The Wall Street Journal has done an interesting analysis of Obamacare. They wanted to know if Obama was being even close to truthful in the numbers he’s spewed forth about Obamacare. He hasn’t. Surprise! Here are their fascinating findings:
● Two different industry groups have conducted surveys to see what percentage of the two million people who “bought” Obamacare policies were previously without insurance and how many were simply dumped into the system when Obama killed their prior policies. Depending on the survey, 11%, 25% or 35% of the enrollees were uninsured before. Thus, if Obama’s goal is to get new people covered, then he's only succeeded with somewhere between 242,000 and 770,000 people... the rest simply replaced existing insurance.The Journal also examined Medicaid enrollments and found that Team Obama is lying through their teeth about those. Team Obama claims that 4 million people have signed up for Medicaid because of Obamacare. But...
● 242,000 is far less than the goal of 7 million at this point. Even using the bigger number (770k) still means he's only hit 11% of his goal. Moreover, only a fraction of those have actually paid... and they don’t have insurance until they pay.
● Of those who didn’t sign up, 52% said they couldn’t afford Obamacare. 30% said they couldn’t work their way through the system.
● Of those who had pre-existing insurance, around 10% were dumped into the Exchanges by heartless employers, the rest were forced into the Exchanges when heartless (and brainless) Obama made their prior plans illegal.
But people sign up for and drop out of Medicaid all the time, and you can't just attribute them all to Obamacare. To figure out the real story, Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics compared the enrollments in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and to those that didn’t. What he found was that 55% of the enrollments in Medicaid took place in states that did not expand their coverage as Obama wanted. Hence, those people signing up was not the result of Obamacare as they were already eligible under the old system. Then he went back and looked at prior enrollment trends in the other states and found the normal baseline enrollment before Obamacare. Comparing that baseline to the post-Obamacare sign ups, he found that Obamacare added only 190,000 people to Medicaid.
The liberal Washington Post examined Trende’s analysis and concluded that he was right. They then labeled Obama’s four million claim “ridiculous” and gave three Pinocchios to everyone “who had improperly used the administration's figure or left the wrong impression about it.” You know things are bad when liberals are accusing Obama of lying.
Anyway, with 10 weeks to go in their enrollment period, and the CBO estimating that 14 million people should sign up for 2014, Team Obama is behind the eight ball. So far, they’ve only achieved 6.8% of their goal with no reason to think they’ll do much better in the future.
... and that needs to be balanced against the 5 million who lost their insurance and the 100+ million who saw their premiums soar.
Epic fail.
40 comments:
this is no surprise, of course. I think Obama's goal has been to make sure everyone is insured. His hope, I guess, is that he would be in such total control, that he could step this over to single payer. He would use a combo of taxes (hiddn) govt. bullying of health care intitutions, and unfunded liabilities hidden in the evr growing national debt. I think he figured once it got going, it would be unstoppable. It's similar to paying people not to work. It is lunacy, and yet there are a lot of people who won't hold govt. accountable.
Jed, In truth, I don't think single payer was ever in the works. Here's why. Single payer would mean that the government foots the bill. The medical bill in this country is more than $2.8 trillion...but the entire government takes in only $2.9 trillion in revenues. That means that if the government took over the healthcare market, it would be utterly broke overnight.
So what Obama is doing is getting the insurers to act as quasi-government agents backed by the power of law. That way he can hide the whole thing off budget because it gets cycled through these private companies.
Let me also say, "Go Broncos!" Actually, I'm more of a Peyton Manning fan.
Single payer is most definitely the ultimate goal of ideologues from the left. In their mind, the power and clout of the government would be superior to even the health care industry. They would, essentially, say, you will accept 25% less (or whatever.) In the past, whenever our government has tried to impose things like wage or price controls, it hasn't worked.
In Tennesssee, we are big Peyton fans. Jon Fox had the exact same AVR surgery as me,so I am Denver all the way. Both S.F. and Seattle are blue state bastions. Still, will this be known as the stoner bowl??? :)
Oh, "snap"! Well, it is official and right from the horse's mouth. Headline in the NY Post this morning "O blames racism for his woes" (I would link to it, but I am on my IPad). I think he may have just jumped the shark on this one. Anyone want to meet at the Bedding Dept to pick up your new set of government issue white sheets?
Oh btw, it already HAS been dubbed the Pot Bowl! I'm torn because I really like Seattle ((the city) and they will be the underdogs. But then, Peyton has had an extraordinary season and deserves to win because then he can rub it in Eli's nose at all the family get togethers. Eli had a veeeery bad season. Oh, what to do ? What to do?
Bev - I saw that, thing with "O". He really is horrible; "Celebrity in Chief." I am on an ipad-mini, but never could get comfortable linking on this platform. Here is the thing, Bev. Seattle may be pretty, but it still has far too many socialists. Go with Peyton :)
I know these updates are distasteful to do. But they're great ammunition against the Obamazombies at work.So we must speak of it again.And again. Oh yes we must.
GypsyTyger
And isn't it funny how he used Martin Luther King Day to whine about being persecuted because he's black? Could this be any less imaginative? Remember his press conference with his manipulation of the school shooting to press for gun control. Every time Obama said the word "tragic" Biden would wipe his eye.Just not only cynical but unimaginatively cynical. And just tired.
GypsyTyger
Jed, Let me clarify. I think single-payer is the ideological wet dream of the left. And that is what they wanted. But when the Democrats saw the price, they suffered sticker shocker in a major degree and ruled that out as possible. Instead, they went with this other method of co-opting health insurers into acting on behalf of the government with the idea that they could force them to cover everyone in exchange for the government subsidizing them if things go wrong.
Sadly for them, the American people are very good at resisting such crap.
Bev, I saw that last night. What a whiny turd!! It's not because I'm an incompetent, angry, stand-offish, hostile asshole who is trying to break the backs of the middle class with my tax hikes.... no, that's not why people hate me. White people hate me because they realized after 2008 that I was black.
Idiot.
Bev, I'm going for Peyton. He's had an amazing season. Plus, it would be nice if he could rub it in Eli's face. LOL!
Oh, boo hoo. I just read something that says the problem facing Obamacare is that success stories just aren't as interesting or newsworthy as failures. Gee, they didn't see this coming to bite them in the butt as they were trotting sob-story after sob-story out to sell Obamacare in the first place?
What's remarkable is that the right-wing media is too busy devouring their own to seek out the Obamacare failure stories and the formerly sycophantic MSM media is actually doing it! That's says a lot!
But maybe it's for the best. After all, if the right-wing media were reporting it, then the left would just dismiss it as anecdotal.
Jed, Good point. Seattle is all about communism... and coffee.
You know, the interesting thing about the racism charge is that this must mean that Obama's own polling shows he's in trouble. Otherwise, why even try to go this route?
GypsyTyger, I agree. This is important information to know because it's great ammunition and it helps us watch the failure in progress so we know what will happen next. But man would I love to write about something else!!
Martin Luther King Day! Ah hah! That's why he picked today. What a little turd. It's clear that he's learned nothing from MLK, isn't it? If he had, he would be trying to show us he's better than we think, not whining that we just don't like him because he's black.
And similarly on that note, think about this. Here is a man who has been elected President of the United States whining that he's being treated unfairly. Fuck you, Mr. President. Maybe you should speak to some people who actually know what unfair means.
Andrew - yeah, I think they could not have gotten single payer passed, politically. Hell, they had to use the "Cornholer Compromise" and every legislative trick in the bag just to get this abysmal law on the books. The lie about it's raison d'etre being to get coverage for those without would be laughable, if not so sad. But, the people are not going to like a "bailout" for the companies, and an effective campaign tool to be used against Democrat incumbents. And really, all they have left to come back with is "well we can't just go back to the way it was now!" Every day, I wake up and get more pissed off by this guy.
Andrew, just for giggles, I can actually work out that whiny turd logic.
In Obama's mind, he was voted into office by a bunch of closet racists who only voted for him to assuage their white guilt while clinging to their racist assumption that America would never elect a black president. So it was to their shock and horror that they learned there were so many closet racists in America that their own guilt actually did elect a black president, so then they had to oppose him. In other words, racism is what elected him in the first place.
That also means that Obama never expected to get elected, so his incompetence is not at issue. It's the racists who are to blame for Obama's incompetence b/c, if they were less racist, they wouldn't have allowed the color of his skin to cover his lack of credentials. He was basically forced into a job he wasn't qualified for by racists just so they could use his failure as an excuse to attack him. None of this is on Obama's head b/c, any way you slice it, he's just a poor victim of racism.
Wasn't that fun?
Just for the sake of clarity, the only "Cornholer" was Ben Nelson himself. He ruined his chance at reelection with that and had to "retire."
tryanmax, First, that's always true. That's been the lament against the news my entire life -- tragedy sells, success doesn't get covered.
Secondly, uh, what successes? And I'm not really being factious about this. I'm serious... what successes? He got almost none of his agenda through even a Democratic Congress. He has jack in the way of foreign policy achievements. The economy is crap. There are no jobs. Obamacare is a joke. He hasn't even managed to fill his appointments which is the equivalent of decorating your desk once you get a new job. He's made no friends. Had no heroic or iconic moments. And every time you look, his pirate wife is pillaging some resort, he's on a golf course, and his team is making fools of themselves. So I ask... what success?
As for the right wing press, they're busy destroying the Republicans... oh, and whining that the Republicans are fighting back. Just ignore them.
Andrew, I'm not saying there is a success story to be found, other than a few anecdotes that people can't relate to. Gee, it's nice that some cancer-ridden, quadriplegic single mom with heart disease and psoriasis can finally get the Medicare she already qualified for but was too ignorant to know it. Now about my rate increases!
Seriously, Obamacare just turned out to be a really, really expensive PSA campaign and registration drive for Medicare. That's it!
Jed, You and me both.
Obamacare is a legislative disaster. I think the Democrats thought they had the perfect system when they designed it. All the tough decisions would be made by insurers. The Democrats could then whine and scream and attack the dirty insurers for not making it work or being harsh to grandma, all the while decrying the cost of the "private sector." In effect, they could claim they got universal coverage without taking any of the blame for the restrictions, the rationing, or the cost.
But it hasn't worked that way because the Republicans didn't play along and try to make the system work by tinkering away its flaws. Now it's become a Frankenstein Monster roaming through our electoral landscape angering voters, wiping out doctors, and destroying Democrats. Even worse for them, the public is refusing to play along. So next year, the insurers will report massive losses, get huge subsidies, and then report record profits. People are going to be beyond pissed.
tryanmax, That makes my head spin, but it's disturbingly accurate. I've heard this before that we elected him because we are closet racists and just wanted to prove that we weren't really closet racists. Twisted.
I think the other element of racism, to his mind, is the opposition he faces. He thinks that all those honky Republicans should have let him have his way and the only reason they stood in his way and, thereby caused his incompetence, is that they are racists who are representing racists. Ignore the fact that he got nothing from the Democrats either or that he has no friends among Congressional Democrats, or that he's got no foreign policy victories either. The truth is that he's a lazy SOB who doesn't realize that success isn't handed to you... because his whole life success has been handed to him,
He is the first "participation trophy" president, to go back to the debate of the weekend.
tryanmax, Seriously, Obamacare just turned out to be a really, really expensive PSA campaign and registration drive for Medicare. That's it!
Bingo.
And I know you're not saying there is a success story out there. If there was, the MSM would be telling it until we were all puking from hearing about it. I just think the charge is funny that somehow everyone is ignoring "his success" because he doesn't have any!!
Great Tweet quote! “I’m fine with losing my job, losing insurance, being audited. I just can’t stand that he’s black,” @OrwellForce snarked on Twitter..."
Here's the NYPost article - http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/obama-some-folks-dont-like-me-because-im-black/
Also for those of you who know IowaHawk (David Burge), his tweet made the cut too. Very funny guy if you follow onTwitter...
Bev, LOL! Nice.
Here's the link: LINK
As an aside, it strikes me that the fact the the NYPost would publish this that the age where screaming racism would have any meaning is long over.
But, but but, Obama is the most successful leader we have ever had! Really! At least that is what I read at HuffPo. When I would ask for list of his accomplishments suddenly the internet went dormant...
Speaking of HuffPo, as of December, they changed their policy to only allow commenting privileges to those who are willing to link through their Facebook pages. I opted to not do that since I don't quite understand that as a requirement, they state that they will have (need?) access to my list of friends. I am not quite sure why they needed to know everyone that I know - guilt by association? They changed their policy because they wanted to a more civil debate, what they got was a 70% decline in traffic.
Bev, I've run into that too, where some site demands that I sign up with Facebook to use them. My answer is to move on. I don't have a Facebook page and don't want one. And if they want to limit themselves to that, then fine, I don't need them.
Funny that the internet would go dormant at that particular moment, isn't it?
"Had no heroic or iconic moments."
Good point.
Bush had the "Bullhorn Speech" and even Carter had his famous "Malaise Speech" (which I'm not linking to). I cannot really think of any equivalent speech by Obama.
I think the reason that Obama has no heroic or iconic speeches is that people tune out. Peggy Noonan wrote a nice article that was in yesterday's
Our Selfish Public Servants where among other things mostly about Chris Christie, she iluminates Obama's selfuch habit of using first person singular in all that he does. It is never "We" or "Our" . It is always "I" and "My". "We" are no longer part of the solution, "we" are the problem (like being racists). He does not inspire anyone to dig deep or pull together. Yet, in all of the "I" and 'me" and "my" stuff, he never takes on the blame or offers any solutions. That is always "them" and "they" who are thwarting "him".
Since we're talking about accomplishments, I'd love to get your take on this. It popped up in my Facebook feed once, but I keep the politics to a minimum over there... usually because I either piss off a couple of conservative friends or my liberal relatives. :-)
Scott, That's why liberals are so easily duped. Most of what they list as accomplishment are just throwing money at things, and that money was all on autopilot.
Secondly, things like extending benefits to gays... Obama resisted until the very end of his term and even then only half did it.
So his accomplishments are being President as money was automatically spent and resisting and then half-assing some minor point his constituents want. Aim high, my liberal friends, aim high.
Bev, That's a very good point. Obama never speaks in terms of WE. He always speaks in terms of ME. It's hard to be seen as historic when you're also seen as self-absorbed.
As an aside, I have an article on Wednesday which actually backs a lot of this up. The Democrats are feeling abandoned/ignored by Obama.
Kit, Carter and Bush are mainly known for their bad moments. But yes, at least they are known. Obama has no single moment that anyone will remember.
Andrew, Scott, a third category: A lot of the items on that site are versions of "Signed the Fluffy Puppies and Kittens Reauthorization Act." In other words, Obama didn't veto anything that any politically-savvy president wouldn't veto.
I also saw this: "Issued executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay" which, correct me if I'm mistaken, hasn't actually happened yet. Talk about symbolism over substance!
tryanmax, He stopped drones too (whenever that kicks in under the next guy), ended torture (or at least created a rule book that will kick in after he's retired), was stopped from denying the detainees non-person status (which he tried), and ended the wars in Libya, er Afghan, er Pakistan, er Yemen, er Iraq.
Liberals are idiots. They believe words, not deeds.
Here is the PG Version. LINK
It sounds like liberals have pretty much abandoned Obama. I mean, they're still rallying around the "progressive" portions of his agenda, and there are still a few, like Chris Matthews, who admit they just can't quit him. But most of the liberals I see on social media, TV, etc., no longer have any problem attacking him on a variety of issues, especially domestic security and so on.
I might have said it before, but I think just as the legacy of the Bush administration was to shift a large section of the Right towards libertarianism (at least rhetorically), the Obama years may end up doing that for a good many on the Left as well (again, rhetorically).
Kit - OMG, I couldn't take anymore of that. Two struck me as particular laughable - The Obama Admin releasing the visitors log. They did that a few times until they realized the press/blogs were using them as fodder. Then they started holding their private meetings "off site" so their visitors wouldn't be counted.
The second was allowing the returning coffins of soldiers killed in action to be photographed at Dover AF Base...yeah, for the expressed purpose of the photo ops with a solemn Obama standing next to the coffins...
There were more, but I fear my head will explode.
Bev,
Credit goes to Scott who posted that. I merely posted the PG Version, he posted the original, R-rated, version.
I missed Scott's link, but...ah, well, that made it even worse. I am now picking up the pieces of my exploded brain matter...
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