New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys fin

[Denny Crane]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ae3152-a54d-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal, according to a pair of new surveys.

Only one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private plans through the new marketplaces enrolled as of last month, one of the surveys shows. The other found that about half of uninsured adults have looked for information on the online exchanges or planned to look.

The snapshots from the surveys released Thursday provide preliminary answers to what has been one of the biggest mysteries since HealthCare.gov and separate state marketplaces opened last fall: Are they attracting their prime audience?

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

 

[MarAzul]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

The lament under the heading "ObamaCare Epic Fail", suggests way too much credit is due Obama and his gang of la la landers. They are just fuck ups in control until the population gets
burned badly enough to restore sanity and leadership to the controls again.

Suffering Obamacare is only one of the wake up calls for the American people, another will surely come as a result of scrapping the American military.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

I think there is still some confusion. When people start paying the fines... they will probably come around.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

2 minutes of barfo's life that won't be wasted.

 

[jlprk]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

If only people would be happy dying from lack of health insurance, the Top 1% would pay lower taxes.

Waaahhh!

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Warren Buffett made $27.5M last year. TAKE it all. It will pay for a tiny fraction if the cost of implementing ObamaCare.

Bill Gates made $1M. You can gave all that, too.

Take ALL the wealth from the richest 300 billionaires in the world, and It won't pay for the government for a year. Those billionaires would be flat broke, too, so you wouldn't be able to pay for any of next year's govt. expenses.

Most of those billionaires aren't Americans, so good luck TAKING their wealth.

 

[maxiep]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Don't these stupid Americans know what's good for them? #NannyPresident

 

[jlprk]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Warren Buffett made $27.5M last year. TAKE it all. It will pay for a tiny fraction if the cost of implementing ObamaCare.

Bill Gates made $1M. You can gave all that, too.

Take ALL the wealth from the richest 300 billionaires in the world, and It won't pay for the government for a year. Those billionaires would be flat broke, too, so you wouldn't be able to pay for any of next year's govt. expenses.

Most of those billionaires aren't Americans, so good luck TAKING their wealth.

The Top 1% includes much more than billionaires. It probably includes you. I know it includes Maxiep. You say my point was, take all your wealth to pay for the government. No, my point was, you 1%ers pay a higher tax rate, thus you are more motivated to oppose tax raises on yourselves. So I worded your motive in this thread as, "If only people would be happy dying from lack of health insurance, the Top 1% would pay lower taxes."

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

The Top 1% includes much more than billionaires. It probably includes you. I know it includes Maxiep. You say my point was, take all your wealth to pay for the government. No, my point was, you 1%ers pay a higher tax rate, thus you are more motivated to oppose tax raises on yourselves. So I worded your motive in this thread as, "If only people would be happy dying from lack of health insurance, the Top 1% would pay lower taxes."

I'm not top 1%. I oppose taxes for everyone.

To put things in perspective, the deficit is over $600B for this year, and will rise again to over $1T. $600B. The government taxes everyone to the tune of $1.1T (income taxes). That's everyone. The 1%, the 99%, everyone. To raise another $600B to balance the budget, they'd have to increase everyone's taxes by over 50%. The 50% tax bracket would have to become a 75% bracket, the 10% bracket would have to become a 15% bracket. No matter how you slice it, it would be an significant burden on EVERYONE.

When the deficits hit $1T again, they're going to have to double everyone's taxes. The 1%, the 99%. Everyone.

Even more in perspective, the debt payments the government makes are $415B. So we're borrowing $600B to cover the $415B in interest we owe. Not sound economics.

Imagine what the govt. could do with that $415B without raising a dime in taxes.

That $415B is going to be ever increasing.

Anytime govt. is required to cut spending, there's whining and moaning and sob stories about those who'd be affected. The sequester was supposed to kill GDP, but instead we had the strongest GDP growth in a quarter since Obama took office.

Austerity, my ass.

 

[Stevenson]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Hmmm -

"The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, released Monday, found that 15.9 percent of U.S. adults are uninsured thus far in 2014, down from 17.1 percent for the last three months — or calendar quarter— of 2013.

That translates roughly to 3 million to 4 million people getting coverage."

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116313/fewer-uninsured-latest-gallup-survey-it-obamacare

The tantalizing, but very ambiguous, sign of Obamacare progress comes from Gallup, which regularly asks people about their health insurance status. On Thursday morning, Gallup published the results from polling of 9,000 adults between January 2 and January 19—in other words, right after the rush of enrollments in December. And the news certainly looks good upon first inspection. According to the survey, 16.1 percent of Americans don't have health insurance. That’s down from 17.3 percent in December and a peak of 18.6 percent earlier in the year. The sharpest drops are among non-whites and the unemployed. This is exactly what we would expect for the initial stages of a program that offers Medicaid or highly subsidized private insurance to lower-income Americans.

Hooray! But wait—upon closer inspection, the data turns out to be pretty murky. One reason the uninsurance rate dropped so sharply is that, according to Gallup, it rose substantially during the first part of 2013. In other words, for the first few months of the year, large numbers of people were losing their insurance. There’s no obvious reason why that would have happened. At that time, the economy was growing, albeit slowly, while unemployment was declining. And the shift happened way too early to be the effect of those infamous plan cancellations. Notices about those didn’t go out until the fall.

That unexplained volatility makes it difficult to put much stock in the results. In other words, you shouldn't read too much into these figures—or, for that matter, any figures you are hearing these days.

 

[maxiep]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Hmmm -

"The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, released Monday, found that 15.9 percent of U.S. adults are uninsured thus far in 2014, down from 17.1 percent for the last three months — or calendar quarter— of 2013.

That translates roughly to 3 million to 4 million people getting coverage."

But I was told 40MM people didn't have health insurance. You're crowing about 7-10% of the uninsured getting subsidized coverage? What about all of those who lost coverage? You're telling me that we just spent $2,000,000,000,000 to insure 3-4MM people? That comes out to $500-$667K per new enrollee. We would have been better off just putting that money in a health savings account for them.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...-sign-ups-are-previously-uninsured-enrollees/

The Obama administration has, for months now, been peddling nice-sounding numbers as to how many people are gaining health coverage due to Obamacare. But their numbers have been inflated on two fronts. First, not everyone who has “selected a marketplace plan” under Obamacare has actually paid the required premiums, payment being required to actually gain coverage. Second, only a fraction of people on the exchanges were previously uninsured. A new survey from McKinsey gives us a better view into the real numbers. Of the 3.3 million people that the White House has touted as Obamacare exchange “sign-ups,” less than 500,000 are actual uninsured people who have actually gained health coverage.

Many Obamacare ‘enrollees’ aren’t actually enrolled

McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, has been conducting monthly surveys of the exchange-eligible population under the auspices of its Center for U.S. Health System Reform. McKinsey’s most recent survey, conducted in February with 2,096 eligible respondents, found that only 48 percent had thus far signed up for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges.

Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of the 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium. (By contrast, among the 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent had paid.)

Put all those percentages together, and you get two key stats. Only 19 percent of those who have paid a premium were previously uninsured. Among those that the administration is touting as sign-ups, only 14 percent are previously uninsured enrollees: approximately 472,000 people as of February 1.

 

[MARIS61]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...-sign-ups-are-previously-uninsured-enrollees/

The Obama administration has, for months now, been peddling nice-sounding numbers as to how many people are gaining health coverage due to Obamacare. But their numbers have been inflated on two fronts. First, not everyone who has “selected a marketplace plan” under Obamacare has actually paid the required premiums, payment being required to actually gain coverage. Second, only a fraction of people on the exchanges were previously uninsured. A new survey from McKinsey gives us a better view into the real numbers. Of the 3.3 million people that the White House has touted as Obamacare exchange “sign-ups,” less than 500,000 are actual uninsured people who have actually gained health coverage.

Many Obamacare ‘enrollees’ aren’t actually enrolled

McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, has been conducting monthly surveys of the exchange-eligible population under the auspices of its Center for U.S. Health System Reform. McKinsey’s most recent survey, conducted in February with 2,096 eligible respondents, found that only 48 percent had thus far signed up for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges.

Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of the 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium. (By contrast, among the 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent had paid.)

Put all those percentages together, and you get two key stats. Only 19 percent of those who have paid a premium were previously uninsured. Among those that the administration is touting as sign-ups, only 14 percent are previously uninsured enrollees: approximately 472,000 people as of February 1.

Your article's main information value is that it shows a huge amount of Americans did not have insurance because it was unaffordable, and now many of them will be able to afford it.

Unfortunately, they are being subsidized by the struggling middle class while the 1% er's make a fortune off them all.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Your article's main information value is that it shows a huge amount of Americans did not have insurance because it was unaffordable, and now many of them will be able to afford it.

Unfortunately, they are being subsidized by the struggling middle class while the 1% er's make a fortune off them all.

It seems to show that many people lost insurance and find the new alternatives too expensive. As well, those without insurance in the first place find it too expensive.

Here’s an important finding from McKinsey. The authors of the study—Amit Bhardwaj, Erica Coe, Jenny Cordina, and Mahi Rayasam—asked those who decided not to enroll in a plan what their reasons were for doing so. The most frequent reason—cited by 50 percent of respondents—was that “I could not afford to pay the premium.” Only 27 percent cited technical challenges; 14 percent said they couldn’t find a plan that met their needs. 21 percent said they were still deciding.

This is the biggest problem with the way the “Affordable Care Act” approached coverage expansion. The reason why so many Americans are uninsured is because health insurance in this country is too expensive. Obamacare increases the underlying cost of health insurance, and then uses taxpayer-funded subsidies to offset those costs for some.

 

[jlprk]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

The people who can't figure out how to save money on their new policies are confused because their Republican states won't follow the law and set up exchanges to find the cheapest policies for them.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

There's two things going on here.

First, the cost of policies is giving people sticker shock. People who lost policies because Obama decided they couldn't keep their policies they liked after all and people who face fines who've not had insurance.

Second, the actual number of previously uninsured isn't in the 3-4 million range, it's in the 3-4 hundred thousand range.

 

[maxiep]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

We really are entering a Constitutional crisis, where a President can bypass a Congress and decide which parts of laws they pass will be suspended and which will be enacted. I'm no attorney, but from my understanding, one has to have "standing" (meaning that one has to show they were harmed) to be able to sue the Executive Branch. Also, it takes a considerable amount of time for these lawsuits to filter all the way through the system.

In other words, even if someone could sue, it would take years to undo the Obama Administration's unilateral changes to the law passed by Congress on a technicality.

Republican or Democrat; Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian or Progressive; Supporter of Obamacare or Opponent. It doesn't matter. Every single American should be terrified by this hijacking of the Legislative by the Executive. The fact that the Congressional Democrats are so blinded by short-term gains that they cheered this behavior in the State of the Union should tell you that they have no respect for the body to which they were elected.

 

[KeepOnRollin]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama

 

[MarAzul]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

We really are entering a Constitutional crisis, where a President can bypass a Congress and decide which parts of laws they pass will be suspended and which will be enacted. I'm no attorney, but from my understanding, one has to have "standing" (meaning that one has to show they were harmed) to be able to sue the Executive Branch. Also, it takes a considerable amount of time for these lawsuits to filter all the way through the system.

In other words, even if someone could sue, it would take years to undo the Obama Administration's unilateral changes to the law passed by Congress on a technicality.

Republican or Democrat; Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian or Progressive; Supporter of Obamacare or Opponent. It doesn't matter. Every single American should be terrified by this hijacking of the Legislative by the Executive. The fact that the Congressional Democrats are so blinded by short-term gains that they cheered this behavior in the State of the Union should tell you that they have no respect for the body to which they were elected.

Well said. This President has long since passed by the misdemeanors and is in the territory of High Crimes of historical order. He has now relieved the Unions of paying the same tax on self insured plans that caused my former employer to quit covering it's retired employees..

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama

Funny?

http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/03/1...less-funny-or-die-video-to-promote-healthcare

Obama in Strangely Humorless “Funny or Die” Video to Promote Healthcare

 

[KeepOnRollin]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Funny?

http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/03/1...less-funny-or-die-video-to-promote-healthcare

Obama in Strangely Humorless “Funny or Die” Video to Promote Healthcare

No accounting for taste of course but the high majority of viewers think it is funny as evidenced by the funny or die meter at the bottom of the video.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

No accounting for taste of course but the high majority of viewers think it is funny as evidenced by the funny or die meter at the bottom of the video.

Obama fans can't get enough of the guy.

EDIT: but check out the comments on this page:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-hams-health-care-funny-die-124434542.html

(I don't think yahoo! is particularly a biased site, one way or another)

 

[KeepOnRollin]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Obama fans can't get enough of the guy.

I would much rather not see as much Obama and have him do more work behind the scenes. I thought the video was a whole lot of meh. There were a couple of funny lines but it was more average-to-unfunny then funny.

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

I would much rather not see as much Obama and have him do more work behind the scenes. I thought the video was a whole lot of meh. There were a couple of funny lines but it was more average-to-unfunny then funny.

I don't mind if he goes on late night shows. I agree this was kind of meh.

 

[maxiep]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Funny?

http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/03/1...less-funny-or-die-video-to-promote-healthcare

Obama in Strangely Humorless “Funny or Die” Video to Promote Healthcare

I just watched it and found it hilarious. Then again, I pretty much love all the "Between Two Ferns". Good for Galifinakis for keeping up the arrogance.

And for President Obama, I think it was a good move as well. He needs to reach the demographic that watches that webcast.

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

It was pretty funny. Humor is not factually funny or unfunny. In my opinion it was pretty good.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

that was just as awkward as all then fern interviews

"how does it feel to be the last black president?"

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys

Just watched some more of them. The one with Charlize Theron was great. Then one with Jimmy Kimmel seemed dumb. Overall, Between Two Ferns is pretty good. What was this thread about?