More and more, Obamacare crtics are being forced to eat crow

[Acebb]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Premiums for popular low-cost medical plans under the federal health care law are expected to go up an average of 11 percent next year, said a study that reinforced reports of sharp increases around the country in election season.

For consumers, the impact will depend on whether they get government subsidies for their premiums, as well as on their own willingness to switch plans to keep the increases more manageable, said the analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
...
"Premiums are going up faster in 2017 than they have in past years," said Cynthia Cox, lead author of the analysis.

 

[russ1945]

It should not be called Obama"care" (because he doesn't LOL)

 

[LENBO]

It should not be called Obama"care" (because he doesn't LOL)

The Unaffordable Care Act fits.

 

[SheriffJoe]

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Cost of Obamacare Plans Will Increase By an Average of 10% in 14 Major Cities[/h][FONT=&quot]Report finds enrollees may have to switch plans or doctors to avoid higher costs[/FONT]
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AP​

BY: Ali Meyer
June 15, 2016 1:40 pm

The cost of plans on the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces in 14 major cities will increase by an average of 10 percent in 2017, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The report evaluated the costs of plans in cities in Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia because these areas had complete data on rates that were publicly available for all insurers. The group evaluated data on silver plans since these are the basis for federal premium subsidies and are the plans that most enrollees choose.
“Based on insurer rate requests, the cost of the second-lowest silver plan in these cities will increase by a weighted average of 10% in 2017,” the report states. “Last year, premiums for the second-lowest silver plans in these areas increased 5% following review by state insurance departments.”
The report also anticipates that fewer insurers will participate next year.
“We also find that some states will have fewer insurers participating in 2017 than participated in 2016,” the group states. “On average across these 14 marketplaces, participation is down slightly from 2016 but similar to that of 2014.”
The report finds that the marketplaces in Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington will see a drop in the number of insurers, likely due to the withdrawal of UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest health insurer. Three states including Maine, New Mexico, and Virginia, will see an increase in insurer participation while the remaining three cities in Nevada, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia will keep the same number of insurers.
“In addition to switching plans, enrollees may also have to switch insurance companies in order to avoid a significant premium increase, which could involve changing doctors as well,” the group states. “In 6 out of 14 cities we examined, an insurer offering the lowest-cost silver plan in 2016 is no longer offering one of the two longest-cost silver plans in 2017.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Everyone who voted for, took a bribe, or in any way contributed to this putrid legislation should be put in jail.


And that includes Justice Roberts and Obama himself.

 

[Acebb]

[h=1]Minnesota's Largest Health Insurer Will Drop Individual Plans[/h]

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota will retreat from the sale of health plans to individuals and families in the state starting next year. The insurer, Minnesota's largest, said extraordinary financial losses drove the decision.
"Based on current medical claim trends, Blue Cross is projecting a total loss of more than $500 million in the individual [health plan] segment over three years," the insurer said in an emailed statement.
The Blues reported a loss of $265 million on insurance operations from individual market plans in 2015. The insurer said claims for medical care far exceeded premium revenue for those plans.

 

[Willie99]

my insurance company sent out a notice this week, I've been with them for 4 whole months now, they're asking the state to allow them to increase rates 30 fucking percent next year

this is what the party of fucking idiots brings to the table, and they're proud of it




they can't balance their own checkbook, they lie about who they are and what they've experienced, they rewrite history, their policies are epic failures, yet they want to run every minutia of everyone's loves

they are stupid sick disgusting vile mother fucking pieces of shit liars who even get some sort of perverse satisfaction from killing babies, may their souls rot in hell



meant in the most respectful way possible, of course

 

[Willie99]

ConnectiCare Insurance Company, Inc. – IndividualRate request – 24.3 percent increaseDecision – Under ReviewPublic Comment Period: Begins June 6, 2016 and will remain open for30 days or until the filing is closed, whichever is laterOn June 1, 2016, ConnectiCare, Inc. submitted a rate filing requestinga 24.3 percent rate increase on individual health plans marketed outside ofAccess Health CT, the state sponsored health insurance exchange.There are 37,142 people covered under these policies.The policies were first offered in 2014 and provide major medical andprescription drug coverage, compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA).The company said it is seeking the rate increase due to higher medicalcosts and the increase in demand for medical services, a factor known as“trend.” The company is projecting a trend impact of approximately 10.9percent on rates in 2016.
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my wife told me 29+%, the public notice says it's only 24.3%, I'll have to read the letter they sent to make sure

so my monthly premium will only increase $ 275 instead of increasing $ 330

libtards are fucking idiots, and questions idiots?

you suck at everything, and your threads are the laughing stock of the entire WWW

 

[Willie99]

my wife is right, the requested rate increase for ConnectiCare Solo policies is 29.8%

fuck you Obama, the epitome of a fucking idiot Loser!@#0

 

[Acebb]

 

[Dafinch]

Whine HARD, bitches, you scumbags say one thing, but the polls say quite another...cheersgifointer:byebye)(&^:nohead:^^:hahahahah:laughingb

Trump’s Still Tanking While Obama’s Ratings Are Rising Through The Roof!

June 25th, 2016

elisabeth elections, Politics 18 Comments

Why are Donald Trump’s ratings sinking while Barack Obama’s are on the upswing? As that old Joni Mitchell song so aptly puts it: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” After nearly eight years of a drama-free administration led by a president who always conducts himself with civility and grace, maybe we’re finally starting to realize how good we’ve had it.
President Barack Obama’s approval rating’s at 52 percent.

CNN reports President Barack Obama’s approval ratings are up again in their latest poll from Friday:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating remains on the upswing, with 52% now approving of his performance as president, up a statistically insignificant one point since last month, but now five points above the 47% who approved in January.
​

This survey marks the third straight CNN/ORC poll with majority approval for the President, and the fourth straight with a net-positive approval rating overall.
​

Given today’s polarized politics, 52 percent is about as good as it gets. Meanwhile, after months of surging public approval, Donald Trump’s poll numbers have suddenly begun taking a nose dive. According to Inquisitr:

Donald Trump endured a sharp drop in the polls that led the GOP candidate to do what many party insiders had been hoping he would — fire controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adopt a more presidential tone.
​

If Donald Trump’s trip to Scotland — and his lame attempt at an infomercial for his golf resorts — shows how he intends to act “presidential,” he’s doomed. For starters, tweeting praise to the people of Scotland for “taking their country back” when they actually voted against Brexit and for staying in the European Union made him a laughing stock.
And that’s on top of calling Mexicans rapists, calling for a ban on Muslims, making sexist comments about women, encouraging rally-goers to beat up protesters, lying through his teeth, and generally acting like a big, mean, low-class bully.
We’ll miss you, President Barack Obama.

The 2016 election cycle has not only exposed divisions in both the GOP and in the Democratic party. It’s also making us realize how good we’ve had it under Barack Obama. He may not be perfect, and our nation still faces some serious issues.
But Barack Obama has left things better than when he started and has never acted anything less than presidential.
Alas, Hillary Clinton’s email hijinks and Wall Street speeches don’t put her in the best light either. Although it’s unlikely that Clinton will be charged with a crime, couldn’t she just do as the US State Dept. asked and not put a god damned email server in her basement? Doing paid speeches for Wall Street banks and refusing to release the transcripts isn’t exactly winning over Bernie Sanders’ supporters either.
The wonky, data-crunching blog Five Thirty Eight reports that both Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers are astonishingly bad for people who’ve just won their party’s presidential primaries. In late April, Hillary Clinton’s “strongly unfavorable” rating was a scarily high 37 percent, while Donald Trump’s hit a staggering 53 percent.
Yup. The American people have gotten spoiled. No sex scandals. None of those worry-inducing deer-in-the-headlights moments. And definitely no chest-thumping or sabre-rattling with foreign leaders. For nearly eight years, Barack Obama has deflected the slings and arrows of racism, birther rumors and GOP obstruction with courtesy and unruffled calm.

 

[LENBO]

And the mental midget posts an article with the word Obamacare mentioned not once.
Way to go proving your point moron.

 

[Dafinch]

And the mental midget posts an article with the word Obamacare mentioned not once.
Way to go proving your point moron.

You're too fucking stupid to realize that many-one could say MOST-do NOT share your views on the effectiveness of Obamacare; if they did, Obama wouldn't have the favorability rating that he has. You're wrong, and, fortunately, in the minority, and growing more so every day. Get ready to bend over and bite that pillow come Election Day, Scumbag...kth)(&^:flies:ointer:Slapping-silly90))cockingasnook():bigfinger:laughingb:madasshol:trx-smly0:kissingbb:Countdown

 

[NFLTrends]

Health insurance and health care are two different things.

America's politicians, White House speechwriters, and way too much of the news media should be forced to write the above sentence 1,000 times. Because they just don't seem to understand that getting millions more Americans signed onto to some kind of health insurance is absolutely nothing to be proud of unless those people actually get better and affordable care. And there's also nothing to celebrate about Obamacare if there's been no easing of the burden for emergency rooms where we have cared for so many uninsured people at such a high cost for so long.

Read MoreRetirement plan workaround: Inherit enough to live on

So far it looks like the ACA is 0 for 2. It's already been well documented that the Obamacare plans are leaving millions of Americans struggling to find doctors who actually accept their new insurance plans. And now it turns out America's emergency rooms aren't getting a break either. A just-released poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians, shows that 75% of the 2,099 ER doctors it surveyed are seeing either a major surge or at least a slight increase in the volume of patients coming into their emergency departments. Again, not only are the ER's not seeing any easing of traffic but their burden to care for those unable to find accessible health care has increased in the past year. So much for all those millions of Americans who were supposed to have great new choices and great new access to care.

Who could have predicted this? It turns out almost everyone who was honest about the ACA, myself included, has been predicting this for more than five years. It certainly didn't take a genius to see it coming, especially when the same thing happened in states like Hawaii and Massachusetts when those states gave their citizens the lemon we know as mandatory health insurance coverage. But the real tip off was when we learned that so many people signing up for Obamacare were being shoved into Medicaid. a system that has been struggling for years to find enough doctors to accept its ridiculously low reimbursement structure. And since Obamacare doesn't do anything to encourage more young people to go into medicine, there was the simple math problem of too many patients and not enough doctors to treat them. You can have all the nice laminated insurance cards you can carry, but they aren't worth a thing if you can't find a doctor who can treat you.

Read MoreWhat makes an 'elite' school?

All of this would be bad enough if implementing Obamacare came for free. But the costs of the ACA are exorbitant and already at least $250 billion more than President Obama promised when he signed it into law in 2010. And don't forget the political price we had to pay as the nation was torn apart over yet another new wedge issue. The dozens and dozens of Democrats who lost their seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2010 and 2014 because of their support for Obamacare probably think the cost for this ineffective clunker was too high as well.

It's not good when the best thing you can say for a supposedly sweeping new health care law is that it gave us a picture of a 23-year-old man wearing little boy pajamas to chuckle about. But there's nothing funny about emergency rooms getting more crowded across the country even as more people are supposedly being "covered." If we don't stop cheerleading meaningless sign up numbers and start paying attention to the numbers of people in our ER's, no one will be laughing pretty soon.

 

[NFLTrends]

ObamaCare's 2016 Enrollment Failure Hits Working Class

New exchange enrollment data released by the Obama administration on Friday reveal in multiple ways that ObamaCare is failing to live up to its goal of providing affordable care.

That's no small problem when the law mandates that people buy coverage or face a fine. The fact that enrollment grew only modestly in the law's third year despite the ramping up of the mandate penalty underscores the reality that ObamaCare only offers poor options to far too many millions of people.

No one is getting a worse deal than the people of Mississippi. Despite the fact that the state ranked near the bottom last year with enrollment of just 38% of those eligible for subsidies, the number of people signing up for subsidized exchange plans in 2016 was virtually flat from a year ago (97,943 vs 97,606 in 2015).

Centene Wins, Mississippi Loses

IBD predicted last fall that Mississippi would be "ground zero for ObamaCare's individual mandate" because stagnant state sign-ups looked like a sure bet with after-subsidy premiums set to jump on the order of 60%, far more than in any of the 36 other states using HealthCare.gov last year.

For 30-year-olds in Yazoo City earning about $25,000 (214% of the poverty level), the after-subsidy cost of the cheapest bronze plan spiked by about $550 to just under $1,500, or 6% of pay. Because this plan from Ambetter, a unit of Centene (CNC), covers little before the $6,800 deductible is met, it may make the $695 mandate tax look like the best among bad options for someone who isn't expecting big medical bills.


It's becoming clear that millions of working-class Americans face a choice between paying a penalty they surely can’t afford and buying a policy — if they can foot the bill — that may still wreck their finances if they land in the hospital.

While this reality is pretty pervasive, it's especially harsh in some areas, Mississippi and Washington state among them, partly due to competitive pricing decisions made by Centene. While the cheapest bronze-plan premium (before subsidies) rose about $250 in Mississippi for a $25,000-earner, the subsidy fell $300, yielding the $550 increase. That came about because the subsidies are tied to the cost of the second-cheapest silver plan, and Centene cornered the market on low-cost plans in a number of states this year by attaching bronze-like deductibles ($5,500 and $6,500) to silver plans.

Centene took the same tack in Washington state, with a similar result. This year, Washington's exchange signed up 140,000 people for subsidized plans. At first blush, the 10.5% growth over last year's 126,650 total looks good, but it's deceptive because last year, unlike this year, the state only counted paid enrollment. Once nonpayers are scrubbed from the total, the number of subsidized customers in 2016 may end up being equal to, perhaps even lower than, last year's.

Centene, along with other Medicaid managed care players like Molina Health (MOH), moved into the individual market with the launch of ObamaCare and has been credited with navigating the market more adeptly than bigger players such as UnitedHealth (UNH).

Still, Centene's subsidy-squeezing shift isn't widespread yet. Overall, the average HealthCare.gov subsidy rose 10.3% to $290 per month from $263 a year ago, as the average share of premiums paid by those eligible for subsidies rose just under 5%, to $106 a month from $101.

Young And Restless

The Department of Health and Human Services also revealed that the exchanges ended 2015 with just under 8.8 million paid enrollees nationwide, down 25% from the 11.7 million sign-ups to start the year. As of last March, once the unpaid total was culled, there were 10.2 million members.

The data also indicate that the paid ObamaCare insurance pool gets older as the year progresses. Among the 5.6 million people who renewed their HealthCare.gov coverage this year (out of 6.3 million who held policies at year-end), just 1.35 million, or 24%, were in age 18 to 34. That's down from a 28% young-adult share of sign-ups in the 2015 enrollment period.

It's worth recalling that the Obama administration and Kaiser Family Foundation both set a target of about 2.8 million young-adult enrollees in ObamaCare's first year, or roughly 40% of the total, in keeping with the young-adult share of the eligible population. It's clear that the exchanges ended the second year far below that initial target, with as few as 2.1 million 18- to 34-year-olds. This year, 3.5 million of the 12.7 million sign-ups are age 18 to 34, though it remains to be seen how many fail to pay or later exit the exchanges if they get workplace insurance.

A higher share of young adults could help keep down premiums because, under ObamaCare's age-rating limit, younger people are charged more than their expected cost to restrain premiums for older adults. This helps turn ObamaCare's market upside-down relative to pre-2014 markets, with a bronze plan now costing $1,000 more for a 30-year-old than for a 60-year-old if both earn $25,000.

Still, there is some evidence in the new data that the higher individual mandate penalty may be convincing people to enroll. About 38% of the additional sign-ups compared to a year ago chose bronze or catastrophic plans. Generally, people who are signing up to avoid a penalty can be expected to lean toward the cheapest plan available.

The number of people with subsidized coverage via HealthCare.gov rose just 6.1% from a year ago. While a clear assessment won't be possible until we know how many people actually pay for their coverage, the weak sign-up total has left ObamaCare in much the same place that it was a year ago.

Millions of people are benefiting from the exchanges, especially near-poor households that qualify for the most generous subsidies and people with pre-existing conditions that no longer have to pay an arm and a leg. But likely fewer than 1 in 3 people with income from 150% to 250% of the poverty level are now getting silver coverage that will protect their finances if they land in the hospital. The vast majority even in this modest-income group either have high-deductible bronze coverage, remain uninsured or are ineligible because they, or a spouse, work full-time for an employer who offers insurance — even if that insurance is far from affordable.

 

[LENBO]

You're too fucking stupid to realize that many-one could say MOST-do NOT share your views on the effectiveness of Obamacare; if they did, Obama wouldn't have the favorability rating that he has. You're wrong, and, fortunately, in the minority, and growing more so every day. Get ready to bend over and bite that pillow come Election Day, Scumbag...kth)(&^:flies:ointer:Slapping-silly90))cockingasnook():bigfinger:laughingb:madasshol:trx-smly0:kissingbb:Countdown

Jonathan Gruber had you in mind when he made his Obamacare comments.
The dumbest of the dumb.

 

[BleedingPurple]

There is no doubt that ACA
Needs restructuring, the claims of savings and affordability just isn't there for too many people. Paying 4 k and above per year for health coverage with a high deductible isn't helping. 6 k deductibles
Are keeping people away from seeking health care.

 

[Albatross]

Its been a huge failure. I cant recall a domestic policy failure this big since dodd-frank, and then not to correct it by gwb.

 

[Dafinch]

Jonathan Gruber had you in mind when he made his Obamacare comments.
The dumbest of the dumb.

Morons are often completely unaware that they're morons, and you're a case in point. You've been dead wrong for well over a decade, but you think you're right and the majority is wrong. Keep dreaming, Schmuck...kth)(&^:flies:ointer:Slapping-silly90))cockingasnook():bigfinger:laughingb:madasshol:trx-smly0:kissingbb:Countdown