Tag Archives: Enrollments

News

House Committee: only 67 percent of Obamacare enrollees have paid premiums

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From The Weekly Standard.

Excerpt:

Only two-thirds of the eight million enrollees into new health insurance plans as mandated by the Affordable Care Act have paid their first month’s premium as of April 15, according to a report from the House Energy and Commerce committee.

Here’s an excerpt from the committee’s statement:

Data provided to the committee by every insurance provider in the health care law’s Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) shows that, as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process. Nationwide, only 25 percent of paid enrollees are ages 18 to 34. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations today invited the leaders of some of the nation’s largest insurance providers and their trade groups to testify at a hearing, “PPACA Enrollment and the Insurance Industry,” on Wednesday, May 7, 2014, at 10:15 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

House Energy and Commerce Committee members sent letters requesting specific enrollment data, including the number of individuals who have paid their first month’s premium and demographic breakdowns. The committee has compiled the data that provides a snapshot of the true enrollment picture as of April 15, 2014, after the official end of the open enrollment period. Due to the administration’s repeated and unilateral extensions and changes, as well as the fact that many insurers have reported that individuals will still have time to pay their first month’s premium, the committee plans to ask the insurers in the federally facilitated marketplace to provide an enrollment update by May 20, 2014.

Now, remember when Obama went out in front of the eager mainstream media and bragged about how 8 million people signed up? Not one journalist asked him how many people had actually paid for a health care plan. And now we know the truth. But how many of the low-information voters who vote Democrat will read a story like this? They may be struggling with the new health care law, but they’ll think that it’s working for most people because of the mainstream media and the 8-million enrollments claim.

 

News

Health insurance companies will raise rates to comply with Obamacare delay

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CNS News explains how health insurance companies will respond to the last-minute attempt by Democrats to delay the implementation of Obamacare.

Excerpt:

After President Obama unilaterally changed his health care law on Thursday, the insurance industry issued a warning.

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers,” said Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

Here’s Ignagni’s full statement:

Making sure consumers have secure, affordable coverage is health plans’ top priority.  The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today.

Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace.  If due to these changes fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase in the marketplace and there will be fewer choices for consumers.  Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.

A recent Weekly Standard podcast predicts that the Democrats are going to come down hard on insurance companies, and blame them for the failure of Obamacare.

News

Obama vows to veto Republican “Keep Your Health Plan Act” bill

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Face a revolt among his own party, the President decided to delay the implementation of his own failed health care policy, until after the 2014 elections. He did this to help Democrat candidates in red states to not be thrown out for enacting a policy that will cancel the health care plans of millions of Americans. After the elections, Obamacare will take effect as planned and millions of Americans will lose their health care.

The Republicans have an alternate plan – let people keep their health care plans if they like them, just as Obama promised before he was re-elected.

Excerpt:

House Republican leaders announced Wednesday the lower chamber will vote next week on a bill that would allow people to keep their health insurance plan if they like it.

The vote hits at President Obama, who, during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, said people could keep their healthcare plans if they like them. Millions of people, however, have gotten cancelation notices because of ObamaCare’s new standards.

Late Wednesday afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced via Twitter that the bill would get a vote.

The Keep Your Health Plan Act, H.R. 3350, was introduced last week by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and more than two dozen Republicans. As of Wednesday, co-sponsorship had grown to 88 members.

Upton’s bill authorizes insurance companies to keep offering plans that they have said need to be canceled because of ObamaCare’s new insurance standards. Since early October, companies have sent out millions of notices to enrollees saying their plans will be scrapped and, in many cases, replaced by more expensive plans.

“Despite the president’s repeated promise of ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it,’ many Americans are now learning the sad reality that their current plan will no longer exist beginning on Jan. 1,” Upton said last week. “Instead they are forced to purchase healthcare that they cannot afford through a system that does not even work, and that’s just not fair.”

The Weekly Standard reports that the Obama administration has threatened to veto the Republican “Keep Your Health Plan Act”. Why? Because the true purpose of Obamacare requires that healthy people get kicked off their plans, and that they be forced to buy more expensive plans that subsidize the treatments of less healthy people.

The chief architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, explained in a recent interview:

“We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick, if you are going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance,” Gruber told host Chuck Todd. “The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners, who’ve been paying their artificially low price because of this discrimination, now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate is about 4 million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now, for the first time, be able to access fairly priced and guaranteed health insurance.” Emphases added.

This is monstrous. Gruber admits that “If you like your healthcare, you can keep your healthcare” was a lie from the start. They never even intended to keep this promise, as doing so would destroy their scheme. The system Gruber describes is the intentional demolition of the private insurance industry, which bases prices on risk. He is also defining “discrimination” so far that given the chance, he would abolish capitalism and private property ownership itself.

That’s why Obama has to veto the bill – because he must accomplish his goal of making everyone’s life “equal” regardless of their individual choices. People who aren’t addicted to drugs must be forced to subsidize the drug addiction therapies of others. People who don’t have a promiscuous sex life must subsidize the promiscuous sex lives of others. People who don’t need abortion-inducing drugs must subsidize the abortion-inducing drugs of others. Wealth redistribution to equalize lifestyle outcomes. If you make good decisions in life, you must be punished. If you make bad decisions in life, you must be rewarded. If you earn money and save money because you have a plan of your own for marriage and family, then what you earn and save must be taken from you and given to others who earn nothing and save nothing and have no plans for marriage and family.

Not enough time to make the changes

James Pethokoukis explains that insurance companies don’t have enough time to restore the plans that Obamacare canceled. So the only real effect of Obama’s announcement is to give cover to Democrats who vote against the Keep Your Health Plan Act. That was the purpose of his press conference – to stop a revolt by people in his own party.