Free Republic

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers. For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by...

You remember the “risk corridor” provisions, right? If a new ObamaCare plan comes in under budget, the insurer pays the difference between the actual cost and projected cost to HHS. If it comes in over budget, HHS pays the difference to the insurance. It’s a way for insurers to spread risk among the industry with HHS as middleman. (The bit in the excerpt about the White House modifying the rules for its new “transitional policy” is a reference to this.) Problem is, there’s no cap on how much HHS might need to pay out if lots and lots of plans come in...

Well, our progressive friends are once again calling for single payer health care. The ironic pretext this time is that Obamacare has collapsed into chaos … But the advocates of the “Affordable Care Act,” as these people stubbornly refer to it, refuse to accept that the crackup was caused by the inevitable incompetence of government bureaucrats. They believe the real problem was avaricious insurance executives. Thus, people like Michael Moore, Paul Krugman and even Colin Powell urge us to cast out the money changers and wholly surrender our health care to the tender mercies of the federal government.

They’re nervous. “We are becoming increasingly concerned about momentum that is quickly building among some leading conservatives for elimination of the risk corridor and reinsurance programs,” [Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO Scott] Serota wrote…“Their efforts, along with growing support for repealing the risk corridor and reinsurance programs, could combine to create a perfect storm to, at a minimum, dissuade the Administration from modifying risk corridor program rules to provide increased funding in light of the recent ‘transitional policy’ allowing insurers to offer consumers the option to renew their 2013 health plans for 2014,” Serota wrote.In attached talking points, seemingly...

Those who have elected to keep close tabs on the reactions to Obamacare’s blotchy rollout will presumably have noticed that it has been marked by admissions of guilt. The latest such confession comes from The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, who bluntly conceded yesterday that “Obamacare actually paves the way toward single payer.” Pushing back against Michael Moore’s unsettling criticisms of the law, Schreiber tweeted: Noam Scheiber @noamscheiber Dear liberals bummed about Obamacare: Don't sweat it. It's going to get us to a single-payer system before long. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116105/obamacare-will-lead-single-payer-michael-moore … 11:42 AM - 6 Jan 2014 26 Retweets 12 favorites This, Scheiber...

"...That's why we're modernizing our unique system. Under the new approach—made possible by the Affordable Care Act and approved by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services—Maryland will implement a groundbreaking new system of health care delivery. Using the rate setting structure, the state will set global budgets and other alternative approaches to payment that reward clinical systems of care for providing improved outcomes at lower costs. Support for this new demonstration has come from a coalition of the hospitals, the insurance companies and the state all working together with a common vision....Under the new model, our hospitals have committed...

Those who have resisted the idea that the HealthCare.gov web site and Obamacare in general may have been intentionally designed to create confusion and chaos [1] as a means for imposing a single-payer healthcare system on a currently unwilling populace are going to have a tough time explaining away yet another recently discovered “quirk.”To be clear, I’m not claiming, as some have inferred from previous columns, that there is a widely orchestrated chaos-creation plan, or that any attempt to capitalize on the current bedlam to impose single-payer is destined to succeed. What I am saying is that the evidence...

WASHINGTON – While all eyes are on the ObamaCare rollout, an ambitious health care experiment is going forward in Vermont that would create a government-run alternative know as a "single-payer" system -- and it's starting to attract more attention from liberals frustrated with the Affordable Care Act's implementation. Democrats' faith in ObamaCare has been shaken by the technical failures of the federal and state insurance exchanges as well as, in some cases, premium increases. In Vermont, however, they see a potential first step toward the kind of national government-run health care system some have advocated for years. Filmmaker Michael Moore,...

Now it can be told. Emphasis on “now”:Precisely. ObamaCare will stumble along for the rest of the year, with a new wave of public irritation to come once small businesses start dumping employees onto the exchanges en masse, but the prospects for repeal will remain dim even if the GOP takes back the Senate. The numbers in Congress just aren’t there to beat an Obama veto, and by 2017 so many millions will have been assimilated into the program that some critical mass of GOP centrists will end up taking a “mend it, don’t end it” approach. Only an adverse-selection...

Last week the liberal documentary-maker Michael Moore prompted indigestion across the progressive wonk community by pronouncing Obamacare “awful.” In a New York Times op-ed, he bemoaned the way the president’s law preserved the health insurance industry rather than replacing it with a Medicare-for-all style single-payer system. The good news, Moore conceded, is that the previously uninsured (and often previously uninsurable) can get finally get coverage. The bad news is that their coverage will often be lousy and pose an enormous financial burden. He ended by calling for activists to lean on state politicians in an effort to beef the law...

<p>TODAY marks the beginning of health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges, for which two million Americans have signed up. Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful.</p>

Michael Moore calls ObamaCare "awful" in today's The New York Times, part of a blistering op-ed attacking the president from the far left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

Let no one say that NBC/MSNBC are reluctant to criticize ObamaCare. A leading NBC light boldly did so today . . . from the left, of course. Appearing on Morning Joe, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC's chief medical editor, declared that there should be "a single-payer system" of health care. That is the left's preferred solution, but brings with it a host of problems, as the Heritage Foundation has detailed. For good measure, Snyderman said that she "made" her young-adult children sign up for Obamacare as their "patriotic duty." View the video here.

There’s no question that the Affordable Care Act’s rollout has been “rocky,” to borrow the common parlance of the Beltway. The Web site troubles and shifting health coverage for some Americans, despite over-assurances from President Obama during the 2010 political debate, have naturally turned off some people. A much-ballyhooed poll from CNN yesterday shows that support for “Obamacare” has dropped to an all-time low. But conservatives toasting the apparent turn in public opinion ought to look a little closer at the polling data. It’s true that only 35 percent of Americans favor the law, while 43 percent oppose it. But...

On Christmas Eve, it will be three years and nine months since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, into law. […] Chaos skeptics will have an especially difficult time explaining away the administration’s December 12 move. That day, it announced that it would “ask” insurance companies to cover virtually any patient who requests medical care in early 2014, whether or not there is any tangible evidence that they have paid their monthly premiums, or have even enrolled. […] It would appear that doctors, hospitals and other medical providers who have agreed to serve Obamacare patients will...

There’s an old saw about cooking frogs: Place them in cool water, and then turn up the heat. The frogs fail to respond to gradual temperature change, and by the time the water gets near the boiling point, the frogs are unable to jump out and save themselves. That is what President Obama and the Democrats have had in mind with Obamacare, which they planned would lead to single-payer, socialized medicine. However, their incompetent “chefs” have placed ordinary citizens directly in a boiling health care caldron. Americans are reacting with extreme reproach, and it is progressivism and the Democratic Party...

Springsteen Guitarist: ObamaCare 'Almost Worthless' By Noel Sheppard Created 12/14/2013 - 2:27pm Steven Van Zandt, the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, came down strongly on ObamaCare Thursday. In a video interview, Van Zandt said Barack Obama's signature legislation is "almost worthless." Van Zandt believes we're having the wrong conversation in this country. "We waste two years talking about healthcare, and I’m like, why are we talking about healthcare when we should be talking about health?" he said. "I spend six months a year in Norway," offered Van Zandt. "Healthcare’s free in Norway because everybody’s healthy." "You can’t even...

Some 1.6 million Americans have registered for Obamacare, but more than nine-out-of-10 of them actually signed up for Medicaid, a trend that could end up slamming federal and state government budgets. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security already account for 48 percent of federal spending, writes economist Michael Tanner, a senior fellow for the Cato Institute, in an article for The New York Post. But with Obamacare adding to the Medicaid costs, "we are picking up speed on the road to insolvency," Tanner writes. The Medicaid program is already the third-largest government program in the United States, coming in only behind...

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who remains as determined as ever to substitute Obama administration talking points for the truth, gave it her best effort in yesterday’s session before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. It was an underwhelming performance at best. As key dates approach and more facts about the government overhaul of the health care system emerge, it is becoming apparent that the ObamaCare scheme is headed for structural disaster — and will take tens of millions of Americans with it. [SNIP] All of the above, including anemic enrollment numbers for private insurance while Medicaid...