- Thread starter
- #371
- 8,448
October 13, 2015
From the Wall Street Journal: With Co-Ops collapsing and "effectuated" enrollments dropping, we are now in an ObamaScrew "Bear Market".
Ref: WSJ URL Removed Due to scum subscription tactics.
Anyway, here is a copy/paste of the article: (a'la Dr. Duaine
)
Oct. 13, 2015 7:15 p.m. ET
By liberal and media acclamation, ObamaCare is a glorious success, the political opposition is fading and the entitlement state has gained another permanent annex. The reality, for anyone who cares to look, is different and suggests that ObamaCare is far more vulnerable than this conventional wisdom.
As Exhibit A, note that participation on the federal and state insurance exchanges is badly trailing the original projections and declining over time. About 11.7 million people joined ObamaCare during the open sign-up period last year. But enrollment this summer slipped 15% to 9.9 million with "effectuated" coverage, meaning enrollees who were up to date on their nominal share of the premium after subsidies.
Some churn is inevitable, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated two years ago that some 13 million would participate in 2015, and its most recent revision in March of this year still pegged the figure at 11 million. The CBO nonetheless now projects ObamaCare will more than double in size in 2016 to 21 million, and such a growth spurt is probably necessary to stabilize the insurance markets.
But don't count on the attrition problem going away given ObamaCare's high and rising costs, as well as its low quality that is approaching Medicaid levels of coverage. The plans simply don't offer good value for the money.
In a new working paper, Wharton economists Mark Pauly, Adam Levine and Scott Harrington estimate how much better or worse off the non-poor uninsured are under ObamaCare. They measure the cost of the plans, the benefits of consuming pre-paid medical care and out-of-pocket payments without obtaining coverage. They conclude that, "even under the most optimistic assumptions," half of the formerly uninsured take on both a higher financial burden and lower welfare, and on net "average welfare for the uninsured population would be estimated to decline after the ACA if all members of that population obtained coverage."
In other words, ObamaCare harms the people it is supposed to help. This is not a prescription for a healthy, durable program.
Markets have also been disrupted by a cascade of failures among the ObamaCare co-ops that were intended as a liberal insurance utopia. These plans were seeded with billions of dollars in federal start-up loans and were supposed to work like the credit unions or the electric collectives of the Depression era. No profits were allowed, advertising to introduce new products was restricted and industry executives were barred from management. As it turns out, attempting to outlaw expertise and incentives tends not to produce good results.
The implicit Fannie Med-type taxpayer backstop let the co-ops gamble on undercutting their competitors to steal market share, pricing premiums well below cost. They figured that any mistakes could be papered over with a bailout from Uncle Sugar.
Among the 23 co-ops chartered for 2013, four have already gone insolvent in Louisiana, Nevada, Iowa and New York. Another 11 have received warning letters from the feds putting them on "enhanced oversight" financial probation until their balance sheets improve. More are likely to fold in the coming months.
The Empire State collapse is particularly spectacular, stranding more than 215,000 policyholders who will have to find new coverage (and in-network doctors). Health Republic Insurance Co. was the largest of all the co-ops and pocketed $274 million in loans, most of which will never be paid back.
The Kentucky Health Cooperative, the second largest U.S. co-op, is also insolvent and being wound down at year's end. The plan scooped up three of four enrollees on the Kentucky exchange by running a premium-to-expense ratio of 158% in 2014—that is, for every $1 in premiums it collected it incurred a 58-cent loss. That's $146.5 million down the tubes.
The federal rescue helicopters never arrived because Republicans in Congress defeated the White House in budget negotiations and thus reduced spending on the co-op program to $2.4 billion from $10 billion. The bailout dollars simply weren't there. Making incremental progress is less satisfying than demanding "repeal," but it does show how Republican reformers can successfully chip away at ObamaCare, plank by plank, as its dysfunctions continue to compound.
-End
From the Wall Street Journal: With Co-Ops collapsing and "effectuated" enrollments dropping, we are now in an ObamaScrew "Bear Market".
Ref: WSJ URL Removed Due to scum subscription tactics.
Anyway, here is a copy/paste of the article: (a'la Dr. Duaine
)Oct. 13, 2015 7:15 p.m. ET
By liberal and media acclamation, ObamaCare is a glorious success, the political opposition is fading and the entitlement state has gained another permanent annex. The reality, for anyone who cares to look, is different and suggests that ObamaCare is far more vulnerable than this conventional wisdom.
As Exhibit A, note that participation on the federal and state insurance exchanges is badly trailing the original projections and declining over time. About 11.7 million people joined ObamaCare during the open sign-up period last year. But enrollment this summer slipped 15% to 9.9 million with "effectuated" coverage, meaning enrollees who were up to date on their nominal share of the premium after subsidies.
Some churn is inevitable, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated two years ago that some 13 million would participate in 2015, and its most recent revision in March of this year still pegged the figure at 11 million. The CBO nonetheless now projects ObamaCare will more than double in size in 2016 to 21 million, and such a growth spurt is probably necessary to stabilize the insurance markets.
But don't count on the attrition problem going away given ObamaCare's high and rising costs, as well as its low quality that is approaching Medicaid levels of coverage. The plans simply don't offer good value for the money.
In a new working paper, Wharton economists Mark Pauly, Adam Levine and Scott Harrington estimate how much better or worse off the non-poor uninsured are under ObamaCare. They measure the cost of the plans, the benefits of consuming pre-paid medical care and out-of-pocket payments without obtaining coverage. They conclude that, "even under the most optimistic assumptions," half of the formerly uninsured take on both a higher financial burden and lower welfare, and on net "average welfare for the uninsured population would be estimated to decline after the ACA if all members of that population obtained coverage."
In other words, ObamaCare harms the people it is supposed to help. This is not a prescription for a healthy, durable program.
Markets have also been disrupted by a cascade of failures among the ObamaCare co-ops that were intended as a liberal insurance utopia. These plans were seeded with billions of dollars in federal start-up loans and were supposed to work like the credit unions or the electric collectives of the Depression era. No profits were allowed, advertising to introduce new products was restricted and industry executives were barred from management. As it turns out, attempting to outlaw expertise and incentives tends not to produce good results.
The implicit Fannie Med-type taxpayer backstop let the co-ops gamble on undercutting their competitors to steal market share, pricing premiums well below cost. They figured that any mistakes could be papered over with a bailout from Uncle Sugar.
Among the 23 co-ops chartered for 2013, four have already gone insolvent in Louisiana, Nevada, Iowa and New York. Another 11 have received warning letters from the feds putting them on "enhanced oversight" financial probation until their balance sheets improve. More are likely to fold in the coming months.
The Empire State collapse is particularly spectacular, stranding more than 215,000 policyholders who will have to find new coverage (and in-network doctors). Health Republic Insurance Co. was the largest of all the co-ops and pocketed $274 million in loans, most of which will never be paid back.
The Kentucky Health Cooperative, the second largest U.S. co-op, is also insolvent and being wound down at year's end. The plan scooped up three of four enrollees on the Kentucky exchange by running a premium-to-expense ratio of 158% in 2014—that is, for every $1 in premiums it collected it incurred a 58-cent loss. That's $146.5 million down the tubes.
The federal rescue helicopters never arrived because Republicans in Congress defeated the White House in budget negotiations and thus reduced spending on the co-op program to $2.4 billion from $10 billion. The bailout dollars simply weren't there. Making incremental progress is less satisfying than demanding "repeal," but it does show how Republican reformers can successfully chip away at ObamaCare, plank by plank, as its dysfunctions continue to compound.
-End
Last edited:
Seriously, are these people on another planet?
