What is going to come of Obamacare?

[Goatnapper'96]

This movement to prevent the regulations from eliminating old insurance plans could be a rather large impediment to the bill's success. It is creating that ol adverse selection dilemma that folks on the right have been warning about for quite sometime. This industry is so complex with so many interrelated parts that this bill, and its various "political fixes" have had to have caused so much disruption. Now it appears that to some extent the private market is not going to be blown to pieces, which I think this bill needs for its success in order to get enough into the exchange pools. I don't know how the Democrats will thread this needle and not get devestated at the 2014 mid-terms.

Recall that next year at election time the employer mandate dropped insurance notification notices will be rolling out. I think the hope is many employers will send their employees to the exchanges for coverage to help the exchange pools. However, while that might make for policy some think is good, it will not make for good politics. The way I have watched the planned destruction of the individual insurance marketplace unfold leaves me convinced that our dear Democratic friends whose careers hang in the balance might no longer have the courage of their convictions.

[Vic Vega]

I killed the other thread after 1,432 posts when I posted there. Let me save you some effort and do the same here a little sooner.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

This movement to prevent the regulations from eliminating old insurance plans could be a rather large impediment to the bill's success. It is creating that ol adverse selection dilemma that folks on the right have been warning about for quite sometime. This industry is so complex with so many interrelated parts that this bill, and its various "political fixes" have had to have caused so much disruption. Now it appears that to some extent the private market is not going to be blown to pieces, which I think this bill needs for its success in order to get enough into the exchange pools. I don't know how the Democrats will thread this needle and not get devestated at the 2014 mid-terms.

Recall that next year at election time the employer mandate dropped insurance notification notices will be rolling out. I think the hope is many employers will send their employees to the exchanges for coverage to help the exchange pools. However, while that might make for policy some think is good, it will not make for good politics. The way I have watched the planned destruction of the individual insurance marketplace unfold leaves me convinced that our dear Democratic friends whose careers hang in the balance might no longer have the courage of their convictions.

Here's what I think -- the numbers right now would have to be multiplied by a factor of 10 if Obama's own regulations are to be believed. The federal registry from three years ago has estimates on the number of employer plans that will be eliminated and it was something like 50%. Just think about that number -- it has to be at least 50 million people affected.

Obama is probably going to try putting off the employer mandate again in an effort to avoid an apocalypse in 2014. But that would just mean it would be kicking in at this time in 2015 and look at the outcry right now. Again, we're talking about a crapload of people that will be losing their insurance and doctors when the employer mandate kicks in. Judging by the sheer numbers, we're potentially talking about enough Democrats defecting in 2015 to override a veto is Obama holds his ground. I'm not entirely convinced he'll do that. On top of that, he can't just put it off again until 2016. The new president would undoubtedly be GOP and he'd just kill the bill his first day in office.

[Goatnapper'96]

Here's what I think -- the numbers right now would have to be multiplied by a factor of 10 if Obama's own regulations are to be believed. The federal registry from three years ago has estimates on the number of employer plans that will be eliminated and it was something like 50%. Just think about that number -- it has to be at least 50 million people affected.

Obama is probably going to try putting off the employer mandate again in an effort to avoid an apocalypse in 2014. But that would just mean it would be kicking in at this time in 2015 and look at the outcry right now. Again, we're talking about a crapload of people that will be losing their insurance and doctors when the employer mandate kicks in. Judging by the sheer numbers, we're potentially talking about enough Democrats defecting in 2015 to override a veto is Obama holds his ground. I'm not entirely convinced he'll do that. On top of that, he can't just put it off again until 2016. The new president would undoubtedly be GOP and he'd just kill the bill his first day in office.

How are the regulations of the employer provided insurance policies going to impact the employer mandate? My logic is that the regulations that have been rolled out over the past few years have purposely been designed to incentivize many employers who have been providing insurance to their employees to rescind the insurance benefit and send employees to the exchanges. Obamacare needs folks in the exchanges to work. For various reasons we offer a very generous coverage so we are not anticipating any problems with the regulations but my instinct is the same dynamics at work in the individual market will be hitting the employee market. I haven't followed it closely but I wonder how many employer plans will be regulated out of the market. Have those regulations kicked in yet? Do they exist? Were the regs suspended until the employer mandate kicks in?

[Vic Vega]

Less than 5% of people are responsible for more than 50% of the healthcare costs. If people don't follow the mandate and get insurance in the 1st year I don't see how this does not get much worse next year.

I have a guess that the small number of people who jumped through the hoops in this 1st month are not the people insurers want to take on. If the price shoot through the roof next year, this thing is dead.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

How are the regulations of the employer provided insurance policies going to impact the employer mandate? My logic is that the regulations that have been rolled out over the past few years have purposely been designed to incentivize many employers who have been providing insurance to their employees to rescind the insurance benefit and send employees to the exchanges. Obamacare needs folks in the exchanges to work. For various reasons we offer a very generous coverage so we are not anticipating any problems with the regulations but my instinct is the same dynamics at work in the individual market will be hitting the employee market. I haven't followed it closely but I wonder how many employer plans will be regulated out of the market. Have those regulations kicked in yet? Do they exist? Were the regs suspended until the employer mandate kicks in?

Look at the other thread I posted the reg from. Obama predicted that over 50% of the policies would fail in 2013 when Obamacare started.

The gig is up for Obama on this point. He continued lying until yesterday. If the employer kicks in and 50 million people lose their health insurance, then people start grabbing their pitchforks. All the blame.will be on Obama. He's stuck in a position where he has to prevent everyone fun losing their insurance next year but he can't do it because the exchanges will fail.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Less than 5% of people are responsible for more than 50% of the healthcare costs. If people don't follow the mandate and get insurance in the 1st year I don't see how this does not get much worse next year.

I have a guess that the small number of people who jumped through the hoops in this 1st month are not the people insurers want to take on. If the price shoot through the roof next year, this thing is dead.

That's true but Obama sent a message to the insurers last month that the risk corridors would cover them. The Risk Corridor is basically a subsidy to the insurers. I imagine that Obama is also working behind the scenes to give more money to the insurance companies if they stop canceling people now that he put the administrative fix in place.

Which is why Marco Rubio is introducing a bill to get rid of the risk corridors. Barack Obama hasn't exactly been shy about bastardizing legislation and making shit up as he goes along. So, it appears as if the new work around is to essentially pay the insurance companies for their losses from these horrible risk pools.

[Omaha 680]

I was going to post Krauthammer's column from today in the other thread but it fits better here.

So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.

Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats against Obamacare. Within hours, that rebellion went loudly public. By Thursday, President Obama had been forced into a rear-guard holding action, asking insurers to grant a one-year extension of current plans.

The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority considers him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama.

This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges,” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.

The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.

Perhaps it won’t go down. Perhaps the Web portal hums beautifully on Nov. 30. Perhaps they’ll find a way to restore the canceled policies without wrecking the financial underpinning of the exchanges.

Perhaps. The more likely scenario, however, is that Obamacare does fail. It either fails politically, renounced by a wide consensus that includes a growing number of Democrats, or it succumbs to the financial complications (the insurance “death spiral”) of the very amendments desperately tacked on to save it.

If it does fail, the effect will be historic. Obamacare will take down with it more than Mary Landrieu and Co. It will discredit Obama’s new liberalism for years to come.

I agree with this. There is a reason Democrats are starting to run for the hills. This legislation was every liberal politicians wet dream for the past 30 years, but it is going to turn out to be an albatross around their neck.

[imanihonjin]

I was going to post Krauthammer's column from today in the other thread but it fits better here.
I agree with this. There is a reason Democrats are starting to run for the hills. This legislation was every liberal politicians wet dream for the past 30 years, but it is going to turn out to be an albatross around their neck.

Yeah, but did Krauthammer know that most of the bill is nothing more than Republican ideas and that this is really all their fault for not participating in Obamacare talk despite the fact that not one of their votes were needed or obtained?

[LA Ute]

One thing that will come of it is a big dent in Obama's credibility, which is probably a good thing if it keeps him from implementing additional "transformational" initiatives:

Walter Russell Mead:

All this has plunged the White House into the deepest hole of the Obama presidency to date, but the biggest shock isn’t about the cruddy rollout, the kludgy law or the disingenuous sales job by which it was passed. The biggest shock and the most damning revelation came in the President’s hasty and awkward press conference when President Obama responded to a reporter’s question about his knowledge of the website’s problems:

OK. On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as — the way it was supposed to. Ha[d] I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great. You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right. And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

Reflect on that for a moment. The President of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office day after day. The West Wing is stuffed with high power aides. His political appointees sit atop federal bureaucracies, monitoring the work of the career staff around them. The President has told his core team, over and over, that the health care law and the website rollout are his number one domestic priorities.

And with all this, neither he nor, apparently, anyone in his close circle of aides and advisors knew that the website was a disaster. Vapid, blind, idly flapping their lips; they pushed paper, attended meetings and edited memos as the roof came crashing down. It is one thing to fail; it is much, much worse not to see failure coming. There is no way to construe this as anything but a world class flop.

[Goatnapper'96]

One thing that will come of it is a big dent in Obama's credibility, which is probably a good thing if it keeps him from implementing additional "transformational" initiatives:

Walter Russell Mead:

He has been through since he threw all his weight behind gun control and couldn't get it out of the Senate. He has nothing to offer and he knows it. Eventually his popularity will return because he is the first black President and emotionally folks are unable to fathom him failing unless he is specifically screwing up their lives. Assuming that the Republicans still control the House after next year's midterms, then as far as governing or accomplishing anything on his agenda it will be done including enormous concessions to Republicans or it just won't get done. I could be wrong but I don't think compromise is something he likes or wants to do.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

One thing that will come of it is a big dent in Obama's credibility, which is probably a good thing if it keeps him from implementing additional "transformational" initiatives:

Walter Russell Mead:

It's going to prevent him from passing anything of substance in the Congress unless it's essentially a conservative idea, like welfare reform in 1996. But we'll never see something like that out of Barack Obama.

What we will see is virtually unprecedented abuses of administrative power and ignoring of statutory law in favor of administrative fiat. It will be done with the cynical mindset that the Supreme Court won't be able to reign him in before the end of his term or before the cause of action is rendered moot due to the temporary nature of the original action. A case in point is what Obama did on Thursday. The insurance companies are placed in an impossible position and even if there were something concrete with Obama's administrative fix (I'm skeptical that there are any teeth to it), there's no way the courts could scale back what he did because it's only lasting for one year.

Obamacare will eventually totally fail in its current state. The only way it will be saved is with administrative shenanigans which may happen through the risk-corridor provisions in the statute/regs. It's lawless and damaging to the structure of government. That will be the legacy of the Obama Administration.

[il Padrino Ute]

One thing that will come of it is a big dent in Obama's credibility, which is probably a good thing if it keeps him from implementing additional "transformational" initiatives:

Walter Russell Mead:

According to this article in Time, Obama doesn't know about what's going on because folks in his administration are afraid to report bad news to him.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

This Gallup poll suggests that now that people have a better understanding of what costs are associated with providing everyone with healthcare (or that the idea is seriously being considered), people don't much like it.

And again, just imagine what will happen if 50 million people find out they're getting booted off their insurance.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/165917/ma...4kcgKA.twitter

[Goatnapper'96]

Nothing moves people towards the conservative camp better than real life experience. One of the biggest problems I think liberals have is I believe the personality types drawn to the nuts and bolts of things tend to be more conservative. One problem I think conservatives have is the people drawn to flowery branding and messaging tend to be liberal. We are ending up with liberals winning the messaging wars, getting the votes, until they ineptly roll out crap and then have this faith inspiring look of "WTF just happened?" when it all comes tumbling down. The President of the United States indicated in a presser that he was surprised by the rollout of his healthcare exchanges. I am not talking about his lying about being surprised people's insurance was cancelled, that was part of the political goal to keep his exchanges afloat. I am talking about the laughingstock of his company's most important rollout of his tenure as CEO. He really did not know that was going to happen. I am sure he is busy hanging out with the gals from the View and whatnot, but honestly he is just not up to the task of being in charge of this type of stuff. But the flowery prose and promises of shaingra-la that facilitated him getting there were very comforting to many people, I suppose. In any event I think those people have been shaken back to being American. In the President's hope is a method pocket rest assured these people have short memories. I wonder how he polls now for feeling the pain of the middle class or whatever stupid shit our pollsters ask that end up saying more about how stupid we are than about the President.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...004.html?hp=l3