June, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Rate Increases, Lousy Enrollment Results, and More Personal Heartbreak Stories.

Every month for the past three years or so we have had to take time out and review the latest insanity and disasters from the Obama Care legislation. Long ago it only took a day or so to cover it all. But then the law starting taking effect and the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” made it impossible to contain the bad news, the heartache, the rising costs, and the stress put on American families to just a day or two.

To review the past discussion on this horrid piece of legislation, enter the term "unfolding disaster" in the search box above or just page through previous month;s posts on the right side of this page and click on the various references to Obama Care. Very quickly, as your read the past posts, you will see that this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Not only has it disrupted lives, stymied the economy, and increased healthcare costs in this country, it never addressed the various root causes of high healthcare costs. Thus, by never addressing some of the root causes listed below, the legislation has virtually no chance of actually reducing healthcare costs in this country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The healthcare industry in this country needs serious tort reform.
• Federal government crop subsidies lead to our food chain being infested with unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
• Current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose upwards of $100 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud, billions of dollars that could be used to reduce other healthcare costs in this country.
• Cross state line insurance competition needs to be made easier to do.
• The Obama effort never “followed the money” to actually map out where the high costs paid by Americans for healthcare actually end up.

Since Obama Care never addressed these root causes, we are still going to have those root causes resulting in higher and higher healthcare costs regardless of how well Obama Care is implemented. And since the prime objective of Obama Care was to reduce costs, the legislation will end up being a failure.

This is our second, but not last post, this month on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

1) Yesterday we reviewed a Washington Examiner article that showed how many large insurance companies that carry Obama Care policies are already filing for double digit premium increases in 2016 despite still getting subsidy help from the Federal government. The Heritage Foundation also recently ran an article by Melissa Quinn with the same message:

• Rate hikes already filed include hikes up to 51% in New Mexico and more than 30% in Maryland and Tennessee.
• According to Ed Haismaier, a senior research fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation: “This is going to be a phenomenon of insurers that priced more optimistically instead of defensively.” 
• CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield in Maryland is proposing insurance policy premium rate increases of up to 30 percent in the individual market for 2016: “CareFirst has predicted for some time that rates would need to climb from artificially lower levels due to the characteristics and needs of the population that has actually enrolled,” the company said in a statement.
• In Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, who is that state’s largest insurance provider, requested to raise policy premiums by an average of 36.3%.
• Community Health Alliance Mutual Insurance, a nonprofit health insurance co-op in Tennessee, wants to raise its rates by an average of 32.6%. 
• Community Health is looking for such a large increase despite receiving $73.3 million in Federal government grant support but who had to stop enrollments in its policies because of bad financial results, results that eventually caused it to drop out of the Obama Care network of insurance providers.The co-op, which started under Obamacare and received more than $73.3 million in federal grants and loans, offered the cheapest plans for Tennessee consumers in 2015 and froze enrollment after it saw an influx of customers, eventually pulling its plans from the federal marketplace.
• In Connecticut, HealthyCT, another co-op started under Obama Care, wants to raise its rates by 14% and UnitedHealthcare, a private insurance company selling plans on Connecticut’s Obama Care state exchange, has requested an average rate increase of 12.4%.

Quite a difference from getting a reduction of up to $2,500 a year like Obama promised vs. seeing double digit, and some cases high double digit increases in premiums. 

2) Given all of this bad news about Obama Care price increases, it should come as no surprise that a recent Quinnipiac poll found that 51% of registered voters still disapprove of the law more than five years after it was enacted, while only 43%. This level of disapproval has held pretty steady over the past few years so there is nothing to indicate that soon or even eventually America is going to think that the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care is a good idea. approve.

3) A recent Washington Examiner article by Paige Winfield stated that most Obama Care enrollees paid for their plans. On the surface this looks like a big accomplishment, most enrollees paid for their plans. But wouldn’t one expect the majority of people signing up for any kind of product or service to pay for their plans? 

The real issue is not what percentage actually paid but how many actually are enrolled at the end of the enrollment period.And the article actually answers that more important question. Of the 11.7 million who signed up for Obama Care health insurance coverage, about 1.5 million never completed the process to actually pay for the policies they started to sign up for, leaving the net additional people covered after two years of Obama Care at just over 10 million.The drop out rate then was just under 10%, not great.

Three other factors about these numbers that are not great:

1. Remember, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that by the end of the third year, Obama Care enrollees needed to exceed 20 million in order to stay on track for viability. Given that most industry experts think that the most desperate people purchased Obama Care policies in the first two years, the “low hanging fruit, it is almost impossible to believe that the legislation will attain its 20 million plus objective by the end of the third enrollment period.
2. Second, while the net number of Obama Care enrollees is about 10.2 million, this does not take into account the six to seven million Americans who lost coverage directly because of the ObamaCare legislation. Thus, even if you take the lower estimate, six million, and subtract that from the 10.2 net Obama Care enrollees, you get anet net increase in insured Americans as a result of Obama Care of just over a measly 4 million people.
3. And finally, if the Supreme Court rules in a few weeks that the legislation’s wording expressly prohibited Obama Care policy holders that got their policies through the Federal exchanges from receiving government subsidies, then about 7.5 Federal exchange Obama Care policy holders will lose their subsidies and many will probably drop their ObamaCare policies due to the increased expense.

 As always, we finish up these unfolding disaster posts with true stories of how individual Americans and their families are being ravished by Obama Care using the following website as our source:

www.ourhealthcarestoires.com

SARAH - WASHINGTON

Sarah's daughter was approved for treatment at Seattle Children's Hospital, then was denied four days later because hospital was 
"out of network" under the plan she had through the exchange.

This is not an isolated incident. The exclusion of a major provider like Seattle Children’s from a major insurance network in this market is unprecedented. We’re seeing denials of care and disruptions in care.

DAVID - NEW MEXICO

From the point where the law passed my insurance premium went from 189 dollars a month, to 359 dollars a month, to 379 dollars a month-and next year it will be 416 dollars a month. My out of pocket limit went from $2500.00 per year to over $6000.00 per year.

The total increase in monthly premiums alone is $227.00 dollars per month. Subsidies here cut off well below 400% of poverty. The premium increases alone are leaving me faced with a choice between a plan with much higher deductibles and out of pocket expenses-or ridiculous monthly premiums-which (according to the chart from the insurer) will only get worse as I get older.

$400 dollars a month is NOT affordable healthcare. 120% premium increases is NOT affordable health care. $6000.00 a year IN ADDITION TO $4800.00 a year is NOT affordable healthcare.

I'd like that plan you promised I could keep back now.

DAVID - NORTH CAROLINA

In January 2013, my health insurance premium was $199 per month using one of the top insurance companies in the country, Blue Cross. In January 2014, upon implementation of Obamacare, my premium more than tripled to $653 per month with less benefits. Even worse was what happened to my wife. She is trying to recover from Stage 4 cancer. She needed surgery in May 2013. 

Because of the impending Obamacare implementation, her insurance was cancelled and the doctors would not perform surgery without insurance. She was not able to get insurance until March 2014 ($850 per month - double her previous premium) and finally had the surgery she needed one year later....allowing prospective cancerous tumors to grow for almost one year without being able to be treated. If she dies as a result, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi should be charged with murder. We are only in our '50's and we are paying $1500 per month for just two of us.

That will do it for today. Higher insurance costs, lousy enrollment numbers and more personal tragedies as a result of Obama Care, with one irate American calling for the members of the Obama Care leadership to be tried for murder for causing his wife to postpone cancer surgery for a year. Yeah, still the worst piece of legislation ever passed. More unfolding disasters tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

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August, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care, Part 1: Attrition Sets In and Dental Work is Not Covered

Every month since last August we have had to do multiple posts every month in order to keep up with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Federal government under any previous Presidential administration. Runaway costs, dysfunctional or non functioning websites, high potential for identity theft, less coverage for more cost, cancelled insurance policies, etc., it was a failure in every way imaginable.

And those failures have continued to unfold every month, which is why we are going to take a few days now to cover what has happened just since last month’s disaster updates. Before we do that, let’s do a quick reminder of where the program is from a numbers perspective:

• The Obama administration claimed that about 8 million Americans signed up for an Obama Care health care insurance plan during the initial sign up period.
• However, recent research from reputable sources found that it is likely that only between 80 and 90% of those who signed up actually followed through and paid for and bought a policy.
• If we take the midpoint of that range and assume only 85% followed through with payment, that 8 million sign up number is really only 6.8 million real policy holders.
• But other reputable research found that only about 57% of those who signed up for an Obama Care policy were previously uninsured, the other sign ups already had health insurance coverage and just churned out to an Obama Care policy.
• Thus, the actual number of INCREMENTAL Americans with health insurance via Obama Care is 57% of 6.8 million or around 3.9 million people.
• That means that 2.9 million Americans were not incremental insurance policy holders, they just churned from an existing policy into an Obama Care policy.
• Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people had their current health insurance policies cancelled as a result of Obama Care, policies that often were perfectly fine and acceptable to those carrying those policies.
• If we assume a best case view from the Obama Care perspective and assume all of the 2.9 million people who were not incremental to the Obama Care numbers came from this pool of 5-6 million people, than the net number of Americans who lost health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care is between 2.1 and 3.1 million people (5 or 6 million less 2.9 million people).
• Thus, we have to take the 3.9 million people that were truly incremental because of Obama Care and subtract out either 2.1 or 3.1 million, ending up with a net gain in insured Americans of between 800 thousand and 1.8 million.
• Thus, after years of trying, billions and billions of dollars spent, we may have gotten incremental, expensive, and narrow insurance coverage to less than two million Americans.

Only in Washington can the nation spend billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth and end up with a problem that is hardly any better than when before the program started. Insane.

That is where we stand today. Let’s take a look at what disasters have come to the surface since we last talked about Obama Care:

1) In early August, 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Federal entity responsible for administrating Obama Care, announced that letters had been sent 310,000 Obama Care customers notifying them that they have to fix errors within their Obama Care applications by September 30, 2014 or their Obama Care health insurance coverage will be cancelled. 

These 310,000 customers are part of almost 1 million Obama Care customers who submitted applications but whose applications had citizenship and immigration information that did not match up with Federal records. CMS has admitted that 450,000 cases out of the 1 million have already been resolved, but it’s not clear how many of those “closed” cases resulted in more canceled policies.

Thus, of those 3.8 million incremental Obama Care policies we calculated above, that number will likely go down even further as CMS likely cancels out hundreds of thousands of more policies for not having proper information on the applications. Which raises an interesting question: it is not how high Obama Care enrollments can go but how low will they sink.

2) But it is not only faulty applications data and information that are reducing the number of incremental Obama Care sign ups. Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer and an Obama Care participant, reportedly had 720,000 people signed up for Obama Care coverage as of May 20. However, by the end of June, Aetna had fewer than 600,000 paying Obama Care customers, a decrease of about 16% in a month and a half.

Even worse for Obama Care supporters, Aetna says it expects even more people to cancel out of Obama Care policies by the end of the year, expecting to be left with "just over 500,000." If their prediction comes true, than they would have seen more than a 30% drop off in Obama Care policy enrollments in less than eight months after hitting their high water mark of 720,000: "I think we will see some attrition ... We're already seeing it. And we expect that to continue through the end of the year," CEO Mark Bertolini said in a July 29 conference call.

Cigna, another major Obama Care insurer it is also seeing some attrition but not as much as what Aetna is owning up to. Cigna has publicly stated that it expects is Obama Care policy enrollment to shrink from 300,000 down to 280,000, about a 7% decrease.

Now some of those cancelled polices may have occurred because people got a job that provided health care insurance, causing them to cancel their now unnecessary Obama Care coverage. However, given that the economy is still pretty sluggish and the unemployment rate has been basically unchanged for a long time, the possibility that a large majority of those cancelled policies were caused by job finders is small.

Far more likely scenarios, scenarios that we have already extensively discussed, is that Obama Care policy holders found out that:

• They were paying more and getting less than what they expected relative to premiums.
• They were shocked when they found out how high Obama Care policy deductibles were.
• They were disappointed that Obama care policies had very restrictive lists of approved doctors, hospitals, and drugs, opting to not pay for coverage that restricted their choices.

Those are likely the real reasons why people are dropping out of Obama Care policies and the reasons why even that calculated 3.9 million number we estimated above is far more likely to continue to shrink in the coming months.

3) One of the major selling points of Obama Care was that insurance companies could no longer deny insurance coverage to anyone who had a pre-existing condition. However, the law was possibly deficient in laying out what type of coverage would be provided. 

It seems that one way insurance companies are minimizing their financial exposure to this new law that requires them to take on all customers, regardless of the likely cost to the insurer, is that the insurance companies simply jack up the cost that customers have to pay for expensive treatment and drugs for their pre-existing conditions. In other words, “we are happy to insure you but the premiums and deductibles for your condition are going to be really expensive to you.” 

The situation has gotten so bad that the Associated Press recently reported that more than 300 patient advocacy groups have signed a letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to complain about some insurer tactics that "are highly discriminatory against patients with chronic health conditions and may ... violate the (law's) nondiscrimination provisions."

The good news is that you now have an Obama Care policy that covers your pre-existing condition. The bad news is that you cannot afford the costs within the parameters of that policy. Insurance companies are not stupid. Forcing them to take on expensive customers with chronic pre-existing conditions is not good for the company’s financial bottom line so that they will take whatever steps necessary to stay within the letter of the law and still remain financially viable. The writers of the Obama Care legislation were too stupid to recognize this reality.

4) What would an update be without some personal news on how Obama Care is messing with the lives and health of Americans. An Indiana man, who purchased health insurance through Obama Care’s Federal exchange, says he was assured he had dental coverage without any waiting period. 

To be sure, he actually recorded several conversations he had with Federal call center employees, all of whom guaranteed him that he had immediate Obama Care insurance coverage to take care of any dental problems. However, when it became apparent that he needed some serious dental work, the Obama Care insurer who provided the policy and who was collecting a monthly premium denied the claim, stating that there was a one year waiting period on his Obama care policy. This denial was made despite him being assured by the Obama Care call center employees that he was covered.

As a public service, he is now others about getting misleading information form the Obama Care processes and to be sure what they are actually buying from the Obama Care health insurance exchanges: “You might be very surprised you’re not covered when you were told that you were.” 

The news report covering his problem can be viewed at:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/08/16/indiana-man-thought-covered-obamacare-needed-visit-dentist/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Another day, another screw up of an American’s life, brought to you by Obama Care, the continuing unfolding disaster. More disasters tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
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