Obamacare News of the Day

Ron Fournier, National Journal: Why I'm Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare Incompetence, politics, and delays frustrate advocates of health care reform

• It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.
• Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy. The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—"If you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan." And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.
• Advocates for a strong executive branch, including me, have given the White House a pass on its rule-making authority, because implementing such a complicated law requires flexibility. But the law may be getting stretched to the point of breaking. Think of the ACA as a game of Jenga: Adjust one piece and the rest are affected; adjust too many and it falls.

Washington Examiner: Number of Obamacare sign-ups is greatly inflated

• "Already, because of the Affordable Care Act, more than nine million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage," Obama said in the State of the Union speech. "Nine million."
• First, Medicaid. This week, the health consulting firm Avalere found that only 1 to 2 million of the 6.3 million who signed up for Medicaid were new enrollees brought into the program by Obamacare. The rest were people who were eligible and would have signed up for Medicaid irrespective of Obamacare, in addition to people who were already on Medicaid but were renewing their status. (The researchers reached their conclusion by comparing the Obamacare sign-ups with a recent period before the new health law went into effect.) If the Avalere report is accurate — and experts are taking it seriously — then less than one-third, and perhaps less than one-quarter, of the new Medicaid sign-ups cited by the administration were previously uninsured people gaining coverage because of Obamacare. That's a major shortfall.
• Then there are the roughly three million people said to have signed up for private insurance. In mid-January, the Wall Street Journal reported that a relatively small percentage of the new sign-ups were previously uninsured Americans gaining coverage through Obamacare. The rest were people who were covered and lost that coverage in the market disruptions largely caused by Obamacare. A McKinsey and Co. survey cited by the Journal found that just 11 percent of private insurance signups were people who previously had no coverage. Other surveys found that about one-quarter of new sign-ups were previously uninsured.
• Whatever the precise number, it appears that a large majority of the activity in Obamacare private coverage sign-ups is essentially a churn operation: The system throws people out of their coverage, and then those people come to the system to sign up for new coverage, and that is reported as a gain for Obamacare.
• [RELATED] HotAir: Four Pinocchios to [Senator] Durbin for claiming 10 million additional insured under Obamacare

The Transom: The Shape of Obamacare's Economy

• The important thing to recognize here is that this is not a “failure of implementation” or a “rollout problem” or anything like that. It’s an example of Obamacare working exactly as it’s supposed to, which is the undercurrent of arguments from people like Chuck Schumer.
• So to be clear: people will have less money, fewer people will be working, the ones who are will be working for lower wages, and the economy will have less growth. But hey, there’s always Medicaid.
• [RELATED] RealClearPolitics: Krauthammer: The Essence of Liberalism Is You Can Choose Not To Work And People Who Do Will Subsidize You
• [RELATED] Steynonline: America Takes Early Retirement
  • The basic problem with the western world today is that not enough people do not enough work for not enough of their lives - and yet still expect to lead a First World lifestyle…As Bernard Shaw asked in Heartbreak House, "Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?"
  • "Of course!" say Obama and Pelosi and The New York Times and the Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Iowa. I think not.

The Hill: Healthcare.gov to be out of service [on the last day that people can sign up for Obamacare for March 1 coverage]

• HealthCare.gov will be out of service for two and a half days beginning on Feb. 15 — the last day people can sign up to obtain coverage that begins on March 1… Those seeking coverage by March 1 must have signed up online by Feb. 15, but with the website maintenance, those registering at the last minute won’t be able to find out what plans or subsidies they qualify for.  The CMS is encouraging these users to call a hotline to complete the process.

Rand Corporation: Negative Opinion on ACA Rises

• We saw a jump in unfavorable opinion compared to last week, while favorable opinion continued to be stable. Those saying “don't know” declined. While the change in unfavorable opinion since last week is notable, the overall rate continues to be in line with the rate of unfavorable opinion since mid-November, between 52 and 54 percent.
• The large jump in overall unfavorable opinion is accompanied by even larger jumps in those stating that the reform will have a negative impact on themselves or their family and those stating that the reform will have a negative effect on the country as a whole.
• Increases in negative opinion seem to be most prominent among those under 26, those over 65, males, and retired individuals.

American Action Forum: White House Holding 45 Million Hours of ACA Paperwork Including the Individual Mandate

• Currently, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the White House is reviewing an avalanche of new Affordable Care Act rules (ACA), including the infamous Individual Mandate Tax. In total, these 28 paperwork burdens total more than 45.7 million burden hours. For perspective, it would take more than 22,800 employees working full-time to complete the new paperwork (assuming 2,000 employee hours annually). Using an average wage rate, these regulations will cost $1.4 billion annually.