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.

Wouldn’t it be Funny …

... if Obamacare caused the United States to return to a free-market economy in health care?  Already many more people have lost their health-care insurance than have gained it as a result of this Harry Reid-Nancy Pelosi bit of screwed-up social engineering … see: Powerline Analysis.  And later this year, when the employer mandate kicks in and many millions more Americans find themselves with the unhappy option of either paying more for less health insurance … they might then chose to go uninsured and suffering the consequence.  And the way “Obamacare is being hollowed-out by government fiat” (a Charles Krauthammer near quote), it is increasingly unlikely that there will actually be any consequences suffered by the uninsured.

The health-care insurance companies allowed the current administration to have its way with them because they thought that they would be able to feast on an additional 45 million customers … and that they could also gouge the many millions more currently-insured who would have to pay more for less as a result of the insurance rewrites caused by Obamacare.  Perceptive people, such as Krauthammer, realize that these two windfalls for the insurance companies are now unlikely to occur … and that a government bailout of their partners-in-sin is quite likely.  So now the Republicans are pushing a bill that would make such a bailout of health-care insurers illegal … see: Fox News Story.  Wouldn’t this be poetic justice?

And wouldn’t it be even sweeter if Obamacare caused the whole health-care industry to once again return to a free market?  Then individuals would be making economic trade-off decisions about their health care without the interference of health-care insurers and the government.  Then the spiraling cost-inflation havoc that this industry-government complex has foisted on our economy might finally be reined-in.  Wouldn't it be funny?

Bad Apples

President Obama just labeled those health insurance companies which are now dropping hundreds of thousands of their clients as “bad apples.”  Quite a tame appellation … no?  Particularly for our pugilistic President.  I kinda think that Mr. Obamacare’s real feelings are quite a bit darker.  Health insurance companies are dropping their clients pell-mell because they can’t afford to insure them under the tenants of Obamacare.  And when the employer mandate kicks in next October (perhaps delayed again until after the mid-term elections?) the total number of Americans who will eventually lose their current policies was secretly estimated by our government at around 93 million!  (See: Forbes Blockbuster Story).

Now, these healthcare insurance companies greedily went along with Obamacare in the first place because they thought that they would tap into a huge 30 million or so block of the then uninsured.  (I almost said uninsured Americans, but I think that might have been misleading.)  In essence, our nanny government was promising to reward them for not objecting to Obama’s takeover of healthcare by making them partners in this crime.  Now comes the cruel light of dawn.

These “bad apples” trusted our fearless leader and will, unfortunately, never recoup anywhere near the number of clients that they will be losing.  And this is not because of a non-functioning HealthCare.gov website (it eventually will be kludged together).  It is because something like 90% of those now getting replacement healthcare insurance coverage are getting it under “expanded Medicaid” (a sotto voce part of the Obamacare law) ... see: Powerline Story … for details about this newest government entitlement (see: Affordable Care Act Tenant).

In a way, these “bad apples” will get their comeuppance for trusting President Obama and his Chicago consiglieres.  The real crime now occurring is not the mendacity of the Obama administration in its false promises about "keeping your insurance and doctor … period."  It is the coming devastation of America's healthcare insurance industry … to be followed by the likely gutting of the healthcare system itself.

How’s that for audacity?