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Dan wrote up yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, which was jammed with crooked numbers for President Obama. Most striking was the (30/55) majority deeming Obama’s presidency “a failure,” along with the prevailing opinion that he’s divided the country, and his unsightly leadership score. The survey also included a dreadful (38/56) presidential approval rating on the implementation of Obamacare; support for the law itself was also underwater, with an outright majority opposed, despite this polling series’ silly question wording that omits any mention of ‘Obamacare’ or the ‘Affordable Care Act.’ A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll produces similar findings, with support for the president’s signature domestic accomplishment swamped by opposition. It’s been this way for years, across hundreds of national surveys.
One major reason for the enduring opposition is that the law has violated virtually every major promise erected in dishonest ideologues’ sales pitch. Another is that an ongoing parade of unpleasant developments continues to make headlines, including the recent revelation that Healthcare.gov was hacked last month. Apologists can cherry-pick useful data points to try to convince the public that Obamacare is reducing premium costs and driving down costs, but that’s simply not the case. Individual market premiums exploded in 2014, and are expected to grow by roughly eight percent in 2015 (with many consumers confronting double-digit spikes) — to say nothing of high out-of-pocket costs and narrow coverage networks. Overall health spending continues an upward climb. The law was billed as a dramatic premium reducer that would also bend down the so-called “cost curve.”
“Obamacare is taking a toll on small businesses, according to a new analysis of the effects of the health-care reform law, which found billions of dollars in reduced pay and hundreds of thousands fewer jobs.
Take-home pay at small businesses was trimmed by some $22.6 billion annually because of the Affordable Care Act and related insurance premium hikes, researchers at the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank headed by former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found in a report released Tuesday.
Individual year-round employees at businesses with 50 to 99 workers lost $935 annually, while those at firms with 20 to 49 workers are out an average of $827.50 per person in take-home pay, the report found.”
“Welcome back from the summer.
It’s been pretty quiet lately on the Obamacare front.
So quiet, that there has been a flurry of articles recently over how Obamacare has dropped to a second or even third tier issue and will hardly matter come election-time.
Wishful thinking.
Obamacare has largely been out of the news cycle for a couple of months but that is about to change.
A few thoughts.
The 2015 rate increases have been largely modest. Does that prove Obamacare is sustainable? No. You might recall that on this blog months ago my 2015 rate increase prediction was for increases of 9.9%.
You might also recall my reason for predicting such a modest increase. With almost no valid claims data yet and the “3Rs” Obamacare reinsurance program, insurers have little if any useful information yet on which to base 2015 rates and the reinsurance program virtually protects the carrier from losing any money through 2016. I’ve actually had reports of actuarial consultants going around to the plans that failed to gain substantial market share suggesting they lower their rates in order to grab market share because they have nothing to lose with the now unlimited (the administration took the lid on payments off this summer) Obamacare reinsurance program covering their losses.”
“Obamacare’s defenders are busy declaring victory again. Ezra Klein is touting a new survey of Obamacare benchmark premiums in some regions of the country as evidence that the law is defying the predictions of critics and working to cut costs rather than increase them.
But, as Bob Laszewski notes, the truth about Obamacare implementation is far less rosy than the latest round of cheerleading would indicate.
For starters, the federal and state websites remain largely a dysfunctional mess, although the media isn’t really covering the story anymore. The supposed “fix” that allowed millions of consumers to sign up with plans on the exchanges from December through April really wasn’t much of a fix after all. It was a workaround, allowing consumers to access large federal subsidies with minimal verification.”
“Robert Laszewski, health policy wonk, blogger, and president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, tells Inside Health Insurance Exchanges:
The Obama administration has no idea how many people are currently enrolled [in exchanges] but they keep cutting checks for hundreds of millions of dollars a month for insurance subsidies for people who may or may not have paid their premium, continued their insurance, or are even legal residents.
And if you think they’re doing those “enrollees” a favor, remember that if it turns out a recipient wasn’t eligible for the subsidy, he or she has to pay the money back.
Surprised? Don’t be. This is part of a deliberate, consistent strategy by the Obama administration to throw money at individual voters and key health care industry groups—lawfully or not—to buy support for this consistently unpopular law.”
“New Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell tried to hit the reset button on perceptions of the health-care rollout in her first public speech since taking the job at the embattled department overseeing it.
“What I’ve told my team at HHS is that we’re not here to fight last year’s battles, we’re here to fight for affordability, access and quality,” said Ms. Burwell to an audience of George Washington University students and faculty on Monday. “Let’s move beyond the back and forth, let’s move forward together.”
Ms. Burwell is stepping into the spotlight after around 100 days on the job and as the agency tries to reorient itself in time for the new enrollment season when millions more Americans are supposed to come to HealthCare.gov to buy coverage in just a few weeks.
She has brought on board several new faces since taking over as secretary from Kathleen Sebelius. They include the head of Connecticut’s health insurance exchange Kevin Counihan to serve as CEO for the site, former clean-up contractor Andy Slavitt as an operations administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and her former Walmart colleague Leslie Dach as her senior counselor.”
“The Affordable Care Act attempts to help low- and middle-income families avoid some of the tough sacrifices that would be necessary to purchase health insurance without assistance. But no program can change the fundamental reality that society itself has to make sacrifices in order to deliver health care to more people. Workers and therefore production have to be taken away from other industries to beef up health care, or the workforce itself has to get bigger, or somehow people have to work more productively. Although the ACA helps specific populations by giving them a bigger slice of the economic pie, the law diminishes the pie itself. It reduces the amount that Americans work, and it makes their work less productive. This slows growth in both personal income and gross domestic product.”
“Well, who could have seen this coming? Thankfully, at this point, the reports say there has been no release of personal information. I can’t say I’m terribly heartened:”
“From Halbig to Sovaldi, this summer was a busy one for health policy and politics. We’ve made it easy to catch up, collecting all of the top stories you clicked on over the past few months. Together, they tell a story about the state of healthcare in the U.S., and offer clues as to where things may be headed when Congress returns in the fall.
Among them: The political battle over Obmacare has become more complicated for Republicans since the government cleaned up the Healthcare.gov mess, and with midterm elections around the corner, the focus will be on how much either party continues to attack or ignore the law. There are policy, legal and business matters to be settled as well – the employer mandate is under attack from the left and the right, the courts have been a wildcard for the health law to this point and could continue to be so, and employers and employees are finding themselves wading through the on-the-ground impacts of the law. That doesn’t even get to our top three storylines of the summer, so be sure to click through to find out what tops the list.”
“The widely accepted view among policymakers in Washington, D.C. is that even if President Obama’s health care law is currently more unpopular than ever, by the time 2016 rolls around, it will be an immovable object, impossible to wholly repeal.
In past columns for The Morning Consult, I have argued this is an incomplete picture of the politics of the issue, one which underestimates the Republican base’s dedication to repeal, and the necessity of Republican candidates to respond to that desire.
You could assume that the continued unpopularity of Obamacare would play to Republicans’ advantage within the battle over health care policy, and that’s certainly correct at the moment. The fact that a Democratic Senator touting his support for Obamacare (albeit without naming which law he voted for) is national news is an indication of that. Had the politics of the Affordable Care Act played out as most Democrats anticipated, every candidate up for re-election would be loudly trumpeting their support for it.
So in the short-term, the law plays into the hands of Republican critics, who have plenty of easy targets and little need to propose a comprehensive reform. But what about what comes after 2016, assuming a Republican presidency but lacking 60 votes in the Senate? At that point, Obamacare’s political toxicity may actually hamper efforts to achieve pro-market reforms.
Consider Avik Roy’s recent proposal, Transcending Obamacare, which is possibly the most comprehensive proposal for health reform offered by a conservative. Not content to merely focus on replacing Obamacare, Roy’s plan relies heavily on the expansion of the existing private insurance marketplace as a replacement for the Great Society, shifting individuals away from Medicare and Medicaid and the VA, and toward private insurers.”