Obama Weekly Address: The Affordable Care Act is Here to Stay

In this week's address, the President called the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act a victory for hardworking Americans across the country, whose lives are more secure because of this law.  The Affordable Care Act is working, and it is here to stay. So far more than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained coverage.  Nearly one in three Americans who was uninsured a few years ago is insured today. The uninsured rate in America is the lowest since we began to keep such records. With this case behind us, the President reaffirmed his commitment to getting more people covered and making health care in America even better and more affordable.

Via: Whitehouse.gov

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Hidden Costs of Health Benefit Mandates

The upcoming King v. Burwell ruling, with its ramifications for the Affordable Care Act, has health-insurance costs back in the spotlight. Health-care mandates in particular have been an ongoing source of controversy. But states have been quietly passing their own health-insurance benefit mandates —requirements that insurers cover specific treatments and conditions — for decades, and there's much we can learn from them.

The number of state-level health-insurance mandates has steadily grown since the 1960s, with the average state imposing nearly 40. This growth surged recently due to the ACA's "Essential Health Benefits." The scope of the services targeted by these mandates varies widely, from cancer screening and prenatal care to acupuncture and chiropractic services.

Some mandated services seem essential to an adequate health-insurance plan, while others are of questionable benefit. What they all have in common is that they increase the cost of insurance by raising premiums for the people and employers who buy it. And higher premiums lead to other hidden costs as well.

In new research for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, we find evidence that new state health-insurance mandates distort state economies by leading to the existence of more large firms and fewer small firms.

The key to understanding how state mandates affect firm size lies in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Under ERISA, employers who self-insure (that is, directly bear the cost of paying their employees'benefit claims instead of buying coverage from an insurance company) are exempt from state health-insurance mandates. While technically a firm of any size is able to self-insure its health plan, in practice it is only the largest employers who opt for this form of coverage. This is because any form of insurance is more cost-effective when risk is pooled over a larger population.

A large employer can easily absorb the cost of one employee's expensive cancer treatment, because the costs are relatively insignificant when spread out among its many more fortunate workers. However, if a small business had to pay the entire cost of the same cancer treatment, it could go bankrupt.

These incentives are clearly illustrated by breaking down the self-insurance rate by firm size. Approximately 84 percent of employees at large firms (employers with at least 1,000 workers) are covered via self-insurance plans, compared with only 13 percent of employees at small firms (fewer than 50 employees).

Because it is easier and cheaper for large firms to self-insure, and thus escape state health-benefit mandates, they face less of a burden than small firms. This grants them a competitive advantage in the form of lower labor costs. The result is surprising: We find that each state health-benefit mandate leads to about 3,000 fewer small firms (with, for instance, 15 workers each), but about 20 more large firms with 1,000 or more workers. The overall level of employment is essentially unchanged.

If there is no change in overall employment, just a shift in the size of the firm employing the average worker, why should we care? While it may seem harmless, the shift could actually have serious implications for the overall productivity of our economy. Take job growth, for example. A recent study found that new, small firms (as opposed to larger, more established firms) were the primary creators of new jobs. Given these results, we should be wary of any policy which places heavy burdens on small employers.

Via: Real Clear Policy

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[VIDEO] HHS to Congress on ObamaCare court ruling: It’s your problem

President Obama's top health official testified Wednesday that if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that upends the Affordable Care Act, it's up to Congress and the states to figure out a solution.

President Obama's top health official testified Wednesday that if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that upends the Affordable Care Act, it's up to Congress and the states to figure out a solution. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, addressed questions over what will happen if the court rules against the administration on the health law. 

A decision is expected in days on whether insurance subsidies can legally be distributed to customers who buy insurance through the federal HealthCare.gov -- as opposed to those getting insurance through state-based exchanges. If the court rules against the administration, millions of people stand to lose their current subsidies. 

Burwell made clear that the administration is not offering an alternative plan at this point, and instead wants Congress and the states to work it out. 

"If the court says that we do not have the authority to give subsidies, the critical decisions will sit with the Congress and states and governors to determine if those subsidies are available," she testified, adding that the administration would be "ready to communicate" and work with states to "do everything we can." 

Via: Fox News

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Obama: Notice You Haven’t Heard Any Obamacare Horror Stories Lately?

In a round of questions following his remarks on the G7 Summit in Germany Monday morning, President Barack Obama dismissed the King v Burwell Supreme Court case as a tortured misreading of the law, and added, “Anyway, the thing’s working!”

“Part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass,” Obama said, citing significantly higher insured rates and lower health care costs. “None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.”

The King case questions whether the federal premium subsidies were meant to be part of the law; an ambiguous sentence suggests they might have been withheld to pressure states into creating their own exchanges. But most involved in the writing and passing of the Affordable Care Act say it was a vestigial idea long abandoned by the time the law was passed.

If the subsidies were overturned, however, it would wreak havoc in the health care industry, if not the economy in general. One reporter asked why Obama didn’t have a Plan B in this event.

He responded that the ACA was a complex and interconnected piece of legislation that would be difficult to untangle, though he added that Congress could just fix the ambiguous sentence.

“This would be hard to fix,” he said. “Fortunately, there’s no reason to have to do it. It doesn’t need fixing.”

Via: Mediaite

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Obamacare Exchanges on Life Support

By Michelle Malkin

At a recent White House science fair celebrating inventors, a Girl Scout who helped design a Lego-powered page-turning device asked President Obama what he had ever thought up or prototyped. Stumbling for an answer, he replied:

"I came up with things like, you know, health care."

Ah, yes. "Health care." Remember when the president's signature Obamacare health insurance exchanges were going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, the remote control, jogger strollers, Siri, the Keurig coffee maker, driverless cars and Legos all rolled into one?

The miraculous, efficient, cost-saving, innovative 21st-century government-run "marketplaces" were supposed to put the "affordable" in Obama's Affordable Care Act. Know-it-all bureaucrats were going to show private companies how to set up better websites (gigglesnort), implement better marketing and outreach (guffaw), provide superior customer service (belly laugh), and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse (LOLOLOL).

You will be shocked beyond belief, I'm sure, to learn that Obamacare exchanges across the country are instead bleeding money, seeking more taxpayer bailouts and turning everything they touch to chicken poop.

Wait, that's not fair to chicken poop, which can at least be composted.

"Almost half of Obamacare exchanges face financial struggles in the future," The Washington Post reported last week. The news comes despite $5 billion in federal taxpayer subsidies for IT vendors, call centers and all the infrastructure and manpower needed to prop up the showcase government health insurance entities. Initially, the feds ran 34 state exchanges; 16 states and the District of Columbia set up their own.

While private health insurance exchanges have operated smoothly and satisfied customers for decades, the Obamacare models are on life support. Oregon's exchange is six feet under — shuttered last year after government overseers squandered $300 million on their failed website and shady consultants who allegedly set up a phony website to trick the feds. The FBI and the U.S. HHS inspector general's office reportedly have been investigating the racket for more than a year now.

Via: CNS News
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Obamacare Penalty May Not Be High Enough For Middle Incomes

Even though penalties under the Affordable Care Act for not having health insurance jumped significantly this year, they still might be too low to attract Americans to signup for subsidized coverage, a new analysis shows.

Avalere Health, a Washington health policy and consulting firm, said some middle income healthy individuals would rather pay the fine when they weigh it against spending a few hundred dollars more on insurance.

The fee increased to $325 per adult or 2% of income for 2015,according to healthcare.gov. That compares to a fee of $95 per adult or 1 percent of income for those who went without coverage last year.

“Individuals earning more than double the poverty level may continue to forego coverage since paying the fine is still much more affordable than purchasing insurance,” Caroline Pearson, senior vice president at Avalere, told journalists during a panel discussion Friday on exchanges at the Association of Health Care Journalists annual meeting in Santa Clara.

Via: Forbes

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Costs of ObamaCare bungles start to add up, with Maryland first at about $30.5M

Maryland could end up spending as much as $30.5 million as a result of a glitch in its ObamaCare website, as the Obama administration steps in to help states with problematic exchanges.

Because of Maryland’s defective exchange, the state cannot determine whether customers remain eligible for Medicaid, according to a report by state budget analysts released Thursday.

As a result, the state has agreed with the federal government to a six-month delay in determining eligibility, meaning that payments will continue to be made to customers who are not eligible until the system is fixed. The delay will cost the state $17.8 million in fiscal 2014 and $12.7 million in fiscal 2015, the analysts estimated.

On Friday, the Obama administration said it would suspend some Affordable Care Act rules to help the 14 states with their own ObamaCare sites, particularly Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Oregon, which have had the most problems.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan, completed a day earlier, states the federal government will help pay for “qualified” health-insurance plans for customers in those states who because of “exceptional circumstances” had to buy plans outside of ObamaCare exchanges, as reported first by The Washington Post.

Via: Fox News Politics

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20,000 Montanans' health insurance 'discontinued' by 'Obamacare'

HELENA – In Montana, as many as 20,000 holders of individual health insurance are getting or will get letters from insurers saying their current policy doesn’t comply with "Obamacare" regulations, and is being “discontinued.“

But insurers say the letter is not a cancellation, and that they’re instructing those policyholders how to get comparable coverage, which may or may not cost more.

“It’s important to note that we are not dropping members from their coverage,” said John Doran, director of strategic marketing services for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana. “Our goal is to provide customers with as many options as possible.”

The letters, which are being sent by insurers not only in Montana, but also across the country, have sparked a national outcry from critics of the Affordable Care Act.

They say the letters contradict President Barack Obama’s earlier promise that the ACA, also known as Obamacare, would allow people to keep their current health coverage, if they wanted to.

“We told you Obama’s ‘If you like your health insurance, you can keep it’ promise was false,” Montana Republican Party Chairman Will Deschamps said Wednesday. “We told you Montanans would lose their insurance coverage.”

Under the ACA, virtually all health insurance policies must offer a set of “essential benefits,” starting next year.

Most current policies don’t meet these requirements, so insurers are discontinuing those policies and offering new, ACA-compliant policies for 2014. For some customers, the new policies will be more expensive because they have more generous coverage.

For example, the ACA prohibits policies with extremely high deductibles or high out-of-pocket costs. If a customer has to buy a plan with a lower deductible or lower out-of-pocket costs, the premium likely will be higher.

Via: NRO

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[VIDEO] Stuck in ObamaCare Hell: Man Spends Six Weeks, 60 Hours on Phone Trying to Cancel Plan, Still Can’t

ObamaCare: It’s the roach motel for humans. Once you’re in forget about getting out.

“We are hearing about a new problem that involves the Affordable Care Act,” said the anchor. “People who signed up for coverage are finding it impossible to cancel their plans. Channel 9′s Lori Brown spoke with an Orlando man who has been trying unsuccessfully to cancel for more than six weeks now.”

“Andrew Robinson was looking forward to getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. He has a small publishing business and works part time, so he hasn’t had coverage. In early January he signed up for a plan that cost nearly $300 a month. About a half hour later he and his wife realized they could barely afford that. They quickly found a less expensive plan through Humana for $116 a month,” says the reporter.

“I immediately called back the Florida Blue and asked them to cancel the policy I just set up,” says Robinson.

“But he quickly learned canceling Obamacare is no easy task. … More than six weeks later after spending 50 to 60 hours on the phone his policy is still not canceled and he is still waiting for the payment Florida Blue withdrew from his account to be refunded.”

According to Dingy Harry, he’s clearly lying and making this horror story up.

Via: JWF

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Letters to the Editor: Obamacare may well be a disaster

Dear Editor,

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy; to be followed by a dictatorship."

— Alexander Tyler Fraser

Politicians are judged based on their ability to sell lunacy as public policy. Therefore, aspiring politicians must master the art of marketing, like the astute Barack Obama. Even if one does not revere Mr Obama, we must admire his skills has a marketer. Obama has managed to garner public support for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which is, in essence, a bad policy. And, instead of engaging in a serious debate with his opposition colleagues about the implications of Obamacare, he is trying to score political points by lambasting them and, unfortunately, most people are succumbing to his antics.

It is not surprising that Republicans are being blamed for the government shutdown, although Obama refused to compromise. House Republicans voted to fund the entire government except Obamacare, and the president refused to budge, citing the need to protect a programme that will redound to the benefit of all Americans. But, contrary to the views of the mainstream media and Democrats, Obamacare may be a disaster. Obamacare will require firms with over 50 full-time employees to provide health coverage or pay a fine of $2,000-$3,000 per full-time worker. This has already created jitters in the private sector.

In a recent CNBC survey, 42 per cent of small businesses indicated that they have frozen hiring because of Obamacare; while 38 per cent have scaled down expansion plans, and 18 per cent have reduced working hours. Based on the Central Budget Office's research, the Affordable Health Care Act will result in 800,000 fewer full-time jobs. In addition, the myriad taxes and regulations introduced by this new policy will serve as a disincentive to the private sector.

Like most salesmen, Mr Obama has the potential to sell sloppy products like the Affordable Care Act, hence voters should become more discerning in order to avoid future disasters.

Lipton Matthews

Via: Jamaica Observer

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