Obamacare Taxpayer Funded Insurance Company Insolvent

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Don't Tread On ObamacareAn Obamacare-created and taxpayer-funded insurance company in Iowa has been taken over by the state due to a financial crisis.

CoOportunity Health is Iowa’s insurance cooperative — a nonprofit insurance company created by the Affordable Care Act to supposedly undercut the large, for-profit insurers that Democrats castigated as “greedy” and “evil” during the debate over health care reform.

After just beginning to offer plans in 2013, the company’s already insolvent and has now been taken over by the state of Iowa, insurance commissioner Nick Gerhart announced Wednesday. CoOpportunity doesn’t have enough cash on hand to be sure it can pay claims for its 120,000 customers, if necessary. The company has only $17 million in cash and assets, Gerhart said.

The federal government’s Obamacare administrator the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services initially gave CoOportunity a $112 million loan award in Feb. 2012, but doled out an additional $32.7 million emergency award to keep the company solvent in September of this year.

That wasn’t enough to keep it in business. CoOpportunity’s management expected to receive more federal money than they did, putting them in continuing financial peril.

Read more about how this Obamacare taxpayer funded insurance company went insolvent HERE.

CDC: 110,197,000 Venereal Infections In US; Nation Creating New STIs Faster Than Jobs, College Diplomas

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Photo Credit: Cynthia Goldsmith

According to new data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 19.7 million new venereal infections in the United States in 2008, bringing the total number of existing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S. at that time to 110,197,000.

The 19.7 million new STIs in 2008 vastly outpaced the new jobs and college graduates created in the United States that year or any other year on record, according to government data. The competition was not close.

The STI study referenced by the CDC estimated that 50 percent of the new infections in 2008 occurred among people in the 15-to-24 age bracket. In fact, of the 19,738,800 total new STIs in the United States in 2008, 9,782,650 were among Americans in the 15-to-24 age bracket.

By contrast, there were 1,524,092 bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in the 2007-2008 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That means the total number of new STIs in 2008 outpaced the total number of new bachelor’s degrees by nearly 13 to 1, and the number of new STIs among Americans in the 15-to-24 age bracket outnumbered new bachelor’s degrees by more than 6 to 1.

While the CDC estimates that there were 19.7 million new STIs in the United States in 2008, data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the total number of people employed in the country actually declined by 2.9 million during that year.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare: the Last Stake in the Coffin of Individual Liberty and American Prosperity

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Photo Credit: RedState

Although there were many warnings that Obamacare would be a disaster of epic proportions before it became law, today, less than a year from its true implementation, we are seeing the actual consequences begin to materialize.

Millions of jobs will be lost, one small company at a time. People will have a difficult time finding a full time job.Healthcare premiums will be going up. There will be a doctor shortage. Obamacare will become a regulatory anvil around the neck of American prosperity. Luckily though the Obama administration is on the job seeking to ensure that it doesn’t become a “third world experience“. Which, it’s looking like it just might become. And to put a cherry on top, with our practically no existent GDP growth, apparently we can look forward to China overtaking the United States by 2016.

As bad as those things are, it actually gets worse. Your individual liberty is simply going to disappear. Many employees are now going to have to begin reveling to employers their weight, body fat measures, cholesterol levels and more. Pharmacy giant CVS states that all its employees will now have to either quit smoking or enroll in an addiction program by 2014. That is of course because smokers generally have higher healthcare costs than do nonsmokers, and since CVS is paying for that healthcare, they get to make the rules. Don’t like it? Then quit.

But then it’s not only smokers who cost more. Fat people generally cost more than thin people. Does that mean that a company can dictate that employees must be Oreo or Doritos or Coke free by the end of the year or enroll in an addiction program? How about motorcycle riders? They are 5 times more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than are car drivers. Does that mean that companies can tell you what you what kind of vehicle you can drive? How about unmarried women having sex out of wedlock, particularly minority women, where 77% of black births and 53% of Hispanic births are to unwed mothers? Given that sick children inflict an increased financial & healthcare burden on unwed mothers than they do on married mothers, can a company demand that unmarried female employees purchase and utilize birth control? (If so, how would they ensure compliance with usage?) Sure, all of this sounds farfetched, but so too once did the idea of schools telling moms what they can put in their children’s lunchboxes, cities banning Happy Meals and soft drinks and companies actually firing employees for being smokers.

At the end of the day, Obamacare may very well be the last stake in the coffin of individual liberty and American prosperity.

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Mortality Studies Suggest Obamacare’s Death Panels May Be Moving Forward

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Researchers are busy creating computer models and testing hypotheses to see if they can predict mortality accurately–as a way, I suspect, of justifying health care rationing.

My concern was heightened by a study just published as a letter in the March 6 Journal of the American Medical Association, in which the authors claim that they were able to predict likely mortality 10-years out. From “Predicting 10-Year Mortality for Older Adults”:

Extending the index from 4 to 10 years did not diminish the model discrimination (validation cohort,C statistics 0.817 vs 0.834; P= .35), suggesting that the risk factors important for 4-year mortality prediction are also important for 10-year mortality prediction. The model compares favorably with other mortality indexes that predict mortality beyond 7 years…Patients identified by this index as having a high risk of 10-year mortality may be more likely to be harmed by preventive interventions with long lag times to benefit, whereas patients identified as having a low risk of 10-year mortality may be good candidates for such interventions.

Thus, (say) if a colonoscopy is identified as not having a positive cost benefit for seven or more years (as the article indicates), such screening for those whom the computers predict are likely to die within ten years might not be covered.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report Puts Obamacare’s Cost At $30.8B, 114 Million Paperwork Hours

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Photo Credit: José Goulão

Obamacare has so far cost $30.8 billion and 111.4 million hours to complete paperwork to individuals, healthcare institutions, and small businesses, according to a new report.

The American Action Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group that has long opposed the health law, said 55,742 employees — working 2,000 hours per year — would be needed to process all the red tape associated with Obamacare.

The report cites several examples of excessive costs from each category. In most cases, neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Congressional Budget Office has provided cost estimates, the organization said.

In the healthcare market, for instance, the Obamacare rule on “preexisting condition exclusions” is costing institutions $4.9 million and 38,000 paperwork hours, the group said.

Regarding premiums, the organization surveyed healthcare costs in five cities — Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Phoenix, and Milwaukee. “The results are sobering: young and healthier individuals, including small employers, can expect a 169 percent premium increase, averaged across the five cities,” the report concluded. “Consumers in Milwaukee could experience the greatest sticker shock, with a 190 percent increase in 2014.”

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Another Obamacare Casualty: More Docs Plan To Retire Early (+video)

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Photo Credit: Every Day Health

Most physicians have a pessimistic outlook on the future of medicine, citing eroding autonomy and falling income, a survey of more than 600 doctors found.

Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years, a survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found. That perception is uniform across age, gender, and specialty, it said.

Another 55 percent of surveyed doctors believe others will scale back hours because of the way medicine is changing, but the survey didn’t elaborate greatly on how it was changing. Three-quarters think the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, although that is an increase from the 2011 survey result of 69 percent.

“Physicians recognize ‘the new normal’ will necessitate major changes in the profession that require them to practice in different settings as part of a larger organization that uses technologies and team-based models for consumer (patient) care,” the survey’s findings stated.

About two-thirds of the survey responders said they believe physicians and hospitals will become more integrated in coming years. In the last 2 years, 31 percent moved into a larger practice, results found. Nearly eight in 10 believe midlevel providers will play a larger role in directing primary care.

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Obama Promised To Personally Use Obamacare, But Don’t Hold Your Breath

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Photo Credit: AP

If President Barack Obama wants to make good on a promise to become one of Obamacare’s first customers, he’ll have to take a route most Americans are unlikely to choose.

He’ll have to enroll in a health plan that lacks a taxpayer subsidy, even though he has access to generous coverage through his day job.

In the days following the passage of the health law in March 2010, the White House confirmed that Obama planned to walk the walk by enrolling in one of the health insurance exchanges his law created, assuming his reelection

“The president will participate in the exchange,” an administration spokesman told USA Today at the time, rejecting Republican efforts to compel the president to do so by law.

It would be a purely symbolic gesture — much like his decision to cast the first early ballot by a sitting president last year — in part because he’ll still have access to the White House Medical Unit and the official physician to the president, an office that has served every executive since the Revolution. According to a White House description of the medical unit, the office “provides worldwide emergency action response and comprehensive medical care to the president, the vice president and their families.”

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Sen. Hatch: Left Conspired to Ensure Obamacare Fails So That Government Takes Over All of Healthcare (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Democrats set up the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, to “fail” in order to establish a single-payer health care system, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”

“Let’s just be honest about it, the bill hasn’t triggered yet fully,” Hatch said of Obamacare, during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “And it doesn’t until the 1st of next year.”

“When the young people in this country find out that they are going to be the generation of debtors and there’s no way they’re ever going to get out from underneath this kind of stuff—I’ve got to tell you, people don’t even realize how crushing it’s going to be after the 1st of this next year,” he said.

“And I’ll predict that within that year—now I may be wrong on this—but within the immediate future the Democrats are going to throw their hands in the air and say, ‘It’s not working. It’s unaffordable. And we have to go to a single-payer system,’” Hatch said, adding, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”

“That’s what’s behind all of this. And they know it’s going to fail,” he said. “It’s already failing, and it hasn’t even triggered yet, the big expenses.”

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Obama Administration Plans To Cut Medicare Advantage Reimbursements

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Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration is planning new cuts to Medicare, a federal regulatory filing reveals, cuts that could mean higher premiums or seniors losing their coverage altogether.

The new cuts come in the form of a planned reduction in the reimbursement rates the government pays to insurance companies that operate Medicare Advantage plans, which are services administered by private for-profit or non-profit providers that offer additional services than can be found in traditional Medicare.

In a Feb. 15 regulatory filing, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the surprised rate cuts of 2.3 percent – meaning it would pay health care providers 2.3 percent less for providing services to patients.

CMS said it was cutting payments because it foresaw the overall costs of the Medicare Advantage program shrinking by 3.2 percent, despite the fact that health care costs – the driver of all federal health care program costs – are only rising.

Medicare Advantage is like traditional Medicare except that its plans are administered by insurance companies, who are paid a per-enrollee reimbursement fee by the government. If insurance companies can provide care to seniors at less than what the government pays them for it, they make a profit.

Read more from this story HERE.

Your Doctor To Become 1-Person Death Panel?

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Photo Credit: WND

A government-funded “mortality index” study – which helps doctors determine whether a patient has a “good chance” of dying within the next 10 years – raises renewed concerns about health-care rationing under Obamacare.

Federal grants from the National Institute on Aging and the American Federation for Aging Research helped pay for researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, to create a “mortality index” designed to aid doctors in decision-making about “preventive intervention” for older patients.

The index provides doctors with 12 measures to assign points to an elderly patient. The lower the patient’s total points, the better his or her odds of survival. The highest score, 26 points, represents a 95-percent chance the patient will die within 10 years.

The index assigns all male subjects 2 points automatically because men on the average have a lower life expectancy than women, the study noted. Men and women aged between 60 and 64 get 1 point; ages 70 and 74 get 3 points, while 85 or over get 7 points.

Two points are further assigned in the following cases: Patients with a current or a previous cancer diagnosis, excluding minor skin cancers; lung disease impacting on physical activity or requiring oxygen; heart failure; smoking; difficulty bathing; difficulty managing money because of health or memory problems; difficulty walking several blocks. One point is assigned to those with diabetes or high blood sugar; difficulty pushing a large object; being thin or of abnormal weight.

Read more from this story HERE.