Tag Archives: Obamacare

Predictions from back in 2009 are becoming reality in 2016. From Devon Herrick at healthblog.ncpa.org:

Our health care system is going to implode under its own weight. National Health Expenditures are approaching 20 percent of gross domestic product — a figure that is expected to about double over the next half century. Obamacare didn’t start the process, but it’s expediting the job started when Kaiser Shipyards requested permission during World War II to offer health coverage as a fringe benefit. This was further exacerbated in 1965 by the poorly-designed entitlement programs Medicare and Medicaid that are now draining the Treasury.
Just look at the evidence. Health care is unaffordable for most Americans. To have any hope of affording even minor medical procedures, Americans rely on health insurance or public coverage to pay much of the cost. About 88 percent of medical bills are paid for by an entity other than the patient. As a result, health insurance has also become unaffordable. The average employer plan costs American families $17,545 per year. A Bronze plan from the exchange for the average middle-age family costs $12,000 per year with combined annual deductibles of $8,000 to $13,000. Provider networks are so narrow that any major procedure is surely to result in out-of-network charges that can be astronomical.

Arguably, the greatest problem our health care system faces is high costs that are rising at more than double the rate of consumer inflation. The price of newer drugs are rising so high politicians like Hillary Clinton are calling for caps on copays. Of course, that will do nothing to lower the cost; it will merely facilitate further price increases. A New York Times article questioned why a new drug marketed to treat women with low libido comes with a monthly price tag of $800 — even though the pill hardly works better than a placebo. The reasoning behind charging so much? Because the drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals assumed health plans would have little choice but to cough up nearly $10,000 per year for women whose doctors prescribed it. Of course, women themselves would never pay $800 per month for a drug whose clinical trials showed it was only correlated one additional sexual encounter per month in the women taking it. Some of the newest cholesterol drugs cost from $1,500 to $2,000 per month. The latest drugs for rheumatoid arthritis cost even more. New treatments for Hepatitis C cost $60,000 to $90,000 for a course of treatment. Now do you understand why health insurance is so expensive?

This is not just a drug problem; believe it or not drugs are actually the best bargain in American health care today. Rather, the more egregious examples reflect a growing trend by health care industry stakeholders to jack up revenue any way they can. The strategic plan in the health care industry is to extract as much revenue as possible from third-party payers, because most consumers are both unwilling — and unable — to pay those exorbitant amounts unless the costs are hidden from them and they are forced to pay for them indirectly. It’s a health care Gold Rush and employers and insurers are the claims being mined. But it’s ultimately consumers who pay the price, since consumers accept lower wages in return for employee health benefits, pay higher premiums for insurance and pay higher taxes to cover the cost of public programs.

Over the years Americans began to balk and forgo health coverage. Some of this was because they were unwilling to pay exorbitant prices; nearly one-third of the uninsured in 2010 had household incomes above $50,000. Just over half of those had incomes of more than $75,000. An additional one-third of the uninsured likely decided they didn’t have sufficient incomes to afford health coverage and pay their living expenses.

To continue reading: The Obamacare Health Care Gold Rush is Bankrupting America

Obamacare keeps running into reality, and losing. From a Wall Street Journal editorial via davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

President Obama claimed credit at a Los Angeles fundraiser last week for “the steady progress that happens when people who love this country decide to change it,” and reality is unlikely to darken his farewell tour. But for everyone else, note that the largest U.S. health insurer is quitting ObamaCare.

On Tuesday UnitedHealth Group reported a terrific first quarter, with strong performance across nearly all business lines. There was one exception: The conglomerate’s insurance exchange unit raised its projected Affordable Care Act losses for 2016 to $650 million from $525 million, after booking $475 million in red ink last year.

CEO Stephen Hemsley said ObamaCare’s instability, small market size and costly patient population “continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis.” He said UnitedHealth will withdraw to “only a handful of states” in 2017.

Liberals claim this doesn’t matter because UnitedHealth was insufficiently committed to ObamaCare, as if it preferred to leave money on the table. The insurer didn’t plunge head-first into the exchanges in year one of the law like the larger industry, but the latecomer expanded to 34 states in 2016 from 23 in 2015 and four in 2014. Mr. Hemsley has been more vocal than most insurance CEOs about the long-term importance of retail, customer-facing coverage outside of the employer business. He told an investors conference last year that he decided to ramp up because he couldn’t believe the ObamaCare market “would form this slowly, be this porous, or become this severe.”

To continue reading: Another Obamacare Fiasco—-Largest US Insurer Heading For The Exit

From John R. Graham at healthblog.ncpa.org:

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest budget estimate shows Obamacare’s costs per beneficiary have exploded, as enrollment in Obamacare’s broken exchanges collapses. January’s update estimates 2016 exchange enrollment at 13 million people (p. 69). Although the Administration had previously downgraded its estimate of Obamacare enrollment, this is the first significant change by the non-partisan CBO.

What is really shocking is the January update still estimates tax credits, which subsidize insurers participating in exchanges, will cost taxpayers $56 billion this year (p. 182). That amounts to about $4,308 per enrollee (although not all are subsidized). Back in March 2010, CBO estimated that 21 million people would be covered in exchanges in 2016, for a total cost of $59 billion in tax credits (pp. 20-23). That would amount to about $2,810 per enrollee.

As recently as March 2015, CBO was still assuming 21 million enrollees in Obamacare’s exchanges this year (Table 2). In the January update, the CBO has only changed its estimate for 2016 enrollment, not future years. Next March’s update will include a more thorough analysis including future years, and we can expect those estimates to be similarly downgraded.

This leads to the conclusion that Obamacare exchanges are, in fact, high-risk pools for sick individuals who cannot get coverage elsewhere. They are not a properly functioning, broad-based, market for health insurance.

And, by the way, the CBO confirms that Obamacare kills jobs:

CBO anticipates that several developments in federal fiscal policy under current law will affect the economy through their impact on the labor market. The most sizable effects stem from provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA’s largest effect on the labor market—especially as overall employment conditions improve—will come from provisions of the act that raise effective marginal tax rates on earnings, thereby reducing how much some people choose to work. The health insurance subsidies that the act provides through the expansion of Medicaid and the exchanges are phased out for people with higher income, creating an implicit tax on some people’s additional earnings. The act also directly imposes higher taxes on some people’s labor income. Because both effects on labor supply will grow over the next few years, CBO projects, they will subtract from economic growth over that period.

(“The Budget and Economic Outlook, 2016 to 2026,” Congressional Budget Office, January 25, 2016, p. 38.)

http://healthblog.ncpa.org/obamacares-cost-per-beneficiary-explodes-with-shrinking-enrollment/#sthash.U82pWhXs.dpuf

From CNBC, with an introduction by Jim Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

So in the real world, the cost of healthcare – even for Obamacare enrollees – uses up at least 10% of people’s annual income. The Obamanistas blather about the low subsidized premiums, but NEVER talk about the $6,000 deductibles because that obliterates their false narrative of affordable healthcare for all.

Our friends at the BLS declare that medical costs only account for 7.7% of household costs and are only going up by 2.9% per year. Isn’t that precious? They underweight the expenses dramatically and then they have the balls to tell you your healthcare expenses are going up at 2.9% per year when you know they are going up by at least 10% per year. Obamacare is essentially a never ending proctology exam for the American people. Bend over folks.

Via CNBC

You might not be reduced to living on Ramen noodles if you buy Obamacare coverage — but your bank account certainly could feel a bit leaner.

A new study reveals that many Obamacare customers pay more than 10 percent of their incomes toward coverage. And the share of income eaten up can be much greater for some people, particularly if they use a lot of health services under their plan.

One in 10 Obamacare customers who earn between just two and five times the federal poverty level will have coverage costs that exceed 21 percent of their incomes, an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute found.

And the median Obamacare customer who earns in that range spends more than 10 percent of their income on monthly premiums and out-of-pocket health expenses, the analysis found.

“Many who have modest incomes have high financial burdens even with average medical expenses,” the report said. “For those at the top of the [health] spending distribution, financial burdens are very high.”

“You start to get hit pretty hard,” said John Holahan, an Urban Institute fellow, and co-author of the report.

Strong sign-up activity

The study comes as Obama administration officials have touted relatively strong sign-up activity on the federal insurance exchange during the third open-enrollment season. Officials also have stressed the availability of financial assistance to help many consumers purchase coverage, and the value of having insurance to protect oneself from potentially crippling medical bills.

Still, the analysis also suggests that efforts to boost Obamacare enrollment dramatically above current levels is being hampered by the sticker shock that some would-be customers feel when they look at how much they would have to actually pay in plan premiums and deductibles relative to their incomes.

To continue reading: Obamacare plans put big dent in customers’ wallets