Affordable Care Facts

We are finally starting to get some cold hard facts behind the Affordable Care Act and the “healthcare.gov” website … according to CNN Money:

Some 87% of the 5.4 million people who have signed up through healthcare.gov, which handled enrollment for 36 states, qualified for subsidies. The department is still gathering data for the 14 states and District of Columbia that ran their own exchanges, which attracted roughly another 2.6 million sign-ups.

This means that 4.7 million of “healthcare.gov” enrollees are getting subsidies. The average monthly subsidy provided to these 4.7 million enrollees is $264 ... versus the average premium that they paid after subsidy being $82. This means that just this partial piece of Obamacare is going to cost the American taxpayer $1.24 billion per month in the first year. And you might be shocked at how one qualifies for this largess (again from CNN Money):

Anyone earning up to 400% of the poverty line -- up to $45,960 for an individual and $94,200 for a family of four -- was eligible for a subsidy. The subsidies were pegged to the cost of the second-cheapest silver plan in one's area. People could choose from four coverage tiers ranging from the cheapest, bronze, to the most expensive, platinum.

Shhh! Don’t let this all get out … otherwise these Obamacare percentages are going to skyrocket … particularly after this fall’s elections when the employer mandates kick in … and tens of millions of employees lose their healthcare insurance. Even before this happens the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the total cost of the Affordable Care Act subsidies this year will total $12 billion … see: CNN Money. Now we finally understand the logic behind the naming of this piece of wealth-distribution legislation.

It will be “affordable” to everyone but the U.S. taxpayer.

Food Deserts

Michelle Obama now has control over $345 million of government two-year funding so that she can encourage (read "coerce") grocery chains to open stores that stock fresh produce in ghetto areas ... which are now conveniently called "food deserts." (See: Michelle's Markets and  Slush Funds) The idea here is that the FLOTUS has been educating the poor families in this country about better nutrition .. yet many of these disadvantaged people have to travel great distances to purchase such nutritional products, since there are no nearby retail purveyors.  Or, if there are such close-by grocery stores, their prices are often much higher than similar stores in upscale neighborhoods.

Now, this sounds to me like another rat hole down which our current paternalistic government plans to pour oodles of taxpayer funds.  And, much like our government's catastrophic meddling in the sub-prime mortgage market, this otherwise noble endeavor is surely going to end up badly.  (Good intentions, gone sour?)  We are supposed to be a free-market economy which means that, if there was an attractive economic opportunity to pursue such business, then it would have been already achieved.  If this hasn't happened, there must be one or more reasons for this reluctance.  Will these reasons disappear because Ms. Obama wishes them away?  I doubt it.  And I also doubt that this initiative will continue much after the current government largess disappears.

And like the sub-prime mortgage fiasco was propagated by our misguided feel-good government hacks, I fully expect that there will be a number of corporations that rise to this juicy bait and make a quick buck off of the backs of the U.S. taxpayer  (like Countrywide Finance did back then with no-documentation mortgages) ... until they no longer can.  Let's just hope that these companies will not be then "too big to fail."

The road to hell ... apparently goes through the food desert.