Reduce Costs Under Obamacare

The Department of Health and Human Services revealed on Wednesday a plan to spend up to $7 billion to find ways to reduce spending under the Affordable Care Act while maintaining or improving the quality of health care.  The solicitation for bids for this wide-ranging project appeared today on the Federal Business Opportunities website:

The purpose is to develop a Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design, and Analysis (RMADA) IDIQ [Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity] to respond to expanded needs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (ACA) and Health Care reform ACT (HCERA). The work awarded under the RMADA will involve the design, implementation and evaluation of a broad range of research and/or payment and service delivery models to test their potential for reducing expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and uninsured beneficiaries while maintaining or improving quality of care.

While the contract is to be an IDIQ contract, meaning that the quantity of work is variable and therefore the price to be paid is not fixed, documents accompanying the contract indicate the maximum is set at $7 billion over the life of the contract:

Via: Weekly Standard

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