I have a new study out today titled “ObamaCare Exchanges: Less Choice, Higher Prices,” that tests those claims.  In short, they don’t hold up.

The study examines the choices and prices of insurance that a single 27-year-old and a 57-year-old couple has on the exchanges and then compares those to what was available in 2013 on eHealthinsurance.com (“eHealth) and Finder.healthcare.gov (“Finder).  Here is what the study found for the choice of insurance for a single 27-year-old:

A 27-year-old male had, on average, ten more policies to choose from on eHealth versus the exchange and 31 more on Finder. A 27-year-old female had an average of ten more insurance options on eHealth and 38 on Finder. There were an average of nine more policies on eHealth and 19 more on Finder for a 57-year-old couple.

Across all areas examined, the exchanges have resulted in a substantial reduction in choice. For 27-year-olds, there were 442 fewer policies on the exchanges versus eHealth, a drop of 18 percent. There were 1,306 fewer policies on the exchange versus Finder for 27-year-old males and 1,716 fewer for females, declines of 38 percent and 46 percent, respectively. For 57-year-old couples, there were 406 fewer policies on the exchanges compared to eHealth and 855 fewer versus Finder, drops of 18 percent and 31 percent, respectively. 

The study examines choice and price across metropolitan areas in 45 states.  In most areas, consumers had access to many policies on eHealth and Finder that were cheaper than the lowest price policy on the exchange. That includes even some people who had access to subsidies, such as a 27-year-old making $25,000 annually:

Thus far the exchanges have resulted in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers shopping for insurance. That will get worse if and when the exchanges start moving toward a death spiral.

For more, go here.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the other day that, despite all the "good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of the are untrue, but they're being told all over America."

ObamaCare is causing a catastrophic change to our health care climate and Harry Reid is denying it. Denier!

No, we don't have a hockey stick to support this (and, come to think of it, neither do alarmists who concocted something more like a horse-hockey stick to "prove" anthropogenic climate change.)

We have proof more like a baseball bat right to the groin... reality.

Not theory, not models, but actual observed changes to our health care system.

There's this: Millions Americans have been informed that their insurance policies are being discontinued BECAUSE they don't meet ObamaCare requirements.

Need proof? Take a look at this letter all the employees of my organization received.

My family's new plan came with a 55% higher price tag and higher co-payments.

And there are much more dramatic and tragic stories such as this one, which details how ObamaCare caused a 49-year-old woman to lose coverage for cancer medication.

Senator Reid has walked his comments back a bit, by saying that nearly all the horror stories are false and suggesting that he was referring only to the ObamaCare horror stories being circulated by Charles and David Koch, whom Reid has called "un-American"... or "un-Aryan"... I forget which.

Reid apparently doesn't believe the Kochs are entitled to express their opinions and exercise their rights like everyone else. He wants to make them the scapegoat for problems he created... not all that dissimilar from a tactic used by a certain European regime 70+ years ago.

Reid owes an apology not only to the millions of Americans who have been harmed by ObamaCare AND to the Kochs, whom he has slandered.

He owes one to his Senate colleagues as his insistence that all ObamaCare horror stories are lies impugned the character of many of them, a violation of Senate rules.

Speaking of the America Academy of Pediatrics, the AAP has fired a shot across the bow of retail health clinics:

Retail health clinics that are popping up in drugstores and other outlets shouldn’t be used for children’s primary-care needs, the American Academy of Pediatrics said, arguing that such facilities don’t provide the continuity of care that pediatricians do.

While retail clinics may be more convenient and less costly, the AAP said they are detrimental to the concept of a “medical home,” where patients have a personal physician who knows them well and coordinates all their care.

Thus far, AAP has only made arguments against using retail clinics as a substitute for a “medical home” for children.  And it is certainly free to do so.  

There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that children are getting worse care at retail clinics, as the AAP helpfully notes: “Data on outcomes specifically looking at pediatric patients are limited, but minor illnesses, such as acute pharyngitis, demonstrate no significant issues with early return visits to pri- mary care physicians.”  In fact, the studies that AAP cites show retail clinics produce pretty good outcomes.

But I doubt the AAP’s effort will end at persuasion or that it will let data deter it from using government to go after retail clinics. For example, the statement released by the AAP states that it has laid out principles that retail clinics “should be subject [to] because of concern regarding the medical care received by pediatric patients in these settings.”

Note the use of the passive voice, a common tactic lobbying groups use when they don’t want to say who will be responsible for doing the “subjecting.”  Will it be the retail clinics who subject themselves, or will it be the government?  

Ultimately, it should be parents who make the decision as to where their children get treated, since no one else—not pediatricians, not “academies,” and certainly not politicians—has a greater interest than parents in seeing that their children receive proper medical care.

But don’t expect the AAP to respect the wishes of parents.  After all, more children treated at retail clinics means fewer treated by pediatricians.  That could also mean fewer dues paying members of the AAP.  It is probably only a matter of time before the AAP calls for stricter government regulations on retail clinics.

 The Wall Street Journal takes stock of the impact ObamaCare will have on various sectors of the economy.  One area set to see growth are those that specialize in helping businesses navigate regulations: “At the same time, employment-benefit and IT companies, such as Virtusa Corp. and Automatic Data Processing Inc. say they are seeing more business as they help clients comply with the [ObamaCare]’s demands.”

Would businesses spend money to hire other businesses to help them comply with ObamaCare if it didn’t exist?  Of course not.  They’d invest it in expanding their businesses, developing new products and technology, and the like.  In short, the things that create new wealth, and, ultimately, new jobs.  Spending money to comply with regulations only shifts money around, from companies that produce wealth to companies that exist to maneuver companies through the regulatory maze.

It may even destroy wealth. Businesses that have the resources to hire regulatory-compliance companies will likely fare better than businesses that can devote fewer resources for such a purpose or have no such resources at all.  Those businesses will have a harder time staying afloat, and should they go under, whatever innovation, jobs, etc. they bring to the market will no longer be there.

2. ObamaCare Will Reduce Your Premiums By $2,500…Uh, Scratch That.

Remember this promise?

As I’ve noted here and here, the Kasier Permanente policy that National Center for Public Policy Research has is being cancelled because of ObamaCare.  The total annual premium increase for us if we choose the policy Kaiser recommends as a replacement will cost an additional $2,577.

We’re not the only small business.  A new report from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that for businesses with fewer than 50 employees, “that 65 percent of the small firms are expected to experience increases in their premium rates while the remaining 35 percent are anticipated to have rate reductions.”   

And what do you wanna bet that most of the businesses seeing rate reductions won’t see ones of $2,500?

More here. 

But late last year, his mother’s ordeal began:

And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She’d had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

When they finally found a plan with Humana that looked like it would cover Sandostatin, she called Humana.  It turned out that the enrollment agents didn’t have access to the drug formularies and so could not confirm that Humana covered Sandostatin.  

[The enrollment agents] said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

Read it all here.

By the way, didn’t someone tell us that people like Blackwood’s mom that if they were losing their “substandard” plan to just shop around on the exchange?

Over in California, Chris Dunn of Senora has has a similiar surreal experience trying to find a back surgeon with his new Blue Cross plan that he purchased via CoveredCalifornia.  Turns out the plan has a very restricted network.  When he called the one back surgeon listed as on his network, the surgeon’s office said they were not taking any policies on Covered California.  See it all here.

…whatever happens to the ACA, the many mistakes made with the rollout have tarnished the president’s reputation for competence. Obama will always have to live with the fact that he “fumbled” — his word — the debut of his signature program and his best bet to define his legacy.

Alter’s article if Foreign Affairs is the best run-down yet of how HealthCare.gov went wrong and how much of the disaster can be traced back to President Obama’s incompetence.  It is well worth the read, even though you have to wade through liberal tripe like this:

Thanks to the ACA, which took effect on January 1 of this year, the U.S. government has finally joined most other industrialized nations in offering its citizens health security. The reform, by many estimates, will save tens of thousands of lives as Americans reap the benefits of such provisions as greatly expanded preventive medicine and a prohibition on insurance companies’ discriminating against those with preexisting conditions. The era when millions of Americans were bankrupted by medical expenses will end. If the law works as planned, it will also contain health-care costs, reducing the U.S. budget deficit. And by freeing employees from the perpetual fear of losing their health insurance, the ACA should, in theory at least, make it easier for them to leave their jobs to start new businesses, boosting domestic and global growth.

No, millions of Americans did not go bankrupt because of medical bills.  And that supposed “health security” of other nations often means long wait times for surgery. Anyway, if you can get passed paragraphs like that, the rest of the article makes for fascinating reading.

One last thing.  Alter appears to think that the government can actually manage the health care system.  I’d encourage him to put “The Use of Knowledge in Society” and “The Fatal Conceit” on his reading list, but doubt it would do much good.

American physicians, worried about changes in the health care market, are streaming into salaried jobs with hospitals. Though the shift from private practice has been most pronounced in primary care, specialists are following.

American Interest titled its post on this “Your Hospital Bill Is About to Get a Lot More Expensive.”  Here’s why:

…experts caution that the change from private practice to salaried jobs may not yield better or cheaper care for patients.

“In many places, the trend will almost certainly lead to more expensive care in the short run,” said Robert Mechanic, an economist who studies health care at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management….

…many of the new salaried arrangements have evolved from hospitals looking for new revenues, and could have the opposite effect. For example, when doctors’ practices are bought by a hospital, a colonoscopy or stress test performed in the office can suddenly cost far more because a hospital “facility fee” is tacked on. Likewise, Mr. Smith said, many doctors on salary are offered bonuses tied to how much billing they generate, which could encourage physicians to order more X-rays and tests.

The article doesn’t say much about the impact on physician quality, but readers should be concerned.  Here is what Dr. John Slotosky, who I interviewed for a National Policy Analysis Medicare, had to say about working for a hospital:

“I was a typical physician employed by a hospital,” Dr. Slatosky said. “I had all the say so of a janitor. We had no say in scheduling or work hours, and if you needed a day off you had to beg for it.”

Looking back, he reflects that in that setting he was unable to provide quality care to patients.

“Most hospitals lose money on their primary-care practices because they are so top-heavy with bureaucracy. But this hospital was trying to make its primary-care network profitable, so the physicians had to see about twice as many patients as you would at a normal physician practice. Hospitals are used to dealing with big charges, of thousands of dollars. But primary-care is about small charges. Most of it probably costs $50 to $200.

“But with seeing so many patients, you only get to see them for a short time. And you try to take care of things quickly, and you miss things. If you want quality, you have to take some time with your patients, and patients have to be willing to pay for that.

Hospitals pressuring physicians to see as many patients as possible is only one way the trend away from independent practices may harm quality.  In my experience, physicians tend to be very independent minded, a trait that often leads them to be good physicians.  Independent-mindedness, however is not a characteristic that is usually prized in bureaucracies like hospitals.  If more physicians end up working for hospitals, long term it may discourage more independent-minded people from going into medicine.

1. Trial Lawyers Bonanza!

The new delay in the employer mandates only apply to employers who don’t reduce their labor force…unless…here is a Q&A on the regulation:

In order to be eligible for the relief, an employer must certify that it meets the following conditions:

(2) Maintenance of Workforce and Aggregate Hours of Service. During the period beginning on Feb. 9, 2014 and ending on Dec. 31, 2014, the employer may not reduce the size of its workforce or the overall hours of service of its employees in order to qualify for the transition relief. However, an employer that reduces workforce size or overall hours of service for bona fide business reasons is still eligible for the relief.

In the title Goodman writes that “you would have to be pretty dumb not to be able to think of a ‘bona fide business reason.”  That’s true, but trial lawyers would have to be pretty dumb to not realize that “bona fide business reason” is so vague that it will provide them with plenty of opportunities to sue businesses with big pockets.  And in my experience, trial lawyers aren’t THAT dumb.

2. Well, Those Rural Folk Didn’t Vote For Obama Anyway.  I missed this one in the Washington Post from almost two weeks back. Apparently consumers in rural Georgia are finding insurance pretty pricey on the ObamaCare exchange:

If Lee Mullins lived in Pittsburgh, he could buy mid-level health coverage for his family for $940 a month. If he lived in Beverly Hills, he would pay $1,405.

But Mullins, who builds custom swimming pools, lives in southwest Georgia. Here, a similar health plan for his family of four costs $2,654 a month.

Read it all.

3. ObamaCare Brings Some People Sadness…  The Massachusetts exchange is not going well, according to the Boston Globe:

The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.

Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, wept at a board meeting, where it was disclosed that 50,000 applications for health insurance are sitting in a pile, and have yet to be entered into a computer system.

Wish I could say I feel sorry for her.

4. …And Brings Other People Joy.  I’m not one who generally enjoys this sort of schoolyard taunt, but given how arrogant the defenders of ObamaCare have been, in that context this bit of schadenfreude by John Podhoretz is spot on:

I could rage on and on about Monday’s gobsmacking announcement that the Obama administration is once again unilaterally delaying a key aspect of its health-care law and what this act of astonishing royalism suggests about the president and his fundamental disrespect for the American system of checks and balances.

But I’m not going to. Instead, with all the dignity that a 52-year-old man and father of three can bring to the task, I will offer these observations instead:

Neener neener neener.

Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Face it, all of you who celebrated and wept and danced when it passed back in March 2010, all of you who viewed it as the historic moment of transformation for the United States: This law is a lemon.

As Bart Simpson once said, “I didn’t think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows.”

5. Maybe “Substandard” Insurance Isn’t So Substandard After All.  Some Congressional supporters of ObamaCare and insurers are pushing a new type of plan that could be sold on the exchanges.  Dubbed a “copper” plan, it would, according to the Wall Street Journal, “cover, on average, 50% of medical costs, and while consumers’ out-of-pocket expenses would still be capped, that limit likely would be higher than the $6,350 maximum for individuals and $12,700 for families currently set by the law.”

The Anointed aren’t pleased:

“I’m not sure that requiring people who have insurance to nevertheless pay for 50% of their costs themselves can reasonably be defined as decent coverage,” said Jay Angoff, the first head of the Department of Health and Human Services office that is overseeing the implementation of insurance provisions in the law.

I am completely sure that bureaucrats, politicians, pundits and others who think they are entitled to run our lives should NOT be deciding what is and is not “decent coverage.”  That should be left to the individual consumer who pays the cost for that coverage.

6. We Need Single-Payer...like we need a hole in our head.  What would an Odds & Ends be without a quick look at the recent goings on in that British gem of health care, the National Health Service?  

-First up is Barnet Hospital whose administrators insisted their A&E Department (similar to an Emergency room in the states) was well prepared to cope with an influx of new patients after the A&E Dept. at nearby Chase Farm hospital closed down on December 9.  “But less than seven weeks later, Barnet Hospital was left crippled by the huge number of walk-in patients and ambulance arrivals on Friday, January 31, a letter leaked to the Times Series has now revealed.

“At the height of the crisis, ambulances were left queuing outside the hospital and, by 2.30pm, 19 had been left unable to transfer their patients because of the drastic bed shortage.”

More here.

-Colchester Hospital is in the midst of a scandal after “a health watchdog found ‘inaccuracies’ with waiting time data relating to cancer treatment.” Staff  told an investigating committee “they were ‘pressured or bullied’ to change data relating to patients and their treatment in order to make it seem people were being treated in line with national guidelines.”  The committee stated that “patients’ lives may have been put at risk.”

-Although incidence of brain cancer are on the rise in Britain, the NHS has proposed shutting down two-thirds of the “of stereostatic radiosurgery units - specialist brain tumour treatment centres.”  Increasing demand for a service yet the supply is reduced—government health care at its finest!

If the nonpayment rate is high, say 20%, then it’s a very good bet that the exchange risk pool is in even worse shape that previously thought.  The reason is that younger people are more likely that older people to be delinquent on their payments.  For example, here are some numbers on age and credit score from BCSAlliance:

Since credit score is heavily reliant on payment history, the above scores suggest that the young have the worst record at making payments on time or making them at all.  From there it is a small leap to the proposition that the bulk of people who have not paid their first premium on the ObamaCare exchanges are in that crucial 18-34 age group.  

If the nonpayment rate is high, then the number of 18-34-year-olds who are part of the exchange risk pool is surely worse than the 24% claimed by the last HHS enrollment report.  It’s also much further from the 38% the Obama Administration predicts it needs to keep the exchange risk pool stable.

Media reports show that the rate of nonpayment runs the gamut:

-An article from mid-January in the Wall Street Journal shows various insurers with nonpayment rates ranging from 20% to 40%. 

-A more recent article in CNNMoney, insurers report a range of customers who haven’t yet paid, from 12% to 30%.  Perhaps most worrisome for ObamaCare supporters is insurer Wellpoint, who has signed up 500,000 on the exchanges.  Yet, “a majority of WellPoint’s would-be members have paid, said WellPoint’s chief financial officer, but not a ‘vast majority.’”

-As of early January, only 8% of those who had signed up for an Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan via the Connecticut exchange had paid their first premium.

-A Newsweek article examining the Vermont exchange shows that about 37,000 had signed up for a private plan but only 11,943 had actually paid their first premium.  That’s a non-payment rate of 68%. 

-Breitbart reported in late January that 25% of those “enrolled” in Covered California had not paid their first premium.

It would be wonerful if HHS not only released the nonpayment rate but also broke it down by age.  Unfortunately, if the first is unlikely, the latter would be a miracle.

From delaying the employer mandate the first time, to allowing people to sign up for insurance until March 31 and avoid the individual mandate penalty, to the Congressional opt-out, this president has made changes to ObamaCare for which he has no statutory authority.  The Galen Institute lists ten such changes here.  It’s up to eleven with yesterday’s announcement.

Galen’s Grace-Marie Turner calls this “One More Delay Closer To Obamacare’s Demise.”  “This delay,” she says, “is a tacit admission by the administration of the damage and distortions the law is causing in the employer community. The only solution to the law’s problems, of course, is permanent relief, through repeal.”  She very likely right about that,  You can only pick so many parts out of a contraption before you have to admit the contraption doesn’t work.

But while ObamaCare’s will likely be repealed, the larger question is what does this do to the “rule of law”?  Rule of law is the bedrock of any free society.  People need to know what the rules are on a day to day basis without worrying that those in power can arbitrarily change them.  Thus far, I only see a few people on the right talking about this.  On the left, well, here is Jonathan Cohn’s reaction to the latest ObamaCare delay: “…if you want to curse the employer requirement altogether, you’ll have plenty of company. Most economists and policy experts don’t like it either. But this decision shouldn’t make much difference in how many Americans ultimately get health insurance.”  Yes, whether it harms the expansion of insurance coverage.  That’s what really matters here.

The political left needs to realize that their guys (and gals) won’t be in power forever. Don’t count on the next Republican in the White House to scale back the limits that Obama has pushed. No doubt the liberal intelligentsia will whine and moan when the next GOP President oversteps his authority, but who will take them seriously after they ignored the transgressions of Obama?

I was on a radio program a few days ago when the host asked me what can be done about it.  My advice was don’t look to the elite.  Rather, average citizens need to start showing up at townhall meeting and demanding that their representatives ensure that the president obeys the law.  They need to insist that Congress scales back the President’s power so he has less ability to issue dictates executive orders.

That’s how we restore rule of law as a bedrock of a free society.

The Hatch-Burr-Coburn…“caps the tax exclusion for employee’s health coverage at 65 percent of an average plan’s costs” (italics added).  In 2013 the average employer-based plan cost about $5,884 for an individual and $16,351 for a family (see page 2).  Under Hatch-Burr-Coburn, any individual would be taxed at the marginal income-tax rate on any dollar of his heath plan that exceeded $3,825 ($5,884 multiplied by 65%).  For a family, it would be any dollar that exceeded $10,628.

In short, this legislation doesn’t just hit “Cadillac” plans.   It also taxes Honda Civic, Ford Focus and Toyota Corolla plans.  

After talking with some Senate staffer last week, I learned that the wording in the proposal was incorrect.  The cap will be set at 65% of a high-cost plan.   For the sake of argument, let’s say that the expensive plan will be set at 2.5 times the average plan—so that the expensive plan would be $14,710 for a single person and $26,565 for a family. That means the cap would be $9,561 ($14,710 multiplied by 65%) for a single person and $17,267 for a family.

That’s an improvement, but how much of one?  One could argue that it’s not really a Honda Civic plan tax plan anymore, but it’s still very much a Cadillac one.  As I noted last time, ObamaCare’s Cadillac tax has not proven popular.  It’s also similar to 2008 plan put out by the John McCain Campaign that Democrats attacked as a tax increase.

One can be charitable toward this plan in that perhaps it provides a foundation on which to build true health-care reform.  But a lot of building is required.

Steve Benen, producer of the Rachel Maddow show, dutifully repeated all the progressive talking points, including, “For Obamacare critics, the law has increased part-time employment over full-time employment. The CBO found ‘there is no compelling evidence’ to support the argument.”

What Benen is referring to here is the ObamaCare employer mandate that requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees (full-time defined as working 30 hours or more a week) to provide their employees with health insurance or pay a penalty.  Alas, what the CBO actually said about the employer mandate was a bit more complex than Benen let on:

In CBO’s judgment, the costs of the penalty eventually will be borne primarily by workers in the form of reductions in wages or other compensation—just as the costs of a payroll tax levied on employers will generally be passed along to employees. Because the supply of labor is responsive to changes in compensation, the employer penalty will ultimately induce some workers to supply less labor.

In the next few years, however, when wages probably will not adjust fully, those penalties will tend to reduce the demand for labor more than the supply. In the longer run, some businesses also may decide to reduce their hiring or shift their demand toward part-time hiring—either to stay below the threshold of 50 full-time equivalent workers or to limit the number of full-time workers that generate penalty payments. But such shifts might not reduce the overall use of labor, as discussed below.

In short, the employer mandate could induce some workers to work less and some businesses to hire less.  It’s just uncertain at this point.

As for there being no compelling evidence that the employer-mandate has increased part-time employment over full-time employment, a more accurate description is that the CBO has no compelling evidence as of right now:

In CBO’s judgment, there is no compelling evidence that part-time employment has increased as a result of the ACA. On the one hand, there have been anecdotal reports of firms responding to the employer penalty by limiting workers’ hours, and the share of workers in parttime jobs has declined relatively slowly since the end of the recent recession. On the other hand, the share of workers in part-time jobs generally declines slowly after recessions, so whether that share would have declined more quickly during the past few years in the absence of the ACA is difficult to determine. In any event, because the employer penalty will not take effect until 2015, the current lack of direct evidence may not be very informative about the ultimate effects of the ACA. (Italics added).

Thus, the CBO has not by any means closed the book on the effect of the employer mandate.  Rather, it doesn’t expect to have any direct evidence until after 2015.

And yes, the evidence right now on the employer mandate is anecdotal.  But progressives should be a little worried, since there are at least 401 anecdotes.

Do Americans have a free speech right to flash their headlights to warn other motorists of a speed trap? Is the Obama Administration attacking the heart of the American work ethic? Should an American dip the U.S. flag in respect before Vladimir Putin? And is MSNBC's Chris Matthews right to claim that conservatives want to have President Obama executed?

These and other questions were debated on the February 6 Sean Hannity radio show between attorney Horace Cooper, Co-Chairman of Project 21 and an adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Thaddeus Russell, author of "A Renegade History of the U.S." (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010) and an adjunct assistant professor of American Studies at Occidental College.

Why did Obama say there's "not even a smidgen of IRS corruption" even before the FBI investigation has been concluded? And the CBO has increased its projection for Obamacare-driven job-quitting to jump from 800,000 to 2.3 million. How serious is this?

Democratic strategist Bob Weiner and I debated these and related questions on the Mainstreet Radio Network's Alan Nathan Show on February 6, 2014. Listen in, if so inclined.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn showed us how it’s done.  And he even managed to quote Society’s official spokesman, Jonathan Gruber!

More important, CBO says, most of the people working fewer hours will be choosing to do so. And that’s a very different story from the one Obamacare critics are telling. Some of the people cutting back hours will be working parents who decide they can afford to put in a little less time with their co-workers and a little more time with their kids. Some will be early sixty-somethings who will retire before they reach 65, rather than clinging to low-paying jobs just to get health benefits. “This is what we want in a fair society,” says Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist and Obamacare architect. “We don’t want to enslave the old and sick to their jobs out of some sense of meanness. If they are dying to quit/retire, then let’s them. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

If you want my thoughts on Gruber’s nonsense, scroll to end of this post.  As for Cohn, he’s leaving out some pretty important parts of the report regarding who is going to choose to work less.  I mean, you didn’t think it was all retirees and people wanting to spend more time with their kids, did you?  From page 120 of the CBO report: 

What the CBO is referring to are the incentives faced by lower-income workers.  In short, ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies discourage such workers from increasing their incomes.  In his piece Cohn states that “Of course, some able-bodied will cut back on hours for reasons that conservatives, in particular, might not like.”  One would think that lower-income workers cutting back on hours worked would be something that progressives like Cohn wouldn’t like.  Or should their recent hyperventilating over income inequality not be taken seriously?  Here’s Cohn from last July:

One reason so many Americans tolerate inequality is their belief that it’s not a permanent condition. Yes, you might start out life without a lot of money. But if you work hard and play by the rules, then you’ll get ahead. You might never become a millionaire, but you’ll still find your way into the middle class. And then your kids will have a shot to do even better. Experts call this income mobility. The rest of us call it “the American dream.”

But for too many of us, it really is a dream—and nothing more. The comparison to other developed nations is striking. In Europe and in Asia, the countries most similar to the U.S. have both more equality and more mobility. In other words, they have fewer rungs on the income ladder to climb, and they have an easier time making each step.

Will giving lower-income workers incentives to work less make it easier for them to get ahead?  The question is rhetorical.  Perhaps that’s why Cohn ignored that part of the CBO report.

As for Gruber, he’s absolutely right!  Slavery of must end!  We as a society must stop our practice of sending cruel overseers to ensure that workers in their 50s stay chained to their desks!  I mean, the floggings those poor codgers endure when they merely ask to use the bathroom at the wrong time!

On a more serious note, I wonder what the 28-year-old living in Omaha, Nebraska making $32,000 annually thinks about his 58-year-old neighbor who has $40,000 annually in retirement income.  As the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator shows, the 28-year-old receives no subsidy on the ObamaCare exchange.  He will, though, pay over $2,800 in federal income taxes according to the Tax Calculator.  Presumably those taxes help pay for the annual subsidy of $2,684 the 58-year-old retiree receives on the exchange.  I wonder, does the 28-year-old agree with Gruber that this “is what we want in a fair society”?

UPDATE: Via Twitter, Cohn said that he did address the issue of low-income workers when he wrote “some able-bodied.”  I think using that term is too vague, but I’ve always known Cohn as a straight shooter, so if he says that phrase was meant to address it, I take him at his word.

Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV went inside a car repair business in McKeesport, PA to watch and record as employees learned the details of their new health plan under ObamaCare.

It's really very affecting; it seemed to me that some of the employees were having a hard time not breaking down.

We must repeal ObamaCare. We simply must.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb writes “In Obamacare, these schemes [including the risk corridors] are an unlimited taxpayer lifeline, designed to reimburse complicit insurers for the many laws of economics and common sense that Obamacare deliberately violates. The three R’s [including the risk corridors] aren’t a bailout. They’re an inevitable form of financial aid..”

Yevgeniy Feyman writes:

The main reason the program exists is because insurers generally have less experience in how to accurately price policies in the individual market than the group market, and have virtually no experience pricing policies for the new demographics under Obamacare. Risk corridors serve as a “bridge over troubled waters….[A]ny conservative reform plan for universal coverage will have to use similar methods of risk adjustment. The point here is simple – if you want insurers to participate more broadly in the individual market, you’ll need to offer a carrot to offset the unavoidable uncertainties. And railing against risk corridors now will make them a hard sell further down the road. Risk adjustment mechanisms get you the buy-in of insurers, but they also helps keep premiums at manageable levels while insurers develop enough experience to properly price plans on their own.

The problem with both of these analyses is they fail to define the term “bailout.”  If you want to show that a particular policy is not a bailout, you need to provide a definition of the term and then explain why the policy doesn’t fit the criteria of the definition.  Neither Gottlieb or Feyman do that.  Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic did provide a definition in his attempt at arguing that the risk corridors were not a bailout.  The problem was that the risk corridors actually do fit his definition of bailout.

Running the terms “bailout” and “definition” through Google returns “an act of giving financial assistance to a failing business or economy to save it from collapse.”  If one accepts that as a definition, then the risk corridors are a bailout.  They are financial assistance given to insurance companies on the exchanges.  Few insurers will probably collapse without the risk corridors.  But the business they do on exchanges could very go under with that financial assistance.  As history shows, health insurers leave markets that are regulated the way the ObamaCare exchanges are.

One of the most important benefits of the Affordable Care Act is that insurance companies will no longer be able to turn you down or charge you more because you have a pre-existing condition.

This is good news for Americans like Diane, an attorney from Michigan. Recently, Diane enrolled for coverage using HealthCare.gov after going without insurance for over six years. Her pre-existing condition made  finding a quality, affordable health insurance plan nearly impossible

As many critics have warned, the rules governing the ObamaCare exchanges like community rating and guaranteed issue would make the exchanges more attractive to folks who were older and sicker and less attractive to the young and healthy.  The leads to a “death spiral” or, as the case may be with ObamaCare exchanges, a bailout for the insurance companies and then a death spiral.  The story of Diane suggests that this process is in the beginning stages.

The HHS blog has quite a few similar examples.  There’s Jacob:

Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act Jacob, a father of three from Arkansas, was forced to shop around for a high-risk insurance plan.

Jacob’s pre-existing condition also forced his three children and wife to be on a separate health insurance. When the family included Jacob in his plan, they were denied coverage. That’s not all, says Jacob:

“Even with my wife and kids on a separate plan, one of my sons is charged extra because he had trouble gaining weight after he was born.”

There’s Noelle:

When soccer is your passion, not being able to hold down food because of an esophagus condition called Esophagitis is a roadblock.

“I struggled a lot with the condition these last 5 years, living without health insurance. Solids and liquids don’t go down easily, and throwing up a lot makes it very hard to get the nutrition I need as an athlete.

My employer doesn’t offer health insurance, and I’ve tried to get coverage through the individual market and couldn’t because I was either denied coverage or would have to pay 4 or $500 a month, way out of my price range.”

And James: 

For James, a 29 year old in Pensacola, FL, a normal week involves hunting, welding, fishing, and before January 1^st, worrying about his lack of health insurance.

“I’ve always been able to afford health insurance—they just wouldn’t cover me, because I’m a diagnosed diabetic. Being without health insurance was terrifying because you could be bankrupted by someone else not paying attention on the road. Or what if something bad happened in the shop?”

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, James was able to enroll in coverage without worrying about his pre-existing condition.

People who are costly to insure and some getting premiums well below what they’d get on a less regulated market—in the long run, there is only one way this ends.

Of course, that depends on whether these examples are representative of many of the people signing up on the exchanges.  Surely, a few anecdotes do not add up to data.

For that, let’s turn to the most recent enrollment report.  Or, rather, let’s turn to Spencer Cowan’s recent analysis of the enrollment report.   At the Weekly Standard, Cowan explains why the choice of plans that exchange enrollees are making is indicative of trouble to come.  He notes that the silver-level plans

which represent 60 percent of all plans sold to date through the Obamacare exchanges.  In fact, the silver-level plans are three times more popular than the cheaper bronze-level plans and sixty times more popular than the cheapest catastrophic-level plans, which are available only to enrollees under 30 years old.

Why would someone opt for a silver-level plan over a cheaper bronze or catastrophic-level plan? The most plausible explanation is that the enrollee anticipates incurring significant medical expenses over the coming year, which is to say that he’s not healthy.

Cowan goes on to explain why they would choose silver over the even more generous gold- and platinum-level plans.  In short, though, the evidence suggests the exchanges are creating exactly the type of insurance pool that is headed for a death spiral.

Read it here this morning.

2. Maybe the Hatch-Burr-Coburn health plan did do some good. I don’t think much of their health care plan for reasons I list here.  But, perhaps by releasing it a day before SOTU, it prevented President Obama from saying the Republicans “don’t have a plan.” Or maybe the President has just gotten tired of saying that. Or maybe he realized he couldn’t say it in a direct way and so said, “We all owe it to the American people to say what we’re for, not just what we’re against.”  

3. It’s STIMULUS THE SEQUEL!

Moreover, we can take the money we save from this transition to tax reform to create jobs rebuilding our roads, upgrading our ports, unclogging our commutes — because in today’s global economy, first- class jobs gravitate to first-class infrastructure. We’ll need Congress to protect more than 3 million jobs by finishing transportation and waterways bills this summer. That can happen.

But — but I’ll act on my own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key projects, so we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as possible. 

Why?  Because STIMULUS worked out so well the first time!

4. Obama wants to raise the minimum wage.  Here’s a better idea: Let’s let states and cities experiment with lowering the minimum wage.  States and cities would be able to apply for a four or five-year exemption from federal minimum wage laws and could set minimum wages lower than the federal rate or set no minimum wage at all.  Then we can see what happens to employment in those areas, especially among sectors of the economy most impacted by the minimum wage such as minority teenagers. Alas, Obama would never agree to that since he believes that the minimum wage is surefire poverty-prevention device, despite all of the research showing that raising it harms employment.  It will have to wait for another administration.

Democratic strategist Bob Weiner and I debated these and other questions on the Mainstreet Radio Network's Alan Nathan Show on 1/27/14.

I don't trust President Obama to mean what he says.

Not even on the things we all broadly agree with.

Take voting rights. At last year's State of the Union address, Obama complained about long lines to vote in Florida in 2012, and said he'd appoint a commission to find out went wrong. Well, he did appoint the commission, but the commission has since reported that some innocent screw-ups combined with a lack of resources caused the problems.

The U.S. has a federal agency set up to get Florida those resources.

Except.

Except the agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, has no commissioners.

Hasn't had any since 2011.

Possibly Bush's fault? Hmmm, probably not, him having left office in 2009 and all.

To be fair, President Obama appointed commissioners years ago, but they were too radical (and they really are radical) to get through the liberal Senate. And Obama has done nothing to get them through or to replace them with people who can get confirmed and get the issues in Florida straightened out before the next election. Which is pretty soon.

Maybe Obama doesn't care all that much about getting the polling places in Florida all fixed up after all.

And then there were President Obama's pledges at last year's SOTU to improve cybersecurity. (Edward Snowden, call your office. On second thought, stay the h*ll away from it; you've done enough damage already.)

But aside from Snowden and leaks, did the President really try to improve cybersecurity? It's hard to say he has, since the ObamaCare websites lack even the basic cybersecurity tools required by federal law. People working under his direction -- people who, he claims, were reporting to him on progress regularly -- were already working on the website when he gave last year's speech. Did he not question them about security issues?

Apparently cybersecurity was important enough to mention in the SOTU, but not important enough to ask a subordinate about.

These and numerous other examples give the public plenty of reasons to believe that whatever President Obama promises in the SOTU, he can't be trusted to keep those promises.

We really can't trust him to even try.

Last year, among many other things, he said he wanted to get a minimum wage increase through Congress, get more gun restrictions passed and have what he calls "comprehensive immigration reform" (as opposed to reform, I suppose).

The left has buzzed about the minimum wage a bit, especially over the last few weeks, but did anyone see President Obama making an effort to put together a coalition on the Hill to get the mandatory federal minimum wage increased? I sure didn't (not that it's a good idea).

The President stopped talking about new gun restrictions soon after it became clear getting them through Congress might be hard, too. (Again, I'm glad he failed, but he claimed he wanted it done and didn't really try.)

And the President knows how to get "comprehensive" immigration reform: Get the southern border closed. All kinds of people will support amnesty if that actually happens, and he knows it. But although he claims to support a closed border, does he take the steps necessary to get it close to that condition? Nope.

In the early years of our Republic, Presidents sent a written State of the Union report to Congress. No speech. Maybe we should return to those days. With no camera, and no microphone, the President just might limit his report to things he truly is committed to doing. And the rest of us can stop wasting our time watching him say things he doesn't really mean.

I’m all for incrementalism as long as it is in a direction of greater liberty.  Further, the plan does have some good parts such as capping Medicaid funds and giving states greater flexibility to experiment with Medicaid, and a tax credit for the purchase of health insurance (although the tax credit needs to apply to everyone, not just those at 300% of the federal poverty level or below.)  Hatch, Burr and Coburn should also be praised for providing examples (albeit hypothetical ones) about how their plan would impact individuals and families.  This “telling stories” is a crucial tactic in passing any piece of major legislation.  Democrats do it all the time, so it’s good to see the GOP finally trying to sell policy this way.

That said, their proposal has a big flaw, what might be called a “de facto Cadillac plan tax.”  Under ObamaCare, the Cadillac plan tax is an excise tax that applies to pricier insurance plans:

A 40 percent excise tax will be assessed, beginning in 2018, on the cost of coverage for health plans that exceed a certain annual limit ($10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for self and spouse or family coverage). Health insurance issuers and sponsors of self-funded group health plans must pay the tax of 40 percent of any dollar amount beyond the caps that is considered “excess” health spending.

The Hatch-Burr-Coburn plan goes beyond that.  It “caps the tax exclusion for employee’s health coverage at 65 percent of an average plan’s costs” (italics added).  In 2013 the average employer-based plan cost about $5,884 for an individual and $16,351 for a family (see page 2).  Under Hatch-Burr-Coburn, any individual would be taxed at the marginal income-tax rate on any dollar of his heath plan that exceeded $3,825 ($5,884 multiplied by 65%).  For a family, it would be any dollar that exceeded $10,628.

In short, this legislation doesn’t just hit “Cadillac” plans.   It also taxes Honda Civic, Ford Focus and Toyota Corolla plans.  

I don’t see how this can be sold politically.  First, the ObamaCare Cadillac plan tax hasn’t proven popular, and it only hits a small percentage of plans, at least initially.  Legislation that taxes every health plan that’s above the average, and even many that are below, would be hugely unpopular.  “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan as long as you don’t mind paying new taxes on it,” isn’t a winning slogan.  Finally, recall that Obama hit McCain over the head in 2008 for offering a health care plan that, in effect, raised taxes on health benefits.  You can expect Democrats and liberals to launch a similar attack on the Hatch-Burr-Coburn plan should it ever become THE “Republican plan.”

In short, the Hatch-Burr-Coburn plan asks conservatives and libertarians to take incremental steps toward a free market, but then adds a 500 pound weight to our backs, thereby making it impossible to take any steps at all.  The GOP can do much better. 

UPDATE: After talking with some Senate staffers, it was clear I did not describe the tax portion correctly.  Here is a new post describing it with my thoughts.

When enrollment numbers were bad, as they were in October and November, they couldn’t be released until the middle of the following month, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius emphasizes in the video below.  But when they hit 2.1 million in December and now 3 million, there was no problem releasing the data early.

The pattern shows that nothing this Administration says about enrollment data can be taken at face value.  It also means that the data that we still don’t have—the number of people who have had difficulty enrolling in coverage, how many enrollees have paid their first premium and how many times HHS has failed to transfer crucial information to insurance companies—probably don’t paint a pretty picture.  

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the White House to release such data.  Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.  For the time being, only pressure from Congress and the media will get the Administration to release more information about the exchanges.

*When the Administration uses the term “enrolled” it means “selected a plan.”  Insurers, on the other hand, mean “paid the first premium.”  As the Daily Caller notes “Americans are still in the dark about the number of people that have actually purchased [exchange] plans.”

I admit that ObamaCare, voter ID and racism do not seem related at first glance, but hear me out.

The central selling premise (other than "if you like your doctor or health plan, you can keep them") of ObamaCare was its universality.

That is, we were told that if ObamaCare was adopted, everyone would have health insurance coverage.

Able-bodied adults under 65 would pay their own way (with lower rates!), except for a few unable or unwilling, who would receive financial help from other Americans (we'll be watching for the thank-you notes). Disabled and elderly would receive Medicare, and the poor would receive Medicaid.

What do all of these programs have in common? You have to sign up, and to do that - here's where the racism comes in - you have to prove who you are.

Moreover, to stamp out fraud, very many patients with ObamaCare-approved providers have to show an ID every time they go to the doctor.

Why I myself must show a photo ID every time I see my doctors, and they know what I look like (granted, they've seen me naked, so perhaps forced themselves to forget).

If ObamaCare is universal, then everyone can get enrolled. Which means that everyone can be expected to prove who they are. Just as they do with voter ID.

Either neither of them is racist, or they both are.

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work.

And the good news about Obamacare is, I’d argue, what’s driving the Republican Party’s intensified extremism. Successful health reform wouldn’t just be a victory for a president conservatives loathe, it would be an object demonstration of the falseness of right-wing ideology. So Republicans are being driven into a last, desperate effort to head this thing off at the pass.

Yeah, ObamaCare—how’s that working out for you Mr. Nobel Laureate?

Photos: iStockphoto 

Target has dedicated substantial resources to guide our team through every step of the process. First, to help offset the inconvenience of this transition, Target will provide U.S. stores’ part-time team members who are currently enrolled in Target’s health coverage and who are losing access to that coverage a $500 cash payment. Second, we have partnered with a highly respected company that has extensive benefits expertise and asked them to develop a personalized approach to provide one-on-one support to every affected team member. 

Translation:  Target is dumping its part-time employees on to the ObamaCare exchanges.

And why not?  Under ObamaCare’s employer mandate, there is no penalty for not providing part-time employees (those who work less than 30 hours a week) health coverage.  Plus, it’s going to cost Target only $500 per part-time employee to get them onto the exchanges, an amount that is surely much less than their current benefits.  I was on a program yesterday where one of the panelists said this was irresponsible on the part of Target.  I didn’t entirely disagree with her, but I noted that ObamaCare provides plenty of incentives to be irresponsible.

Target is following the lead of companies like Home Depot and Trader Joe’s.

Looks like the critics of ObamaCare were dead on again:

-Here’s John Goodman of NCPA citing a study in Health Affairs that showed “that changing theoretical premium contribution levels by just $100 could induce 2.25 million individuals to transition to exchanges and increase federal outlays by $6.7 billion.”

-Here’s The Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey Anderson examining research from McKinsey and Co. that 30% of employers would dump employees into the exchanges.

-Here’s the Heritage Foundation reporting on the findings of the House Way and Means Committee “that the most successful companies would save billions of dollars if they stopped offering coverage to their employees and dumped them into the taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchanges.”

And while we are on the subject, how many companies have announced they will cut back employee hours in response to the employer mandate?  Last time I checked in it was 363.  Now it’s 388.

Photo: iStockPhoto

Cohn claims:

The bailout analogy is potent. And it’s certainly accurate to say that, under ObamaCare, some insurers may collect payments from the government to help offset losses. But the analogy breaks down after that.

Bailouts typically start with companies taking egregiously irresponsible actions and end with the government forking over mind-boggling sums of money to save them. Think of the savings and loans institutions misleading the public about the state of their finances in the 1980s—or the financial industry making those bad home loans and risky investments a decade ago. Each of those involved grievous management errors, frequently skirting the limits of legality. The federal outlays to save those banks were in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

As Cohn explains how the risk corridors are different, he inadvertently shows that the insurers have engaged in egregiously irresponsible actions:

With Obamacare, the situation is different. Projecting future insurance costs inevitably involves a little guesswork. With a brand new program like Obamacare, it inevitably involves a lot of guesswork. Even the smartest, most responsible actuaries might not get the numbers right, for reasons Sy Mukherjee of ThinkProgress explains: 

Insurance companies were sort of shooting in the dark when they set premiums for Obamacare’s first year. They had to approximate how many people would enroll, how old the customers would be, how sick they would be, how much insurers would have to pay out in claims — but the whole enterprise was, ultimately, a series of educated guesses.

Let’s see here: “involves a lot of guesswork,” “sort of shooting in the dark”—aren’t those other ways of saying that the actions that you are taking are very risky and you could incur substantial losses if things go sideways?  Generally, although not always, the term for such behavior is “irresponsible.”

However, the term fits, but not because the insurers are taking gigantic risk without knowing the outcome.  Indeed, they are taking the risk despite knowing the likely outcome.  Insurers already had ample evidence what regulations like community rating and guaranteed issue that govern the Obamacare exchanges would do to an insurance market and the companies in those markets.  The eight states that ruined their insurance markets with community rating and guaranteed issue in the 1990s—Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,  Vermont and Washington—gave insurers plenty of evidence to ponder.  In short, the young and healthy dropped out of the insurance market, premiums skyrocketed, and most insurers couldn’t make money and ended up leaving those states.  Despite that, insurers still decided to take a mammoth risk and jump into the ObamaCare exchanges.  It’s hard to imagine they would behave so irresponsibly—unless the federal government was going to bail out their losses.

I suspect what has Cohn and other ObamaCare supporters concerned is that opponents have found another very potent weapon.  After all, who wants to defend an “insurance company bailout”?  

RISK CORRIDOR:  ObamaCare’s risk corridors are a temporary program that is supposed to help insurers mitigate the enormous amount of risk inherent in the ObamaCare exchanges.  Under this program, an insurer in the exchange whose costs amount to 97% or less of its premiums must contribute part of its profits to reimburse insurers whose costs are 103% or greater of their premiums.  Insurers who are profitable contribute only a portion of their profits while insurers who are not profitable see only portion of their losses reimbursed.  See the scale below from this very informative article by Milliman.  The problem occurs if there are not enough insurers who are “winners” to help fund the “losers.”  If there are many more losers than winners, the federal government the taxpayers step in and pay the costs of the losers.  And that is a very real problem given that not enough young people are signing up for insurance on the exchanges.

Photo: iStockPhoto

National Center Risk Analysis Division head Jeff Stier will testify Wednesday before a joint study committee of the Oklahoma State Senate and Oklahoma House of Representatives on e-cigarettes and tobacco harm reduction methods.

Sort of.

Jeff set off at 9:40 AM Wednesday morning to catch a flight out of his home base of New York City. The flight was cancelled due to the then-impending snowstorm, but, as he was determined to make it to Oklahoma City, he and a volunteer driver set out for the airport in Hartford, CT to catch another plane. Unfortunately, the snow caught them instead, alternative flight options also were cancelled, and conditions got so bad that driving back to New York City seemed extremely unwise. Yet all the hotels on the road so far are full, except one on the top of a hill they can't get to.

As I write this, Jeff has been on the road over 13 hours, and it's clear he won't be making it to Oklahoma by 9 AM Central time. So he's submitting his testimony in writing.

We'll link to it if we can get a copy, which, right now, is in the car with Jeff. We were hoping to watch Jeff testify on video, but like Jeff's trip to Oklahoma, I don't think that's going to happen.

Now we're hoping to get word from Jeff and his volunteer driver that they found somewhere safe to spend the night.

Stay tuned.

Addendum: They did.

Cyber-security expert David Kennedy “recently claimed that ‘gaining access to 70,000 personal records of Obamacare enrollees via HealthCare.gov took about 4 minutes.’”  Also, here is Kennedy’s testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee.

Meanwhile the White House opposed the security bill passed by the House with the support of 67 votes. According to the Administration the bill has “unfunded, unprecedented, and unnecessary reporting requirements.”  In other words, it costs too much.  

2. If You Thought Getting Into HealthCare.gov Was Tough, Try Getting Out.

Dave Petno decided to test HealthCare.gov by signing up for a plan.  He found out it actually worked.  Since it was just a test, he wants to cancel the policy.  After numerous efforts he has come to the conclusion: “I can check out anytime I want, but I can never leave.”  

Somebody call Paul Shanklin and tell him he needs to do a parody called “Hotel ObamaCare”:

3. 2014 And ObamaCare: Early Warning Sign.

Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff points to a special State Senate election in Northeast Arkansas as a portent of the things to come for ObamaCare supporters.  “The race centered on the issue of whether to continue the Arkansas’ ‘private option,” plan to expand Medicaid,” according to Mirengoff.  Candidate Steve Rockwell supported the plan while his opponent, John Cooper, opposed it.

Cooper won with 57% of the vote.  What’s should make this even more alarming for ObamaCare supporters is that Cooper is Republican, and the GOP has never before won this Senate District (District 21).

Photo: iStockPhoto

-Only 11% of consumers who bought new coverage under the law were previously uninsured, according to a McKinsey & Co. survey of consumers thought to be eligible for the health-law marketplaces. The result is based on a sampling of 4,563 consumers performed between November and January, of whom 389 had enrolled in new insurance.

-At Michigan-based Priority Health, only 25% of more than 1,000 enrollees surveyed in plans that comply with the law were previously uninsured, said Joan Budden, chief marketing officer.

-Health Markets Inc., an insurance agency that enrolled around 7,500 people in exchange plans, said 65% of its enrollees had prior coverage. Around 10% were dropping out of employer coverage, either because the employer stopped offering its plan or because they could qualify for subsidies on the marketplaces. Fifteen percent had previous individual plans canceled, and 40% decided to switch into coverage bought through an exchange from previous individual plans.

Let’s assume that 35% of the people signing up on the exchanges were previously uninsured as the Health Markets Inc. survey suggests.  That means of 2.1 million who have signed up for a private plan in the exchanges, only 735,000 were without health insurance.  That’s not going to make much of dent in estimate 48 million who are uninsured.  And it leaves open the  possibility that the exchanges could leave more people uninsured as we still don’t know the fate of the over 4.7 million people who lost their insurance in the individual market under ObamaCare.

(For those without access to WSJ online, a PDF version of the article is here.)

I bring this up because Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics noticed that and other problems with the the Medicaid number touted by the Obama Administration.  Read his great article here. 

After reading Trende’s article, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker delved a little deeper into the numbers.  He ended up giving the 3.9 million Medicaid figure Three Pinocchios and wrote: “Bottom line: This number tells you almost nothing about how the Affordable Care Act is affecting Medicaid enrollment. Reporters need to stop using it.”

2. The Exchange Isn’t Such A Good Deal If You Aren’t Subsidized. That’s what consumers who have to pay the full price of premiums appear to be saying based on number in the latest enrollment report.  From Megan McArdle:

Five million people were deemed eligible to buy a policy on the exchanges; 2.7 million, or 54 percent of them, were eligible for subsidies. But of people who actually selected a plan, 1.68 million, or 80 percent, were subsidized. To put it another way, 62 percent of the people eligible for subsidies selected a plan, but only 8.5 percent of those who weren’t eligible for subsidies actually purchased one.

3. Surprise! ObamaCare To Produce Even More Rules And Regulations!  A new report from the Congressional Research Service examines all the ObamaCare regulations that still have yet to be finalized.  By my count of the appendix, there are at least eight rules that have to be finalized in 2014.  Haven’t gotten into the details just yet, but you are welcome to do so.

4. And For Something Completely Non-Health Care Related: The Best Response To A Phil Donahue Question Ever!