“A few observations from my travels and conversations in the marketplace”
“A bill barring the state’s health insurance exchange from hiring individuals convicted of certain felonies failed to advance Tuesday.
Under the proposal by Assemblywoman Connie Conway (R-Tulare), Covered California would not be able to hire people who have been convicted of certain crimes–felonies concerning breach of trust or dishonesty–for jobs where enrollees’ financial or medical data could be accessed.”
“Since Obamacare “hit” its “enrollment” “target,” Democrats, liberals, and their friends in the press have enjoyed some old-fashioned taunting of Republicans. This would be justifiable if a.) Republicans had destroyed the website that needed fixing or b.) predicted that nobody would sign up for the program in the first place.
Neither condition holds, of course. The website was totally the design of CMS, HHS, and the White House, which are all run by Democrats. Meanwhile, as Michael Cannon argued, it is no big feat to get people to sign up for a heavily subsidized product.”
“Many key provisions of The Affordable Care Act were finally implemented earlier this year, and widespread dismay over the reality of an overreaching government immediately followed. Initially, the predominant focus was on the inept rollout of the Obama administration’s website, a fiasco that cost well over $500 million of American taxpayer money — more than was spent to develop Facebook and Twitter combined, more than the cost of developing Apple’s iPhone. With more than two dozen executive branch decisions to delay some of the law’s deadlines — but ignoring fixes more substantive than repairing the basic functions of its website — the Obama administration cynically pushed forward.”
“During the past few months, insurance industry insider Bob Laszewski has chronicled many of the failures of ObamaCare’s launch. He has raised some very important questions and concerns from the insurance industry about future policy and premium bumps that lay ahead under the ACA. Unfortunately, his recent attack on Republican governors and state lawmakers who have rejected ObamaCare’s misguided Medicaid expansion completely misses the mark. He contends that Arkansas’ “Private Option” is really just a block grant for Medicaid. But the truth lies in the fine print, and while there is no question the Private Option puts state taxpayers at risk, it also creates a new entitlement and ceded most of the control for the program to the federal government. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.”
“President Obama yesterday again claimed his health care law had triumphed as enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges had reached eight million. However, it will prove a Pyrrhic victory.”
“Finally, President Barack Obama can say his health care law is beating the expectations.
Well, one of them, anyway. It’s safe to say that no one — not even him — predicted that the Obamacare sign-ups would soar as high as 8 million, the figure he announced in an appearance in the White House briefing room Thursday. That number, at least on its face, truly does go beyond the enrollment goals the administration set for itself — and makes the recovery from the website debacle even bigger.”
“President Barack Obama said Thursday that eight million people had picked health-insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act, a number that significantly outstripped initial projections and emboldened him to step up criticism of Republicans seeking to repeal the law.”
“A four-year slowdown in health spending growth could be coming to an end.
Americans used more medical care in 2013 as the economy recovered, new reports show. Federal data suggests that health care spending is now growing just as quickly as it was prior to the recession.”
“Ezra Klein, in his new capacity as one of the impresarios behind Vox, has written a pair of attention-grabbing posts — here, and then here — defending the proposition that Obamacare has, in some sense, “won,” and that conservatives who can’t come to terms with that victory can’t come to terms with reality itself. Reading them, it struck me that this argument would benefit from laying down some specific markers for the near future, because Klein seems to move back and forth between two definitions of success.”