Slashdot Mirror
Can the ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers Be Believed?
An anonymous reader writes "When the Obama administration announced on April 1 that an estimated 7.1 million had signed up for ObamaCare by the end of March, it seemed a nearly impossible achievement. To reach 7.1 million, sign-ups had to rocket up by 67% in just one month. That's astounding enough, but an IBD review of existing ObamaCare enrollment data shows that the mathematical challenge of reaching 7.1 million sign-ups was even tougher."
...if you like your 7.1 million sign-ups, you can keep your 7.1 million sign-ups.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
To reach the number of Christmas gifts said to be bought for Christmas, gift purchases would have had to rocket up by 67% in December alone...
I don't care how accurate the numbers are; I care about the sloppy language. What they mean is that 7.1 million people have applied for coverage through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace.
I'm really fed up with this lazy language. It's ended up confusing millions of people who are just looking for some healthcare coverage. A lot of people seem to think that "Obamacare" is now some federal version of Medicaid, or young-people version of Medicare--a government program that pays medical expenses.
I don't care whether the Republicrats or Democans started the confusing talk; let's all be part of stopping it.
You can set up a HSA instead of insurance, if you want.
Otherwise, I'll say how dare you expect the rest of us to pay for your health care because you don't want to.
I don't respond to AC's.
You really expect to believe the numbers coming out of Washington? Gullible aren't we?
Sure, this is the worst administration for lies in our lifetime, but even before this one, they still fudged numbers. It's just the way the game is played out there.
define "lifetime."
also, i'm pretty sure THIS was the worst falsehood from a U.S. presidential administration in our relative lifespans: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/st...
for some, its about getting insurance AT ALL if you want it.
pre-existing bullshit was one thing that needed fixing and its fixed.
SOME discount if you are a single buyer (not group plan based) is also there. in fact, it can be lower than cobra payments.
so, there was some benefit.
I'm unlucky in that my cobra payment is about as bad as my pre-obamacare non-group policy. I was unemployed with single policy for a while, then went contract and had a better pkg, then went full time and had a pretty decent pkg, now I'm laid off, on cobra and its back to non-group level monthly premiums that I was doing before I had that last job.
the insurance companies are raping us again, and using this as an excuse. nothing I'm doing has anything to do with obamacare but my rates went up a lot over the last yr or two and the 'discounts' are not really discounts that I can see.
but still, they can't cancel you for having pre-existing stuff and they can't totally deny you, either. those were 2 major evils pre-obama.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
California's exchange is well capable of providing a mere 7 Million registrations and was not ever having problems while the Federal site was the subject of so much news controversy.
I am celebrating this event because This is the first time that Bruce Perens can get insurance coverage! I operate my own company and have previously only had access to insurance through my wife's employer. All of my family, my wife, my son, and I, have each individually been rejected by private insurers for what was esentially medical trivia. In my son's case, it was because he took a test they didn't like even though he passed it.
Not everyone understands the B.S. that private insurers were permitted to put people through.
Bruce Perens.
There was a deadline. People put stuff off to the deadline, especially when it means it's going to cost them money.
For comparison, this page has a graph of tax-related Google queries. Big shock: they spike right before deadlines in January and April. (That's a proxy for tax filings, for which I couldn't find a decent source. I suspect that tax filings are probably even more spread out, since many people get money back and would rather do it early.)
Combined with problems that would have caused people who tried earlier to fail, it doesn't seem at all likely that numbers would go up by a factor of 2/3. If you'd told me it was an order of magnitude, I might have been surprised. IBD has a history of a negative view of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and so I'm not especially inclined to see their incredulity is anything other than ideology.
To reach 7.1 million, sign-ups had to rocket up by 67% in just one month. That's astounding enough.
A very very large number of people, myself included, tend to wait until the last minute to do things, especially if it's not something they particularly want to do. Especially if it's something they don't especially NEED right now, and will have to pay by the month for.
Just ask the IRS for a graph of how many people self-file their taxes in April as opposed to Jan/Feb. At least there there is the motivation for getting a refund earlier. There may be some people who have conditions that need to be treated now, but I'm willing to bet that the list of healthier people who never got insurance is much larger.
Casual observation suggests, Republicans would find it very hard to believe and the Democrats would find it totally within the realm of possibilities. My brother is consultant for PeopleSoft benefits management module. According to him, about 10% of the employees enroll as soon as the period opens. After that spike there is a lull, and about 50% of the employees enroll in the last week (of a typical 4 week open period), and about 25% enroll on the last day. About 1 in 1000 miss the deadline and send despo emails and come up with sob stories why they missed it and beg to change their options. About 1 in 10000 realize they have missed the enrollment period only when they show up at a doctors offices and the friendly receptionist tells them, "Sorry Mrs McGillacady, the card is not going through". Based on that, I would say the profile of surging enrollment in the last few days/weeks seems to be consistent.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Actual summary of article:
"It seems really unlikely the enrollment numbers got met because that would have meant a lot of last minute sign-ups *shrugs*"
"Oh and by the way even if the enrollment numbers got met, it probably doesn't count because if you haven't paid your first month's premium you don't count as an enrollment number for some reason because we said so"
If you play with the definition of things then you can make the numbers be whatever you want. Read a report last week that more than 1/3 of those were people that were dropped at the beginning of the year (which means there's very little real gain in number of people insured), and 1/4 hadn't actually paid. So the number is just a topical headline that they feed the media so they can pat their backs, but breaks down under serious scrutiny. Like "we've deported more illegal immigrants than the previous administration". Truth is they changed the definition of "deported" to count people who were stopped at the border and turned around, which had never been counted as a deportation before. Meanwhile the Border Patrolman's union is complaining that the administration and DHS/ICE are making their job nearly impossible, but the media won't cover them, and they actually kicked the leader of the union out of congressional hearings.
But they're the most transparent EVER!
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
If you're eligible for Medicaid, you are NOT eligible for the ACA subsidies for health insurance. Which means that if you CHOOSE to buy your own insurance when eligible for Medicaid, insurance will cost you five times what it costs someone who makes a bit more money (and is therefore eligible for subsidies).
That said, what they're not saying, so far, is how many of those 7.5 million (7.1 is sooo yesterday - today's number is 7.5) have actually paid a premium for this new insurance.
Note that many insurance companies aren't going to be accepting new clients after the close of "open enrollment" absent changes in life/employent/whatever. If you marry, divorce, get a job, lose a job, become a widow/widower, you can get insurance, but you can't just any old time.
Apparently the possibility that people might take advantage of the "no pre-existing condition" clause of the ACA to get insurance when something catastrophic happens disturbs the insurance companies' bottom line deeply.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Sure, this is the worst administration for lies in our lifetime
You're very well-spoken for a five year old.
Plus a huge number of enrollees have not actually made an insurance premium payment so they are not really signed up and insured. What was the percentage being reported, something like 15% to 20%?
You can set up a HSA instead of insurance, if you want.
Nope. If you sign up for an HSA then you must also sign up for an HDHP (High Deductible Health Plan). But by getting an HSA+HDHP, you are conforming to Obamacare, not "opting out".
Suppose that instead of calling it a fine for not buying insurance, they had simply described it differently. Suppose they decided to tax everyone by a fixed amount, and then offered a tax rebate to anyone who bought insurance. Would you still feel that was unconstitutional? The government has the right to levy taxes - no question about that. And they have the right to spend money however they want, including giving it out as tax rebates to encourage particular behaviors. Yet the two situations are completely identical as far as money is concerned. The only difference is how they describe it. What makes the first unconstitutional and the second not?
Anyway, your claim about the Supreme Court is simply wrong. They've ruled that choosing to spend money in particular ways in particular circumstances is protected free speech, but they've never made any blanket claim that money=speech. For example, they still allow lots of restrictions on donations to political campaigns. You can't donate more than a fixed amount to any one candidate, and while you're allowed to buy political advertisements on your own, you can't coordinate with the campaigns you intend to support. And much more relevantly: so far as I know, they have never ruled in any context that you have a right to refuse to pay taxes or fines levied by the government.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
how dare you expect the rest of us to pay for your health care because you don't want to.
Such as the smokers, the obese, alcoholics and drug users who can continue with their merry lifestyles, safe and secure in the knowledge everyone else is forced to hand over their money so they don't have to take personal responsibility for their actions, right?
Obamacare (as well as Romneycare) does nothing to lower health costs or ease the burden on the system so long as people are not forced to live healthier lifestyles. All they are doing is extracting money from people simply for the sake of extracting money and giving it to insurance companies who have gotten a huge financial windfall.
Considering how people on here rant about big bad corporations, this point should have been obvious, but I guess when you can take money from people, simply because you can, that never enters into the equation.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Um.. most of US population is already covered though their employers/family plan. They're talking about the 40 million or so Americans who cannot get affordable coverage due to preexisting conditions, income restraints, and the like.
Otherwise, I'll say how dare you expect the rest of us to pay for your health care because you don't want to.
Not wanting to be forced to buy health insurance by a government that has no real constitutional authority to force you to buy what it tells you to is not he same as not expecting to have to pay for health care.
I just saw the nice new box on my W2 that shows "employer health insurance" payments. It was about five times what I would have paid out of my own pocket for my health care last year. Had my employer been legally allowed to hand me that money directly and allow me to pay as I go, I'd be several thousand dollars ahead of the game.
That the Fugitive Slave Act was deemed constitutional? But the 13th Amendment to the CONSTITUTION made that irrelevant, didn't it?
Are you able to show us the terms of your plan? The reason I ask is that I was offered what turned out to be a "trash plan", and the sort of things that aren't being grandfathered are rejected because they don't meet a minimum standard of care. In my case, a catastrophic injury such as in an auto wreck would not have been covered significantly.
The lady who famously confronted Obama on this issue had a plan that limited its payout to a few hundred dollars.
Bruce Perens.
Yep, only problem is because most other people rely on buffet-style all-you-can-eat-for-fixed-price, the cash price for many services is stupendously high.
Last year I had a month-long cold of some sort and needed a checkup to find out what was wrong and get anti-biotics. I don't have a family doctor because the last two I've had retired (drove out of business due to poor medicare reimbursement rates), so I went to Patient First. I asked them how much the checkup would cost, and they said they could not tell me until after the services were performed. Great.
Got a bill in the mail a month later for $300 for a 5 minute checkup and chest x-ray. Anti-biotics were another $80. I don't mind paying these prices if that's what they actually cost. That's what the HSA is for. The problem is they would not tell me what the costs would be up front, and I had no way of shopping around for better prices at competing clinics. That's like going to McDonalds for a hamburger, but they won't tell you what the price is until they mail it to you a month later. And the cost of the burger ends up depending on how hungry you were at the time and how many poor people and illegal immigrants they had to give free hamburgers to.
There was a legal challenge to the ACA already, and it was defeated in court. In other words: your views on the constitutionality of the ACA aren't shared by the current Supreme Court, and therefore they are pretty much irrelevant
You seem to not understand how the Supreme Court works. That's OK, it's arcane.
The particular ACA challenge you refer to was over the Constitutionality of the ACA as a fine. The Court said, "it's not a fine, it's a tax, and FedGov can levy taxes." The challenge was defeated.
Now other lawyers are back before the Court arguing that taxes must originate in the House, per the Constitution, while ACA is a Senate bill (with gut-and-replace not being a valid technique to avoid germaneness via-a-vis the Origination Clause). The Court will rule on that narrow point and then the next challenge will be heard.
SCOTUS will never come out and say, "All aspects of ACA are Constitutional".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm just curious. Why is it that so many countries in the world have universal health care paid by the population (through taxes) yet one of the most prosperous and powerful countries in the world can't figure it out or refuses to implement it?
Is capitalist greed getting in the way or am I missing something?
Actually, in the UK, it really does work like that. Even if you're only visiting the UK for a 2 hour period, and manage to become seriously ill in that time, you'll get free treatment there.
Pre-tax deductions have not changed. I don't know what wacko changes have changed your taxes, but it ain't ACA.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
Apparently the possibility that people might take advantage of the "no pre-existing condition" clause of the ACA to get insurance when something catastrophic happens disturbs the insurance companies' bottom line deeply.
This is precisely what's happening...it's called "adverse selection".
I personally know someone who switched plans during open enrollment to get a different carrier who would pay the $100k for her experimental treatment. She has to pay slightly higher premiums than the first plan she was on, but it's not a bad tradeoff when you're "buying" $100k of value for a few hundred a month. She can't be declined and her preexisting condition must be covered.
Everyone understands why you can't buy auto insurance coverage for a collision that already has happened. The same holds for health insurance—it's absolutely untenable otherwise. Not that there is any love lost between me and the scumbag health insurance industry. I'm just pointing out it literally actuarially/mathematically cannot work the way some people want it to. You simply can't let people wait until they have, say, cancer to sign up for insurance and then demand that insurance pay for the treatment.
What's the solution? Well, since we as a society have decided we do not want a free market in health care (a free market would necessarily entail leaving those who cannot pay to die outside the doors of the ER), then our next optimization is to save money. We spend more per capita and in total than every other nation, and we get worse average outcomes for our population.
To put it more plainly: a socialized medicine system like they have in the UK would COST LESS than what we have now.
Furthermore, the NHS public healthcare system in the UK works alongside a private, more "free market" type of healthcare system. We could mirror that here if we wanted to encourage the private industry innovation that appeals to our cultural sensibilities. We already have that in other realms: the USPS and FedEx operate side by side, there are private schools that operate alongside public schools, etc.
Finally, we need to realize that a huge percentage of the US population is ALREADY on socialized medicine (ie. governmental health care programs paid for by taxes): everyone who is over 65 (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), the veterans (the VA), the Armed Forces (Tricare), all federal, state and local governmental employees (taxes pay their premiums). Does anyone believe we will ever elimated those programs, barring universal healthcare in this country? The "free market for healthcare" ship sailed a long time ago.
Let's just try to save some money and get better health for our population instead of trying to pretend a mathematically-broken insurance approach is ever going to be a good idea.
Fact 1) 7.1 million were the number that signed up using exchange. NOT all the people that got insurance, just the number that signed up.
Fact 2) It did not include the people that were told they were approved for Medicaid.
Fact 3) It did not include the people that picked their own insurance not on the exchanges.
Fact 4)It did not included the young people now signed up on their parents plans.
You need to compare apples to apples. That is, 60 million without insurance before hand vs ??? million without insurance after hand. Trying to do 7.1/60 just demonstrates your complete inability to do honest math.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's not capitalist greed, it's anti-free-market greed. Note that non-essential medical services such as plastic surgery and laser eye surgery continuously get better and cheaper over time. That is, I could get the same laser eye surgery today for cheaper, or pay a similar amount for higher-quality laser eye surgery. It's much the same as with computing hardware or any other relatively unregulated market, and quite the opposite of what's happening with healthcare, namely that it gets worse and way more expensive over time. I don't know why forcing everybody in the United States to buy managed healthcare plans would improve the situation at all.
BS - You pay unless your a college student, a citizen from another European Union country that signed an agreement with the NHS, or other select cases
From the NHS - http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/10...
Obamacare (as well as Romneycare) does nothing to lower health costs...
Sure it does. There's way more to the ACA than health exchanges and elimination of denials for pre-existing conditions. Whether or not the provisions aimed at controlling costs actually work or not will take a long time to figure out. But ACOs and medical homes and and PCORI...
Situation 1) No law requiring people to buy healthcare, no law blocking insurance companies from denying you healthcare for pre-existing situations. They can even deny you healthcare for brain cancer because you have diabetes. (or worse, accept you, then deny coverage because you failed to disclose you had diabetes). People that get screwed: a) anyone that is not 100% healthy and also b) anyone that risks going without insurance but ends up needing it.
Situations 2) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, but no law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Insurance companies, as people wait till after they get sick to buy insurance. Then after insurance companies all go bankrupt, everyone gets screwed.
Situation 3) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and also a law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Anyone that wanted to risk going without good insurance and would have been lucky enough not to need it.
The first situation was what we used to have. The second situation is what we tried to avoid. The third situation is what we have now. Please note it only screw up assholes that tried to take ridiculous gambles and happened to be lucky enough to win the gamble.
We had a choice - screw over the sick, screw over insurance companies (which would have eventually led to a truly government controlled healthcare), or require everyone to buy insurance. We wisely made the best possible decision.
P.S.I am employed and have good healthcare - which I desperately need because I got sick (nasty virus) in college and my kidneys have slowly been dying over the past 20 years, despite the fact that I don't drink, etc. I have maybe 5 more years till I need a transplant and am clearly one of the people that will very much benefit from Obamacare.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's a multilayered thing. I'd say that the U.S. population is made up of the misfits and cast-offs from other countries, and as a result has very different cultural leanings than other countries. Those leanings are wonderful tools for the sociopaths that run our corporations. "Supporting others is welfare/socialism, and that's (dun dun DUN) Communism!". Or maybe "The government is taking away your right to free choice! Isn't that why you left [country of origin]?!"
People with power and influence play the rest of the population like fiddles. Those in power decided that (at least in the short term) government-controlled health care would be bad for profits, so they play on the unique insecurities inherent to American culture to achieve their goals.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
In the first year of Obamacare we will still have more uninsured than in the last year of the Bush administration
Bullshit. Best estimate I've seen is that right now, today, the number of uninsured has been decreased by about 25%.
7.1 million sign ups out of over 300 million people for a "mandatory" participation program is truly pathetic regardless whether it is above or below what was expected. Yes yes, I know the number of uninsured was closer to 60 million, so basically you are getting adoption among the intended uninsured population of just 12%. Just 12% of uninsured people are choosing Obamacare/ACA, that is what is remarkable.
Your comment is complete fucking nonsense. 1) Of course, as you sort of admit, out of 330 million people, there are about 300 million with some form of health insurance. 2) There were 40 million without health insurance, not 60 million. 3) In addition to whatever fraction of the 7.1 million were previously uninsured, several million more have been added by the Medicaid expansion. 4) In addition to whatever fraction of the 7.1 million were previously uninsured, several million more have been added to employer-sponsored programs.
One important reason for that is that consumers can tell the producers of non-essential goods and services to get lost if they don't like the price. Essential goods and services, pretty much by definition, don't have that property.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
If you truly cannot afford it, the federal credit kicks in to defray the monthly cost. You can be compliant with the law at basically no cost to yourself if all you take is a Catastrophic or Bronze-level plan. After the credit, I'm paying $30/mo for low deductible/out of pocket health ins. with no co-insurance, for example.
And hospitals having to write off expenses from uninsured ER visits costs many billions of dollars each year -- which get passed on to the premiums of everyone who does pay for insurance. Isn't that a bit unfair?
My daughter-in-law attempted to sign up for Obamacare. She is in school and makes no money. Between her and my stepson, they make maybe $4-$5k per year, about $10,000 of which goes to pay for school. Yes, I know that doesn't add up. Anyway, she tried to sign up for Obamacare, and the cheapest plan she could get would have cost her $143 a month. She can't afford that, so she didn't sign up. She asked about the penalty and they said since she didn't make much money, she doesn't have to pay the penalty. So what does that mean? It means Obamacare did nothing. Poor people still don't have insurance. They don't have to pay the penalty either. They just go to the emergency room like they used to. Nothing has changed except that the people who already HAD insurance now pay twice as much.
They should be eligible for Medicaid.
I'm sure if my stepson and daughter-in-law were to drop out of school have a kid and sit at home all day THEN Obamacare would kick in and pay for them. After all, that is what Obama really wants, is for people to sit at home and make babies, not waste their time on education.
Well, at least they're trying to better themselves, rather than growing up to be a fucking ignorant bitter racist troll like yourself.
"This shit is so unconstitutional"
please point to me where the constitution say we can't have mandatory insurance?
Perhaps you mean to say "I don't like it, so I'm going to say it' unconstitutional because I have no clue what the Constitution says?"
" How dare you fine me for not buying your services."
It's a fee, not a fine. If it was a fine it would be assigned after you failed to buy insurance on a case by case basis. IT's an amount set in the bill, hence fine. An important distinction. Which isn't to say you have to like it., only that you sound like an idiot when you scream at the wind and the term you use is incorrect.
It's a service you will use, sooner or later.
"Money is speech according to the Supreme Court, and so I say no to Obama care."
Supreme Court said no such thing.
"I'm making use of my first amendment by not giving my money to this system."
That has nothing to do with the first Amendment
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on