Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insur

Meister

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Hmmmmm, interesting


The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a longstanding priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. Beneficiaries could use the money for services to help them stay at home, or to help with nursing home bills.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes geared at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health would have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insurance Program Canceled
 
Friday afternoon news dump of course.....so, nobody signed up, or let me be more accurate not NEAR enough people are signing up, and the handwriting is engraved in the wall, so, what now batman?



the 80 BILLION budget surplus they predicted based on this prgm. was due to the 5 year vesting period, translation?

we collect your money then start paying the next 5 years completing the 10 years of the plan the CBO scored, BEFORE the bottom falls out.....back handed props for pulling the plug on it. But then again, it never should have passed muster anyway.




Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. The money could go for services at home, or to help with nursing home bills.

But a central design flaw dogged CLASS. Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout…

“Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time,” Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.



News from The Associated Press

and-

Long after Obamacare was passed and signed into, even prominent supports of the bill acknowledged that the CLASS Act was a financial disaster waiting to happen. Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D) called it “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of.” Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted it was “totally unsustainable” in its current form.

But again, that was after Obamacare had been enacted. In fact, under the new law, HHS has until Oct. 1, 2012 to finalize the program’s requirements, to be imposed through regulation. Because the law (no doubt intentionally) left vague many of the plan’s key provisions, there is currently no way to reliably assess the program or estimate its potential cost.


snip-

E-mails uncovered by the working group show that such concerns were first raised back in May 2009, nearly a year before Obamacare’s passage, by Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster. “At first glance this proposal doesn’t look workable,” he wrote in an e-mail to other HHS officials. “Due to the limited scope of the insurance coverage, the voluntary CLASS plan would probably not attract many participants other than individuals who already meet the criteria to qualify as beneficiaries.” Even so, Foster estimated that the CLASS program would have to enroll about 234 million people, which is greater than the entire U.S. population aged 20 and above, in order to sustain itself.


CLASS-less Behavior - By Andrew Stiles - The Corner - National Review Online
 
the money shot-

"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.


our best efforts ...yea, I bet.

In short, if they cannot force people to do it, they will cook the books to make it appear so, until the fail is so huge, its just drops into the abyss.
 
it is what it is. I mean what does the Medicare chief actuary know:rolleyes:

For sebelius to actually come out and ( she has talked around this issue for a while now) and admit its totally unsustainable and pull the plug, well.......I have no doubt though that the die hards are right now as you infer Mesiter, working the boiler room templates trying to come up with another iteration of the same plan under a different name probably.
 
the money shot-

"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.


our best efforts ...yea, I bet.

In short, if they cannot force people to do it, they will cook the books to make it appear so, until the fail is so huge, its just drops into the abyss.
Just wait until SCOTUS gets hold of it.
 
Hmmmmm, interesting


The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a longstanding priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. Beneficiaries could use the money for services to help them stay at home, or to help with nursing home bills.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes geared at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health would have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insurance Program Canceled

The problem I have with health care in general, and reform in particular, is those who make their pro and con 'solutions' simple are biased by politics or profit. Most knowledgeable people understand the need for health care reform due to the enormous costs involved. It's too important to leave to Congress and special intererests.
 
Hmmmmm, interesting


The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a longstanding priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. Beneficiaries could use the money for services to help them stay at home, or to help with nursing home bills.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes geared at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health would have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insurance Program Canceled






I've been pondering this situation since yesterday.. :confused: Didn't the legislative branch of the U.S. Government vote this bill into law? How is it that the White House can arbitrarily cuts bits and pieces of the entire bill?
 
Hmmmmm, interesting


The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a longstanding priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. Beneficiaries could use the money for services to help them stay at home, or to help with nursing home bills.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes geared at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health would have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insurance Program Canceled






I've been pondering this situation since yesterday.. :confused: Didn't the legislative branch of the U.S. Government vote this bill into law? How is it that the White House can arbitrarily cuts bits and pieces of the entire bill?


Excellent point. I also would have to agree, that any changes to the law would have to first go through Congress. The president already had his opportunity to veto the whole bill, or in part through a line-item veto, before he could sign it. Does this "retreat" begin the crack that could eventually create enough holes to allow the whole Health Care overhaul to come crashing down? This decision doesn't look good when the Obama Administration must eventually defend the entire Obamacare bill before the United States Supreme Court.
 
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I've been pondering this situation since yesterday.. Didn't the legislative branch of the U.S. Government vote this bill into law? How is it that the White House can arbitrarily cuts bits and pieces of the entire bill?
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I'd still like to know how this happened!
 

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