For a few hours yesterday, the top link on the Drudge Report led to a YouTube video in which an Ohio woman said she's going to vote for President Obama because he gave her a phone. The woman is inarticulate and she speaks loudly, and on top of those things she's black. Basically, she is exactly the kind of person many on the right envision—wrongly, it should be said—when they think of who is guzzling from the government teat these days. That she was bragging about Obama giving "every minority in Cleveland" luxuries like cell phones was just the icing on the cake.
Of course, it turns out that the "Obamaphone" brouhaha was, to put it mildly, a wee bit exaggerated (and the program was actually started by Ronald Reagan):
However, I also noted that the graph included by Gallup makes the drop look more dramatic than it really is, by not including the entire picture. I whipped up my own version which starts at 0% to give a more accurate representation; here they are again:
Nearly 12 million people signed up for health coverage plans on exchanges created under Obamacare, according to the website ACAsignups.net. [ed: hey, that's me!!]
But more than half of the adults who bought such plans had deductibles of $1,500 or more, Families USA, a Washington nonprofit organization focused on health care, found. Adeductible is the cumulative amount a person has to spend on health care before his or her insurance company starts to pay. Despite receiving tax credits to help offset the cost of coverage, these deductibles were prohibitively expensive.
In addition, NJ FamilyCare – the state’s primary Medicaid coverage program -- has added 463,463 residents to its rolls since December 2013, including 42,947 in April.
The fact that 9% of the net increase happend 16 months after the Medicaid expansion provision started is surprising to me, consideirng that according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only around 390,000 uninsured NJ residents were even eligible for the program as of last fall to begin with. In other states, like Michigan, things have pretty much plateaued as every eligible resident has pretty much been enrolled already.
I don't post about the state of Maine very often, and given that their Governor is an utter nutbag that's usually a good thing. Tonight, however, I'm happy to report that at least 2 of the 34 states at risk of losing their federal tax credits in the event of a King v. Burwell plaintiff win next month are seriously prepping to "establish" a state-based exchange if need be (Pennsylvania is the other one):
In a unanimous vote, the Legislature’s Insurance and Financial Services Committee endorsed the effort to maintain the health insurance premium subsidies that are offered as tax credits through the Affordable Care Act. Those credits are being challenged in a federal lawsuit known as King v. Burwell, which the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide next month.
Right off the bat, I want to clarify that I might have misread some of the numbers here; while some states provide the per-company average rate change requests in a nice, simple table format, I had to wade through a mountain of forms at the SERFF Filing Access Database to hunt all of these down, and there seems to be little consistency from company to company about the formatting of the documentation, etc etc. It's possible that I've confused a Small Group filing for an Individual one, for instance, and I may have misunderstood the current enrollment number for one or two companies. Finally, in one case (Physicians Health Plan), their 2016 rate request seems to have been redacted for some reason. Fortunately, they only appear to have around 600 enrollees anyway, which means any change in their rates would barely move the state-wide needle at all anyway.
With those caveats out of the way, assuming I have these numbers straight, here's what it looks like...and remember, these are requested changes only; they still have to be approved:
The California ACA exchange, CoveredCA, released their 2016 budget today, and the outlook is...well, kind of underwhelming, frankly:
After using most of $1 billion in federal start-up money, California's Obamacare exchange is preparing to go on a diet.
That financial reality is reflected in Covered California's proposed budget, released Wednesday, as well as a reduced forecast calling for 2016 enrollment of fewer than 1.5 million people.
The recalibration comes after tepid enrollment growth for California during the second year of the Affordable Care Act. The state ended open enrollment in February with 1.4 million people signed up, far short of its goal of 1.7 million.
A number of factors contributed to the shortfall, but health policy experts said that some uninsured folks still find health insurance unaffordable despite the health law's premium subsidies.
Yesterday I posted a rather scathing entry about Mr. Luis Lang of South Carolina, followed by another one about the hundreds of almost entirely liberal / progressive-leaning donors (including myself) who have, as of this writing, ponied up over $12,000 to save him from going blind due to a combination of his own irresponsibility and his political party's decision to throw nearly 180,000 SC residents--including himself--under the bus.
Today, Mr. Lang has responded to all the hubbub...mostly (emphasis mine):
First of all I would like to thank ALL of the wonderful people that have donated to help me in my time of need. And I do mean everybody. When I started this I never meant it to became a political war. I am a honest person and I have to give a big thumbs up to the liberal side. Even though you have crucified me in your comments but you spoke with your heart with the donations. I respect everybody opinion whether I agree with you or not. That is why we live in the U.S.A. home of the free and free speech. As far as the conservative side I wish they would step up to the plate and do there part. Again thank you all and i will be posting updates with my condition.
sorry one last thing I have to hand it to the liberal side you sure do know how to get the word out when you dislike something. I say shame on the conservative bloggers for resting on there laurels.
As one of those who coughed up a few bucks to bail him out of his self-created mess, here's what I have to say to Mr. Lang:
(ok, not much of an article here, I mainly linked to it as an excuse to jot down a note: The exchange market share breakout in Wyoming is roughly 9,500 via WINHealth & 10,500 via BCBSWY).
The Connect for Health Colorado staff has recommended more than doubling the fee that insurers pay on each policy purchased on the exchange — a charge that is passed on to consumers.
The state marketplace would increase the carrier fee from 1.4 percent to at least 3.5 percent of the premium charged on exchange health plans — the same rate charged through the federal exchange, under the recommendation made Monday.
For a consumer holding a $4,000-a-year health plan, the increase would be $84 a year. The estimated increase in revenue for the exchange would be about $5.8 million.
