Part 2, August, 2013 Obama Care Update: Navigators That Cannot Navigate, More Polls Down On Obama Care, And Breaking The Law That Is Obama Care

Yesterday was the first update for this month regarding the ongoing disaster that is Obama Care. In that post we found that insurance premiums are gong up, not down, as promised by Obama. Insurance companies are either pulling out of state based Obama Care exchanges because they cannot make money by being in them or they are proposing premium increase that are gag-worthy. Opinion polls from the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media news sources all show the substantial opposition to the law’s tenets, requirements, and absurdity.

But all of the bad news could not be contained in just one post, Today we continue with the disasters we did not cover yesterday.

1) The Washington Post recently did an investigative report on the implementation of Obama Care. One aspect of the report is a series of quotes that they found from SUPPORTERS of Obama Care, not the majority of Americans who think Obama Care is not a good thing. As you read these supporters’ quote, remember that we are less than 60 days from a rollout of a major component of the law:

• “Advocates on the ground are really struggling with that group. They want to have a positive message but don’t know what to say.”
• “We’re in an environment [now] where 40 percent are against it, 35 percent are for it and neither side knows what’s actually in it.”
• “How hard does the insurance department or Medicaid department in a red state [that opposes the law] make it to implement this?”
• “Everybody is having sleepless nights given the magnitude of the effort and the short amount of time.”
• “It’s like building a bridge from both ends and hoping, in the end, they connect.”
• “I read [the delay of the employer-mandate] as an admission that not all of the components of the [data] hub are working.”
• “Some of the guidance from the federal government is still coming. That means we can’t get to our wish list.”

I especially like the quote of building a bridge from two different shores and hoping that they actually connect in the middle of the river (this quote could probably apply to all Federal government programs). These are what supporters say about this unfolding fiasco.

2) Two other noteworthy facts were included in the Post’s negative report on Obama Care:

1. A recent  Huffington Post opinion survey found that 52.5% of Americans are against ObamaCare, compared to 40.5% who are for it. This 12-point gap is the largest gap that this poll has ever measured.
2. Another recent survey, according to the article, asked younger Americans whether a $210 premium under Obama Care was affordable. Only 29% of likely marketplace enrollees said yes.

This second point is critical. The Post concluded in its report that if a large number of young Americans do not sign up for Obama Care, which today is a highly likely occurrence according to poll results, the “law will fail.” 

3) Cato had a recent analysis of the potential risk Obama Care faces from a set of lawsuits that have been filed across the country. These lawsuits are particularly important in light of the critical need for the Obama administration to have a lot of young people sign up for Obama Care health care insurance:

• The attorney general of Oklahoma, a group of small businesses, and individual Americans across the country have filed lawsuits which challenge the Obama administration’s plans to issue Obama Care tax credits in the 34 states that have opted not to establish one of Obama Care’s health insurance exchanges themselves. 
• The law’s writing explicitly only  authorizes those credits and related subsidies “through an Exchange established by the State.” 
• Nowhere, and in no manner, does Obama Care allow the administration and Federal government to issue credits through the 34 state Federal-based exchanges established and operated by the Federal government. 
• Despite the wording of the legislation, the White House is trying to spend an estimated $700 billion over 10 years in those 34 states without state health care exchanges and without Congressional authorization.
• Both the non-partisan Congressional Research Service and Harvard Law Review have found that these lawsuits are credible. 
• Plaintiffs in one of the suits have asked the court to block that illegal spending before it begins in 2014. 
• Supporters of the law admit that if that happens, according to the Cato report,  Obama Care does not just fail, it collapses.

It is hard to believe that this monstrosity of a law still works if about 68% of the young Americans in 34 states do not get any support at all to pay for overpriced Federal health insurance exchanges. 

4) We have reported on how many entities, both private and governmental, have had to cut workers and/or cut workers’ hours since Obama Care will impose impossible costs on their operations, costs that require them to find other ways to stay solvent. A recent article from July 23, 2013 in Florida Today reported on how a Florida county has had to cut staff hours strictly as a result of Obama Care:

• Obama Care’s Mandates Would Cost Brevard County $10,000 A Year Per Employee: Brevard County Insurance Director Jerry Visco said every employee added to the county’s health insurance program could cost the county about $10,000 a year per person, and ‘that money is not there’ in the county budget.
• Annual Estimated Total Cost To Brevard County — $1.38 Million A Year: According to Director Visco’s analysis, providing health insurance to 138 part-time workers under Obama Care would cost the county $1.38 million a year.
• To Date, 37 Brevard County Library Employees Have Had Their Hours Cut: Brevard County Library Service Department Director Jeff Thompson said 37 of his department’s employees have had their hours cut as a result of the health care issue. 

More Americans losing salary dollars as a result of a Federal government law that has no chance of being successful. Pitiful.

5) Even though the President has delayed the rollout of some facets of Obama Care for businesses until January, 2015, probably illegally, a recent U.S. Chamber Of Commerce shows how devastating Obama Care will be to small business growth and financial health:

• 24% of small businesses polled say they will reduce hiring as a result of Obama Care‘s tenets, requirements, and taxes.
• 23% of small businesses  plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering Obama Care’s insurance  mandate.
• Only 30% are ready for the law or even understand what is required.
• Dealing with Obama Care is the biggest worry of small businesses.
• The Chamber survey found that "nearly one-in-four employers say the health care bill is their biggest obstacle to hiring more employees."

Different survey of a different set of Americans but the same results: Obama Care is bad news, more costs for little or no problem resolution.

6) Last set of bad news from Obama Care today. The following distressing and scary facts come from a National Review article from July 22, 2013. Much of the following disasters-waiting-to happen come from testimony given to Congress’ House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the spring of 2013. Hold on for what will scare the daylights out of you:

• Obama Care "navigators" are supposed to be highly trained specialists that will help Americans understand and obtain the best health care insurance for themselves under Obama Care insurance exchanges. They will theoretically have access to every American’s personal information including name, address, medical history, social security numbers, etc., an identity thief’s data paradise.
• Given that 34 states will not be setting up exchanges, the Federal government will now have to find resources to become navigators and are turning to a wide variety of organizations that have no experience in health care and health care insurance including Planned Parenthood, churches, senior citizens groups, and other organizations that are ill prepared to get things right.
• The Government Accountability Office recently reported that the administration is considering allowing navigators to assist with outreach and enrollment tasks even before completing their formal training. The reason? The navigators program is behind schedule and drowning in its own complexity. So, given that they are untrained, let’s go forward anyway? Insanity.
• Despite the reality that navigators will have access to sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won’t even have to have high-school diplomas. Can you say massive identity theft? Hiring potential criminals to have such access to such data is beyond stupid.
• Navigators will take a 20–30 hour online course (i.e. no idea of how well they learned in the absence of a trained trainer) about how the 2,000-page law works. This works out to only about four days of training to learn everything they need to know about Obama Care and all of the related insurance plans they will be offering. Not going to happen.
• Even worse, many of the exchanges are also going to serve as voter registration outlets. Talk about incompatibility of objectives, you are either a health insurance expert or a voting registration expert. Trying to do both tasks with severely limited training is a disaster for both objectives.

Tell me this is not a disaster waiting to happen. We have already reported on how calling the IRS “navigators” on their 800# support line almost always gets you different answers for semi-complex tax issues, how can anyone expect a brand new Federal bureaucracy to get it right when the IRS has not gotten it right after decades of trying?

A similar comparison is made at the end of the article relative to the Federal government trying to get any complex task successfully implemented:

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that the potential failure of the navigators program could further convince voters that Obama Care is simply unworkable. “The Obama administration wants something the federal government has never done: a computer system that connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security and perhaps other departments,” John Goodman, a health-care expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in May. “For perspective, consider that the Veterans Administration converted to electronic medical records in 1998 and the VA and the Defense Department tried without success to share records until February [2013] when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the plan would be abandoned.”

Fifteen years and probably billions of dollars wasted to get to highly interrelated Federal entities to have their computers talk to each other, an effort that ended in failure. There is no chance that the exchanges and their navigators cannot also end in failure.

More Obama Care failures tomorrow.

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