Tag: "ObamaCare"

Why Does the Government Need More Money for ObamaCare?

I’ve asked Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to explain the massive jump in costs for premium subsidies. The projected figure for subsidy expenditures has gone from nearly $16 billion in the president’s 2012 budget up to nearly $22 billion in his 2014 budget. Why is the administration expecting these costs to soar? Is it because they are seeing employers dropping coverage, leaving more employees to get ObamaCare insurance through an exchange subsidized with these tax credits? Is it because they expect insurance premiums to soar, driving up the percentage-figure the government must cover with subsidies? Maybe both.

Orrin Hatch.

Jun 19, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Can computer viruses affect your pacemaker?

Coming: major shortage of primary care physicians.

At $112,000 per patient, Los Angeles leads the nation on spending in the last two years of life.

There is a 95% chance you are washing your hands incorrectly. (For males, its worse.)

ObamaCare will share personal health info with federal, state agencies.

Jun 17, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Silver Plan vs. Bronze Plan Deductibles, and Other Links

ObamaCare insurance: deductible for the silver plan is $2,000; for the bronze plan it’s $5,000. (Karen Davis must be in mourning.)

The less you know, the easier it is to solve this puzzle.

Personalized medicine comes to psychiatry.

60% of Massachusetts doctors will not meet state electronic record mandate.

Denmark’s fat tax harms the economy and produces little change in behavior.

Jun 17, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Most designated drivers are drunk.

Canadians have access to fewer new medicines than other countries.

Is Kaiser trying to avoid sick people in California’s ObamaCare health insurance exchange?

The U.S. economy is less open than 37 other countries.

Did the IRS seize 60 million medical records in California, including every state judge as well as “prominent citizens in the world of entertainment, business and government, from all walks of life”?

Jun 14, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Exchanges: Re-inventing the Wheel

eHealthInsurance.com — along with smaller websites providing similar services — is, in virtually all respects, an existing healthcare exchange and has operated as such for long before the Affordable Care Act introduced the concept of the health insurance exchange into the vernacular of national health care policy…

[Yet] while states such as California and Maryland had initially indicated that they would move forward in a relationship with eHealthInsurance.com — the largest privately run health insurance exchange in the nation — these states have recently backed off their commitment to bring the web-based company into the mix right from the start, suggesting instead that they might permit eHealth to participate in “a year or so.”

…by failing to include companies like eHealthInsurance.com, the state exchanges are dramatically increasing the odds that the first year of ObamaCare may be less successful than it could be were they to open up to the participation of the private sector.

Whatever the reason for the reluctance of the state created exchanges to include private business participants, the end result is that taxpayers will spend millions of dollars unnecessarily while fewer people are likely to be enrolled in qualified health insurance programs — and that is just wrong.

Rick Ungar at Forbes.

Jun 13, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Breaking: Will Lawmakers and Aides Quit Over ObamaCare?

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting.

The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive. (Politico)

Jun 13, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Dehumanizing the Opposition

It is a whole lot easier to get people to kill or vilify other people when they think the opposition is less-than-human.

During World War I the Wilson administration called Germans “the Huns” to dehumanize them and undermine any allegiance German immigrants might have for their country of origin. Calling the foes “Japs” in World War II made it easier for the Roosevelt Administration to bomb civilian targets and place American citizens of Japanese origin in internment camps. It is notable that in both cases, these were extremely “progressive” administrations.

So, it may not be that surprising that during the current progressive administration the opposition has been dismissed as “racists” and “tea baggers.” Who cares about protecting the rights of racist tea baggers? They are illegitimate. They are not worth paying attention to. They are not your friends and neighbors; they are people to be shunned. Go ahead and audit them. Don’t allow them to organize or get tax exempt status ― their views are beyond the pale ― voicing racist tea bagger ideas is probably a hate crime anyway. So it goes in these days of total political war.

Still, it is jarring when the same approach bleeds into what should be a fairly innocuous discussion of insurance costs.

Jun 13, 2013 | 29 comments | by

Will ObamaCare Subsidize Layoffs?

[U]nlike the Recovery Act’s program, [the Affordable Care Act] welcomes people out of work even if they left work by quitting, retiring or being fired for cause. It also welcomes people who have the possibility of joining a spouse’s plan and people who had no health insurance on their prior job.

Thus, we are about to begin a federal program that subsidizes layoffs to a degree that we have not seen before. Nevertheless, economic and budget forecasts by the Congressional Budget Office and others have yet to consider the effects of the layoff subsidy on the size of the program and the number of layoffs that will occur.

More from Casey Mulligan at The New York Times economics blog.

Jun 12, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Two online health calculators designed by federal officials to help states and employers comply with ObamaCare mandates are riddled with so many flaws that users are abandoning them.

Another pay-for-performance failure.(HT: Jason Shafrin)

The government also knows what you buy.

Jun 10, 2013 | 16 comments | by

Will Employers Intentionally Offer Unaffordable Coverage?

This is from Avik Roy:

The law requires that every employer with 50 or more “full-time employees” offer “minimum essential coverage” in an “affordable” manner…

The penalty is triggered if at least one employee seeks federal exchange subsidies instead of gaining insurance form his employer. In that case, the employer will have to pay a non-tax-deductible fine of the lesser of $2,000 times the number of full-time employees ― 30.

If the employer does offer a health plan, but it isn’t “affordable” to all workers or fails to meet the “minimum essential coverage” requirements, then the employer pays the lesser of the fine described above, or $3,000 times the number of full-time employees receiving exchange subsidies.

What does this mean in reality? It means that employers have an incentive to offer coverage that is either “unaffordable” according to ObamaCare or that fails to meet the law’s “minimum essential requirements.” That way, the employer pays a penalty only for those workers who gain subsidized coverage on the exchanges. So the best way for employers to “dump” coverage onto the exchanges is not by offering no coverage at all, but by offering coverage that doesn’t meet ObamaCare’s requirements.

Jun 07, 2013 | 17 comments | by
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