Thread: Do you support Obama Care ?

6/10/2013 @ 12:35AM - Avik Roy, Contributor
Ohio Dept. Of Insurance: Obamacare To Increase Individual-Market Health Premiums By 88 Percent

Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,” said Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in a statement. “Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.” http://www.insurance.ohio.gov/Newsro...osedRates.aspx

The rates that Ohio reported are proposed rates; the Department of Insurance still has to formally approve them. “A total of 14 companies proposed rates for 214 plans to the Department. Projected costs from the companies for providing coverage for the required [by Obamacare] essential health benefits ranged from $282.51 to $577.40 for individual health insurance plans.”

It’s called “rate shock,” but it’s not shocking to people who understand the economics of health insurance. In August 2011, Milliman, one of the nation’s leading actuarial firms, predicted that Obamacare would increase individual-market premiums in Ohio by 55 to 85 percent. http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...iums-by-55-85/ This past March, the Society of Actuaries projected that the law would increase premiums in that market by 81 percent. http://cdn-files.soa.org/web/researc...aca-report.pdf Like good players on “The Price is Right,” they both came in just under the Dept. of Insurance’s figure.

Nancy Pelosi Promises Lower Rates for EVERYONE : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqONZ...layer_embedded

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...by-88-percent/

See also : How Ohio's Medicaid Expansion Will Increase Health Insurance Premiums for Everyone Else http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...everyone-else/

With Election Over, Obama Announces Medicare Cuts to Fund ObamaCare
by Dr. Susan Berry - 20 Feb 2013

During the 2012 election campaign, Democrats denied that ObamaCare made $716 billion in cuts to Medicare in order to provide funding toward $1.9 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next ten years.
In an announcement on Friday, however, the Obama administration revealed that it would be significantly reducing funding for Medicare, a move that one health insurance analyst said “would turn almost every plan in the industry unprofitable.”

Health insurance stocks tumbled following the announcement that a big chunk of the Medicare cuts would come from the popular Medicare Advantage program, a market-oriented system in which participants can choose coverage by a private company that contracts with Medicare to provide all Part A and Part B benefits.

According to health care analyst Carl McDonald, the new rates proposed by the Obama administration will have the net effect of reducing payments to Medicare Advantage plans by seven to eight percent in 2014. McDonald projects: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/201...-many-seniors/

If implemented, these rates and the program changes CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] is suggesting would be enormously disruptive to Medicare Advantage, likely forcing a number of smaller plans out of the business and creating disarray for many seniors.

According to Richard Foster, former chief actuary to the Medicare program, ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage will likely force half of its current participants back into the old Medicare program, originated in 1965. It is estimated that this change will cost Medicare enrollees an average of $3,714 in 2017 alone.

Democrats have long been unfriendly toward the Medicare Advantage plan, which was passed as part of the Balanced Budget Amendment of 1997 and has seen tremendous growth over the past 10 years. Today, more than 25 percent of seniors receive their health benefits through Medicare Advantage.

Regarding the cuts, America’s Health Insurance Plans’ (AHIP) president Karen Ignagni said, “Washington cannot tax and cut Medicare Advantage this much and not expect seniors to be harmed."

Last year it was revealed that, while AHIP was openly supporting ObamaCare and working on a deal with the White House, it was also secretly funneling over $100 million to the Chamber of Commerce to be spent on advertising designed to convince Americans that the new legislation should be defeated.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...Fund-ObamaCare

does obama think he can balance the budget by reducing medical care to seniors so that they would die and thus reduce the number of people collecting social security?

This argument came up in another thread on BO and touched upon the health care issues ... of course the Conservatives were cast as the heartless, evil ones who would pry medicare & social security out of the wizen hands of our Seniors. I included the link back for proper context...

If government run health care opens the door to corruption (what area of politics doesn't have corruption??) then perhaps we should end the VA, SCHIP, Medicaid, and Medicare.

Wait ... here is a brillant and novel idea ... why don't we work on FIXING what is wrong with how the goverment manages VA, SCHIP, Medicaid, and Medicare BEFORE dumping the rest of the population into the same mishandled pot ??

If my son shows me he can't manage his $2 allowance ... why would I give him $20 to be responsible for ?

People who are dependant on those should just die and decrease the surplus population.

A lovely use of Dickens. : http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...l#post96207983

41 percent of small businesses freeze hiring because of ObamaCare
Herman Cain on Sunday June 23rd, 2013

Inevitable.

Here’s today’s least surprising piece of news. A Gallup poll shows that 41 percent of small businesses say they’ve frozen hiring because of ObamaCare.

Well of course!

If there’s one thing small businesses must do at all times, it’s to control costs. There is a simple reason for this: Your typical small business, with its limited capacity for output and marketing, can only generate so much revenue. There are obviously impressive exceptions who come up with brilliant concepts and rake in the bucks, but for most small businesses, the limits of time and resources to devote to production capacity mean you can only take in so much money.

That means that penny of cost that you add to your overhead will eat into your already limited potential for profit. Simply put, any cost that does not help you produce is a cost you cannot accept.

So when ObamaCare passed, many of us knew exactly what would happen. The mandate on employers to provide health insurance for anyone who worked more than 30 hours a week amounted to a new cost that those operating on tight margins simply could not absorb and remain profitable.

That left small businesses with a few options. One was to limit employees to fewer than 30 hours a week, which many did. Another was to severely curtail hiring, or to freeze it altogether. And as we now see, 41 percent of small businesses have taken the latter approach.

To understand why, recognize that the cost of employing a person is already much greater than just the wage or salary they are paid. You also have to figure in the cost of employment taxes and various other related costs. Depending on the nature of your business or where you are located, the employee may also need a uniform, parking, an office, a computer, professional membership fees . . . employees are expensive.

Many companies see health insurance as a good investment in high-quality employees, and in many cases it is. But that’s not true in every situation, and it’s for the employer to decide. Most of the time, they do not choose to pay for health insurance for part-time employees because the contributions made by these employees do not justify the added cost.

So when ObamaCare passed, mandating this benefit for all employees working 30 hours or more, it took away from employers the right to determine how, and how much, to invest in people in exchange for the productivity the employers would receive in return. The attitude of ObamaCare supporters is, “Businesses have the money!” But it’s not necessarily true at all that businesses have the money. In addition to tight margins, many have cash flow issues, and adding to the cost of employing each person can cause situations in which a company misses payroll or has to access lines of credit or even high-interest, short-term financing to cover it.

The obvious answer for the typical small business is: Don’t hire. That’s the only way you can control your costs in an environment where government dictates to you what the cost of an employee must be.

I do not think most Democrats understand anything about business finance. Their so-called “knowledge” comes from listening to union bosses who rail against “greedy corporations” who are sitting on massive piles of cash “on Wall Street” and screwing their workers. None of this has much to do with the real world, but that’s what Democrats think and that’s why we have the laws we have.

I suspect they still don’t understand how much they are contributing to persistent high unemployment, which is why they need to be replaced, and then ObamaCare needs to be repealed.

http://www.caintv.com/of-course-41-percent-of-small

Obama administration enlists nation’s librarians to sign people up for Obamacare
By Doug Powers • June 29, 2013 12:23 PM

Katie Pavlich writes that we should first hire some librarians to read the bill, http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...acare-n1630099 but unfortunately it’s already too late for that.

From the Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-obamacare-en/

The nation’s librarians will be recruited to help people get signed up for insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Up to 17,000 U.S. libraries will be part of the effort to get information and crucial computer time to the millions of uninsured Americans who need to get coverage under the law.

The undertaking will be announced Sunday in Chicago at the annual conference of the American Library Association, according to federal officials who released the information early to The Associated Press.
[...]
Libraries equipped with public computers and Internet access already serve as a bridge across the digital divide, so it made sense to get them involved, said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

President Obama will address the ALA conference tomorrow morning http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013...la-conference/ via recorded message and personally deliver the good news. What Obama won’t tell librarians is that when Obamacare collapses under its own weight he may also ask them to perform prostate exams and STD tests.



**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2013/06/29...for-obamacare/

Snicker! Citizens discover real reasons for Obamacare delay

Posted at 1:42 pm on July 3, 2013 by Twitchy Staff

Dan McLaughlin @baseballcrank

I guess Obamacare wasn't shovel-ready either.

5:32 PM - 2 Jul 2013

Beautiful.

But there may be yet another reason why the implementation of the employer mandate in Obamacare has been delayed.
http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/obamac...tter-responds/

Thomas H. Crown @ThomasHCrown

The employer mandate has been delayed to make certain that the IRS knows which employers to penalize and which to let pass.

5:17 PM - 2 Jul 2013

Oh, snap!

Don’t ask President Obama about it, though.

Cuffé @CuffyMeh

RT @BarackObama: One year ago today, the Supreme Court upheld #Obamacare. See how it's working for Americans today: http://twitpic.com/a1ksfm



9:23 AM - 3 Jul 2013

Cuffé @CuffyMeh

"Too soon." - @BarackObama on Obamacare.


12:16 PM - 3 Jul 2013

David Burge @iowahawkblog

Somewhere, a Democratic ex-congressman who lost re-election in 2010 over his Obamacare vote is staring silently into space.

9:37 AM - 3 Jul 2013

Governor Jindal may have won with the “best tweet ever,” but other Twitter users are still providing much comedy gold. Keep it coming!

Gov. Bobby Jindal ✔ @BobbyJindal

You know things are bad when you can’t even successfully implement your own bad ideas.

9:28 AM - 3 Jul 2013

http://twitchy.com/2013/07/03/snicke...amacare-delay/

‘Best tweet ever!’ Gov. Jindal scores with epic Obamacare boom http://twitchy.com/2013/07/03/best-t...bamacare-boom/

Bam! Iowahawk points out ‘Schadenfreudentastic’ part of Obamacare delay http://twitchy.com/2013/07/03/bam-io...amacare-delay/

‘Dipity dipity derp’: Hilarious flashback to Nancy Pelosi’s #Obamacareinthreewords
http://twitchy.com/2013/07/03/dipity...einthreewords/

Obamacare delayed for businesses, not for individual Americans; Twitter responds http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/obamac...tter-responds/

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Obamacare delay is sign of president’s commitment or something http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/rep-de...-or-something/

‘Let’s delay it all forever’: Sen. Ted Cruz calls for full Obamacare repeal http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/lets-d...macare-repeal/

It’s. The. Law? Can Obama administration legally delay Obamacare mandate until 2015? http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/its-th...te-until-2015/

Report: WH will delay Obamacare employer mandate until 2015 http://twitchy.com/2013/07/02/report...te-until-2015/

Health-Law Employer Mandate Delayed by U.S. Until 2015
By Mike Dorning & Alex Wayne - Jul 3, 2013 6:51 AM

The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance.

The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, after the congressional elections, the administration said yesterday. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don’t offer affordable insurance.

It’s the latest setback for a health-care law that has met resistance from Republicans, who have sought to make the plan a symbol of government overreach. Republican-controlled legislatures and governors in several states have refused funding to expand Medicaid coverage for the poor and declined to set up exchanges where individuals can buy insurance, leaving the job to the federal government.

The delay in the employer mandate addresses complaints from business groups to President Barack Obama’s administration about the burden of the law’s reporting requirements.

“The administration has finally recognized the obvious -- employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate,” Randy Johnson, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobby, said in an e-mail.

Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, said in a blog post announcing the move that the administration decided on the delay so officials could simplify reporting requirements and give employers a chance to adjust their health-care coverage.

Individual Mandate
The individual mandate, a linchpin of the law that requires most Americans to carry health insurance, remains in effect.

Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Families USA, said the employer-mandate delay creates “a potential for some harm” to workers. Businesses that don’t offer coverage may now wait an additional year because there is no penalty, he said. And employers who provide “substandard” coverage that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements of the health law won’t be forced to improve it, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the delay confirms his party’s argument that “Obamacare costs too much and it isn’t working the way the administration promised.”

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, seized on the announcement to urge the White House to also delay the individual mandate.

“I hope the administration recognizes the need to release American families from the mandates of this law as well,” Boehner said in a statement. “This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable.”

Congressional Elections
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allows the Obama administration to set the starting date for the information-reporting requirement that is key to enforcing the mandate that companies cover their workers. While the White House hadn’t yet announced a date, enforcement of the mandate had been widely expected to begin in 2014, an official said.

Congressional elections will take place in November of next year, and the delay potentially shields Democratic candidates from a backlash generated by the additional regulations on employers.

The White House had been in discussions with business groups over complaints about the reporting requirements and believes it can simplify the process, two officials said.

“As we implement this law, we have and will continue to make changes as needed,” Jarrett said in her blog post. “In our ongoing discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this right.”

Reporting Burden
The employer mandate imposes extensive reporting requirements on businesses including the months during which each employee and any of their dependents was covered by health insurance, the official said. The Business Roundtable said in a June 11, 2012, comment letter that reporting requirements would demand “substantial changes in administrative procedures and reprogramming of recordkeeping systems.”

According to a White House fact sheet, more than 96 percent of companies with at least 50 employees already offer health insurance to their employees.

The officials said the decision stemmed from a commitment in the administration to reduce regulatory red tape and drew parallels to a move earlier this year to cut the length of application forms for insurance provided through government-sponsored exchanges to three pages from 21.

‘Wise Decision’
Neil Trautwein, vice president and employee benefits counsel for the National Retail Federation, called the move “an unexpected but extraordinarily wise decision.”

It could lead companies to delay their own decisions on whether to offer coverage to all their workers, Trautwein said.

“The administration is certainly encouraging employers to continue and expand offerings,” he said. “We’ll see how that goes.”

Tim Taft, president and chief executive officer of Fiesta Restaurant Group Inc (FRGI)., reacted to news of the delay in a phone interview: “Hooray,” he said. “That’s so huge.”

“The delay affords us what is really needed, which is time to get our heads and minds around how this is going to work,” Taft said.

200,000 Employers
Former White House health policy adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, now vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, said today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the delay of implementation of the employer mandate will impact a limited number of companies. “I actually don’t think this is that big a deal,” he said.

The provision only applies to employers who have 50 or more employees, Emanuel said. He estimated that there are 200,000 total employers in the U.S. impacted and that “94 percent already offer health insurance” to employees.

“We need to look for 2020 rather than moment to moment for changes in the system,” Emanuel said.

Obama has confronted opposition from Republicans at every turn of the law, which passed Congress with only Democratic votes and was later challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Only 16 states have agreed to set up the new exchanges, or marketplaces to sell insurance to people who don’t get it at work. Twenty-four states have refused to expand Medicaid, as called for under the law, according to Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s secretary of health and human services.

Congressional Republicans, who have vowed to try to repeal the law, have refused Obama’s requests for about $1 billion more to help enact the statute and ensure it runs smoothly. Instead, they’ve started multiple investigations into the implementation.

Nor is this the first time Obama has been forced to scale back the law’s features. In March, the administration said small businesses wouldn’t be able to give their workers a choice of health plans in exchanges set up just for them. In January, a plan to create new nonprofit insurers in states was curtailed after Congress capped funding for the companies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...d-to-2015.html

July 3, 2013, 6:38 p.m.
Employer Mandate? Never Mind
Obama decides not to enforce the heart of his health-care law.

These columns fought the Affordable Care Act from start to passage, and we'd now like to apologize to our readers. It turns out we weren't nearly critical enough. The law's implementation is turning into a fiasco for the ages, and this week's version is the lawless White House decision to delay the law's insurance mandate for businesses, though not for individuals.

The employer mandate is central to ObamaCare's claim of providing universal coverage. Companies with 50 or more "employee equivalents" must pay a $2,000 penalty per full-time employee if they don't provide government-approved health insurance. The provision was supposed to start in January, and delaying it is like Ford saying its electric car is ready to go, except the electric battery doesn't work.

But all of a sudden on Tuesday evening Mark Mazur—you know him as the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy—published a blog post canceling the insurance reporting rules and tax enforcement until 2015 as Washington began to evacuate for the long Independence Day weekend. Enjoy the holiday, mate.

White House fixer Valerie Jarrett tried to contain the fallout with a separate blog post promising that ObamaCare is otherwise "staying the course." That's true only if she's referring to the carelessness and improvisation that have defined the law so far.

Mr. Mazur cited the "complexity of the requirements" as the reason for the delay. He isn't talking about business confusion and uncertainty, as damaging as those are. This is probably an admission that Treasury's information technology isn't ready to process and cross-check paperwork across the 5.7 million businesses in America, especially the pass-through S-corps and partnerships that file under the individual tax code.

This is more than a typical government snafu. It relates directly to the design of the law, which was thoughtlessly written and rammed through Congress with instructions for the bureaucracy to figure it all out.

And, lo, over eight interim final rules, three final rules, 20 requests for comment, 21 proposed rules, one information collection request, two amendments to the interim final rules, six requests for information and one frequently-asked-questions document, the Administration has created an employer-mandate system that, for example, requires business to track and report every full-time employee's hours of service on a monthly basis.

Meanwhile, the law stipulates that a full-time workweek for the purposes of the mandate is 30 hours, when general business practice is at least 35. The result is that businesses have been scrambling to insulate themselves from higher labor costs by hiring part-time workers, or splitting shifts, or in some industries like fast food even sharing workers. Small firms trying to expand while avoiding the 50-worker trigger have come to be known as 49ers.

The delay will help these and other employers avoid immediately higher costs, which is why the main business lobbies endorsed it. But the decision will continue to dampen overall job creation because businesses know they'll still be whacked in a year. Businesses don't hire workers with the intention of sacking them later.

The Administration's media cheerleaders are nonetheless portraying this as a stroke of political genius to push all the pain past the 2014 elections. But if that's the goal, it is too clever by half. If Republicans have any sense, they will move immediately to delay the rest of the bill for at least a year too. They should start with the individual mandate to buy insurance or pay a tax.

Individuals are only supposed to be eligible for ObamaCare's subsidies if their employer doesn't offer the right benefits. But how will the Treasury know who qualifies in 2014 if they lack the information that businesses are supposed to provide? Citizens must also pay the individual mandate-tax if they decline coverage from their employer. How will the Treasury verify these offers?

Which brings us to the dubious legality of this delay. The Affordable Care Act's Section 1513 states in black-letter law that "(d) Effective Date.—The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." It does not say the Administration can impose the mandate whenever it feels it is politically convenient.

This selective enforcement of laws has become an Administration habit. From immigration (the Dream Act by fiat) to easing welfare reform's work requirements to selective waivers for No Child Left Behind, the Obama Administration routinely suspends enforcement of or unilaterally rewrites via regulation the laws it dislikes. Now it is doing it again on health care, without any consultation from, much less the approval of, Congress. President Obama probably figures business and Republicans won't object because they don't like the law anyway.

***
But Republicans should give Mr. Obama the legal authority to suspend the mandate—in return for other concessions. In addition to forcing votes on suspending the individual mandate-tax, this could include repealing the medical device tax and other harmful provisions. Democrats will find it hard to defend an individual mandate-tax now that businesses are spared. And a delay of one year can easily become two, then three, and then past the next Presidential election.

ObamaCare has become a rolling "train wreck," in Senator Max Baucus's memorable phrase, and it gets worse the more of it the public sees. The employer mandate is terrible policy, as the law's critics said before it passed. Now the Administration is all but admitting it can't implement it properly, and the task for opponents is to press the concession and begin to delay the rest of the law and dismantle it piece by piece.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...972896364.html