Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP
By Tom Coburn.
Obamacare supporters are touting reports that 6 million Americans bought insurance on exchanges as evidence the plan is moving in the right direction. But these numbers are misleading. If anything, they show that Obamacare’s greatest challenges are yet to come.
Of these enrollees, as many as 89% were previously insured. Helping 5 million Americans re-enroll in insurance is no great achievement, particularly when many of those customers were forced to give up plans they liked.
For everyone else, costs continue to skyrocket. President Obama promised to lower health premiums by $2,500 per family, but premiums have increased by more than that since Obamacare passed. The costs of deductibles and premiums — big, out-of-pocket expenses — have soared more than 40% in only one year. Premiums will likely increase even more because young, healthy people aren’t enrolling fast enough to offset the costs of covering older, sicker patients.
Obamacare is proving, yet again, the axiom that the best way to make something expensive is for government to make it affordable.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: IJ Review
By Mike Miller.
Now that Obama has taken a victory lap and popped the champagne cork over hitting the ObamaCare enrollment goal, it looks as if it might be time to put the cork back in the bottle.
Results of a RAND Corporation study suggest that barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans – nowhere near 7.1 million, as claimed by Obama – had paid for new policies and joined the ranks of the insured by the Monday night deadline. The study also indicates that only one-third of exchange sign-ups were previously uninsured.
Yes, millions of enrollees were previously insured, including those who lost coverage when their existing policies were cancelled because they didn’t meet ObamaCare’s minimum requirements.
Still, Obama claimed that “millions of people who have health insurance would not have it”‘ without ObamaCare. The numbers simply do not support that claim.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: White House
By Bem Shapiro.
As the Obamacare enrollment period draws to a tentative close – and you never know when the period will close, given President Obama’s apparent willingness to manipulate the calendar repeatedly – horror stories about the Affordable Care Act mount.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) originally maintained, “All of [the horror stories] are untrue, but they’re being told all over America”; he now says that he never called such horror stories lies. It’s a smart backtrack, given the wide variety of Obamacare horror stories that continue to pile up day after day. Across the nation, premiums are blowing up; according to a December analysis by USA Today, more than half of the counties under the federal Obamacare exchange “lack even a bronze plan that’s affordable by the government’s own definition.”
And that is having an impact on individuals.
Getting Stuck In The System: Larry Basich of Nevada suffers from heart problems. He’s 62 and bought Obamacare through the Nevada Health Link insurance exchange. He paid his premium before January 1, which is when coverage was slated to begin. He then had a heart attack on December 31. He had a triple bypass on January 3, and now owes $407,000 thanks to a mix-up at the insurance level.
President Obama has continually put off the deadline for implementation of Obamacare thanks to hang-ups in the system.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: AP
By Wynton Hall.
President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange spent $35,749 per enrollee, a sum greater than the price of a new 2014 BMW 320i sedan (MSRP $32,750).
“Just obscene amounts of money have disappeared into these state exchanges for very little actual performance,” said American Commitment President Phil Kerpen. “You just have this huge duplication and waste in places like Hawaii and Oregon.”
A CNBC analysis ranking taxpayer-funded federal expenditures on Obamacare found that Hawaii enrolled just 5,744 people through its Obamacare exchange at a cost to taxpayers of $205,342,270. The second-worst performer was the District of Columbia which spent $20,499.37 per enrollee. DC bagged $133,573,927 to sign up just 6,518 people.
Read more from this story HERE.
