More Obamacare fuckups

[Gelston]

It's the same old story, baby: opt-in vs. opt-out. You always get more participants if you make the program opt-out. That's just how people are. How does that apply here? If you'd shut up long enough for me to put two sentences together you'd already know. A person is more likely to look for a job when they don't have one (opt-in) rather than leave their current job on the chance of another (opt-out). This is true even on the level of clicking boxes, imagine how much more dramatic the effect is when the cost is employment.

Imagine all the people living life today with federally guaranteed access to insurance. If that wasn't John Lennon's dream, I don't know what is.

(Nobody is talking here, this is typing and reading.)

[Jarvan]

It's the same old story, baby: opt-in vs. opt-out. You always get more participants if you make the program opt-out. That's just how people are. How does that apply here? If you'd shut up long enough for me to put two sentences together you'd already know. A person is more likely to look for a job when they don't have one (opt-in) rather than leave their current job on the chance of another (opt-out). This is true even on the level of clicking boxes, imagine how much more dramatic the effect is when the cost is employment.

Imagine all the people living life today with federally guaranteed access to insurance. If that wasn't John Lennon's dream, I don't know what is.

I may be wrong, but I think everyone already had guaranteed access to insurance. Most if not all states had an "insurer of last resort" that was not allowed to refuse anyone insurance. Now.. being able to PAY for it is something different.

[Tgo01]

It's the same old story, baby: opt-in vs. opt-out. You always get more participants if you make the program opt-out. That's just how people are. How does that apply here? If you'd shut up long enough for me to put two sentences together you'd already know. A person is more likely to look for a job when they don't have one (opt-in) rather than leave their current job on the chance of another (opt-out). This is true even on the level of clicking boxes, imagine how much more dramatic the effect is when the cost is employment.

Imagine all the people living life today with federally guaranteed access to insurance. If that wasn't John Lennon's dream, I don't know what is.

I challenge Latrin to find some numbers and Latrin fails to provide said numbers?!

Calm down everyone, I don't want to alarm you, but I do think the end of times are near.

[Gelston]

I challenge Latrin to find some numbers and Latrin fails to provide said numbers?!

Calm down everyone, I don't want to alarm you, but I do think the end of times are near.

He is busy searching for his hidden stash of oregano.

[Latrinsorm]

(Nobody is talking here, this is typing and reading.)

What?!?!

I challenge Latrin to find some numbers and Latrin fails to provide said numbers?!

Calm down everyone, I don't want to alarm you, but I do think the end of times are near.

You better hurry up and read that study before Hightower comes in here and tells everyone how wrong I am about what that study says.

[Androidpk]

What?!?!

In the words of Barry O.. intercepted!

[Tgo01]

Two months ago Obamacare was credited with "saving" the economy.

Now they're saying Obamacare might have actually fucked over the economy.

Obamacare is going to have to return its hero's cape, and we're all going to have to learn to think twice before we over-react to shaky economic data.

Two months ago, President Barack Obama's signature health-care reform law was widely credited with saving the U.S. economy from shrinking in the first quarter by giving a huge jolt to health-care spending. On Wednesday, we found out that had all been a mirage.

Using more-solid data than it had two months ago, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found that health spending actually shrank in the first quarter, weakening overall consumer spending and contributing to a terrible quarter for the broader economy. Gross domestic product shrank at a 2.9 percent annualized rate in the quarter, the worst since the depths of the Great Recession, with health spending alone shaving 0.16 percentage points from growth.

What a difference from two months ago, when the BEA first guesstimated that health spending soared at a 9.9 percent rate in the quarter, helping to keep the economy out of the dumpster. Many news outlets, including yours truly, ran headlines like this:

Other outlets, with differing ideologies, zeroed in on the alleged spending surge as a bad thing, pointing out that one of the goals of Obamacare was to reduce such spending.

We were all wrong. It turns out that health-care spending actually fell, as apparently millions of new Obamacare and Medicaid enrollees boosted their total health-care spending much, much less than the BEA had guessed they would.

We should have listened to our own health-care reporter Jeffrey Young, who wrote when the first data came out:

Because everything with the words "health care" in it have been intensely politicized since 2009 when Congress started writing what eventually became the Affordable Care Act, every number that comes out has a tendency to be overanalyzed, and people on the left and the right have a tendency to draw grand conclusions from what can be pretty meager, preliminary information.

Young also pointed out that the long-term trajectory of health-care spending should be higher, anyway, given an improving economy, an aging population and other factors. On Wednesday, the White House suggested that health spending should pick up, but health prices should stay low, both of which the White House naturally attributed to Obamacare.

And we might not really have seen the full impact of Obamacare sign-ups on the economy yet, particularly as large numbers of them happened at the tail end of the first quarter, for insurance that actually couldn't be used until April -- the second quarter -- at the earliest.

Anyway, this episode highlights the risk we run every month of giving too much weight to any one economic number -- especially big, politically charged numbers like the unemployment rate and health-care spending. These numbers are often just best guesses that are revised completely beyond recognition in short order, and yet they can cause wild mood swings in consumers, politicians and financial markets. Better to be patient and stay focused on the big picture.

I especially love the original narrative.

"Obamacare saved the economy because it increased healthcare spending!"

Wait...what? Wasn't Obamacare supposed to lower healthcare spending?

[Parkbandit]

Two months ago Obamacare was credited with "saving" the economy.

Now they're saying Obamacare might have actually fucked over the economy.



I especially love the original narrative.

"Obamacare saved the economy because it increased healthcare spending!"

Wait...what? Wasn't Obamacare supposed to lower healthcare spending?

It's not called the Lower Healthcare Spending Care Act.. it's called the AFFORDABLE Care Act.

It's Affordable, no one said it would be lowering the cost.

Suck it Trebek.

[Methais]

Two months ago Obamacare was credited with "saving" the economy.

Now they're saying Obamacare might have actually fucked over the economy.



I especially love the original narrative.

"Obamacare saved the economy because it increased healthcare spending!"

Wait...what? Wasn't Obamacare supposed to lower healthcare spending?

SOMEONE FROM THE TEA PARTY MUST HAVE HACKED HUFFINGTON POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Parkbandit]

In a potentially crippling blow to Obamacare, a federal appeals court panel declared Tuesday that government subsidies worth billions of dollars that helped 4.7 million people buy insurance on HealthCare.gov are illegal.

The 2-1 ruling said such subsidies can be granted only to people who bought insurance in an Obamacare exchange run by an individual state or the District of Columbia—not on the federally run exchange HealthCare.gov. The ruling relied on a close reading of the Affordable Care Act.
"Section 36B plainly makes subsidies available in the Exchanges established by states," wrote Senior Circuit Judge Raymond Randolph in his majority opinion in the case known as Halbig v. Burwell, where he was joined by Judge Thomas Griffith.
"We reach this conclusion, frankly, with reluctance. At least until states that wish to can set up their own Exchanges, our ruling will likely have significant consequences both for millions of individuals receiving tax credits through federal Exchanges and for health insurance markets more broadly."
In his dissent, Judge Harry Edwards, who called the case a "not-so-veiled attempt to gut" Obamacare, wrote that the judgment of the majority "portends disastrous consequences."
Indeed, the 72-page decision threatens to unleash a cascade of effects that could seriously compromise Obamacare's goals of compelling people to get health insurance, and helping them afford it.
However, the ruling does, and will not ultimately affect the taxpayer-fund subsidies the federal government issued to 2 million or so people through the 15 exchanges run by individual states and the District of Columbia,
The Obama administration said it will ask the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reverse the panel's decision, which for now does not have the rule of law.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the ruling—for now—"does not have any practical impact" on premium subsidies issued to HealthCare.gov enrollees now."
"We are confident" that the ruling will be overturned, Earnest said. "We are confident in the legal position we have . . . the Department of Justice will litigate these claims through the federal court system."
Earnest said "it was obvious" that Congress intended subsidies, or tax credits, to be issued to Obamacare enrollees regardless of what kind of exchange they used to buy insurance.
Michael Cannon, one of the intellectual godfather of the court challenge and a director at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the ruling "was validating" to him.
"This is the first opinion that looked at all of the evidence," said Cannon.
Tuesday's ruling endorsed his controversial interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, whichargues that the HealthCare.gov subsidies are illegal because ACA does not explicitly empower a federal exchange to offer subsidized coverage, as it does in the case of state-created exchanges.
HealthCare.gov serves residents of the 36 states that did not create their own health insurance marketplace, and had enrolled 5.4 million of the 8 million people who signed up for Obamacare plans by the end of open enrollment in mid-April.
About 4.7 million people, or 86 percent of all HealthCare.gov enrollees, qualified for a subsidy to offset the cost of their coverage this year because they had low or moderate incomes.
If upheld, the ruling could lead many, if not most of those subsidized customers to abandon their health plans sold on HealthCare.gov because they no longer would find them affordable without the often-lucrative tax credits. And if that coverage then is not affordable for them as defined by the Obamacare law, those people will no longer be bound by the law's mandate to have health insurance by this year or pay a fine next year.
If there were to be a large exodus of subsidized customers from the HealthCare.gov plans, it would in turn likely lead to much higher premium rates for nonsubsidized people who would remain in those plans.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101819065