Posted on 12/06/2013 1:12:47 PM PST by Hojczyk
Another expert, Nancy Thompson of CBIZ Benefits & Insurance Services, said "no one had the crystal ball" that predicted just how dire the enrollment levels and data problems in enrollment files would be at this point, more than two months after Obamacare launched. "Let's face it, with the number of uninsured that we have in the United States, for us to be sitting [at less than 400,000 enrolled], that's staggeringly low," said Thompson, senior vice president and sales director at CBIZ.
"The bigger concern is, what kind of individuals are enrolling," Thompson said, echoing Tiede's concern about adverse selection. "The low enrollment numbers could absolutely play havoc on the rating structure."
Thompson noted that when they designed their plans and set premium prices for 2014 for the Obamacare exchanges, the exchanges had never enrolled anyone, so there was no data to use to predict who would enroll, and what their level of benefit use would look like.
Now, with low enrollment levels overall nationally, and with the assumption that a disproportionate number of people who did enroll were previously uninsurable because of pre-existing health conditions, "there's no doubt that some of [the insurers] missed the mark when they set rating structures," Thompson said.
An estimated 10 percent of all enrollments now being made on the federal Obamacare marketplace contain data errors that could delay people from actually getting health coverage, officials disclosed Friday.
And that error rate for enrollments submitted via HealthCare.gov and then sent to insurers before December was an estimated 25 percent, officials revealed.
The rate fell in the past week, officials said, because of repair efforts to HealthCare.gov's, particular the discovery and fix of one particular software problem that was causing an estimated 80 percent of data errors, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Oh, my. Now who could’ve foreseen this disaster.
How judgmental.
gee.. who could have seen this coming??
whats that Ray Charles? You saw it coming???
No one but a bunch of racists was opposing it...
at least that’s what I heard “back then”.
FUBAR
Enrolled doesn’t actually mean covered. The insurance companies may not be receiving the correct info AND I hear that state Medicaid agencies may not be receiving correct info for new enrollees either ...
Right now there is NOTHING more annoying on television than those “I’m covered” commercials with beautiful diversity people mouthing “I’m covered”.
I bet I’ve seen it a dozen times this week already.
Your tax dollars at work against you.
“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.” –Former President Bill Clinton, November 12
So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.
Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats against Obamacare. Within hours, that rebellion went loudly public. By Thursday, President Obama had been forced into a rearguard holding action, asking insurers to grant a one-year extension of current plans.
The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority considers him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.
At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.
Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring, and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state, and create yet new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).
The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the last half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.
As the only socially transformational legislation in modern American history to be enacted on a straight party-line vote, Obamacare is wholly owned by the Democrats.
Its unraveling would catastrophically undermine their underlying ideology of ever-expansive central government providing cradle-to-grave care for an ever-grateful citizenry. For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.
It begins with the bungled rollout. If Washington can’t even do the website — the literal portal to this brave new world — how does it propose to regulate the vast ecosystem of American medicine? Second, arrogance. Five million freely chosen, freely purchased, freely renewed health-care plans are summarily canceled. Why? Because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by the experts in Washington.
For all his news-conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. That’s the very definition of paternalism. Lastly, deception. The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama.
This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.
The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance, and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.
Perhaps it won’t go down. Perhaps the web portal hums beautifully on November 30. Perhaps they’ll find a way to restore the canceled policies without wrecking the financial underpinning of the exchanges.
Perhaps. The more likely scenario, however, is that Obamacare does fail. It either fails politically, renounced by a wide consensus that includes a growing number of Democrats. Or it succumbs to the financial complications (the insurance “death spiral”) of the very amendments desperately tacked on to save it. If it does fail, the effect will be historic. Obamacare will take down with it more than Mary Landrieu and Co. It will discredit Obama’s new liberalism for years to come.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2013 the Washington Post Writers Group
SOURCE http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364008/why-liberals-are-panicking-charles-krauthammer
Have you seen the one with the guy shouting out of the bathhouse window “I’m covered!”?
Add to that: Doctors (finally) beginning to revolt.
Boomamba's spent his entire time in office using official govt activities and resources in hopes of building a permanent Dimocrat majority.
Too bad he stupidly threw a bomb into his plans........ w/ Obamacare.
LAUGH BREAK Team O musta been laughing up their sleeves as they connived to insert the infamous "cancellation clause" into O/Care---while planning to regurgitate the old Dem standby---blaming someone else---Repubs (and the insurance companies they unreservedly despise).
Now the stupids must be downing valium and vodka non-stop as we type---the lunkheads failed to factor in that Dems would take the fall at the polls---by the very people they intended to "punish" w/ cancellations ---- we, the voters.
Just call him "Wrong-Way Boobamba." Remember---he "vowed" to destroy the Republican Party----but he ended up destroying the Democrat Party, instead. Looks like he needs a new GPS system from Santa.
ROTFLOL.
==========================================
Egged on by pie-eyed Pelosi. Dimocrats rammed the monstrous Healthcare bill through on a straight party-line vote and refused to consider a single legislative change---including Mike Enzi's bill to allow Americans to keep their exisitng plans. Now desperate Democrats are frantically introducing “fix Obamacare” bills.
Dims want to separate themselves from their aye votes that they sold to push Obamacare onto unsuspecting Americans------ but they can't.
Republican strategists says ObamaCare “has the potential to be even more potent in 2014 than it was in 2010" (when Repubs took over the House) and that Democrats in competitive seats could see themselves washed out to sea.
Predictions are that the misguided law could get even worse for Dimocrats. “It’s like quicksand. It's sucking people in. And this is just one component. Just wait until the next piece of this law is rolled out,” strategists said.
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Now, a really, really big problem for Obama is that people still remember CHEAPER PREMIUMS BEFORE Obamacare. Then they're told Obamacare higher premiums are the real ones BUT NOT TO WORRY---they're getting subsidies as a "gift" from Obama.....
....but here's the kicker.....in politics, it's OK for a pol to be clever and come up with clever ideas. But pols can't "appear" to be clever. B/c the citizenry equates POLITICAL cleverness with deviousness. (George Will on Fox)
CNBC? What’s Dan Mangan going to do at his new job?
Yes, Indeed.
Again, for the record, all the people who are actually signing up are the ones who are sick, have been sick, or are very high risk. Have you seen the stories where the AIDS people are going to get special treatment? Have you seen the story where the women from the Nevada Brothel are signing up?
It's called adverse selection in health insurance parlance. The insurers set their Obmacare rates on the pledge and promise that millions were going to sign up, primarily healthy college Obama zealots. That hasn't, and won't happen.
These college zealots and other healthy types thought Obamacare was going to be free, or next to free. It ain't.
And the bad news (good news) is that based upon this article insurers are now awake from their Obama induced coma and are freaking out at the price they are offering insurance rates at. Somebody is going to have to pick up the tab for the massive losses they will take!
Moreover, and however it works under Obamacare, the second insurers can adjust their rates commensurate to the risk they blindly accepted, they will move them to the roof! And the Obama sycophants think it hard to sign up people now??
That's why I don't see how Obamacare can survive. I think it must collapse under its own weight. It's taking on water fast and it WILL go under. The question is when, not if.
LOL!!
Even accepting those numbers as true (they are probably lower given the backend problems and who counts as enrolled), the 400,000 are probably comprised mostly of people who had their insurance policies cancelled--over 5 million of them. The real question is how many of the 400,000 were previously uninsured.
Find and mirror, look into it, and you'll see who's going to pick up the tab for the massive losses. Just google "risk corridor" to find out about the law's provision for insurer bailouts if they find themselves in the red.
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