Is Washington Ready for the Death of Obamacare?

The possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon eliminate federal subsidies for people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act is the biggest story in politics and economics that no one wants to talk about. But the stakes in King v. Burwell, which the court will hear on March 4, could scarcely be higher: If the plaintiffs prevail, millions of people in 34 states who bought insurance on federal exchanges would suddenly lose the subsidies that make it affordable. Consequently, most would lose their coverage. A Rand study pegged the number at 9.6 million people, with premiums soaring 47 percent for those still able to afford them. “Everyone agrees this would be a cataclysmic hit to the insurance market,” Michael Kolber, a health-care attorney at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said at a Feb. 13 Bloomberg Intelligence panel on King v. Burwell.

The immediate effect of a ruling against the ACA would be to hurl the political system, and no small part of the economy, into chaos. Yet there’s little sign that Washington is preparing for that scenario. Democrats won’t talk about what they would do because they don’t want the court to believe they could contain the fallout. Republicans don’t want to talk because they’re loath to admit that, even after voting 67 times to repeal or defund the ACA, they have no plan to help the millions who would be affected. (But they’d sure love the court to kill the law anyway.) Hospitals and insurers understand that bewailing their financial plight might not help their cause. Instead, they’ve channeled their warnings into amicus briefs.

Read the rest here.

Thanks to Jonathan Gruber for revealing Obamacare deception

Democrats are desperately distancing themselves from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber. He “never worked on our staff,” President Obama said this weekend in Brisbane, Australia, (even though Gruber was paid almost $400,000 by his administration, is the intellectual author of the individual mandate and met in the Oval Office with Obama and the head of the Congressional Budget Office to pore over the bill). “I don’t know who he is,” Nancy Pelosi declared on Capitol Hill (even though she repeatedly cited him by name during the Obamacare debate).

The reason Democrats are running from Gruber is the same reason conservatives should be thanking him: Gruber has exposed what liberals really think of the American people.

Read the rest here.

Thank You Mr. President

Walmart to End Health Coverage for 30,000

Second Appeals Court Supports Obamacare

Two same day rulings appear to directly contradict one another. Details here

Appeals Court Ruling a Blow to Obamacare

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government could not subsidize premiums for people in three dozen states that use the federal insurance exchange, a ruling that could upend President Obama’s health care law.

The 2-to-1 ruling could cut off financial assistance for more than 4.5 million people who were found eligible for subsidized insurance in the federal exchange, or marketplace.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the court said, subsidies are available only to people who obtained insurance through exchanges established by states.

Read the rest here.

A Company Liberals Could Love

FOR a generation now, liberals have bemoaned the disappearance of the socially conscious corporation, the boardroom devoted to the common good. Once, the story goes, America’s C.E.O.s recognized that they shared interests with workers and customers; once wages and working hours reflected more than just a zeal for profits. But then came Reagan, deregulation, hostile takeovers, and an era of solidarity gave way to the age of Gordon Gekko, from which there’s been no subsequent escape.

There are, however, exceptions: companies that still have a sense of business as a moral calling, which can be held up as examples to shame the bottom-liners.

One such company was hailed last year by the left-wing policy website Demos “for thumbing its nose at the conventional wisdom that success in the retail industry” requires paying “bargain-basement wages.” A retail chain with nearly 600 stores and 13,000 workers, this business sets its lowest full-time wage at $15 an hour, and raised wages steadily through the stagnant postrecession years. (Its do-gooder policies also include donating 10 percent of its profits to charity and giving all employees Sunday off.) And the chain is thriving commercially — offering, as Demos put it, a clear example of how “doing good for workers can also mean doing good for business.”

Of course I’m talking about Hobby Lobby, the Christian-owned craft store that’s currently playing the role of liberalism’s public enemy No. 1, for its successful suit against the Obama administration’s mandate requiring coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and potential abortifacients.

Read the rest here.

This thoughtful article has been getting a lot of attention on the blogosphere, but I thought I'd bump it for the benefit of anyone who missed it.

Supreme Court Backs Christian College on Contraception Sparking Sharp Dissent

The three female justices of the Supreme Court sharply rebuked their colleagues Thursday for siding with a Christian college in the latest battle over providing women with contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, saying the court was retreating from assurances offered only days ago.

In a short, unsigned opinion, the court said that Wheaton College in Illinois, at least temporarily, does not have to comply even with compromise provisions in the law that the college says still violate its religious beliefs.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the action cast doubt on the very accommodation the court’s majority seemed to endorse Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which concerned businesses that objected to providing birth control that offends the owners’ beliefs.

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” wrote Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. “Not so today.”

She said Thursday’s order “evinces disregard for even the newest of this court’s precedents and undermines confidence in this institution.”

Read the rest here.

Two More Big Wins from the Supreme Court

Unlike the two big ones from last week, today's decisions were not unanimous. But in a pair of 5-4 rulings the court limited the power of public sector unions to force non-members to pay union fees and also ruled in the much anticipated Hobby Lobby case that "closely held" private companies with a strong religious ethos cannot be compelled to pay for employee contraceptives.

The end of employer provided health insurance?

By 2020, about 90 percent of American workers who now receive health insurance through their employers will be shifted to government exchanges created by the health law, according to a projection by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm serving the financial industry.

Read the rest here.

Union officials say Obama betrayed them on health-care

Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections.

Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers.

Read the rest here.

Supreme Court Justice delays health law’s birth control mandate

WASHINGTON — Only hours before the law was to take effect, a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday blocked implementation of part of President Barack Obama’s health care law that would have forced some religion-affiliated organizations to provide health insurance for employees that includes birth control.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s decision came after a flurry of efforts by Catholic-affiliated groups from around the nation. Those groups had rushed to the federal courts to stop Wednesday’s start of portions of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Read the rest here.

You know you are in trouble when...

Even the NY Times has figured out your healthcare law is hurting one of the largest groups of Americans...

Ginger Chapman and her husband, Doug, are sitting on the health care cliff. 

The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their annual income of around $100,000 and more than they have ever paid before. 

Even more striking, for the Chapmans, is this fact: If they made just a few thousand dollars less a year — below $94,200 — their costs would be cut in half, because a family like theirs could qualify for federal subsidies. 

The Chapmans acknowledge that they are better off than many people, but they represent a little-understood reality of the Affordable Care Act. While the act clearly benefits those at the low end of the income scale — and rich people can continue to afford even the most generous plans — people like the Chapmans are caught in the uncomfortable middle: not poor enough for help, but not rich enough to be indifferent to cost.

“We are just right over that line,” said Ms. Chapman, who is 54 and does administrative work for a small wealth management firm. Because their plan is being canceled, she is looking for new coverage for her family, which includes Mr. Chapman, 55, a retired fireman who works on a friend’s farm, and her two sons. “That’s an insane amount of money,” she said of their new premium. “How are you supposed to pay that?” 

An analysis by The New York Times shows the cost of premiums for people who just miss qualifying for subsidies varies widely across the country and rises rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly approach 20 percent of a person’s income. 

Read the rest here.

Reflections on the Birth Control Mandate

Anti-Gnostic has some reflections up in response to this post. Among his observations...

Insurance is the pooling of risk of unanticipated casualties. Outside the rare event of rape, coitus is entirely voluntary. Thus, there is no way to "insure" birth control. The mandate is equivalent to requiring your homeowner's insurer to cover your gambling losses in Vegas. The only way to avoid moral hazard would be to charge you for the entire amount of your own money you're prepared to risk. So, premiums must rise to cover the cost of these purely voluntary outlays, er, expenses.

Read the rest here.

Supreme Court to Rule on Birth Control Mandate

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has agreed to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama’s health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.

The justices said Tuesday they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.

Read the rest here.

A lonely quest to embarrass Congress

This week, once again, Sen. David Vitter did not get his way.

On Wednesday, in a speech on a near-empty Senate floor, Vitter (R-La.) returned to a lonely quest that has obsessed him since September. He is unhappy — very unhappy — with the health insurance plans available to Congress’s staff.

The problem, Vitter says, is that those plans are too good.

Under the president’s health-care law, Congress and much of its staff are supposed to lose their old health plans and instead buy coverage on the “exchanges” set up for individual Americans. But Vitter says that they are slated to get improper help, including money from the federal government, and that special loopholes allow some to keep their old coverage.

Vitter wants that to stop.

And so he has embarked on an improbable mission: to persuade other legislators to take valued benefits away from the very staffers who write their speeches, guide their votes, answer their mail, and remind them of the birthdays of spouses and the names of Rotary Club presidents back home.

Read the rest here.

House approves plan to let some keep their health plans

The House approved a plan Friday permitting health insurance companies to continue selling policies that do not comply with the health-care law, a proposal that would allow more Americans to keep their current health plans while significantly weakening part of the Affordable Care Act.

Thirty-nine Democrats joined with the Republican majority in support of the “Keep Your Health Plan Act,” a proposal by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) that would allow insurance companies to keep selling health policies that do not reflect the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections.

Read the rest here.

Shamelessly stolen from here.

Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

Read the rest here.

Obamacare website costs approaching $300 million

The government contract for the company that built the glitch-prone website for Obamacare has ballooned to three times its original cost, and some Republicans are demanding the resignation of the cabinet secretary who oversees it.

Since its launch, on Oct. 1, the site has been plagued by crashes as Americans to try log on and enroll for health insurance. The Obama administration has conceded that the launch has been rockier than it had hoped.

The U.S. arm of a Canadian company, CGI, had the biggest role of the many contractors that worked on the rollout. It won the contract in October 2011. At the time, it had an estimated cost of up to $94 million. By May of this year, that cost ceiling had swelled to $292 million.

Read the rest here.

If the GOP had not gone off on their Thelma and Louise road trip they could have had a field day with stuff like this. They strike me as a party determined to always and everywhere seek new ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In the meantime, instead of wall to wall coverage of the train wreck that is Obamacare, all we are getting is endless discussion of how much the general public now loathes the GOP because of their idiotic efforts to hold the country, and to some degree the world, hostage to their political agenda.

Just wondering

Back in 2008, The One campaigned on a platform of health care reform. He pointed out, ad nauseum, that tens of millions of Americans had no health care insurance. Fair enough.

So why is it that five years and untold millions of dollars later, the Obama Administration appears not to have planned for the possibility that millions of people might try to sign up for this new insurance thingy? Seriously. Who did they hire to design their website? Was his last name Cruz?