Obamacare cost...

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Wait... So 38% of the enrollees need to be "young invincibles" or 38% of all "young invincibles" need to enroll for Obamacare (oops, I mean) the ACA? I assume the former.

Of course given the "got insurance?" ads I am guessing they assume those "young invincibles" must be mostly brainless... Just how does one get pregnant from a cardboard cut-out of Ryan Gosling?

38% of the enrollees need to be 18-35.

When you think about it, it's wholly unrealistic because people up to the age of 26 can be on their parents insurance.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Wait... So 38% of the enrollees need to be "young invincibles" or 38% of all "young invincibles" need to enroll for Obamacare (oops, I mean) the ACA? I assume the former.

Of course given the "got insurance?" ads I am guessing they assume those "young invincibles" must be mostly brainless... Just how does one get pregnant from a cardboard cut-out of Ryan Gosling?

This is the quote from the WaPo:

How many younger people are needed each year to hold down premiums depends on how many people sign up for the marketplaces. If the total this year is 7 million people, then about 2.7 million need to be in the 18-to-35 set.

There's no effing way they can pull that off.

[Uncle Ted]

38% of the enrollees need to be 18-35.

When you think about it, it's wholly unrealistic because people up to the age of 26 can be on their parents insurance.

Yeah, I am guessing a lot of the "young invincibles" will pay the $95/1% fee/tax and then move to Vermont to take advantage of the "Everybody in, nobody out" single payer healthcare if that cardboard Ryan Gosling does somehow get them pregnant.

[Uncle Ted]

Hmm... So if you get medicaid subsidies to help pay for insurance that you don't want but are mandated to buy then the government can go after your estate to recovery the money it paid for those subsidies?

I've been looking into this issue for the last couple of years, and here's something I think is very important that many people don't seem to be thinking about: Medicaid + ACA + Estate Recovery = a mechanism whereby a large number of people in the lower income brackets may be just about to find ourselves paying hugely disproportionate sums for the privilege of being covered by Medicaid, even briefly or intermittently. There's a nicely succinct explanation on this page:

Affordable Care Act of 2010. Estate recovery will be forced on millions of people who might have otherwise gone without insurance. Why? Because the plan is that millions more Americans have health insurance. That would be accomplished by expanding Medicaid and implementing premium assistance (subsidies). When a person is found to be eligible for Medicaid, they will be automatically enrolled into their state's Medicaid program. Those forced into Medicaid will, due to the federal law, also be forced into estate recovery. Their estates will be partly or fully taken over by the federal or state government when they die.

[...]
How will this play out? No one knows, as far as I can tell. But it is easy to see how this could become a real problem. If someone is low income and goes on Medicaid, will Medicaid put a lien on their house? If they need to sell their house and move, will they then lose all their equity in paying off the lien? Will people get hit with bills and liens for many thousands of dollars, even if they were healthy and hardly ever went to the doctor?


Why is it that Medicaid is pretty much cost free to use up to age 54 if you qualify, and suddenly becomes a collateral loan at age 55, for which a state agency will do its best to collect payment in full for every cost assigned? It seems clear that the Estate Recovery law did not anticipate the current circumstance with the ACA, and that putting the two laws together makes for a terribly unfair situation for some. What can we do to remedy this situation?
[...]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1...-Consequences#

[thesaint258]

While I don't have the official numbers (because the broker who's supposed to present our plans for next year has cancelled the informational meeting twice), it looks like my premiums will go up while receiving fewer benefits. Awesome.

[Uncle Ted]

While I don't have the official numbers (because the broker who's supposed to present our plans for next year has cancelled the informational meeting twice), it looks like my premiums will go up while receiving fewer benefits. Awesome.

Since I believe you are one of those "young invincibles" maybe this ACA ad will help you feel better about paying more and getting less....

[thesaint258]

Since I believe you are one of those "young invincibles" maybe this ACA ad will help you feel better about paying more and getting less....

Getting drunk probably is the only way to feel better about it.

[All-American]

Getting drunk probably is the only way to feel better about it.

Seriously. I keep wondering why we haven't seen parodies of these ads like we saw with "Life of Julia." Then I looked at the ads again and figured it out.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

While I don't have the official numbers (because the broker who's supposed to present our plans for next year has cancelled the informational meeting twice), it looks like my premiums will go up while receiving fewer benefits. Awesome.

Saint, I'm sure you're going to derive a lifetime of satisfaction knowing that you're subsidizing people that don't work and are used to not paying a dime for their medical care. You're taking one for the team and Obama and the Democrats are confident that the positive feelings you derive from this selfless behavior forcibly extracted from you will ensure that they get your vote in the coming decades.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Katy pointed this item out weeks ago, but it has ended up becoming a media story in its own right.

Basically, the Obamacare website doesn't allow people to poke their nose in and shop around. The reason is simple -- they don't want people to shit their pants when they see how bad they're getting reamed. Instead, they want everyone to enter in all their information so the website can reduce the sticker shock for some of the people that sign up -- but not all obviously.

So, Henry Chao tells Congress that they scrapped this "Anonymous Shopper" function because it simply wasn't working. I know this might surprise a few of you given how straightforward the Obama administration has been since October 1 and how willing it's been to shoulder responsibility, but it turns out that Chao wasn't being truthful.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/22/politi...per/index.html

This is important because a big reason why the website sucks is because the Obama Administration wanted to prevent people from just seeing the prices. They instead required everyone to first enter in their information. This made the website even more unwieldy and likely to fail. But on top of that they still released the website knowing that everyone would have to enter in their personal info, they had to do so because Obama wanted to continue hiding the ball as long as possible, AND they knew that the website was a huge security risk.

[Uncle Ted]

State confirms health website security breach

Officials overseeing the Vermont HealthConnect website confirmed Friday there was a security breach on the system last month in which one user got improper access to another user’s Social Security number and other data.


A report from state to federal officials overseeing the health insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act said a consumer reported the incident with the Vermont Health Connect website on Oct. 17.


The consumer, whom officials would not identify, reported that he received in the mail — from an unnamed sender — a copy of his own application for insurance under the state exchange.

“On the back of the envelope was hand-written ‘VERMONT HEALTH CONNECT IS NOT A SECURE WEBSITE!’ This was also (written) on the back of the last page of the printed out application,” said the incident report.
[...]

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/v...ecurity-breach

It was most likely a bad password. I doubt it will happen again.

[All-American]

2015 insurance rate due date pushed back from mid-October to mid-November 2014. You know, just after the elections.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ic-looks-like/

I feel like Democrats are trying to get out as much of their dirty laundry as they can during this month, in the hopes that it will freshen up after a year of airing out.

[Uncle Ted]

Few attend local health insurance exchange seminars

FARMINGTON — Officials from the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange have reached out to communities throughout the state to explain the exchange and new insurance plans, periodically holding seminars in San Juan County.


But many of those seminars have been sparsely attended. A free health insurance exchange seminar and dinner scheduled last week in Bloomfield was cancelled due to a lack of response.


"We advertised for three weeks before, put it on our reader board and hand-delivered invitations to various doctor's offices and small businesses," said Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce President Janet Mackey. "We only had seven people RSVP, and since we were also going to be providing dinner, we thought with so few people it would be a waste of resources."


Only 10 people attended a separate seminar in Wednesday at the Courtyard by Marriott in Farmington.
[...]

http://www.daily-times.com/four_corn...hange-seminars

57% of the people in New Mexico voted for Obama in 2008 and they can't even get folks to attend these seminars even when offering free dinners?

[Uncle Ted]

US hospitals look to provide insurance for poor patients

US hospitals are exploring ways to buy “Obamacare” insurance plans for their sickest and poorest patients as they strain under the weight of tens of billions of dollars in uncompensated costs from the uninsured.


But the move is opposed by the Obama administration and insurers, who fear it could add to the turmoil surrounding the new healthcare marketplace.

[...]

“Hospital and drug companies pay patients’ premiums and cost-sharing in order to increase utilisation of treatments and prescription drugs that benefit them financially,” said Robert Zirkelback of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the insurers’ lobby group. “This practice drives up healthcare costs for consumers, employers, and taxpayers.”


Hospitals have traditionally been barred from buying insurance for patients under strict federal anti-kickback laws, but hospitals received what they interpreted as a green light to start buying insurance plans late last month.


Kathleen Sebelius, the health secretary, said in a letter that the plans that are being sold on online health exchanges are not considered “federal healthcare programmes”. Legally, the hospital industry said that means that federal anti-kickback rules do not apply to the insurance plans being sold on the Healthcare.gov website.

[...]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/11ee6...#axzz2llMhJrt0

Cool, hospitals paying for the insurance premiums for the sick and poor. Sounds good to me.

Death spiral is an insurance plan with costs that rapidly increase as a result of changes in the covered population. It is the result of adverse selection in insurance policies where lower risk policy holders choose to change policies or be uninsured. The term is found in the academic literature at least as early as Cutler and Zeckhauser's 1998 paper "Adverse Selection in Health Insurance" which refers explicitly to an "adverse selection death spiral".[1]
[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)

Sh*t.

[Eddie]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/11ee6...#axzz2llMhJrt0

Cool, hospitals paying for the insurance premiums for the sick and poor. Sounds good to me....

I'm confused. Obama does or does not want everyone to have insurance?