Obamacare cost...

[myboynoah]

I also have a better answer relating to ER and my Humana plans being extended into 2014. Apparently the insurance companies have always had the option of doing an early 2014 renew by December 2013. Ezra Klein clarified this in a tweet where he is essentially commenting that Obama's fix essentially means nothing as to whether people's plans will be cancelled or not.

So, the real reason why Obama is doing this is to shift the spotlight onto insurers and blame them for dropping coverage.

Obama has been trying to do this all along, but it didn't stick the first time. Might as well try it again.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Obama has been trying to do this all along, but it didn't stick the first time. Might as well try it again.

I'm actually surprised that Obama didn't let the Republicans get their fingerprints on some bill that allows people to keep their plans. There are competing bills -- Landreau's and Kate Upton's uncle's bill. Upton's bill would have been vetoed by the President, but it would have never made it past the Senate anyway. His bill would have allowed people to still go out and buy plans that have been available in 2013. Basically, that would have just given anyone an escape hatch away from the inflated exchange prices. Landreau's plan would essentially force insurance companies to keep people off of the exchanges. The GOP would have found Landreau's blunt government force against the insurance companies repugnant while the Democrats would have objected to Upton's bill essentially hollowing out the Obamacare exchanges -- but both would have hastened the destruction of the exchanges this year. It's likely that the compromised bill would have looked like Obama's administrative fix.

Obama's administrative fix is much less dramatic than either Upton or Landreau's plans, and it's unlikely to really curb much of anything. The difference now is that Obama still can't pin blame on the Republicans. So, I think Obama actually did the Republicans a favor. While the Democratic Senate and GOP House would have been duking it out on competing bills, the Democrats with their natural media advantage would have bashed the Republicans over the head while they fought against Landreau's bill. Then when the inevitable compromise occurs and the death spiral continues or speeds up, then the Democrats would pin the blame on the Republicans forcing this issue and passing this law.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

The State of Washington refuses to acknowledge Obama's administrative fix.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/S...231949931.html

...yeah, I'd say the GOP needs to lay off that Upton bill for the time being.

[SCcoug]

Does Obama have the authority to arbitrarily change the requirement without a legislative change (I know he has done it to other pieces of the law)?

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Not in this case. The grandfather clause in the statute has been clearly violated. The plans had to have been in existence prior to the passage of Obamacare. It is within the purview of the Obama Administration to pass regulations about what exactly is grandfathered in as long as it doesn't violate the clear language of the statute. Basically the regs they put in place don't violate the statute. But Obama's fix today does violate it because it allows in plans that were bought after the enactment of Obamacare.

Some people have mentioned that forcing the insurers to draft the letters explaining their options is also an extra-statutory thing. I'm not so sure about that because the insurers don't have to actually send out the letters unless they're offering to reinstate/maintain someone's policy and it seems like the extra language of "Hey! You can buy at a higher price shittier insurance that covers drug treatment and sex change operations! Come one, come all!" that has to be put in the letter could be something validly passed through regulation.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Wait-- THAT Kate Upton?

Yep, that's her uncle.

I would also add that the most bipartisan, universally-agreed upon principle in this country is the magnificence of his niece's rack.

[Pelado]

Jonah Goldberg describing the early days of the healthcare.gov launch:

To be sure, there was some apparent plausibility to the claim that the website was working only too well, because the White House lied so confidently about what was going on. Few critics grasped at first that this was going to be the Charlie Sheen of IT launches — a spectacularly mortifying failure, punctuated with desperate shrieks of “Winning!”

http://nationalreview.com/article/36...dberg/page/0/1

[Vic Vega]

Jonah Goldberg describing the early days of the healthcare.gov launch:



http://nationalreview.com/article/36...dberg/page/0/1

I have not followed this too closely, but it sounded like it wasn't a secret that the site was not ready for prime time at the launch. I don't understand how not delaying the launch for a few months would not have been better for Obama.

[Omaha 680]

I have not followed this too closely, but it sounded like it wasn't a secret that the site was not ready for prime time at the launch. I don't understand how not delaying the launch for a few months would not have been better for Obama.

Luke Vega: Your overconfidence is your weakness.

Barack Palpatine: Your faith in your friends is yours.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I have not followed this too closely, but it sounded like it wasn't a secret that the site was not ready for prime time at the launch. I don't understand how not delaying the launch for a few months would not have been better for Obama.

Goldberg pointed out a while ago that Obama was an idiot for not allowing a delay during the government shutdown. If he had made that concession, guess who be blamed for all the cancelled policies right now?

[LA Ute]

Richard Fernandez:

Obama is waist deep in quicksand. The first rule of quicksand is not to struggle; to swim your way out. But Obama won’t. Can’t. The deeper he gets the harder he thrashes. No shame. No self control. And therefore this may end in the manner of the Beast From Hollow Mountain.

Plus this:

Meanwhile the conservatives, who cannot at present account for more than half the voters, are in a strategic waiting game. At best they can consolidate the half into the nether millstone against which events may grind. The single greatest task for conservatives is to fix their own leadership problems. In so doing they must avoid the single greatest mistake Obama has made, which is to rely on fantasy. The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter.

And this from Peggy Noonan:

People are wondering if we are seeing the end of liberalism. We are not. Liberalism, a great and storied American political tradition, will survive this. But progressivism—liberalism without blood—has been badly, deeply damaged. We are seeing the end of its first major emanation, ObamaCare.

[Indy Coug]

American Academy of Actuaries: You're just making things worse.

http://www.actuary.org/files/NewsRel...2013-11-14.pdf

[YOhio]

American Academy of Actuaries: You're just making things worse.

http://www.actuary.org/files/NewsRel...2013-11-14.pdf

Are there rivalries amongst actuaries? Like the health people hate the life people?

[Indy Coug]

Are there rivalries amongst actuaries? Like the health people hate the life people?

Health actuaries are actuaries that can't hack it in the life world.

[Uncle Ted]

Did Fox News just buy Obama's home town news paper, the Chicago Tribune?

Stop digging. Start over.

As Friday dawns, here's what a health insurance crisis looks like to many millions of Americans: Barely six weeks shy of 2014, they do not know whether they will have medical coverage Jan. 1. Or which hospitals and doctors they might patronize. Or what they may pay to protect themselves and their families against the chance of medical and financial catastrophe. How much, that is, they may pay in order to satisfy the Democratic politicians and federal bureaucrats who are worsening a metastasizing health coverage fiasco.


For perhaps 5 million of those Americans thus far — estimates vary — the Washington-ordered cancellation of their policies is especially maddening. In the past these people took responsibility for their coverage and bought policies that balanced their needs, finances and personal choices. Congress and President Barack Obama, by enacting the Affordable Care Act, in effect ordered insurers to dismantle many of those individual plans — and cancel those policies.
[...]

But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.


We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program ... under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.


What we don't understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that "we fumbled the rollout of this health care law" would have been pleased to hear him add: So we're admitting it. This law is a bust. We're starting over.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...,4468841.story


VC, tell me it isn't so.