This quote comes from a part-time teacher who has learned that his hours will be cut so his school district doesn’t need to provide him with health insurance under Obamacare. Nobody could have seen that coming! Here’s the latest on Obamacare:
● Real Life: A lot of disappointed liberals are learning that businesses are indeed restructuring in one of three ways to avoid Obamacare: (1) not hiring so they stay below 50 people, (2) cutting hours below 30 hours, or (3) dumping their health plans entirely. Each of these is a way to avoid Obamacare and firms are doing it... even though liberals assured us they wouldn’t. Liberals are, of course, shocked that employers are doing what a million years of human behavior told us they would. And people like this teacher are upset that not only will they not get insurance like they thought, but they will be hurt with fewer hours and fewer jobs. Just wait till the fines kick in! LOL!
● More On California: I told you last week how the California numbers aren’t what they seem: (1) fly-by night insurers, (2) too small a number of policies to count the low-rate plans as legitimate, (3) they are taking no profits this year as a loss-leader, meaning the rates won’t last, (4) California cherry-picked rates for healthy single 40-year old men and compared those to made up rates to claim there was no rise, (5) they ignored the old-people and the smoker multipliers, (6) they compared them to rates in 2012 so as to avoid exposing the massive run-up in rates in 2010-2011, etc.
Well, there’s more.
1. It turns out that to keep these rates low, California excluded all the expensive hospitals from the plans, like Cedars-Sinai. Basically, if you are on Obamacare, you are limited to second-tier hospitals... and God knows what kinds of doctors. This suggests that Obamacare is about to create a two-tier system: quality care for the wealthy and crappola care for the rest. Call it Ghettocare.● Forcible Upgrades: In addition to the exchanges, Obamacare includes various mandates on insurers outside the exchanges. This will result in millions of cancellation notices being issued because most policies don’t fit the mandates. The people receiving these noticed will then be offered new policies, which Team Obama claims will offer more benefits (true) but won’t increase costs (false) and even if it does, you should be thankful because you’re getting more benefits now. Right... we should be thankful for being forced to accept something we don’t want and paying more for it. Welcome to liberal land.
2. The White House claims that most states will have at least five insurers in their exchanges, hence there will be competition as promised. Only, it turns out that this is misleading. Most states already have that, but one carrier dominates the state and the rest are just around the edges. This confirms what I found with the low number of policies in the low-rate plans (as I mentioned last week)... you’ll never get the low rate policies.
3. Forbes examined California’s claims and found them to be fraudulent. It turns out that California was comparing individual plans to business plans when it said the rates would go up only about 2%. Forbes did the math and found that if you are a single, non-smoking 25-year-old male, you will pay a minimum of $184 a month for a catastrophic plan. The same plan is currently available for $92. That’s a 100% increase. If you’re 40, then you aren’t allowed to buy a catastrophic plan anymore, so you will pay $261 for a plan you can currently get for $121... a 116% increase. So much for 2%.
A spokesmonkey for the Washington state insurance commissioner claimed the premiums will be “similar but with better coverage.” How can that be? Well.... “Your costs involve more than your premiums.” That’s an interesting quote. What it is, is an evasion. What she’s saying is that you won’t notice the premium rise compared to the total cost you pay if you get sick. So premiums will go up, as we know they must, despite the assurances to the contrary.
And by the way, when they say “better coverage,” they don’t mean “amount they cover,” they mean “things they cover”. The things they keep touting are contraceptive care and drug rehab, which aren’t things the vast majority of the public will ever use. Basically, you’re about to pay a bundle for bloatware.
● Oh oh!: Finally on rates, we get this doozy. The insurance companies supported Obamacare because they see this as a huge boon to them (and their soaring stock prices confirm that). The fly in the ointment, however, is that everyone needs to sign up for this little shakedown of theirs to work... or things go horribly wrong.
Said one former insurance executive, “A lot of people are worried. There’s concern that if this is an administrative mess, only the sick people will crawl across your door and the healthy people won’t show up.” If that happens, he said, the rates provided will be extremely inadequate.
Well, guess what... healthy people aren’t going to sign up. Why would they? They don’t sign up now and no small fine is going to change that. In particular, they are hoping that young people will sign up, but think about this little problem: the law allows “children” up to the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ plans. So why would those people leave those plans and go to an exchange to buy insurance? Why would a healthy 28 year-old spent $2,400 a year on coverage they don’t think they’ll ever use when they can pay a small fine or can even avoid paying the fine by just making sure they don’t overpay the IRS? Can they really believe that millions of people will go against their self interest just to make this insurance conspiracy work? Are they taking crazy pills?
● Nearly 50 million?: When Obamacare got started in 2009, there were 43 million uninsured. Now there are more than 49 million. That’s a 16% increase in three years. Do you think the MSM would have ignored this if it had happened under Bush? Clearly, the prospect of Obamacare is already driving up the numbers of uninsured.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. My guess is this...
Event 1: People get notices that their policies have been cancelled and their new rates are 25% higher. Liberals deny it and blame greedy insurers.
Event 2: A BUNCH of businesses dump their plans and tell their employees to go buy from the Glorious People’s Exchanges! Liberals deny it and blame greedy insurers.
Event 3: Signup day happens and people are shocked to discover that they can’t get the rates advertised. Most actually pay double. Liberals deny it.
Event 4: We hear that there’s no money to pay the subsidies, so poor people will need to be seen on credit. Liberals deny it and blame greedy Republicans.
Event 5: We start getting reports that young people refused to sign up. Liberals deny it but accuse young people of lacking patriotism.
Event 6: We get reports of hospitals turning away Obamacare patients, who now can’t find doctors. Liberals deny it but blame greedy doctors.
Event 7: The 2015 rates come out and they are double the 2014 rates. Liberals blame greedy insurers!
Event 8: We hear that the IRS took in a lot less in fines than expected as people refused to pay them. Liberals blame the rich and the unpatriotic.
Event 9: The exchange system is folded into Medicaid and quietly vanishes. Liberals talk about the need for someone to finally tackle the issue of healthcare since “no one ever has tried before” and they lament the 65 million uninsured.
44 comments:
Socialism wont work better under Obama than it's worked anywhere else. It's a sham and a fraud.
Now now LL, you know that socialism has never been tried. The Russians, the Germans (East, West and Nazi), Sweden, the British, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, FDR, LBJ, South American, Africa, the Middle East, France... those were all just capitalists pretending to be socialists. Yep. :P
In all seriousness, what I don't understand is how supposedly rational people can think that insurance companies are just going to cover people for free or that healthy people who don't buy insurance now are suddenly going to pay $4k a year to help keep everyone else's costs down. That flies in the face of ALL of human experience, and yet the supporters are claiming that will happen.
this is pretty much what I expected to see under this horrible, horrible act. Lies and coercion were used to get it passed by the skin of it's teeth, and then S.C.O.T.U.S. (thank Roberts) decided to bail on it's legal judgement for reasons only outwardly known. The mess created is a mess of astronomical proportions. It is only meant as a stepping stone to complete nationalization, but even if that is rejected, the shit rain it has created is enormous.
FYI, Forbes has a new article on the rate hikes (47 minutes fresh): LINK
In it, they note that the Democrats are now admitting that rates will skyrocket on most people, but the Democrats are saying this is a good thing because that rate shock will pay for the small group of people whose premiums will go down. Yikes.
It's a good read.
Jed, It may have been meant as a step to nationalization, but it's pretty much killed off any chance of that. You can't mishandle something this incompetently and then claim the solution is MORE!
What I find interesting is the psychology of this. Either the Democrats are insane idiots (always possible) or they think that if they can just lie long enough, people won't notice that they're all getting screwed.
That may have worked in the 1960s, when they controlled everything the public knew, but not in the modern era.
Andrew, it's not that I disagree with you on that, but I have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to the ability of things to not go my way politically. Honestly, when it was clear the American people had rejected this (as evidenced by the 2010 mid-terms) I thought it was probably dead. Then I thought Roberts would do the right thing, and tell them it was unconstitutional, and here is how they could fix it. Then I thought how can the American people return to office this inept president. Well, you get the idea. So on things political, for fiscal conservatives, I no longer believe good things happen until they actually do.. BTW, to all my friends here, I will be off-line for an undisclosed amount of time after today. I have to get some serious repair work on engine my engine done. All my best to everyone, and I'll hopefully catch up in a few weeks.
Jed, take heart: the worst of Obamacare is scheduled to hit before 2016. (I read somewhere this was a mistake on the authors' parts, that they meant for it to hit later.) If people are screaming bloody murder going into the next presidential election, Republicans have a chance to really clean up--provided they don't campaign against gay marriage and birth control.
The only wildcard is that at this juncture, I don't think the Democrat strategy for 2016 is remotely predictable. Who are they going to run? Hillary? A healthcare nut in the wake of a healthcare crisis? That'll be easy to shred. Biden? Please! And in the lower ranks, of those who haven't been burned by 0bama, there aren't too many exciting personalities.
Okay, before moving on I have to get this out of my system in a controlled environment...I saw a blurb on our elevator news this morning and it was all I could to do not laugh out loud because this is what came to my mind with the what I read -
President Obama is convening a day long conference on mental health today. Joe Biden is joining him. All I could think of was that President Obama must be bringing Biden in to this meeting for "show and tell".
You would be proud. It did not blurt that out on the elevator.
There, it's out of my system...
"I never expected the Wake County Public School System to circumvent the intent of the law."
Newton's Third Law, anyone? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? Apparently public education is in even worse shape than I thought.
Also, just saw that Sen. Frank Lautenberg has died, he being the last of the WWII veterans in the Senate. RIP.
"... or if [Democrats] think that if they can just lie long enough, people won't notice that they're all getting screwed."
Andrew - not to split hairs here, but isn't that EXACTLY what they have proved? This is exactly why they didn't want anyone to read the dang bill before they signed it into law.
I am of the belief now that Insurers and currently Uninsured get what they deserve. We have tried and tried to warn them over the last 4 years and frankly, let them scream to high heaven and why didn't anyone warn them. Screw 'em.
Moving on...the one thing that no one is factoring in are the "Doctors". Remember them? Not only do we not have enough of them, but the ones who are currently practicing are going to become very choosey about who they take as patients. There is already a ground swell of doctors who are dumping Medicare/Medicaid patients and will only take privately insured. One doctor in Maine is now only taking direct payment/no insurance. He has lowered all of his prices (no staff to file claims anymore) and has made it public that he will negotiate his prices, if necessary - btw, something that he could NOT do working with insurance carriers/Medicare/Medicaid. Btw, for those of you who don't know, not only can a doctor be fined/jailed for overbilling Medicare/Medicaid, but also for underbilling.
Jed, Best wishes! We'll be here when you get back! :D
I know what you mean about how things have gone. Roberts in particular was a real disappointment to me. That was the one that made no sense at all to me. The rest is just politics, and politics always loses to reality at some point.
tryanmax.... ABORTION AND STOPPING GAYS IS ALL THAT MATTERS!!! You know that. Actually, in all seriousness, I'm seeing significant changes everywhere in the Republican Party that they're done with that. From what I'm seeing, abortion is being backseated, gay marriage is being accepted, and even immigration reform is being accepted. The question is, what will they run on after that. That, I think, they are still searching for.
In terms of when this kicks in, they really couldn't have done it worse. The bad parts have already started for industry and by reflex consumers. The Exchanges will be up and running by October, showing how horrible the rates really are. I suspect the cancellation notices will go out right around that time too. Right around election time 2014, the second wave of much higher rates will come out. By that point people will also have been fined one. Those fines will increase each year as will the rates. This thing will keep right on giving.
Between this and the IRS scandal, the Republicans will do really well in 2014. But they still don't have a chance in 2016 unless they develop and agenda. Rubio and Rand right now are kind of doing that, so I am hopeful, but we'll see. They will need to overcome the base to do it.
T-Rav, Liberals don't think like that. They think that if something is "good" (i.e. they want it) then everyone will do it once you raise awareness and pass a law expressing your "intent."
Sadly, life doesn't work that way.
TennJ - Hurry back! We will miss you! ;-\
T-Rav, Lautenberg was a New Jersey liberal who helped damage the country year after year. As the left does with our people, I say only good riddance.
Bev, I agree across the board. First, I have no sympathy for the public on this. This is idiocy on a grand scale and if the public didn't rise up and stop it, then they get what they deserve. I won't play along however.
I do feel sorry for doctors who are getting screwed here and I recommend they opt out as well.
I also think that people are going to discover very quickly that the doctors covered by Obamacare policies are crap. I ran into that in DC where there were two tiers of doctors. If you had good insurance, you could see the good ones who had real offices with real equipment. If you had cheapo insurance, then you saw "third world" doctors at best... people who didn't speak English and who practiced in the basements of apartment buildings in the bad part of town.
I also think the future is the guy in Maine (I saw the same thing in WVa), and this may become the catalyst. As more doctors break away from things like Medicare/Medicaid, they will find a lot more freedom. It's like getting fired -- until it happens, you never understand how liberating it can be when you suddenly get to start fresh. And I think they will use that freedom to do what this guy did and find a set of loyal patients willing to pay cash.
Andrew - The Maine doctor also found something enlightening - once the insurance carriers were off his back, he could lower his prices dramatically to reasonable price for service and at the same rate that the insurance companies were willing to pay, but without the middleman. His patients are free to apply their insurance to lab work etc. Btw, this is exactly the way my father practiced before the insurance companies started taking over because of the proposed Hillarycare.
Bev, That's the thing. Insurance is a trap. And once you're in it, it becomes "the norm" and you lose the ability to see how the world would be better without it -- on both sides. Doctors fear their patients won't pay if they don't have it and patients fear they will go broke without it. For "big" things like heart surgery that's true, but for GPs it's false.
I've spoken extensively with numerous doctors including a couple who have walked away from insurance and they all say it dramatically changed their practice for the better. They say they had more time, less headaches, got paid more regularly, etc.
The most interesting thing I ran into was the GP in WVA who did the fixed monthly rate program. You paid $68 at the start of each month and then you could see him as much as you wanted. That sounds like it would be a disaster for him, but it wasn't -- he was making a fortune because most people rarely went. They just liked knowing they could. And every time I saw him, he spent about 40 minutes with me. Basically, he was happy, his patients were happy, he made a heck of a profit, we save money and we got better service... it was WIN-WIN.
BUT he got criminally charged twice for "selling insurance without a license" by a prosecutor backed by the insurance industry. Both times he had to go to the state Supreme Court before he was cleared. That's how strongly the insurance industry saw the threat in what he was doing.
Re: Sen. Lautenberg - This will be a good test to see what kind of Republican Chris Christie is since he gets to appoint the replacement for Lautenberg. Since Obama was in NJ last weekend (and I suspect that he wasn't there just to see the results of all that emergency Sandy aid to the coast) I am not holding my breath that Christie would appoint a conservative Republican and I would bet real money that he may appoint a Dem like Cory Booker for instance...who wants to run for the Senate anyway.
Bev, That's a great point. So far, Christie keeps failing test after test. Here is his chance. He needs to find a conservative who has a chance of getting re-elected. If he can do that, then he will help his stock a lot. If he appoints a total RINO or a Democrat, then he might as well change parties.
18 Dem-held seats (not counting the 2 Special Elections) are up for grabs in the Senate. We need 6 to gain a majority.
I hope they use this next year.
Kit, I talked about that already once and I still don't think we have a chance at winning the Senate, but we will pick up seats. It's almost inevitable. And between this and the IRS, it's all but a certainty. But if we want a majority, we need more.
Kit, Here's my take on the Senate. LINK.
I'll revisit it eventually, but don't think that just because a bunch of Democrats are up for re-election that that means anything. Until we can win outside of the South, those seats are meaningless to us.
What do you think of Gabriel Gomez?
LINK
I think he's the only type of Republican who can win in Massachusetts. I also think many of his ideas will become GOP policy over the next 5-10 years. Things are changing.
If you want a laugh, everyone should read this article from The Atlantic. They're worried that the very young people whose wallets they need to bleed aren't going to buy healthcare and that will break the system.
Like typical liberals, at one point they even ask why would anyone rather pay a fine than get healthcare? Well, the answer is that those poor deluded souls don't know HOW to buy healthcare! Not that they would rather spent $100 than $1000 for something they don't want -- plus, lots of people won't be paying the fine anyway.
Laughably, in the end, they try to claim this is rich kids who are going to screw up the system.
This is a fun read... it's how liberals cope with a reality they are unwilling to accept. LINK
A distant cousin posted "healthcare for profit is disgusting". I tried to let it pass, but couldn't. So, I asked her if she was proposing med school grads work for free. She then got indignant, revised her statement to "excessive profit", and asked when she had said that someone should work for free. I then copied and pasted her original statement. She went unusually silent.
Is here a name for "law of consequences we told you were coming but you pretend weren't and now you're saying they're unintended/unexpected consequences but they aren't"????
rlaWTX, That's very typical for a liberal. They spout jargon without any sense of what it real means for the real world and when faced with the obvious idiocy, they add an undefined adjective to cloud things up. And if you quiz her on what's "excessive," she won't have an answer. It will just apply to anyone she doesn't like.
As an interesting aside, one of the things I like to do to liberals is ask them "Why just doctors?" or whatever profession they are targeting today. "We need to fix our bridges, we should make steel workers work for free... or farmers. They shouldn't be allowed to profit."
Liberals usually look at you like you're crazy at that point.
As for the word about "well-known-'un'expected consequences"... we really need a word for that. Perhaps combining the words epiphany and liberal to get libpiphany?
"libpiphany" - but that's only if they LEARN from it... but since each "un-unexpected consequence" is totally unique and surprising in its own individual way, they won't learn and apply the info... grrrrr
How about epipheral?
What is frustrating they just can't see how they are wrong? When this one of these epipherals happens, I always write "Well, welcome to the Tea Party!" Especially when idiots like David Axelrod make excuses like "“Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast,” Hey Axelrod "Welcome to the Tea Party!"...
Now we're getting kind of philosophical... what happens when an unteachable liberal encounters a teachable moment.
Bev, I like epipheral though rlaWTX makes a good point that they really aren't learning anything.
That's why it's not an epiphany, but an epipheral. It is an epiphany just around the edges (that's where the -ipheral has a double use) It can mean "liberal" AND "peripheral". Isn't the suffix "-eral" Greek for "ignorant" anyway...oh, no, that's "-mous" (like in ignoramous), so that would be "epiphemous"
So we compared Obama to Nixon, so they come back to compare Issa to McCarthy...because all of this IRS and AP buggin stuff is all a witch hunt.
An epiphany just around the edges. I like that! That's brilliant, Bev! epipheral
As for the Nixon thing, I stopped worrying what liberals think a long time ago. They're idiots. They say what they want whether it makes sense or not and then they pat themselves on the back for being clever little monkeys.
epipheral: It is an epiphany just around the edges
Most Excellent!!!
Then it's settled. I will add "epipheral" to the Commentarama-nary.
Bev, I vote yes. :)
My wife was speaking to a flaming liberal friend a few years back. She of course was pushing for socialized medicine. When my wife explained to her that the service she gets now will not be the same if it changed. She completely denied it. Why would it change? Oh, I don't know. Why would someone work just as hard as they are now and get paid much much less? Bring on socialized medicine, I can take it. Sure we will have crappy health care, but I will get to take more time off with my kids. You will be lucky to get me to answer a phone after 5pm let alone see me. The way Canada works, I might have the whole month of December off.
It was a very epipheral moment. They are no longer friends.
Koshcat, Honestly, I don't understand why liberals don't get this. They can see it in their own lives. Indeed, if you ask them, "How hard will you work if the government says you can only make half of what you make now?" Then they get furious and call it an outrage and they admit fully that they would not keep working (assuming they don't just try to avoid it by claiming that could never happen). Yet, when it comes to doing it to other people, they seem to think that everyone else should just accept this and keep on working for everyone else's good. It's either abject stupidity or total hypocrisy... or both.
Nice use of epipheral! :)
Epiphemoral: a brief moment of clarity lasting less than one sentence that usually ends with pleading the 5th; a transitory epipheral moment
Bev, Getting these words added to the dictionary would certainly help us define liberalism much more easily!
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