After 20 of the 24 Obamacare non-profit health insurance cooperatives collapsed, despite the influx of $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that its trade association would also fail.
The National Alliance of State Health Cooperatives (NASCHO), the Obamacare co-op health insurance trade association, has quietly closed its doors, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
NASCHO once represented as many as 24 Obamacare non-profit co-ops that were intended to compete with for-profit commercial health care insurers and perhaps even drive them out of business. The Obama administration underwrote the experiment with $2.4 billion in long-term, low-interest loans.
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“What about the 20 million people who got coverage?”
Republicans are naturally concerned. Liberals have weaponized this number to stop repeal of the ACA. But should 20 million people keep a bad law on the books? To answer this question, Congress must ask two different questions.
First, is the number real? In March 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated that 20 million uninsured adults gained coverage under the ACA: 17.7 million non-elderly adults (ages 18 to 64) since October 2013, and 2.3 million young adults (ages 19-25) between 2010 and 2013.
The estimates are based on data from the National Health Interview Survey and the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The estimates are “adjusted to account for changes in general economic conditions (via employment status), geographic location, demographics and other secular trends.” Thus, the 20 million is an estimate, not a rock-solid fact.
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Only four of the original 24 Obamacare health co-ops remain standing after Maryland’s co-op announced Dec. 8 it was suspending the sale of individual health insurance policies, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has found.
With the near-collapse of Maryland’s co-op — called Evergreen Health — at least 989,000 individuals nationwide have lost their health insurance coverage when the nonprofit co-ops stopped selling insurance to customers, according to TheDCNF’s tally.
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While Obamacare is currently making headlines for (much) higher than predicted costs, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) want to create a national database of highly sensitive personal health information for the 30 million Americans with individual and small group coverage. Under Section 153.610 of a new Health and Human Services (HHS) rule for Obamacare, this proposal would require health plans to send CMS data on enrollees on an unprecedented scale, including:
- Amount paid
- Diagnoses received
- Drugs prescribed
- Procedures received
- Health care providers seen
- Out-of-pocket liabilities assumed
- Individual demographics
- Social Security Number
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Former President Bill Clinton attacked President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation Monday, calling it a “crazy system” that “doesn’t make any sense” during a Michigan campaign event for Hillary.
“It doesn’t make any sense. The insurance model doesn’t work here,” Clinton said about the government-run marketplaces Obamacare set up. Clinton said that Obamacare “works fine” for people with “modest” incomes or who are eligible for government subsidies, or Medicare. But he added that, “the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.”
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President Barack Obama and former top Obamacare official Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel are now floating the idea of a public option as an answer to the seemingly inevitable collapse of Obama’s landmark health care legislation.
Obamacare has seen better days: It’s had 16 health care co-ops go kaput, including in New York, some major health care providers are pulling out, and analysts have almost nothing rosy to say about the legislation in both the near and long term. As a result, Obama and his surrogates are scrambling to shore up the sinking ship.
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Hillary Clinton wants to use Obamacare to provide health coverage for illegal immigrants.
In an interview with Anderson Cooper as part of CNN’s presidential primetime event Monday, Clinton said, “It’s not only the right and moral thing to do for them, it’s also important that we keep ourselves healthy and public health requires that.”
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The case considers Obamacare’s rule requiring nonprofit employers to provide contraception coverage as part of insurance plans. Rev. David Zubik, the Catholic bishop for Pittsburgh, is leading the charge in the case, which consolidated the complaints of objecting Christian universities and groups like Little Sisters of the Poor.
Thirty-four top executives at 10 failed Obamacare co-ops were paid a whopping $8,211,384 in 2014, according to 990 tax forms obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
New York had the highest total, having paid four of its employees an astounding total of $1,156,317 , with Health Republic Insurance of New York CEO Debra Friedman taking in $427,632 and COO Nicholas Liguori making $316,411. Nevada Health Cooperative’s CEO had the highest salary of the year, receiving $428,001 in compensation for 2014.
Arizona’s Compass Cooperative Mutual Health Network, Inc. also provided hefty salaries — its CEO Kathleen Oestreich was compensated $377,279, while its COO Jean Tkachyk made $351,807.
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Federal health officials approved loans to Obamacare health insurance co-ops despite “specific warnings” about across-the-board failures from Deloitte Consulting, according to a blistering Senate staff report released Thursday.
The report was released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at a hearing that featured Andy Slavitt, the embattled acting administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — the section of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that manages Obamacare.
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