Free Republic

New Castle resident and business owner David Fitzsimmons used to pay $672 a month for health insurance for him and his family. This year, with the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act that has resulted in the country’s highest rates being charged in Garfield County, he faced a minimum premium of $942 a month. “The insurance rates, frankly, it just comes down to a decision for me and my family, whether we have a roof over our heads or whether we have health insurance. The obvious answer is that we have a roof over heads,” he said Friday during...

“My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That’s how the market works. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down.” So sayeth President Obama, but so far, his crowning legislative achievement has directly resulted in a whole lotta’ restrictions on consumer choice, while his brand of top-down government-led “competition,” well… isn’t, really. On top of the...

So Bob Laszewski was right. Fully one-fifth of the new enrollment numbers that HHS has been waving around are bogus. Their target for the end of January was 4.4 million sign-ups; a few days ago, they told the country they’d made it three-quarters of the way there with 3.3 million. In reality, once the deadbeats are bounced from the rolls by their new insurers, they’ll be in the ballpark of 2.6 million, or 60 percent of their target. And that’s after HHS pressured insurers to extend the payment deadline from December 31 into January, hoping that a little more time...

The big question about Obamacare this year is whether enough people will enroll to make the controversial health-reform plan viable. Another important question has been overlooked, until now: Will people pay their premiums once they enroll? The unsettling answer appears to be maybe not. The New York Times has discovered that only about 80% of people purchasing health insurance through the federal online marketplace or a similar state-run exchange paid their first month’s premium. There’s no single source of such data, but the Times canvassed insurers participating in the program, such as Aetna (AET), Wellpoint (WLP), Humana (HUM) and Blue...

Democrats claim three million people have enrolled in private health insurance through Obamacare. But how many have actually paid for their plans? Several state exchanges have begun reporting the number of customers that did pay their first premiums, and some results are as low as 51 percent.

For Many, Few Health-Plan Choices, High Premiums on Online Exchanges Analysis Shows Americans in Poorer Counties Have Limited Options on Health-Care Exchanges By Timothy W. Martin And Christopher Weaver Feb. 12, 2014 7:37 p.m. ET Hundreds of thousands of Americans in poorer counties have few choices of health insurers and face high premiums through the online exchanges created by the health-care law, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of offerings in 36 states. Consumers in 515 counties, spread across 15 states, have only one insurer selling coverage through the online marketplaces, the Journal found. In more than...

Link only: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2013/obamacare_map_3/index2.html

In the wake of Tuesday’s Congressional Budget Office report showing that Obamacare will lead to a reduction in employee working hours, there is also bad news on the wages front. Noting that Obamacare provides subsidies for coverage to people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, and that the subsidies decrease as income increases, the CBO said there is a strong incentive to reduce wages. “People whose income exceeds 400 percent of the FPL are ineligible for premium subsidies, and for some people those subsidies will drop abruptly to zero when income crosses that threshold,” the report...

Here is an interesting video regarding the effects of Obamacare on all the employees at at Simonetta's auto repair shop in Pennsylvania. The video was made by a local TV station. A couple premiums dropped, but most went up, some by huge amounts. In every case deductibles soared. Every person involved is worse off than before. Link if video does not play: Employees in Pennsylvania Company Learn of Increased Health Costs Due to Obamacare Partial Transcript Jeff and Dave used to have a $1,250 deductible. Since Obamacare went into effect, it's now jumped 60 percent to $2,000. That's nothing compared...

People’s Exhibit A: Josie Gracchi has breast cancer. Up until January 1st of this year she had insurance and was scheduled for a January 3rd biopsy and follow-up treatment at one the largest private cancer treatment centers in the world: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. But once 2014 arrived, her insurance was rolled into an ObamaCare health exchange. She now has no access to the surgeons she was working with, her biopsy and treatment have been postponed and she can’t find comparable doctors and surgeons through the ObamaCare website. She pleaded on television for help from the president,...

A local news station brings viewers inside one Pennsylvania company as the employees their learn about their new health care plans under Obamacare: "Look at the numbers," says the reporter of two employees. "Jeff and Dave used to have a $1,250 deductible. Since Obamacare went into effect, it's now jumped 60 percent to $2,000. That's nothing compared to Brian, Kristi, and Judy who have kids. They are going to pay twice that, four grand." The reporter adds that co-pays are being increased, too.

Just cause they've signed up for Obamacare doesn't mean they're covered. Around one in five people who picked health insurance policies on the state and federal exchanges last year haven't paid their first month's premiums, according to insurers polled by CNNMoney. These folks will likely see their policy selection canceled and they'll be left uninsured. Some 2.1 million people signed up for a plan in time for their coverage to start January 1, according to the Obama administration. But with the payment deadlines stretching until January 31 at the latest, anywhere between 12% and 30% of those folks still haven't...

We've covered a number of horrible cases involving individuals and families being victimized by Obamacare, but this Michigan family's plight is uniquely heartbreaking: A Bangor Township family of four, all of whom have disabilities, say they fall within a niche that makes the Affordable Care Act more of a burden than a blessing. Now, they say, they'll be paying nearly $8,000 more per year for medical care after being denied coverage through Obamacare. The family in question is the Daverts — husband and wife Ken and Melissa and their 15-year-old twins Austin and Michaela. The twins and their mother are...

WASHINGTON — Lots of conservative lawmakers hate Obamacare. Rep. Louie Gohmert is putting his money where his mouth is. The Tyler Republican gave up his health insurance for 2014, asserting that the president’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, has made coverage too expensive. “Other people are going to see what I did when I looked into health insurance for my wife and me: that the deductible rate, it doubled, about $3,000 to $6,000, and our policy was going to go from about $300 to about $1,500 a month,” he said during a recent radio interview with Trey...

It's time for your latest Obamacare update, and it will come as no surprise to you that things are not getting any prettier for this monstrosity. Let's just take a jog down Obamacare Avenue and see what is popping out at us from the storefronts this week. Roll down your windows so you can get a clearer look: --Obamacare devotees are still clinging to the idea that this law will expand coverage, but the most recent data indicate that it may fall short of this goal, too, just as it has failed in every other respect. Forbes reports that instead...

David Kurtz of the lefty website TPM -- to his credit -- published an email he received from a young reader living in New York City. The 32-year-old correspondent wrote that much to his chagrin as an ardent backer of the president and his unpopular healthcare law, he's unable to afford its price tag. He suggests that his personal situation exemplifies the broader problems the program will have attracting the participation of young, healthy people: I'm a 32 year-old healthy male that wants, but can't afford, Obamacare. I think the law is a step in the right direction, it just...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The fact that North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan was nowhere to be found when Obama went to North Carolina. That's the kind of thing that you might not get moved by, but in the deepest, darkest recesses of the liberal Democrat mind, that kind of thing is one of the greatest indicators of presidential trouble that you can find. When a Democrat senator up for reelection refuses a ride on Air Force One, refuses the joint exit down the stairs from Air Force One with the president, and then does not show up at the president's town...

This is breathtaking incompetence. In the video below, we have the spectacle of a CMS official telling us they literally do not know who has paid for their Obamacare premiums. The administration literally does not collect the information, though we are assured they will do so at some point. They will have to go back and "reconcile" that information later. How on earth could something this appallingly bad ever have become law in a modern industrialized nation? This is the sort of thing that you expect from banana republics and dysfunctional socialist regimes . . . oh, wait, now I...

A follow-up to my Obamacare post from yesterday: The law's adverse selection problem doesn't just inflame the risk of a market death spiral. It also all but guarantees that next year's expected premium hikes will be worse than anticipated for millions. The New York Times' lede is telling: People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law’s economic underpinnings and cause premiums to rise in the future if the pattern persists. Questions about the law’s...

Many insurers should know by Friday how many of the 2 million-plus Obamacare sign-ups have actually converted into premium-paying customers. Yet an array of payment deadline extensions by other plans means that what critics have been demanding — a full count of Americans insured under Obamacare — won’t be available until next month. Companies are scrambling to ensure that individuals who committed to plans online in fact put their money where their mice are. They’re staffing call centers and even making robocalls to get procrastinators to finalize their first premium payment. But the effort has been complicated by several dysfunctional...