The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[B-Man]

The "Rule of Law" is for the little people:

 

Megan McArdle: ObamaCare Is Whatever Obama Says It Is.

 

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Obamacare is going very badly indeed, and that the president knows it is going very badly. Until sometime in late October, he was clearly still confident that, despite some setbacks and embarrassments, the system would soon be up and working, and the public would rally behind it. Now he sees his polls rapidly declining, and with them the political capital that he may need to fix any further problems that crop up. Turning the insurers into scapegoats, when he still needs their help to make this law work, was an act of desperation. How many acts does this play have left?”

[IDBillzFan]

howard speaks the truth: http://www.politico....95.html?hp=t3_3. obama needs to listen. now.

 

I love how the person who isn't sure who he'd choose between Hillary and Christie thinks what the president needs to do is listen to Howard Dean, who's answer is to throw MORE money at hiring MORE people to get people to do something that absolutely NO ONE is able to do because all paths lead to the same broken portal.

 

So as a conservative, I say "Yes, Obama. Good plan. Listen to Howard Dean."

[3rdnlng]

what about the word "more" do you fail to understand, idiot?

 

no, i admit the rollout is a disaster. it can be fixed. obama's statements on keeping your insurance are a political disaster. he should just suck it up, admit he was wrong and move on. the plan itself hasn't even fully started so how could anyone label it a success or failure? i believe it will improve access for 10's of millions of americans and maintain access for nearly everyone else. we'll see.

 

Why do you believe that it will "maintain access for nearly everyone else"?

[keepthefaith]

bush was a presidential opponent of his that somehow won. it's an apt comparison.

 

the aca isn't and never was simple. i can't think of anyone claiming such. as i've stated many times, the recognized goals of the aca could have much more simply been accomplished by a single payor plan. that was not feasible but i do feel obama gave up too quickly on it and the rollout of the aca has been a disaster.

 

The vast majority of our population does not want single payer. People don't want the post office and the IRS or anything that is run with typical government culture managing their health care and for good reason. Medicare and Medicaid have plenty of problems and solving a disagreement with the government is nearly impossible. Single payer? Who pays? It is a myth that people could not get health insurance before the ACA was passed. Anyone could easily buy insurance and it was priced pretty competitively with employer provided insurance. Most uninsured simply had other spending priorities. The number of people who are citizens of this country who truly needed help was/is certainly less than 10% of the population. The law as written is a horrible piece of work.

[Nanker]

If Obama was an NFL quarterback he would have been cut in training camp. He's an incompetent, lying buffoon.

[TheMadCap]

what about the word "more" do you fail to understand, idiot?

 

no, i admit the rollout is a disaster. it can be fixed. obama's statements on keeping your insurance are a political disaster. he should just suck it up, admit he was wrong and move on. the plan itself hasn't even fully started so how could anyone label it a success or failure? i believe it will improve access for 10's of millions of americans and maintain access for nearly everyone else. we'll see.

 

I think you meant to say "will cause thier previously acceptable and desirable level of insurance to decrease in coverage and explode in premiums". I know mine will, I've looked on the exchanges, and buddy, let me tell you, it's enough to even make my wife, who's father blames the GOP for every problem the world has, who has NEVER voted for anyone other than one with (D) after their name, to see the light...

[B-Man]

LOL................

 

 

The NYT acknowledges Obama's in trouble by reminding us that Bush was really, really bad. Remember?!!

 

At the website front page the teaser headline — which is also the headline in the paper version — is: "As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama." But if you click to the article, the headline becomes "Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response."

 

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels:

 

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

 

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

 

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

 

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

 

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama's?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

 

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

 

 

 

(much more at the link)

[Joe Miner]

what about the word "more" do you fail to understand, idiot?no, i admit the rollout is a disaster. it can be fixed. obama's statements on keeping your insurance are a political disaster. he should just suck it up, admit he was wrong and move on. the plan itself hasn't even fully started so how could anyone label it a success or failure? i believe it will improve access for 10's of millions of americans and maintain access for nearly everyone else. we'll see.

 

Which unicorn fart was it that solidified you in your beliefs?

[Nanker]

Anyone else wonder what the law of the land will be tomorrow when this inept **** wakes up and makes a new pronouncement on what the Law-of-the-Day is?

It reminds me of this:

http://youtu.be/EV4N2dk0cMk

Edited November 15, 2013 by Nanker

[DC Tom]

what about the word "more" do you fail to understand, idiot?

 

Okay, let me spell it out for you:

 

You whined about Bush "making complex problems seem simple."

I referred you to the ACA.

You veered onto a completely different topic, about how the ACA sucks because it's a half-measure.

I tried to get you back on the "making complex problems seem simple" topic.

 

You completely missed my point that THIS administration trying to make a complex problem (health care reform) seem simple, with pablum like "if you like your insurance, you can keep it." Thus demonstrating that you are a halfwit who is more interested in the partisanship of the issue than you are the issue itself (like we didn't know already), else you wouldn't criticize Bush and excuse Obama for embracing the same "making complex problems seem simple" philosophy.

 

Of course, you do that because you know you're full of ****, and can't back up anything you say.

 

The "Rule of Law" is for the little people:

 

Megan McArdle: ObamaCare Is Whatever Obama Says It Is.

 

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Obamacare is going very badly indeed, and that the president knows it is going very badly. Until sometime in late October, he was clearly still confident that, despite some setbacks and embarrassments, the system would soon be up and working, and the public would rally behind it. Now he sees his polls rapidly declining, and with them the political capital that he may need to fix any further problems that crop up. Turning the insurers into scapegoats, when he still needs their help to make this law work, was an act of desperation. How many acts does this play have left?”

 

This would be a good time to dig up Obama's "bad apples" speech.

 

If it's just a few "bad apples" cancelling bad insurance plans, then why is it a major political crisis that has to be addressed "administratively?"

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

 

 

Okay, let me spell it out for you:

 

You whined about Bush "making complex problems seem simple."

I referred you to the ACA.

You veered onto a completely different topic, about how the ACA sucks because it's a half-measure.

I tried to get you back on the "making complex problems seem simple" topic.

 

You completely missed my point that THIS administration trying to make a complex problem (health care reform) seem simple, with pablum like "if you like your insurance, you can keep it." Thus demonstrating that you are a halfwit who is more interested in the partisanship of the issue than you are the issue itself (like we didn't know already), else you wouldn't criticize Bush and excuse Obama for embracing the same "making complex problems seem simple" philosophy.

 

Of course, you do that because you know you're full of ****, and can't back up anything you say.

 

 

 

This would be a good time to dig up Obama's "bad apples" speech.

 

If it's just a few "bad apples" cancelling bad insurance plans, then why is it a major political crisis that has to be addressed "administratively?"

Or Obamas answer in a town hall meeting where he says an elderly lady should just take pain pills instead of having surgery to pro long her life as part of his plan.....

[B-Man]

The "Hammer" chimes in.....................

 

 

 

Why liberals are panicked about Obamacare

 

by Charles Krauthammer.

 

FTA:

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 more 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 past 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.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.washingto...e6d4_story.html

[DC Tom]

Lost in all this schadenfreude is Nancy Pelosi's particular brand of crazy-stupid:

 

http://twitchy.com/2013/11/15/nancy-pelosi-i-didnt-make-a-like-it-keep-it-pledge-because-i-never-met-anyone-who-liked-his-plan/

[IDBillzFan]

Or Obamas answer in a town hall meeting where he says an elderly lady should just take pain pills instead of having surgery to pro long her life as part of his plan.....

 

Or Obama's concern that if you go in for a tonsillectomy, you could have your leg removed. Or something like that.

[DC Tom]

Or Obama's concern that if you go in for a tonsillectomy, you could have your leg removed. Or something like that.

 

Oh yeah...well...shut up! Republicans want to kill grandma!

[3rdnlng]

http://www.gopusa.co...t/?subscriber=1

 

 

 

 

 

A local expert on the Affordable Care Act said President Obama's promise that Americans can keep canceled health insurance policies for a year is virtually toothless.

"He can't order the insurance companies to do anything," said Chris Schrader of Schrader and Associates in Bloomington. "These policies have been canceled, and you can't turn on a time machine and restore everything to the way things were pre-Oct. 1. These canceled policies have been killed, and Obama cannot resuscitate them by putting the presidential paddles on them and saying 'Clear.'"

Schrader said in order for insurance companies to cover people whose policies have been canceled, they would have to create brand new insurance products and submit them to individual states for approval.

"Insurance is regulated on the state level, not the federal level," he said. "Every state has different laws, but in most states the average amount of time it takes to construct an insurance product and get it approved and ready to take to market is six months."

Schrader said even if the states and insurance companies fast-tracked the process and people bought the new policies right away, people would not be able to regain health insurance coverage until June or July.

"What this means is that even in a best-case scenario, people losing their health insurance on Jan. 1 would be exposed without coverage for six months," he said. "It's true that most of the people with individual plans are healthy, and for many of them the loss of coverage would not be the end of the world because they are less likely to need medical care. But many are not so healthy. Come Jan. 1 we will start hearing stories about cancer patients who've lost their insurance and can't get the chemo they need to survive."

He added that even if people are able to buy a plan on the marketplace by the middle of next year, they may be sorely disappointed.

"In New Hampshire, for example, there is only one insurance company in the marketplace, and that company's plans include only 10 of the 27 hospitals in the state," he said.

Schrader said there's another challenge Obama faces concerning his new pledge -- persuading insurance companies to write policies for less than a year in duration.

"Insurance companies are already screaming about the low number of enrollees (26,794 in the federally run marketplaces and 79,000 in the 14 state-run marketplaces)," he said. "They are not happy about those numbers, because they need lots of bodies, particularly healthy bodies, to maintain their risk pool. I would be stunned if any of them would write a policy and collect premiums for just 5 or 6 months before the policy is canceled. These companies work off actuarial tables and their policies are designed to keep people engaged for many years, with the hope that over the long haul their gains will exceed their losses and they'll make money."

Schrader said insurance companies are not only unhappy with the number of marketplace enrollees, but the demographics.

"Those who are enrolling are skewing old," he said. "Not many young people are enrolling and that is not good news for the insurance companies."

Schrader said the problem with the president's promise is that is seeks to provide a quick fix to a complex problem.

"The Affordable Care Act is not designed in a way that allows you to take a piece out of it and try to fix that piece in a vacuum," he said. "There are many factors that are interwoven and leveraged on everything happening in a certain way. Clearly the president and Congress have not read the bill or the regs, because what they're proposing can't be executed."

Edited November 15, 2013 by 3rdnlng

[Nanker]

 

This would be a good time to dig up Obama's "bad apples" speech.

 

If it's just a few "bad apples" cancelling bad insurance plans, then why is it a major political crisis that has to be addressed "administratively?"

 

And seriously, what magic transformation happened overnight that suddenly, he wakes up and wants to unilaterally change what took years to put into place? I mean, what's different now? If the plans were substandard and that was a huge issue for him - why is that less of an issue now, and why will it be less of an issue in 12 months? It will be an even larger issue next year once the employer mandate waiver expires. Right now it's just a "small percentage" (5% of the population - which is 2.5 times the gay and lesbian population of the country) that are being forced by the law out of their healthcare insurance. Next year it could be 80% of the population that could be given the heave-ho from their employer-sponsored plans.

 

Employee benefits is one of the satisfiers that employers provide as incentives to employees and potential employees to work for their company. Obama's !@#$ing with people's employee benefits and that is unprecedented. He and the rest of the Democrats that voted for this abortion and that continue to support him deserve to be the guinea pigs for this horse ****. Make them live with it and under its provisions and let them then sing its praises. So strip the unions and the government workers of their exemptions and let's get it on, B. O. We'll see who stinks more in the end - your signature abortislation or you with your aptly fitting initials.

[DC Tom]

And seriously, what magic transformation happened overnight that suddenly, he wakes up and wants to unilaterally change what took years to put into place?

 

I know this is a rhetorical question, but I feel compelled to answer nonetheless: he's campaigning.

 

http://www.gopusa.co...t/?subscriber=1

 

 

 

 

 

A local expert on the Affordable Care Act said President Obama's promise that Americans can keep canceled health insurance policies for a year is virtually toothless.

"He can't order the insurance companies to do anything," said Chris Schrader of Schrader and Associates in Bloomington. "These policies have been canceled, and you can't turn on a time machine and restore everything to the way things were pre-Oct. 1. These canceled policies have been killed, and Obama cannot resuscitate them by putting the presidential paddles on them and saying 'Clear.'"

Schrader said in order for insurance companies to cover people whose policies have been canceled, they would have to create brand new insurance products and submit them to individual states for approval.

"Insurance is regulated on the state level, not the federal level," he said. "Every state has different laws, but in most states the average amount of time it takes to construct an insurance product and get it approved and ready to take to market is six months."

Schrader said even if the states and insurance companies fast-tracked the process and people bought the new policies right away, people would not be able to regain health insurance coverage until June or July.

"What this means is that even in a best-case scenario, people losing their health insurance on Jan. 1 would be exposed without coverage for six months," he said. "It's true that most of the people with individual plans are healthy, and for many of them the loss of coverage would not be the end of the world because they are less likely to need medical care. But many are not so healthy. Come Jan. 1 we will start hearing stories about cancer patients who've lost their insurance and can't get the chemo they need to survive."

He added that even if people are able to buy a plan on the marketplace by the middle of next year, they may be sorely disappointed.

"In New Hampshire, for example, there is only one insurance company in the marketplace, and that company's plans include only 10 of the 27 hospitals in the state," he said.

Schrader said there's another challenge Obama faces concerning his new pledge -- persuading insurance companies to write policies for less than a year in duration.

"Insurance companies are already screaming about the low number of enrollees (26,794 in the federally run marketplaces and 79,000 in the 14 state-run marketplaces)," he said. "They are not happy about those numbers, because they need lots of bodies, particularly healthy bodies, to maintain their risk pool. I would be stunned if any of them would write a policy and collect premiums for just 5 or 6 months before the policy is canceled. These companies work off actuarial tables and their policies are designed to keep people engaged for many years, with the hope that over the long haul their gains will exceed their losses and they'll make money."

Schrader said insurance companies are not only unhappy with the number of marketplace enrollees, but the demographics.

"Those who are enrolling are skewing old," he said. "Not many young people are enrolling and that is not good news for the insurance companies."

Schrader said the problem with the president's promise is that is seeks to provide a quick fix to a complex problem.

"The Affordable Care Act is not designed in a way that allows you to take a piece out of it and try to fix that piece in a vacuum," he said. "There are many factors that are interwoven and leveraged on everything happening in a certain way. Clearly the president and Congress have not read the bill or the regs, because what they're proposing can't be executed."

No...it'll be a change to HHS regulations allowing policies already cancelled to be reissued on the same terms as when they were cancelled. Then when the insurance companies can't immediately reinstate everyone's policy (because in the real world you can't just flip a switch. **** takes time and effort), the administration can point to the insurers and say "See? It wasn't us! It was them all along!"

 

Told you so.

Edited November 15, 2013 by DC Tom

[Dante]

If Obama was an NFL quarterback he would have been cut in training camp. He's an incompetent, lying buffoon.

I was listening Carolla the other day and he was comparing the life of a NFL coach's to politicians. Imagine, for a moment, if Barry had the same work ethic as any NFL head coach? The level of commitment it takes to compete at that level and the low tolerance for failure. No way Sotero handles that pressure. No way he puts in their hours. And I guess, being honest, do I really want a marxist hack like him working hard destroying the country? Again no way. He's just fine going out and playing yet another round of golf.

 

Lost in all this schadenfreude is Nancy Pelosi's particular brand of crazy-stupid:

 

http://twitchy.com/2...liked-his-plan/

I went to Golden Gate Park a couple months ago and was caught off guard when I saw a "Nancy Pelosi Drive". I lol'd but quickly muzzled myself before anyone noticed realizing I was in the belly of the beast so to speak. Edited November 15, 2013 by Dante

[IDBillzFan]

nt to Golden Gate Park a couple months ago and was caught off guard when I saw a "Nancy Pelosi Drive".

 

Legend has it that the road is paved with the skin removed from Nancy's face by her plastic surgeon.