“Celeste Castillo, a Guatemalan immigrant, was invited to a news conference with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius early last year to help promote enrollment in the country’s new health insurance marketplaces…Fourteen months later, the 57-year-old nanny was still uninsured.”
“New poll: Majority Oppose #ObamaCare Medicaid expansion in VA under .@GovernorVA. Why? @josharchambault explains:
New polling out of Virginia is sure to disrupt the media’s narrative on ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion that the public overwhelmingly supports it. The results could even have a ripple effect far beyond the Commonwealth’s borders as 24 other states still debate expansion.”
“In recent opeds for the Los Angeles Register and the Orange County Register, I explain how ObamaCare’s requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions at the same price as healthy people dramatically reduces the risks associated with not having health insurance, and therefore creates a perverse incentive for people to drop their coverage and wait until they get sick to re-enroll.”
“Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is considering expanding health coverage for the poor without the approval of the state legislature, a move that would muscle his top priority past Republican opponents but also throw his young administration into a partisan firestorm and uncertain legal territory.”
“My mother is not one to seek attention by complaining, so her recent woeful Facebook post caught my eye: “The poor get poorer.” It diverged from the more customary stream of inspirational quotes, recipes and snapshots from her tiny cottage in Pierce County, Wash. The post continued: “I just received a notice: ‘In order to comply with the new healthcare law, your current health plan will be discontinued on December 31, 2013.'”
“Even if Obamacare really has enrolled 8 million Americans through its health insurance exchanges, that’s not good enough. For the exchanges to work, people must enroll and stay enrolled.
If too many enrollees drop out, premiums will climb until the exchanges collapse.”
“Fans of Kathleen Sebelius, the lady who made Obamacare so wildly popular, say her greatest accomplishment was persuading red states to accept the Medicaid expansion. Alas, these states have been lured with false promises of flexibility and free money.”
“With the unveiling of the Affordable Care Act’s website, the public experienced a painful reminder of the consequences of the government’s new authority over health care. While millions signed up for insurance, millions of others abruptly lost their existing coverage and access to their doctors because that coverage didn’t fit new ObamaCare definitions.”
“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.”
“House Republicans say they remain resolute in their opposition to using federal Medicaid funds to provide health insurance to as many as 400,000 low-income Virginians.”