Jan. 1st - minus 3 million net for Obamycare

[LeadRoundNose]

It’s official: Obamycare debuts with more cancelled plans than enrollments

It's official: Obamacare debuts with more canceled plans than enrollments | The Daily Caller

Obamacare may have promised health insurance for the masses. But on its first day, it’s left more Americans without coverage than before the law was passed.

More than 4.7 million Americans had their health insurance canceled as a result of any of the thousand-plus-page law’s new rules, the Associated Press reports, but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed Tuesday that between federal and state exchanges, just 2 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare coverage.

The Obama administration has yet to announce the final tally of full enrollments, which are only confirmed once customers have made their first payment, but Cato Institute health policy expert Michael Cannon warns that not all those who signed up will complete their purchases, potentially leaving the White House with an even lower bottom line.

Even without the full number of enrollments, Obamacare’s current net effect is clearly in favor of cancellations. Millions are already seeing Obamacare’s adverse effects — largely due to more mandates for more services.

The health-care law requires that all insurance plans cover 10 “essential benefits,” eliminating millions of plans that don’t fit the bill and boosting costs for consumers that have to purchase coverage for services they may not want or need.

All plans must include maternity coverage, for example — including plans for men and post-menopausal women. Even customers without children must purchase plans that cover pediatric services. Other newly established essential benefits include hospitalization, mental-health services and preventive and wellness services.

While a grandfather clause allowed plans purchased before Obamacare passed in 2010 to continue, HHS estimated that 40-67 percent of plans would eventually lose their status and cost millions of Americans their insurance plans.

The Obama administration eventually admitted Obamacare’s role in crushing many Americans’ coverage and has scrambled to belatedly make up for it. President Barack Obama first attempted to reinstate the canceled coverage for just one more year, but many insurers chose not to restart already-canceled plans.

The latest stopgap, announced just before the deadline to purchase exchange coverage, is to allow those with canceled plans a one-year “hardship exemption” from the individual mandate to have medical coverage, but insurance companies didn’t see this as an adequate solution either.

“This type of last-minute change will cause tremendous instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers,” Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, told reporters.

obamy and the libs.....serving the American public since 2008.

 

[LeadRoundNose]

The worst law passed EVER.

No wonder the demoncrats wouldn't let anybody read it.

 

[LeadRoundNose]

Also, I could have sworn that the liar in chief said that our policies (the ones that you can "keep") wouldn't be raised by one dime.

obamy is the biggest liar on the planet. No wonder he got lie of the year.

New ObamaCare fees coming in 2014

New ObamaCare fees coming in 2014 | New York Post

WASHINGTON — Here comes the ObamaCare tax bill.
The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.
Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.
But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, laid bare the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.”
The new taxes on one customer’s bill added up to $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, according to Kaiser Health News. It boosted the monthly premium from $322.26 to $345.40 for that individual.
The new taxes and fees include a 2 percent levy on every health plan, which is expected to net about $8 billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.
There’s also a $2 fee per policy that goes into a new medical-research trust fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Insurers pay a 3.5 percent user fee to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov Web site.
ObamaCare supporters argue that federal subsidies for many low-income Americans will not only cover the taxes, but pay a big chunk of the premiums.
But ObamaCare taxes don’t stop with health-plan premiums.
Americans also will pay hidden taxes, such as the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that will inflate the cost of items such as pacemakers, stents and prosthetic limbs.
Those with high out-of-pocket medical expenses also will get smaller income-tax deductions.
Americans are currently allowed to deduct expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their annual income. The threshold jumps to 10 percent under ObamaCare, costing taxpayers about $15 billion over 10 years.
Then there’s the new Medicare tax.
Under ObamaCare, individual tax filers earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000 will pay an added 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on top of the existing 1.45 percent Medicare payroll tax. They’ll also pay an extra 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income, such as investment dividends, rental income and capital gains.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration touted a surge of more than 2 million visitors Monday at HealthCare.gov, plus about 250,000 calls to ObamaCare call centers.
“Volumes remain high but not equal to [Monday] and we have not had to deploy our queuing system on the site,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, referring to a virtual waiting room that is activated when the site is overloaded.
“We are taking thousands of calls at our call centers, which remain open until midnight, and we are seeing thousands of visitors complete enrollment online,” she said.
It wasn’t smooth sailing for everyone on the troubled site.
Software techie Jeff Karaaro tweeted in frustration: “Got three different codes trying to submit plan choices. No [one] can tell me what they mean. I nor call center can complete my application due to error.”

 

[Luddly Neddite]

The worst law passed EVER.

No wonder the demoncrats wouldn't let anybody read it.

"let"?

Who is stopping you or anyone else from reading it? LOL

Same thing happened with the much worse roll out of Medicare and, AFTER IT WAS FIXED BY THE BIPARTISAN CONGRESS, it became an excellent program.

Problem is, the Rs have wanted nothing quite so much as NOT letting Americans get affordable health care. That won't change any time soon.

 

[Steven_R]

Maybe we should have passed a bill that didn't need fixing in the first place.

 

[emilynghiem]

The worst law passed EVER.

No wonder the demoncrats wouldn't let anybody read it.

"let"?

Who is stopping you or anyone else from reading it? LOL

Same thing happened with the much worse roll out of Medicare and, AFTER IT WAS FIXED BY THE BIPARTISAN CONGRESS, it became an excellent program.

Problem is, the Rs have wanted nothing quite so much as NOT letting Americans get affordable health care. That won't change any time soon.

Luddly I guess the same thing could be asked of you:

What is stopping ANYONE from getting affordable health care?

* anyone can access FREE SPIRITUAL HEALING that has cured cancer, diabetes, addiction to drugs if not crime itself. the costs and expenses SAVED if everyone quit drug and/or criminal addictions would easily pay for health care WITHOUT charging taxpayers more.

What is stopping anyone from using FREE methods to REDUCE public expenses on health care so more people could be served with the same resources?

Why not support equal and "free choice" to go through either govt programs OR private programs? What is WRONG with that?

Oh that's right. Under ACA, only "certain" groups are religious exempt and are allowed to pay for their own alternative besides Insurance. The federal govt is basically regulating on the basis of religious requirements, so you are NO LONGER FREE to pay for the health care provisions and methods of your choice, only Insurance is legal and the rest is penalized.

* anyone can work with doctors and educational programs to set up charity outreach to provide medical help to those in need

Oh wait, ACA penalizes people who believe in paying for other programs BESIDES HEALTH INSURANCE AS THE "ONLY OPTION" for affordable health care.

So all the people who would rather invest their money in creating charitable hospitals, clinics, and cost-effective outreach; none of that would count as "exemptions"

Money that would normally go into creating MEDICAL SERVICE PROVISIONS (or paying for Medical scholarships/education/internships to provide public services) is required to pay for INSURANCE which unfortunately does NOT create any service providers or programs.

Luddly: what was preventing this freedom before, which is now restricted, regulated if not penalized by ACA requirements now?

 

[LeadRoundNose]

Hehehe. Watching the libs try and spin the fact that this ACA is floating like a lead balloon is funny. What's not funny is how much this law has and will continue to hurt real Americans.

Why do the libs insist that republicans fix their screw up? Republicans have put proposals on the table but they are shot down by that partisan prick Harry Reid in the Senate. Cruz wanted to delay the roll-out and that got shot down by the senate and THEN, THEN it was suddenly a good idea as the demoncrats realized that they had shot themselves in their foot.

As the reality of what has happened continues to filter through the remaining brain cells of the low info voters comprised of so many liberals, you'll see more and more hyped up spin from this lying administration, no accountability and no reasonable fix offered as they continue to delay, change by executive fiat and alter the law (illegally) till it finally collapses on itself, hopefully dragging people back to reality in this country and booting the scum that passed this shit OUT of office forever.

 

[emilynghiem]

Hehehe. Watching the libs try and spin the fact that this ACA is floating like a lead balloon is funny. What's not funny is how much this law has and will continue to hurt real Americans.

Why do the libs insist that republicans fix their screw up? Republicans have put proposals on the table but they are shot down by that partisan prick Harry Reid in the Senate. Cruz wanted to delay the roll-out and that got shot down by the senate and THEN, THEN it was suddenly a good idea as the demoncrats realized that they had shot themselves in their foot.

As the reality of what has happened continues to filter through the remaining brain cells of the low info voters comprised of so many liberals, you'll see more and more hyped up spin from this lying administration, no accountability and no reasonable fix offered as they continue to delay, change by executive fiat and alter the law (illegally) till it finally collapses on itself, hopefully dragging people back to reality in this country and booting the scum that passed this shit OUT of office forever.

Dear LRN:
What is SAD is I AM A prochoice liberal/progressive Democrat, yet of the opponents on the left who agree ACA is a disaster, I am one of the few willing to speak out in public, much less ALIGN with opponents on the right. The dissension on the left appears to be silenced?

The only positions voiced in public seem to be FOR the ACA
* as long as those "supporters" are exempted, either politically or financially
* or they use the ACA as some kind of political statement or revenge AGAINST conservative opponents, deliberately discrediting and attacking them for their beliefs
Very little of this is directly about health care; but more about political fighting for power.

(as Luddly said, MALICIOUSLY misrepresenting Republicans as "not wanting people to have affordable health care" as opposed to them believing in freedom under the Constitution to keep free choice of health care options WITHOUT penalty by govt.

This seems as intellectually dishonest as calling prochoice advocates "proabortion" and "not wanting women to have babies" when the real motivation is to protect freedom from govt intrusion into private decisions and NOT to penalize women for wanting FREE CHOICE.)

Also as I pointed out to CClaytonJones that Roe V Wade struck down abortion laws as "Unconstitutional" WITHOUT setting up any alternatives either!

So where are the complaints there?

People long warned me that prochoice Democrats were not about "free choice," but control of govt. It seems the Democrat Party leadership only cares about hooking the prochoice/singlepayer constituency for votes only, to hijack power and representation, the same as was done to the Black votes, the Green proenvironment vote, the Pink antiwar vote, etc. Just marketing to get the votes. So sad the victims of political fraud are silenced.

They are so afraid of the "bigger bullies" they get taken advantage of by bullies anyway!

So sad. To see that all my single payer friends are equally against ACA, but the left and the right are fighting ALONE, against each other, while the bigger bully is beating them both!

 

[WelfareQueen]

The worst law passed EVER.

No wonder the demoncrats wouldn't let anybody read it.

"let"?

Who is stopping you or anyone else from reading it? LOL

Same thing happened with the much worse roll out of Medicare and, AFTER IT WAS FIXED BY THE BIPARTISAN CONGRESS, it became an excellent program.

Problem is, the Rs have wanted nothing quite so much as NOT letting Americans get affordable health care. That won't change any time soon.

No....an "Excellent Program" wouldn't be a few years away from bankruptcy.