Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Not So Bad PPACA Numbers

After 10 days scurrying around the Shanghai, China area; I am now sitting in Bangkok, Thailand and reading more of the news. Such is the life of a Global Purchasing Manager dealing with automotive and industrial. I have been reading and watching the typical media reporting about the PPACA while drinking my green tea. Greg […]

Socialism At Its Finest

The Grey Matter Blog does a nice little bar chart on insurance profitability; “Socialist” Obamacare a boon to insurance companies” since the passage of the PPACA in 2010. I gotta say this is nothing like what I would have expected to happen; but, I have to acknowledge my other blogger-foil’s told-you-so remarks to me repeatedly. […]

But the exchanges aren’t working

My question is what can an angrybear do to help people who received a scary letter from their insurance company informing them that their mininsurance is cancelled and offering them a chance to pay 10 times as much. I think it is easy to provide useful links. So I will soon consider the case of […]

How the Democrats Should Deal With the AnthemBlueCrossCare Issue. Really.

Today, the House of Representatives will take up GOP Rep. Fred Upton’s proposal to ”fix” Obamacare by undermining it, and the vote is being widely cast on a referendum on whether Dems will continue distancing themselves from the law. Meanwhile Senate Dems are also still considering fixes of their own that could undermine it, though […]

Health Care Thoughts: Which Law to Violate?

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Which Law to Violate? Citing a state notice statute, the Insurance Commissioner of California has convinced Blue Shield NOT to cancel policies which are not grandfathered under the ACA. The policies will be extended until March 31, giving hundreds of thousands of policy holders more time to […]

The Truth About Obamacare’s Exchanges

Maggie Mahar at The Health Beat Blog writes bout the exchanges. Paul Krugman: “There are two remarkable things about this kind of doomsaying. One is that the doomsayers haven’t rethought their premises despite being wrong again and again — perhaps because the news media continue to treat them with immense respect.” If you Google “Obamacare,” […]

Junk health plans

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/03/junk-health-insurance/index.htm   Consumer Reports, which also destroys that story. They take a look at the Florida woman’s cancelled health policy and compare it to what she could—affordably—get by shopping on the exchange. Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried […]

Not even a cursory fact check

We all make mistakes sometimes, but there is a lot of this in the news. Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts: Dianne Barrette of Winter Haven Florida claims that instead of paying $54 a month for health insurance (no hospital coverage and a $ 50 deductible for office visits) she will have to pay $ 591 […]

7 Million Insured versus 2.7 Million Millenials

The argument has been the ACA depends on a number of the young to sign up for healthcare insurance on the PPACA or at least this is what S.E. Cupp believes and suggested on This Week with George Stephanopoulis. “There’s two problems, one is the technological, sort of mechanics of this. Obamacare relies on Millennials, […]