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What Aetna’s Decision To Leave Obamacare Proves

Posted on May 15, 2017 in Economic Liberty, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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What Aetna’s Decision To Leave Obamacare Proves

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

When it comes to government policies, we seldom see initiatives looking into undoing what has been done.

AetnaAs the health care bill supported by President Donald Trump makes its way to the Senate after being passed by the House of Representatives, many remind the public that the bill isn’t ideal. Not because it doesn’t bring a complete end to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as we know it. But instead, critics suggest that the new proposals simply do not go far enough by not bringing an end to the federal government’s involvement with the health insurance business.

Government officials have, for the most part, created a rise in health care costs by trying to address the consequences of their policies by enacting more restrictions and regulations.

By selectively intervening in the health care market, government generates more unanticipated difficulties, as economist Ludwig von Mises once wrote. As politicians are pressed to “do something” to address the issues brought up by intervention, they come up with new interventionist policies, thus never bringing an end government’s involvement in the business of providing care.

A perfect example of an unintended consequence caused by further meddling with the health insurance industry is Aetna’s recent decision to pull out completely from the Obamacare individual market for 2018.

According to the company, its participation in the Obamacare exchange is costing them money. More precisely, the company is projected to lose around $225 million this year. In 2014 through 2016, Aetna lost $700 million from its exchange plan businesses.

Some of the issues that have been to blame for these losses include a poor balance between sick and healthy customers purchasing plans through the exchange. As a result, premium rates have gone up 25 percent this year, forcing more Americans to remain uninsured, proving that every time the government gets involved with health policy, it stifles choice, hurting those who need the care the most: the patient.

Another problem caused by government’s requirements concerning mandatory insurance purchase is the lack of access to actual care.

As the insured notice that it becomes ever more expensive to have access to doctors because of the high co-pays, they fail to seek the care they require.

Seeing this trend and feeling the pressure to see more patients for less cash, many doctors have decided to skip the nightmare altogether by leaving the insurance market and by offering personalized care instead. The movement has prompted a series of doctors to turn to direct primary care for the solution, offering patients care in privately-run clinics in exchange for a monthly payment that often pales in comparison to what an individual would pay an insurance company.

By saying no to insurers, these doctors and patients are also saying no to suffocating regulations.

Perhaps, if more of these businesses are launched, health insurance companies as we know them will become obsolete, forcing the government to finally step away from messing with healthcare policy altogether.

Montana to Remove Middle Man, Liberating the Market from Obamacare

Posted on January 30, 2017 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Montana to Remove Middle Man, Liberating the Market from Obamacare

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Health care has been a hot button issue for years. Ever since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — also known as Obamacare — a greater number of doctors have been opting to exit the system altogether, while patients have increasingly run away from insurance providers, opting to join health sharing ministries instead. While many hoped for a reversal of the law once a Republican president took office, any reform could take months and perhaps even years to be completed. Instead of waiting for the federal government to remove hurdles so that the healthcare market can promote competition, thus making care affordable and available to all, some states are acting unilaterally, attempting to pass their own laws nullifying the federal control over the healthcare market.

ObamacareIn early January, Montana’s Sen. Cary Smith, a Republican from Billings, introduced Senate Bill 100. The bill establishes that primary care agreements would not be considered insurance in the state, allowing doctors and patients to set their own agreements and freeing them from meeting onerous demands and regulations.

With this bill, patients would be able to have the care they need without paying through the nose with insurance. Considering monthly premiums have been increasingly dramatically over the past few years due to the burdensome regulations imposed by federal law, this could help countless low-income Montana residents to stay healthy without having to break the bank.

If the bill is signed into law, it would also create a structure that would allow the state government to regulate direct primary care provider agreements.

While this particular move isn’t exactly “freeing,” the first portion of the bill allowing doctors and patients to set up their own agreement could help to undermine federal control over health care law, giving locals a much needed break from costly insurance deals.

Furthermore, this bill would minimize costs for the doctors, since the third party payer would be removed from the equation. Allowing the medical retainer agreement deal to come to fruition would also allow the patient to pay the physician directly for routine exams and care monthly. Through their agreement, exams or treatments would cost nothing extra. Without an insurance company standing between the patient and the doctor, the patient would also have access to better care, since the relationship between the two parties would be more personal. An issue that has been damaging the quality of care across the board.

According to Tenth Amendment’s Mike Maharrey, this solution provides the type of cost control promised by the past administration with the passage of ACA. While the health care law failed to deliver on its promises, Montana residents could finally see the cost control they want if this bill is signed into law.

SB100 is now set to move to the House for consideration, where a committee will have to pass it by a majority vote before the full House can vote on the measure.

Health Withers As Bureaucracy Devours Physicians’ Working Hours

Posted on December 19, 2016 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Health Withers As Bureaucracy Devours Physicians’ Working Hours

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

The passage of the Affordable Care Act did not represent the death of free market healthcare in America. I was just the last nail in the coffin.

healthcare-1Health care services and their consumers have been hurting ever since the United States government initiated its policy of industry regulation. With the inclusion of so many requirements and mandates, the common physician saw his options vanish. And as a result, the cost of having access to skilled physicians shoot up. Seeing the crisis this vicious cycle created, lawmakers saw yet another opportunity to act, passing a cluster of laws designed to fight “abuse” called The Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare.

The goal behind ACA may have been to protect the consumer from unfair costs, but the result is nothing short of disappointing. Instead of keeping the cost of health care low, Obamacare artificially increased the cost of doing business to the insurance and healthcare industries.

What’s worse, ACA lowered standards of care as a result.

As physicians find themselves buried in paperwork, they lack the time to dedicate to their craft. Who suffers? The patient.

According to a study published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine (http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2546704), doctors spend two additional hours on paperwork for every patient they see.

While this is certainly one of the few studies into the subject, it isn’t the first time physicians noticed a problem with the increasing bureaucracy associated with practicing medicine.

In 2005, Hames Sanders, MD wrote that, “As physicians, we are inundated with paperwork in every area of medical practice.”

Due to the time spent on bureaucracy, Sanders continued, the “time and money we desperately need for patient care” is gone. And while physicians “moan and groan about federal and state regulations that are responsible for much of our paperwork burden,” Sanders accused he and his colleagues of having “succumbed to a system that produces more.”

Despite some of their best efforts, things have only gone worse, with physicians now spending 49.2 percent of their time outside of the examination room, and 37 percent of their time in the room with the patient doing paperwork.

With President-elect Donald Trump and his administration showing signs they may not put an end to the Affordable Care Act, we might have to continue experiencing the same problems for 4 more years.

ACA’s Medicaid Expansion: Not Good for Your Health

Posted on October 22, 2016 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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ACA’s Medicaid Expansion: Not Good for Your Health

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In 2010, just a few weeks before Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama said that taxpayers “end up subsidizing the uninsured when they’re forced to go to the emergency room for care…. You can’t get … savings if those people are still going to the emergency room.”

healthcarePart of what the current administration’s signature health law was supposed to do was to increase cost savings so visits to the ER weren’t as common. After helping to pass the law, then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi claimed that “the uninsured will get coverage [so they are] no longer [being] left to the emergency room for medical care.”

Six years have passed since those who supported ACA and its main provisions promised to bring the number of ER visits down and yet, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that assuming ACA would lower the number of ER visits was a mistake.

With the expansion of Medicaid in states like Oregon, ER visits increased. But the increase is not the only consequence of Medicaid expansion. When compared to 2015, this year’s Medicaid expansion spending is 49 percent higher per enrollee than what government had expected.

In order to expand Medicaid in Oregon, officials used lottery to expand Medicaid benefits to a limited number of lower income, non-disabled adults.

According to the study’s authors, “Medicaid’s value to recipients is lower than the government’s costs of the program, and usually substantially below,” perhaps because, researchers found, expanded Medicaid coverage “resulted in significantly more outpatient visits, hospitalizations, prescription medications, and emergency department visits.”

When it comes to how Medicaid expansion pushed individuals to the ER, researchers explain that, during the past 15 months, Medicaid increased ER visits by 40 percent.

Researchers found that even if patients have Medicaid, there’s “no evidence that Medicaid coverage makes use of the physician’s office and use of ERs substitutes for one another.”

What many choose to forget is that Medicaid expansion was made possible because of ACA. And according to the government’s own projections, each Medicaid enrollee cost the taxpayer roughly $6.366 in 2015, 49 percent higher than past predictions. This cost spike is mostly due to the fact the federal government reimburses 100 percent of state spending on enrollees who were added after the expansion was launched.

When ACA became law, states were given enough incentives to pay insurance companies high payment rates so new enrollees were cared for, but the high payment rates could only be covered by the federal taxpayer. Since many physicians are leaving the system altogether, preferring to not accept new Medicaid enrollees due to lower rates, patients continued to use ER at a high rate, even higher than years past. So coverage, in this case specifically, did nothing to help patients in need. The result is higher cost to the taxpayer. Instead of making people healthier and helping individuals who are unable to afford medical care, researchers found that the result has been the exact opposite, invalidating ACA apologists.

Will they continue to ignore these results?

ACA Health Coverage Approval Drops, Experts Blame Mandates

Posted on June 14, 2016 in Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Advocates HQ Comments are off
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ACA Health Coverage Approval Drops, Experts Blame Mandates

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

After Goldman Sachs confirmed that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate is leading to a rise in involuntary part-time employment, Obamacare continues to make the news nationwide, but not because the current administration has achieved its goals. Instead, Mercatus Center’s Bin Blase argues, Obamacare is in all over the news again for getting people very angry.

healthcareAccording to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest survey, Affordable Care Act enrollees are increasingly unhappy with their coverage. The study used data collected from 671 enrollees who purchased individual market plans compliant with the Affordable Care Act’s mandates.

In an article for Forbes, Blase explains that as insurers either announce they are leaving the market or are planning on increasing premiums next year, consumer confidence tanks.

Instead of helping the group of people it intended to help, Blase argues, the overall unhappiness with ACA shows federal policy must change dramatically if the administration is serious about helping members of the middle- and low-income classes.

Unfortunately, things might not change until Congress—or the next administration—comes up with a new policy. After all, unhappiness with ACA is nothing new.

Between 2014 and 2015, consumers noticed a sharp increase in premiums and deductibles for 2016 policies, Blase explained. But as the cost of remaining insured increased, consumer choice also suffered as available plans started covering fewer doctors and hospitals.

According to the surveys carried out by the Kaiser Family foundation over the years, the percentage of enrollees rating their coverage as “not so good” or “poor” went from 20 percent in 2015 to 31 percent in 2016. Among those who are less satisfied with their plans, a greater number of insured with high deductible policies appear less satisfied with ACA plans than those with low deductible policies. In this latest poll, at least 45 percent responded that they feel vulnerable to high medical bills while in 2015, only 38 percent felt the same way.

The survey also discovered that, in 2015, 55 percent of respondents rated their insurance as a “good” or “excellent” value while in 2016, only 45 percent claimed the same. As Mercatus Center’s Blase pointed out, a large majority of individuals with ACA coverage receive subsidies to help them pay lower premium shares and yet, even more people say their coverage provides poor value. Perhaps, Blase wrote for Forbes, that proves that the “numerous requirements placed on individual market covered by ACA” are pushing the cost of insurance up. Instead of helping, what ACA has accomplished was to make insurance less affordable.

With fewer ACA enrollees actually approving of their insurance plans and the overall quality of their coverage, it’s hard to understand comments made recently by progressive magazine Mother Jones, that claims that Obamacare “is doing great.” Maybe consumer satisfaction means nothing to them.​

White House Sacks the Treasury in the Name of Corporate Welfare

Posted on February 24, 2016 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Taxes by Alice Salles Comments are off
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White House Sacks the Treasury in the Name of Corporate Welfare

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Friday, one day before the President’s day holiday weekend, the Barack Obama Administration announced that $7.7 billion of taxpayer dollars would be allocated to Affordable Care Act insurers through the law’s reinsurance program.

From the Americans for Tax Reform website:

“For 2015 Obamacare reinsurance, the administration will pay out $6 billion raised from a fee on private health insurance and an additional $1.7 billion that under federal law belongs to the Treasury department.”

Seal According to pro-taxpayer organization, at least $1.7 billion of the $7.7 being used to cover insurers is being funneled illegally.

Doug Badger of the Galen Institute explains that ACA’s reinsurance program works by silently taxing every individual in America with health insurance. In 2015 and 2016, each individual with insurance is being allegedly taxed a total of $107. According to Badger, the program is designed to “prop up insurers that have agreed to sell Obamacare policies in the individual market.”

While the administration continues to claim that ACA is working, insurers that participate are losing money. But since the reinsurance program exists to cover the losses of the insurers, the administration seems to think keeping corporations happy with the deal is more important than following the law.

With the failure of the system, and with a growing number of consumers referring to alternative methods to have access to care, the administration is having to get creative.

According to the New York Post, not one dollar out of the $7.7 billion being promised to insurers should be taken from the Treasury under ACA law.

From the New York Post:

“The law states a fixed share ‘shall be deposited into the general fund of the Treasury of the United States and may not be used’ to offset insurance companies’ losses.

But the administration gave all of it to the insurance companies last year, and got away with that heist. So now they’re trying it again.”

While the administration projected it would be raising $12 billion for the ACA reinsurance program in 2014, it was $2 billion short. In order to handle the situation, the administration decided to keep the money from the Treasury, using it instead to hand it over to the participating companies.

The administration isn’t a stranger to this type of move. According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, at least $8.5 billion in taxpayer money has already been illegally funneled to ACA’s corporate welfare programs.

Another initiative designed to shield insurers enshrined in ACA also seeks to secure the investment of insurers. The initiative is known as the Risk Corridor program, and it has also been tied to scandals in the past.

In 2014, insurers requested $2.87 billion in “risk corridors” payments, but the administration only offered 12.6 percent of that value.

The risk corridor program works by redistributing funds from insurers that make money with the Obamacare exchange to insurers that don’t. Not knowing how sick their customers were going to be due to the new healthcare law and its mandates, insurers were not being able to set premiums realistically, making it hard for companies to turn a profit.

Despite falling short on the risk corridor payments, the administration decided to bail out insurers that weren’t making money off the exchanges last year. ACA chief Andy Slavitt, who’s also the former Vice-President for United Health, made the announcement in December of 2015, saying the federal government was going to bail out insurers and offer them the amount they had previously asked. Later, however, Congress blocked the $2.5 billion “risk corridor” payment. The effort was championed by several conservative and libertarian organizations that came together to urge Congress to act.

If nothing is done this time around, taxpayers will have to foot the bill and cover the $7.7 billion the administration has vowed

ACA’s Bureaucratic Requirements Force Patients to Lose Access to Care

Posted on February 16, 2016 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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 ACA’s Bureaucratic Requirements Force Patients to Lose Access to Care

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

The Affordable Care Act has become a joke among conservatives and libertarians.

Since the passing of the law, mandates concerning enrollment requirements pushed the cost of health care up, forcing countless to not only find themselves uncovered, but also unable to have access to the care they had before Obamacare.

DoctorWhile the overregulation of health care in America is nothing new, ACA accelerated a process that was well under way before President Barack Obama took office. Unfortunately, officials didn’t pay attention to the market signals. What the current administration decided to do instead was to focus on pushing laws based on hopes and aspirations, ignoring the potential consequences.

The story of Walt Whitlow is the perfect example of why politicians should always consider the short and long-term consequences of their policies.

According to the Associated Press, Whitlow was under treatment for cancer when he learned that his financial assistance had gotten slashed under ACA. With a premium costing four times what it cost prior to the passing of the new health care law, his deductible went from $900 to $4,600.

Patient Ana Granado also suffered due to the bureaucratic nature of the law.

Granado had undergone a breast cancer surgery and was waiting to undergo breast reconstruction procedures when she was notified that her coverage had been canceled. Under ACA’s new rules, her immigration status became an issue, which forced her insurer to drop her. While lawyers were able to resolve the issue promptly, her financial assistance for premiums were suspended.

Under ACA, Lynn Herrin’s tax credits for premiums were also questioned by the IRS, forcing her to pay $700 to the taxman. Having issues to find a doctor, Herrin decided to cancel her plan, which left her without any assistance when she later found out she had oral and neck cancer.

As countless Americans and residents ditch their plans or pay more for their previously affordable plans because of complex paperwork requirements, many believe that the law was never written to make health care access affordable.

By adding more roadblocks and mandates, ACA forced many Americans to rely on the government for subsidies so they can afford health care. Under a free market system, they would be dealing directly with insurers and providers instead.

By making the cost of insurance an issue, the federal government created a monster that costs the taxpayers and leaves millions of patients without access to quality care when they need it the most.

Currently, 12.7 million people are covered thanks to subsidies created by ACA. But about 470,000 people had their coverage terminated through September 30, 2015 because of complex paperwork requirements. Another 1 million of households had their financial assistance “adjusted” due to what the government calls “income discrepancies.”

By making the process more bureaucratic than it should be, ACA forced countless of consumers to rely on the government for health care. Elizabeth Colvin of Foundation Communities says people have been panicking when they “get that bill for a full-price plan.” This issue is undermining ACA’s insurance markets, simply because the cost to obtain coverage through the government is too high.

As more and more Americans look for alternative ways to have access to health care, the future of ACA is uncertain. Will the next administration take these matters into account when thinking about reforming US health care law?

State of The Union Address: What this Administration Got Wrong About Obamacare

Posted on January 20, 2016 in Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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State of The Union Address: What this Administration Got Wrong About Obamacare

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During President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, this administration’s signature healthcare law was seldom brought up. As a matter of fact, little time was dedicated to healthcare overall. But the few references to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been mostly ignored, suggesting that little to no attention is dedicated to healthcare law as the media focuses on the 2016 presidential election.

But to Brian Blase, Senior Research Fellow with the Spending and Budget Initiative at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the administration’s claims deserve a second look.

In an article for Forbes, Blase looks at how the current programs are performing. With the hopes of helping Americans have a better understanding of ACA and its consequences, the scholar analyses the administration’s claims and reports on his findings.

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According to the current administration, ACA was designed to fill “the gaps in employer-based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business, you’ll still have coverage.” To Blase, however, things aren’t that simple.

If the administration had made the portability of coverage a main priority, the law would not have to be as complex as it is.

Blase also argues that portability as a main goal would have prompted a piece of legislation that would have attracted considerable bipartisan support. Why? Because most healthcare experts on the right and center have always advocated for increased portability, urging lawmakers to severe the ties between insurance and employment.

To Blase, the primary purpose of ACA couldn’t be to keep Americans covered through the several changes they experience if the law standardizes health insurance and ups the requirements concerning coverage levels. By implementing a complicated tax and subsidy system to support ACA, the Obama administration forced consumers to fall prey to distorting price controls that make insurance coverage actually less affordable.

If the administration’s main goal with ACA was to keep people covered no matter what, the law wouldn’t also have been written in a way that increases gross premiums so radically, making low-income earners less likely to get good coverage.

While Blase spent a good deal of time focusing on this particular claim, another subject also caught his eye.

During the address, president Obama claimed that ACA has helped businesses to create jobs, not eliminate them. To Blase, this particular claim is troubling mostly because it’s not necessarily wrong. It’s misleading instead.

Claiming jobs were created because of the enaction of ACA is not a fact, since job growth naturally increased after the deep economic recession the country had just been recovering from when ACA became the law of the land. During the recession, millions of people were kicked out of their jobs, but as confidence grew, more jobs were inevitably created. That’s just a natural consequence of the labor market dynamics and is not at all connected to the enactment of ACA.

If the current administration is, indeed, concerned with how its healthcare programs are performing, Blase suggests, its review of ACA would lead to its repeal. Why? Because ACA is actually a negative pull on the economy.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, ACA will actually shrink the labor market in America. If the congressional projection is correct, two million full-time jobs will be lost due to ACA alone.

Increasing Costs Tied to Obamacare Make Healthcare Ministries More Appealing Than Insurance Providers

Posted on January 4, 2016 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Increasing Costs Tied to Obamacare Make Healthcare Ministries More Appealing Than Insurance Providers

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As the country is distracted by the presidential election, issues that aren’t getting as much air time as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton become a side show.

With reports concerning the ineffectiveness of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, hitting the news but being ignored by major news channels, crusaders take it to the Internet to discredit Obamacare critics. As new reports argue that Americans are fed up, smaller publications seek to downplay some of the fears brought up by conservatives and libertarians all along. When faced with evidence that shows ACA is making healthcare less affordable, will these pro-Obamacare crusaders back down?

Health Care

Exactly two days before Christmas, the New York Magazine ran an article tailored to take conservative-leaning Americans to task. The subject? One of the left’s most adored achievements (and one of the right’s biggest, and most disputed, creations): Obamacare.

According to Jonathan Chait, the author, the NY Mag piece was conceived in order to debunk arguments presented by Ross Douthat, who wrote a column on Obamacare for New York Times earlier that same week.

While the piece discusses the number of covered Americans before and after the enactment of Obamacare and other points made by Douthat, it’s when Chait focuses on the cost of healthcare before and after the enactment of ACA that things get interesting.

In the NY Mag piece, Chait introduces a seemingly detailed blueprint of how ACA has bent the overall healthcare cost to the average consumer. Yet he ignores actual evidence proving that no, Obamacare hasn’t helped to keep the cost of healthcare low. As a matter of fact, the constant meddling with the insurance business and the healthcare industry in the past has done nothing but to increase the overall cost of health care. Now, those who lost their previous plans and who are unable to sign up for insurance after Obamacare went into full force are being cornered. As a result, they are choosing to pay the IRS fee instead of getting coverage.

Even those who supported President Barack Obama’s signature law are getting desperate.

But as a number of consumers lose their hope, a report recently published by the Wall Street Journal shows that things might have just gotten worse.

According to the WSJ, the cost of health insurance is such a heavy burden for those who lost their insurance plans after ACA became the law of the land that many consumers are now turning to healthcare ministries to cover their medical expenses.

That’s right. Health insurance costs are so out of control that consumers are turning to ministries, which operate outside the insurance system, in order to get access to the health care they need.

Instead of functioning as an insurance provider, these ministries provide health care cost-sharing arrangements to those who share the same religious beliefs.

Ministries now count with about 500,000 members nationwide thanks to ACA. Previous to the law, there were about 200,000 members enrolled in the system. But things could get crowded soon, making it hard for ministries to take in more members.

While ACA gives these ministries an exception to the law, only groups that have operated continuously since at least December 31, 1999 are eligible. Without the possibility of expanding the number of participating ministries, helping those in need could become too heavy of a burden.

When the exception was added to the law, it hoped to satisfy a relatively small number of groups that argued that nonparticipation was a matter of religious freedom. Now, ministries are being sought after as a matter of survival. And as ministries become crowded, insurance commissioners begin to complain, claiming these groups operating outside ACA are hurting consumers.

But with ministries costing about 30 percent less than private insurance, consumers who choose the more affordable path can’t be blamed for taking the easier way out.

Claiming to have the consumer’s best interest at heart, insurance commissioners from Kentucky, Washington, and Oklahoma have, in the past, decided to take action against ministries in their states. Thankfully, legislatures blocked the efforts. But as the cost of care continues to grow and the number of uninsured only shrinks because of the threat associated with non-compliance, other states may attempt to put an end to faith-based healthcare providers again, hurting thousands of consumers if they succeed.

In light of this report, will NY Mag’s Chait finally agree that Obamacare is making healthcare less affordable? Probably not. Nevertheless, ministries may have to fight yet another battle to stay open if membership growth remains steady.

Two More ACA Cooperatives Go Down in Flames

Posted on October 20, 2015 in Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Jackson Jones Comments are off
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Two More ACA Cooperatives Go Down in Flames

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Just last week, the Advocates noted the Kentucky Health Cooperative announced that it would close at the end of the year. At the time, the cooperative, which was set up under the Affordable Care Act, was the six to shutter because of financial problems.

cooperativeSince last week, however, two more cooperatives – Connect for Health Colorado and Oregon’s Health CO-OP – have been forced to close, bringing the grand total to eight. Roughly 400,000 people are now without coverage because of the failures. As the Washington Post explained on Friday, “Nearly a third of the innovative health insurance plans created under the Affordable Care Act will be out of business at the end of 2015.

Like other cooperatives, Connect for Health Colorado and Oregon’s Health CO-OP faced significant financial troubles. According to a July 2015 report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, Connect for Health Colorado lost $23 million in 2014 and Oregon’s Health CO-OP lost more than $6.7 million.

Cooperatives were supposed to be the big compromise for Democrats who wanted a single-payer program – the so-called “public option” – to compete with private health insurance companies.

“Markets have…been disrupted by a cascade of failures among the ACA co-ops that were intended as a liberal insurance utopia,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “These plans were seeded with billions of dollars in federal start-up loans and were supposed to work like the credit unions or the electric collectives of the Depression era.”

“No profits were allowed, advertising to introduce new products was restricted and industry executives were barred from management. As it turns out, attempting to outlaw expertise and incentives tends not to produce good results,” the paper added.

Indeed, just before the announcement, Oregon’s Health CO-OP CEO Phil Jackson tried to explain an average premium increase of nearly 20 percent. “Nobody knew what it was going to cost to provide insurance benefits on the exchange,”Jackson said. Yeah, it’s such a big surprise that costly health plans with mandated benefits that people may not want or need would attract too few healthy consumers and wind up requiring big premium hikes. Which is exactly what has happened in state after state.

With the next ACA open enrollment period set to begin on November 1, one of the key components of the law is faltering. It’s just a matter of time when the rest of it collapses. The only question is whether it’ll take the health insurance industry with it.

Kentucky ObamaCare Cooperative Will Close

Posted on October 13, 2015 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Jackson Jones Comments are off
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Kentucky ObamaCare Cooperative Will Close

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Kentucky’s health insurance cooperative will close by the end of the year, leaving approximately 51,000 looking for coverage from other insurers that offer plans on the state’s insurance exchange. The Kentucky Health Cooperative is the latest of its kind to close down due to financial difficulties.

Health Care

Nonprofit insurance cooperatives are an integral part of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” But this type of health insurance provider has hit significant snags. According to a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, 21 of the 23 cooperatives created under the 2010 health insurance reform law are losing money and 13 aren’t meeting enrollment projections.

The report revealed that 21 cooperatives have lost $382 million combined. The Kentucky Health Cooperative ran the largest deficit, losing more than $50 million. Cooperatives were meant to compete on the exchanges with private health insurance. They were a compromise when leftists in Congress were unable to get the so-called “public option,” or single-payer, included in the Affordable Care Act.

The Kentucky Health Cooperative decided to shutter after finding out that it would receive a smaller than expected payout from the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors” program, according to The Hill. This program provides health insurers with payouts to cover some of the losses they incur for plans available on the exchange.

“It is with sadness that we announce this decision,” Kentucky Health Cooperative Interim CEO Glenn Jennings said in a release. “This very difficult choice was made after much deliberation. If there were a way to avoid it and simultaneously do right by the members, providers and all others that we serve, we would do so.”

“In plainest language, things have come up short of where they need to be,” he added.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reacted to the news by noting that the closure of his home state’s cooperative is a sign of deeper problems with the Affordable Care Act.

“Barely a week goes by that we don’t see another harmful consequence of this poorly conceived, badly executed law,” McConnell said on Friday. “Despite repeated Obama administration bailout attempts, this is the latest in a string of broken promises with real consequences for the people of Kentucky who may now be losing the health insurance they had and liked twice within the past three years because of Obamacare’s failures.”

Five cooperatives have closed, including Kentucky’s. Others include New York’s Health Republican Insurance and the joint venture for Iowa and Nebraska, CoOpportunity.

They Said It… With Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Jonathan Gruber, and More

Posted on November 18, 2014 in Liberator Online by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(From the They Said It section in Volume 19, No. 21 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

RE-LEGALIZE MARIJUANA, SAYS GOP CONGRESSMAN:
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher“The fundamental principles are individual liberty, which Republicans have always talked about; limited government, which Republicans have always talked about; the doctor-patient relationship, which, of course, we have been stressing a lot about lately; and of course, states’ rights. … It is counterproductive to the people of this country to have our limited resources — we’re $500 billion in debt every year — to put in jail someone who is smoking a weed in their back yard, or especially for medical purposes. It is a total waste of resources. … To my fellow Republicans, this is going to help you politically. If I can’t appeal to you on your philosophical nature, come on over for just raw politics, the numbers are going this way now.” — U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), former Reagan press secretary and speech writer, quoted in the Washington Post November 14, 2014.

OBAMACARE PASSED BECAUSE AMERICANS ARE “STUPID,” SAYS OBAMACARE Jonathan GruberCRAFTER:
“If you have a law that makes explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it wouldn’t have passed. … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.” — Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, who was paid nearly half a million dollars to help craft Obamacare, in a 2013 video that surfaced this month.

WHERE IS THE ANTI-WAR LEFT? “Hundreds of airstrikes, over 3,000 soldiers deployed, and a request for $5.6 billion is a war, folks. Had President Mitt Romney just doubled our military presence in the Middle East and launched airstrikes that even the Kurds and the Free Syrian Army have criticized, the reaction would have been entirely different from liberals throughout the country. We once again have over 3,000 American boots on the ground in Iraq (without a peep from the anti-war left)…” — journalist H. A. Goodman, “I’m a Liberal Democrat. I’m Voting for Rand Paul in 2016. Here Is Why,” Huffington Post, Nov. 17, 2014.

YET ANOTHER DUMB WAR: “For most of this century, we’ve been fighting wars to enhance our security, and each time, we find ourselves with more enemies and less security. By now it should be clear that is not a coincidence.”— syndicated columnist Steve Chapman, “The U.S. Goes to War Without a Clue, Again,” November 6, 2014.

Video: Coffeecare —The Affordable Coffee Act

Posted on February 27, 2014 in Healthcare, Liberator Online by James W. Harris Comments are off
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You know how you buy a cup of coffee. You just go into the store, ask for what you want, and pay. End of story.

But… What if we had to buy our coffee like the government is now forcing us to buy health insurance? What if, like Obamacare, we had… Coffeecare?

This scathing and very funny animated video by RealityAlwaysWins show us. The result is a lot of laughs and a thorough indictment of the bitter brew that is Obamacare. All in just three and a half short and funny minutes.

Share it online with friends. It will open their eyes and let them smell… the Coffeecare.

Gallup Poll: Nearly 3 in 4 Americans Say “Big Government Is Our Greatest Threat”

Posted on January 7, 2014 in Liberator Online by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 1 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

For nearly 50 years Gallup has polled the American public on this question: “In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future — big business, big labor, or big government?”

In mid-December Gallup announced this year’s result: Fully 72 percent of Americans now say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. than either big business or big labor.

That’s an all-time record — and by a sizeable margin.

A majority of Americans have always chosen “big government” when asked this question. But the 72% choice of big government as the biggest threat is the largest ever, far surpassing the prior record of 65% in 1999 and 2000.

(For comparison, when the poll was first taken in 1965, only 35% of Americans thought big government was the greatest threat.)

This year just 21% named big business as the greatest threat, and only 5%, a record low, said big labor.

Further, the response is consistent across party lines. Gallup notes: “Each party group currently rates big government as the greatest threat to the country, including a record-high 92% of Republicans and 71% of independents, as well as 56% of Democrats.”

Concludes Gallup: “This suggests that government policies specific to the period, such as the Affordable Care Act — perhaps coupled with recent revelations of government spying tactics by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — may be factors.

“Americans have consistently viewed big government as a greater threat to the United States than either big business or big labor, but never more than they do now. That may be partly a reaction to an administration that favors the use of government to solve problems. Also, the revelation of widespread government monitoring of U.S. Internet activity may be a factor in raising Americans’ concern about the government. …

“In the future, Americans likely will continue to view big government as the greatest threat of the three, partly because of Republicans’ reluctance to rely on government to solve problems, and because Democrats and independents are also inclined to view big government as a greater threat than big business or big labor.”