CBO- Obamacare Will Cover More People at a Lower Cost Than We Expected

[The Guesser]

I'm sure the CBO is now making up numbers also, because we know ANY good numbers or results for the ACA are made up. Only the bad numbers and reports are accurate. Shush()*

http://www.thewire.com/politics/201...ople-at-a-lower-cost-than-we-expected/360633/

Apr 14, 2014 12:48PM ET / Politics
[h=1]CBO: Obamacare Will Cover More People at a Lower Cost Than We Expected[/h] Philip Bump

Elizabeth Rich helps a man sign up for the Affordable Care Act. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Into the bucket labeled "Small Bits of Good News that Will Not Change People's Minds on Obamacare" (it is a wide bucket), throw this: The Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimate for how much Obamacare will cost and increased its estimate of how many people will be covered.

The CBO, the non-partisan analysis arm of Congress, has regularly produced estimates of what Obamacare will do to the budget and the population of uninsured in the United States. In 2010, it estimated that Obamacare's costs to the federal budget between 2014 and 2019 would hit $759 billion. That figure has steadily declined with each revision. The new figures project "a net cost of $36 billion for 2014, $5 billion less than the previous projection for the year; and $1,383 billion for the 2015–2024 period." That last figures is "$104 billion less than the previous projection."
It also projected an increase to the number of people gaining coverage under Obamacare — though a modest one. Compared to its February estimates, the CBO now assumes that 7 million more people will gain coverage under the Obamacare exchanges. In total, it projects that "12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 than would have had it in the absence of the ACA" — an increase that appears to be independent of the spike in Obamacare enrollments at the end of March.
[h=3]Annual change in each group, millions by year[/h] 2014201420152015201620162017201720182018201920192020202020212021202220222023202320242024-20-20002020ExchangeExchangeMedicaidMedicaidEmployerEmployerOtherOtherUninsuredUninsured


One of the interesting developments in Obamacare enrollment spotted by researchers from RAND is that the number of people covered by employers has increased — the opposite of what was expected to happen. The CBO continues to estimate that the number of people covered by employers will drop each year through 2024. The data uncovered by RAND, indicating that 8.2 million more people have employer-based coverage than last fall, may be a short-term increase as people signed up for employer policies to avoid the individual mandate. The employer mandate that begins later this year (after a delay) has long been expected to result in decreased employer coverage.
The CBO also returned to another key point that it had made in the past. Spending isn't the only factor to consider, and, once coverage provisions are included in the financial calculus, "the ACA’s overall effect would be to reduce federal deficits." Reduced spending, more coverage, and a net reduction of the deficit. Small bits of good news that will not change people's minds on Obamacare.

 

[The Guesser]

http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-obamacare-report-how-many-people-are-insured-2014-4

More than 12 million people will gain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act this year, according to new projections released by the Congressional Budget Office Monday. And millions more stand to benefit from the law over the next decade. At the same time, the law's costs to the federal government are shrinking. According to the new projections, the federal government will spend more than $100 billion less on Obamacare's coverage provisions through 2024 than previously projected. That includes a downward estimate of about $5 billion this year. Overall, spending on the federal and state insurance exchanges are projected to cost 14% less than originally forecast.
The CBO said plans offered through the exchanges are narrower, allowing companies to keep premiums low and the federal government to pay less in subsidies. The lower spending projections on the Affordable Care Act will help shrink deficits overall. The CBO said the federal government will now run a deficit of $492 billion in fiscal year 2014, which is almost a 33% decrease from 2013.

Through both the federal and state insurance exchanges and the expansion of the federal Medicaid program under the law, the CBO projects more than 12 million people now have insurance who wouldn't have normally been covered in the absence of the law. The CBO also projects 19 million people will gain coverage by 2015, 25 million more by 2016, and 26 million more by 2026.
In 2014, according to the CBO, about 6 million people gained insurance from the exchanges and close to 7 million people benefitted from the Medicaid expansion. Those gains reduced the number of uninsured in the U.S. to 42 million —16% of the population. By 2024, the CBO projects, about 89% of U.S. residents will have health insurance.
Here's a chart from the CBO showing the parallel universe between a U.S. with the Affordable Care Act in 2024 and one without it:

Congressional Budget Office



There's one key difference between the CBO's projections and a study released last week by RAND Corp., which said a net 9.3 million people had gained insurance coverage from September through March: The RAND study said most of those who gained coverage did so through employer-sponsored coverage, something the CBO said did not contribute to any relative gains in coverage.
The Obama administration has spent much of the past two weeks trumpeting the law in spite of a disastrous rollout. Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who resigned last week, said 7.5 million people had enrolled in plans through the exchanges by the end of the law's first open enrollment period on March 31.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-obamacare-report-how-many-people-are-insured-2014-4#ixzz2yvRqz8f7
​

 

[SheriffJoe]

Obamacare: Health care premium costs skyrocket 12% as Obama does victory lap

http://www.examiner.com/article/oba...-costs-skyrocket-12-as-obama-does-victory-lap

 

[akphidelt]

You are going to disrupt the ecosystem with this!! The rats are preparing to get on their spinning wheels!

 

[The Guesser]

latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacare-numbers-20140331,0,4488747.story
[h=1]latimes.com[/h] [h=2]Obamacare numbers coming in huge: Here's a guide to GOP excuse-making[/h] By Michael Hiltzik
10:36 AM PDT, March 31, 2014

​

Against all odds and expectations, enrollments in health plans qualified under the Affordable Care Act are surging Monday toward -- and maybe beyond -- the 7-million figure projected by the Congressional Budget Office before Oct. 1, when the open-enrollment period began. The deadline for starting enrollment applications for 2014 plans is midnight Monday.
The surge is creating a big problem for the "train wreck" narrative of Republican opponents of the ACA, who have been holding out hope for Obamacare's utter failure. So the excuse-making has begun.
Before we examine those excuses: You will recall that the budget office reduced its projection of enrollments on individual insurance exchanges to 6 million earlier this year to account for the botched launch of healthcare.gov, the federal enrollment website. Enrollments blew past that mark days ago. If exchange enrollments meet or exceed the original projection of 7 million despite the loss of some six weeks in website functionality in October and November, that would be a testament to the public's latent desire for effective healthcare coverage.
Photos: The battle over the Affordable Care Act
We won't know the final March 31 tally for days, possibly weeks, but that indispensable enrollment tracker Charles Gaba is projecting 6.78 million exchange enrollments, with a chance of topping 7 million.
That figure covers enrollments in private healthcare plans via healthcare.gov and the individual websites offered by 14 states and the District of Columbia. As my colleague Noam Levey is reporting, the Rand Corp. estimates that another 4.5 million previously uninsured adults have signed up for Medicaid in states that expanded that program under the ACA. And about 3 million young adults have obtained coverage through an ACA provision allowing them to stay on their parents' employer plans until age 26.
For Obamacare critics, consequently, the enrollment numbers demand debunking. Here's a bestiary of their arguments for why the figures shouldn't be believed, and explanations of why they're off-base.
"How many have paid?" (Also known as "The statistics are full of deadbeats"): We examined this argument a few days ago. We observed that the concern is probably exaggerated and certainly premature, since many people who enrolled late in the cycle, including those in the March surge, may not have payments due for as much as six weeks after enrollment. Many haven't even received their first monthly premium bill yet.
Figures from states that track this metric, including California and Vermont, show that 85% to 90% of enrollees have paid on time, which secures them the coverage they applied for.
"Most of them were already insured": The argument here is that if we've just moved people from one insurance plan to another, we've just been wasting Americans' time and subjecting them to an onerous bureaucratic procedure as well.
The claim is based primarily on a survey in January from McKinsey and Co., which concluded that only 11% of exchange enrollees had been previously uninsured. A McKinsey survey a month later raised that figure to 27% -- still low, compared to expectations.
The major problem with the McKinsey survey is that doesn't say what its hawkers claim. The survey combines on-exchange enrollments and off-exchange enrollments; the latter are likely to heavily skew figures toward the previously insured because those are most likely people signing up again with their existing carriers. The goal of the exchange marketplaces, however, is to reach uninsured Americans. The McKinsey surveys don't break out on-exchange signups, but it's probably that the share of previously uninsureds in that group is higher than the combined total.
The few states that do break out their own numbers reinforce that expectation. Kentucky says that some 75% of its exchange enrollees were previously uninsured. New York says that about 60% of its exchange enrollees were previously uninsured. That number has been rising over time, raising the prospect that the March surge will include an even higher ratio of uninsured customers; Gaba, who has calculated a time series of New York enrollments based on the state's monthly news releases, calculates that of enrollees in mid-February, at least 92% had been uninsured.
"'Young invincibles' aren't signing up": This is related to the oft-mentioned threat of a "death spiral" in the insurance market -- if the enrollees are predominantly older and sicker consumers, they'll drive up premiums, which will discourage younger and healthier people from enrolling, which drives up premiums, which discourages, the young, etc., etc.
Federal officials have set an informal target of 40% of enrollments in the 18-34 age range. The latest figures from various states put the enrollment rate at the mid-20% level. But it was always expected that younger people would be among the last to enroll, and reports from the states suggest that's happening.
Even if the statistics remain fixed in the mid-20s, however, the death spiral won't be happening. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that even if the young enrolled at only 50% of expected levels, premiums for 2015 would have to be raised a couple of percentage points. That's nowhere near enough to set off a death spiral.
Moreover, as we explained way back in October, the ACA has a corrective to the death spiral written in. It's called risk adjustment, and it works by paying a subsidy to insurance companies that end up with older or sicker customer bases than they anticipated. The money comes from payments made by carriers that end up with favorable customer profiles. Republicans know this arrangement will keep Obamacare stable. How do we know? Because in a majestically cynical move spearheaded by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., they tried late last year to kill it, calling it an insurance "bailout."
"More people got cancellations than signed up": The numbers never supported this claim, and the latest estimates make it even more of a fantasy. It's based on the wave of reports late last year of insurance companies canceling old policies that didn't meet ACA standards, which led to hysterical claims that as many as 17 million Americans were being left uninsured.
Rand's figures support earlier estimates that fewer than 1 million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because of cancellations. Insurance companies that issued the cancellation notices say they've retained "the vast majority" of their old customers, mostly by moving them into new, compliant, plans.
"The White House is 'cooking the books'": This is the last refuge of scoundrels like Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who made the claim this weekend on Fox News Sunday while the slack-jawed host, Chris Wallace, sat silently by.
What makes this claim particularly fatuous is that the most encouraging figures don't come from the federal government at all, but from states with their own enrollment programs. The eight states with the best records of signing up their eligible citizens in exchange plans (actually seven states and D.C.), all have their own exchanges and websites. Vermont leads the parade at 83% enrolled. California, which leads all states in number of exchange enrollees at more than 1 million, ranks fourth with a 41% outreach rate.
If the feds are cooking the books, they've cooked them to look worse, not better -- the 36 states that dumped their enrollment responsibilities on the federal government are clustered at the bottom of the list, most of them with enrollment rates of 20% or less of eligible citizens. Many of these are states that actively discouraged or interfered with enrollments of their citizens in health insurance plans -- behavior that should be grounds for impeachment or recall of their governors and legislators.
Of course, even the enrollment of 7 million Americans in ACA exchanges doesn't mean Obamacare is a certified success. There's a lot of work to be done to fix the inevitable flaws in any law as far-reaching as this one. As Noam Levey reported, it amounts to the largest expansion of health coverage for Americans since the enactment of Medicare half a century ago, but many more people need to be signed up in coming years.
The apparent success of the first annual open enrollment period, however, should show Republican naysayers that this law is here to stay, with all its customer-protection provisions intact. It's time they recognized that the rhetoric about Obamacare's failure has gotten them nowhere. It's gotten the country nowhere. It's time for them to get behind the law, to help get their fellow citizens the coverage they need, and to help fix what needs to be fixed.

Reach me at @hiltzikm on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or by email.

 

[The Guesser]

You are going to disrupt the ecosystem with this!! The rats are preparing to get on their spinning wheels!

They won't believe it. They only believe biased, slanted sources when the numbers are good, not unbiased, objective sources like the CBO. When the numbers are bad, then they are accepted without question. That's how these partisan hacks roll.

 

[The Guesser]

As usual, Ezra Klein nails it:

Tuesday, April 15, 2014


The right can’t admit that Obamacare is working

Updated by Ezra Klein on April 14, 2014, 12:09 p.m. ET @ezraklein
Tweet Share Share

Don't miss stories. Follow Vox!


On Thursday, I stated the obvious: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's resignation was timed to follow news of Obamacare's surprising success signing up 7.5 million people for private insurance.
Conventional wisdom was that Sebelius would resign back in October or November, when Healthcare.gov was a mess and the White House needed a scapegoat. Like many others, I thought Sebelius — and a few others — should be fired.
But for better or worse, President Obama doesn't like to fire people amidst crises, even if the crises are partly their fault. And so Sebelius's resignation, coming on the heels of a rush of good news for Obamacare, is evidence that the White House considers the Obamacare crisis is over. With 7.5 million people (and rising!) signed up for the insurance exchanges and 3.5 million people (and rising!) signed up for Medicaid the law is likely here to stay — which means the White House can finally exhale, and begin changing the team that runs it.
This blindingly obvious analysis made a lot of Obamacare critics very, very angry. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, took the column on in a speech in New Hampshire:

If you listen to Democrats, if you listen to the media - although, I repeat myself - they will tell you there is no hope. They will tell you we cannot turn this around. They will tell you you cannot stop Obamacare. They will tell you that Kathleen Sebelius resigning is a result of Obamacare's success. Well if that's true, then I hope every Democrat will follow her path and resign, as well!
​

Sen. John Cornyn was pithier.
Republicans used to talk about Bush Derangement Syndrome. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer defined it as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush." Republicans like Krauthammer understood that BDS helped the Bush administration in two ways: it fired up their supporters and it distracted liberals from more modest, but effective, critiques.
Today, the right struggles with Obamacare Derangement Syndrome
Today, the right struggles with Obamacare Derangement Syndrome: the acute inability to see Obamacare as anything but a catastrophic failure that the American people will soon reject. For those suffering from ODS, all bad Obamacare news is good news, and all good Obamacare news is spin. In this world, delays of minor provisions in the law prove that the entire structure is collapsing, while surges of millions of people enrolling in insurance don't prove anything at all.

ODS has kept Republicans from updating their mental model of how Obamacare is doing. To them, the law's disastrous rollout proved that it was doomed. The fact that it recovered beyond anyone's expectations — literally, not a single analyst or policymaker I spoke to in December thought it credible that the exchanges would sign up 7 million by April, much less 7.5 million — hasn't made much of an impression.
Today, Republicans are thrilled by Sebelius's resignation: It means that the Obama administration needs to get her successor, OMB Director Sylvia Matthews Burwell, confirmed by the Senate. And that's an opportunity for Republicans to relitigate the many failures of Obamacare.
So long as Ted Cruz is promising Obamacare can be stopped, no Republican can outline a plan to tweak it
But it's coming at a moment when Obamacare's successes are getting tougher and tougher to deny. The law signed up more than 7.5 million people in the exchanges, more than 3.5 million people in Medicaid, and it led millions more to get health care through their employers or directly through insurers. Premiums are lower than the Congressional Budget Office predicted when the law passed, and insurers are already thinking about how to compete for applicants in 2015. The White House has a much better story to tell than anyone — including me — thought possible in December.
There are still many good critiques to make of Obamacare. But Republicans don't want to critique Obamacare. They want to stop it. Repeal it. They want to make it the hill big-government liberalism dies upon. And those in the party who know better continue to be cowed by those in the party who don't. So long as Ted Cruz is going to New Hampshire promising that Obamacare can be stopped, no Republican can step before the faithful and outline a plan for how it can be tweaked.

The irony of this is that Obamacare's successes are, in many cases, conservatism's successes. The individual mandate is a conservative idea — and it's working. Liberals were skeptical that private insurers would compete on price even absent a public option — but they are. High-deductible health plans are a longtime conservative solution for health costs — and Obamacare is spreading them far and wide. But conservatives can't take credit for any of this, much less build on it.

For the White House, the new hearings present an opportunity. Public opinion always lags a bit behind policy reality. Obamacare, weirdly, became more popular in its disastrous first weeks. But then its numbers plummeted as people realized Healthcare.gov really was a disaster. Now that Obamacare is recovered the White House needs to somehow get that message out to the public — and even to liberals. That's a tough job. Obamacare's unexpectedly impressive enrollment numbers aren't getting nearly as much coverage as its early disasters.
The irony is that Obamacare's successes are in many cases conservatism's successes
The other problem for the White House is that many think Obamacare is basically working despite the Obama administration's best efforts. The roll-out really was a disaster, the law remains unpopular, and estimations of the Obama administration's competence are still low. The public would gladly flock to a political party that had a real plan for improving Obamacare, and a serious claim to being able to manage it more professionally. Luckily for the Obama administration, ODS ensures Republicans are still far, far away from being that party.

 

[hehateme82]

Ezra Klein loves the cock.

 

[GasMan]

Meanwhile, in the real world, health care premiums skyrocket.

 

[Willie99]

gotta love libtardville, as Rome burns their band plays on

didn't read the article, but I'm a "guessing" they're talking about the costs to the federal government, because everybody else's costs are skyrocketing

and I also suspect all those massive tax increases people are paying enables them to make such moronic statements

but if they weren't so damn stupid, we wouldn't be where we are

"so there you have it"



PS: I might add that they're simply intellectually dishonest in every position they take. Again, they have to be to take such positions, so we have yet another catch 22

 

[Acebb]

The poster who started this thread is supremely dishonest and comically ignorant on this topic (and so is Ezra Klein). I realize the facts and logic that follow will do nothing to change the opinion of the comically ignorant, but I will destroy the lies for posterity's sake.

#1 Please, anyone reading, point to anyone from the White House or any elected Democrat saying that a measure of ObamaCare's success is more people on Medicaid. And since that never happened yet the CBO says: "In 2018 and later years, 25 million people are projected to have coverage through the exchanges, and 13 million more, on net, are projected to have coverage through Medicaid and CHIP than would have had it in the absence of the ACA" how, exactly does this show ObamaCare 'working'? Oh, it doesn't.

#2 Speaking of Medicaid, we know that having a Medicaid card does nothing to guarantee you access to a doctor, (see more here) and Medicaid does not improve health outcomes, and of course having an ACA plan also does not ensure you'll actually see a doctor either.

#3 Note that the CBO says the number of uninsured non-elderly people will still be 31 million in 2024. Also note, the 7.5 million "sign ups" is not a relevant figure and only a tiny fraction of those people were actually uninsured, which was the problem ObamaCare was supposed to address. (#Working!)

#4 On cost. Note that the spending on the ACA is still higher than anyone in the White House ever said it would be - $1,383 Trillion (this isn't bending the cost curve down) - and note that "CBO and JCT estimate that the added costs to the federal government for Medicaid and CHIP attributable to the ACA will be $20 billion in 2014 and will total $792 billion for the 2015–2024 period" Hey, remember when Obama & Pelosi said the ACA will increase Medicaid & CHIP spending (remember, neither insurance assure you that you'll see a doctor) by almost a Trillion dollars? Me too! One final point on costs: since major provisions of the law have been delayed, of course the cost estimates for next year are lower. And, what kind of idiot brags about a 1% cost savings anyway? These "savings" are rounding errors in the budgeting process.

#5 Perhaps the most rank dishonesty here is the suggestion by Ezra Klein (swallowed whole by our ignorant poster who started this thread) that somehow high deductible insurance is an idea embraced by the White House. Well, when all those cancellation letters when out last fall, the White House said they were "junk plans" anyway. What made them not "junk plans" you may ask? Political convenience, not whether or not they are actually a good idea. Also note that the full impact of cancelling these "junk plans" has been deferred until Obama is on his way out of office. So the full impact of this change is not reflected in the CBO report. Seeing the ignorant Klein (and again the idiot who started this thread) cheer this on is hilarious.

#6 Note that in addition to the delay in enforcing the "junk policies" provision, the employer mandate has been delayed until next year. Any comments about employer sponsored plans are dishonest and irrelevant at this point. Which of course is why they were brought up in those articles.

#7 Finally, the entirety Ezra Klein's criticism of Senator Cruz is a Non Sequitur. It never occurs to Klein that Cruz is a legislator with constituents and may actually know more about the impacts of the law than he does. So of course he just presumes ObamaCare is "working" - by these redefined measures of success nobody was talking about in 2009 or 2010 - and Cruz is a nut for wanting to change a lot that is not really 'working' as intended.

So in sum, the poster who started this thread has no idea about the topic, will not at all consider any information contrary to political biases, and of course accepts whole what a dumb little kid, Ezra Klein who has no requisite education or experience in the area, says.

Bravo.

 

[Acebb]

More people got cancellations than signed up": The numbers never supported this claim, and the latest estimates make it even more of a fantasy. It's based on the wave of reports late last year of insurance companies canceling old policies that didn't meet ACA standards, which led to hysterical claims that as many as 17 million Americans were being left uninsured.
Rand's figures support earlier estimates that fewer than 1 million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because of cancellations.

Loser!@#0

Uh,
[h=1]Consumers Allowed to Keep Health Plans for Two More Years[/h]
Why are you people always lying?

 

[Acebb]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, right on cue:

A major goal of the law is to increase the number of people with health insurance. The White House reported that 7.5 million people signed up for private health plans on the new insurance exchanges and that enrollment in Medicaid increased by three million since October. But the administration has been unable to say how many of the people gaining coverage were previously uninsured or had policies canceled, so the net increase in coverage is unclear.

Of course the census is going to "revise" the approach. When you don't like facts, they must be changed.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Obamacare Only Enrolled 1.4 Million Previously Uninsured Individuals[/h]




HealthCare.gov / AP

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
April 13, 2014 5:38 pm
Obamacare has reportedly enrolled 7.1 million individuals since its exchanges opened in October. However, according to a recently released RAND report, just 1.4 million of those individuals were previously uninsured.
Avik Roy of Forbes reports:

Last week, I wrote about an article in the Los Angeles Times, on a then-as-yet unpublished report from the RAND Corporation. The report indicated that only one-third of Obamacare’s purported 7.1 million exchange sign-ups were from the previously uninsured. But Noam Levey, the author of the Times article, didn’t disclose RAND’s actual findings as to the actual number of previously uninsured exchange enrollees. Well, now we know why. RAND published the full report yesterday; it indicates that Obamacare’s exchanges only enrolled 1.4 million previously uninsured individuals.
That 1.4 million is out of a total of 3.9 million exchange enrollees overall. That is to say, a little over a third of enrollees—36 percent—were previously uninsured. RAND’s figures don’t take into account the last few weeks of the Obamacare open enrollment period, and they contain a substantial margin of error, due to the study’s small sample size. (RAND surveyed 2,425 individuals aged 18 to 64; the 1.4 million figure has a margin of error of 700,000, meaning that there is a 95 percent probability that the actual number is between 700,000 and 2.1 million previously uninsured enrollees.)
If you assume that 80 percent of signer-uppers will eventually pay their premiums, the true number of previously uninsured exchange enrollees is likely closer to 2 million. That’s far from what the Congressional Budget Office has projected; the CBO estimated that 80 to 90 percent of the first-year enrollees would come from the previously uninsured population. Instead, it appears to be more like 24 to 36 percent.
​

 

[SheriffJoe]

Surprise: New Census Bureau changes to annual survey will obscure effects of ObamaCare

*****************************************************************************************

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/u...ealth-law-effects.html?_r=1&assetType=nyt_now

"An internal Census Bureau document said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, in a test last year, produced lower estimates of the uninsured. Thus, officials said, it will be difficult to say how much of any change is attributable to the Affordable Care Act and how much to the use of a new survey instrument."

“We are expecting much lower numbers just because of the questions and how they are asked,” said Brett J. O’Hara, chief of the health statistics branch at the Census Bureau…

"Another Census Bureau paper said “it is coincidental and unfortunate timing” that the survey was overhauled just before major provisions of the health care law took effect. “Ideally,” it said, “the redesign would have had at least a few years to gather base line and trend data.”

:neenee:

 

[Dave007inVegas]

"Another Census Bureau paper said “it is coincidental and unfortunate timing”

What it should have said…

“it as purposeful and fortunate timing”

 

[Dave007inVegas]

 

[festeringZit]

You gotta just shake your head at the stupidity of Obama lemmings, it's mind boggling.

 

[akphidelt]

The rats are spinning!! Lmao! Gotta love watching this.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

A series of billboards are cropping up from Nashville, TN to Texas announcing the Obamacare Games, where “the odds are never in your favor.”

The billboards are the product of refusetoenroll.org and are a play on the massively popular books-turned-movies called The Hunger Games, where the motto of the fight-to-the-death matches are “May the odds be always in your favor.”

According do their website, refusetoenroll:

“Initiated a new billboard campaign as part of our ongoing 'Refuse to Enroll' effort. The exchanges are the Achilles' heel of Obamacare. They are also the IRS enforcement centers, the federal takeover centers, and the insurance status surveillance centers. We are focused on stopping Obamacare by stopping the Obamacare exchanges.”

They also list the top 4 reasons why not to enroll in Obamacare.

1. No Private Insurance - Obamacare is "Medicaid for the middle class" - or as former CBO director Douglas Holtz_Eakin calls the Exchange coverage: "a second Medicaid program."

2. No Privacy - Data enters federal database accessible by IRS and various other state and federal government agencies.

3. Limited Choice - Most coverage is "narrow network" or "ultra-narrow network" policies, limiting access to doctors, hospitals and other health care professionals.

4. High Cost Premiums - To pay for multi-million dollars Exchange operations and for subsidizing high-cost individuals, the young and healthy will pay high-cost premiums for policies with high deductibles.