We will not see the overall impact of ACA for several years. If the roll out of the public interface and the unanticipated loss of employer provided health care is indicative it probably won’t be good by many metrics.
CoRev what has the Weekly Standard’s overall editorial position been on Obamacare? And does it really meet the definition of a news magazine as opposed to a political opinion vehicle?
I suggest that latter and as such put exactly zero reliance on any data point they put up without significant and substantial backing and context.
For example we have the case of Trader Joe’s. TJ’s has an extraordinarily worker friendly compensation package with much higher wages than industry standard and a very fine health care insurance plan for full-time workers. But part-time workers were only partially subsidized. On analyzing the numbers it turned out that most of those part-time workers would come out ahead if dropped from the TJ Plan and sent to the Exchanges, particularly after TJ’s provided a cash subsidy from their end in liue of the previous contribution to the employer supplied plan.
Well it is a complicated story that ends up with many winners and a small number of losers. But you can simplify it a LOT by summarizing it as “1000’s of Trader Joe’s employees nationwide lose employee provided health care”. Which I suspect is the basic methodology here.
Plus you are again mixing apples and oranges. It is perfectly possible and indeed likely that 2% of employees lose employer provided health care in any given year even as millions are added. That would be the natural result of job turnover in which some folk went to jobs without such coverage or into self-employment. Or as some employees voluntarily cut their hours below the threshold needed. Even as every new hire to that company was enrolled. Now if the results of that poll were showing that there was a 2% reduction in employees covered by employer provided health care either on an absolute or relative to work force basis then that might be news and even cause to blame Obamacare. If Obamacare was actually in effect for most employers who provide such coverage. Which it mostly isn’t the mandates were not even scheduled to start until Jan 1 and now have been postponed.
I’ll look at the poll but really when it comes to honest reporting on Obamacare the Weekly Standard is only a step up from NewsMax and Breitbart.
What is not a poll are the cancellation notices. Hundreds, thousands, millions of individual health insurance policies that customers were fine with now do not meet the Obamacare “seal of approval” and are now illegal.
Replacement policies, festooned with all the PC, and/or lobbied for, benefits combined with pre-existing condition exclusions are considerably more expensive. Healthy people gonna pass. Pay the $95 penalty and be done with this fiasco.
“the thrust of Obama’s comments remained accurate. Individuals whose policies existed prior to 2010, when the ACA was signed into law, are grandfathered into the new law and have the option to preserve that plan as long as it has not been significantly changed since the law passed. He said the law could not anticipate insurers changing policies since then, or instances in which insurance providers canceled plans because of new requirements for minimal levels of coverage for policyholders.”
“This part of the law does not apply to the 80 percent of Americans who receive health insurance through their employers or through Medicare or Medicaid. Still it could impact up to five percent of Americans, or about 14 million people. Obamacare regulations estimate that, because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy.”
“two million Americans across the country are getting, or are about to get, letters canceling policies purchased on the individual market.”
Note, this is on the individual market as the group coverage already complied or will comply in one year with the delay.
Most of the analyses omit consideration of subsidies when discussing rates and also consider existing policies with benefits so limited that any major health problem would receive such inadequate coverage as to cause bankruptcy through the operation of large co-pays, caps, and exclusions. Interestingly, the Massachusetts program seems to functioning well despite all of the same potential problems as are presented under the ACA.
How long before the Abamacare IT system is actually usable? Usable in this case I devfine as being able for users to easily access WITHOUT SERIOUS THREAT OF COMPROMISING THEIR PERSONAL INFORMATION. In my estimation it will take many, many months. This disaster of a Bill, and IT System will haunt the American people for years.
Bet’cha the lawyers are lining up clients as we speak.
In 2011 http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-s-passage-millions-have-lost-employer-sponsored-health-insurance_607994.html Gallup showed ~2% of employees had already lost employee provided health care. How many since? How many nest year? OMB predicted a gain of ~2M would be added to employer health care rolls.
We will not see the overall impact of ACA for several years. If the roll out of the public interface and the unanticipated loss of employer provided health care is indicative it probably won’t be good by many metrics.
CoRev what has the Weekly Standard’s overall editorial position been on Obamacare? And does it really meet the definition of a news magazine as opposed to a political opinion vehicle?
I suggest that latter and as such put exactly zero reliance on any data point they put up without significant and substantial backing and context.
For example we have the case of Trader Joe’s. TJ’s has an extraordinarily worker friendly compensation package with much higher wages than industry standard and a very fine health care insurance plan for full-time workers. But part-time workers were only partially subsidized. On analyzing the numbers it turned out that most of those part-time workers would come out ahead if dropped from the TJ Plan and sent to the Exchanges, particularly after TJ’s provided a cash subsidy from their end in liue of the previous contribution to the employer supplied plan.
Well it is a complicated story that ends up with many winners and a small number of losers. But you can simplify it a LOT by summarizing it as “1000’s of Trader Joe’s employees nationwide lose employee provided health care”. Which I suspect is the basic methodology here.
Plus you are again mixing apples and oranges. It is perfectly possible and indeed likely that 2% of employees lose employer provided health care in any given year even as millions are added. That would be the natural result of job turnover in which some folk went to jobs without such coverage or into self-employment. Or as some employees voluntarily cut their hours below the threshold needed. Even as every new hire to that company was enrolled. Now if the results of that poll were showing that there was a 2% reduction in employees covered by employer provided health care either on an absolute or relative to work force basis then that might be news and even cause to blame Obamacare. If Obamacare was actually in effect for most employers who provide such coverage. Which it mostly isn’t the mandates were not even scheduled to start until Jan 1 and now have been postponed.
I’ll look at the poll but really when it comes to honest reporting on Obamacare the Weekly Standard is only a step up from NewsMax and Breitbart.
Bruce,
What is not a poll are the cancellation notices. Hundreds, thousands, millions of individual health insurance policies that customers were fine with now do not meet the Obamacare “seal of approval” and are now illegal.
Replacement policies, festooned with all the PC, and/or lobbied for, benefits combined with pre-existing condition exclusions are considerably more expensive. Healthy people gonna pass. Pay the $95 penalty and be done with this fiasco.
I am baccckkkkkkk. Neat little article today here: http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21237370-white-house-president-didnt-mislead-on-insurance-promise?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1
“the thrust of Obama’s comments remained accurate. Individuals whose policies existed prior to 2010, when the ACA was signed into law, are grandfathered into the new law and have the option to preserve that plan as long as it has not been significantly changed since the law passed. He said the law could not anticipate insurers changing policies since then, or instances in which insurance providers canceled plans because of new requirements for minimal levels of coverage for policyholders.”
“This part of the law does not apply to the 80 percent of Americans who receive health insurance through their employers or through Medicare or Medicaid. Still it could impact up to five percent of Americans, or about 14 million people. Obamacare regulations estimate that, because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy.”
“two million Americans across the country are getting, or are about to get, letters canceling policies purchased on the individual market.”
Note, this is on the individual market as the group coverage already complied or will comply in one year with the delay.
Run,
Thanks for making my point.
Most of the analyses omit consideration of subsidies when discussing rates and also consider existing policies with benefits so limited that any major health problem would receive such inadequate coverage as to cause bankruptcy through the operation of large co-pays, caps, and exclusions. Interestingly, the Massachusetts program seems to functioning well despite all of the same potential problems as are presented under the ACA.
How long before the Abamacare IT system is actually usable? Usable in this case I devfine as being able for users to easily access WITHOUT SERIOUS THREAT OF COMPROMISING THEIR PERSONAL INFORMATION. In my estimation it will take many, many months. This disaster of a Bill, and IT System will haunt the American people for years.
Bet’cha the lawyers are lining up clients as we speak.