OK, the battle’s over, if not the war, and as we carry the dead from the blood-soaked field, Obamacare is still the “law of the land”. (“Flaw of the land”, according to some, but never mind.)
So: how’s it going? Megan McArdle’s been wondering. If you are too, here’s a nifty website to help you follow along.
25 Comments
Ya know Malcolm?
I think I may have a solution to all this ObamaWebarama boondoggle.
Transfer some of the F-35 avionics geniuses (that program’s computer stuff, or so I’m told is all fixed) anyway, transfer some of the F-35 Lightning computer crew over to HHS.
Lockheed’s Geniuses know costs and deployments overruns. Should be a snap.
I do have one small niggling wonder though – how is it One-Eye could possibly be the sole guy in the continental US to’ve managed to get so satisfied on day one?
Yep, that does seem a little fishy. I wasn’t going to say anything, but…
You are of course thinking “fishy” my coupling Lockheed with Geniuses?
No, I was referring to that “niggling wonder” of yours.
Just making sure Malcolm, we’re on the same page – I’d really hate me posting somesuch as confusing Lockheed and Geniuses possibly in confliction with One-Eye’s gushing:
That is Malcolm, the “niggling?” same thing?
I wouldn’t want to libelize somebody and then to hire Gloria Alred & have to go to California.
I got the rates on the first day, and signed up a week later after I decided which plan I wanted. We use the Covered California site, which works fine- the federal site is for the states which did not set up state exchanges.
One-Eye!
Some of my non-Vet friends’re running into a little problem apparently. Fortunately my VA benefit stuff hasn’t been affected but I told all my Arkie neighbors that have been affected, “I know somebody who’s got an in.”
Anyway, some of my friends, Mom’s friends, people at Mom’s beautiful shop, non-vet friends at the cop-shop, some old people at nursing-homes, some others … anyway I told ’em I had a friend who knew everything.
What’s happening One-Eye is this – everytime all of these people try to log onto the ACA site – I’m told they’ve even tried Googling, “What’s the correct web-address for the Kathllen Sebelius I saw on The Daily Show”? …
Anyway One-Eye, you being the ultimate public helpful person not regularly dressed in an orange suit person I “sorta” know …
Everybody trying Miss Sebelius’ site is only getting an errorear code – 404 and they’re asking me, “Is that a toll-free number?” I called my local phone carrier and even the supervisors I asked to speak to besides stuff I would never put on a family-friendly blog such as this told me, a former sailor stuff made me blush’ “You Blankety-Blank-Blank-Blankety-Blankety” various additional Blanketys.
Anyway One-Eye, I’m figuring you’ll assure me errorear code 404 is definitely a toll- free number but what I need to know is, what are the following seven numbers residents of Arkansas add after 404?
Arkansas set up a state-exchange.
JK: I’m afraid that I can’t help you. All I know is from a visit to the California site where I went to the comparison engine and another visit when I signed up. It was like eBay for health insurance.
While the focus is (deservedly) on the wretched roll-out of the federal site – why didn’t they just let Oracle do it? – the more interesting story about Obamacare is getting very little attention in the media:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/keller-obamacare-the-rest-of-the-story.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Hmmm.
I am self-empoyed & live in California. I’ll be paying 2x as much but the deductible is slightly lower…still, would rather have the cash, though.
I called and spoke to some high-paid federal employee and learned interesting things:
1. There is a HUGE cliff on your AGI for getting subsidy. For my family, if we earn $79k we pay $650/month (and never any more) however if we earn $78k we only pay $450/month (and subsidy increases the less we earn). At $78k AGI, by earning $1000 more, we lose $2400. I’ll be doing some careful tax planning to lump big payouts into good years.
2. You are incentivized to tell them you make very little money and get the max subsidy because if you turn out to make a lot of money you might not have to pay ALL of the subsidy back! Amazing!
3. They couldn’t tell me why I should sign up now. So, why not wait? It’s not as if they can reject you?! Unfortunately, it is the only game in town come Jan. 1.
4. Obama and the politicians did not lie when they said you can keep your existing health plan. They just made a lot of health plans (like mine) illegal as of 2014. So, I likely could keep my existing health plan if it wasn’t going to be illegal.
Yo Mama:
1) If you are at the cusp of an income break, you can reduce your AGI by making 401k or IRA contributions.
2) It doesn’t work that way. If you are eligible for a subsidy, the amount is based on 2014 income – so if you lowball your income, you’ll get stuck with the difference when you file your 1040 for 2014.
3) The enrollment period is in effect until 3/31/14.
4) My old Kaiser plan was jettisoned because it was non-compliant, but the new plan with Kaiser is essentially the same (except stuff I had to pay for before is now included in the plan for free, and there is no longer a lifetime cap).
1. poorly implemented policy. I already do all sorts of things to reduce/lump my income… now I have 1 more “gotcha” to deal with.
2. Read the fine print. If I make more money in 2014 than I estimated, then, depending on the difference, I pay a PORTION of it back. Worst case, I pay all of it back but if I’m in the subsidy range I only pay a portion of it back.
3. The health insurance doesn’t cover you until jan 1 so WHY ENROLL NOW? no reason.
4. Wow! your old plan was jettisoned? Unbelievable? Didn’t obama say that if you like your old plan you can keep it? What if you liked your old plan?
For “free”! It’s amazing how the cost of delivering those goods and services dropped all the way to zero at the stroke of a pen.
It’s free in the sense that there are no out-of-pocket costs at the time of service – the costs are rolled into the monthly premiums.
1 & 2) If you want to means-test a subsidy, then you have to have a sliding scale of some sort. If you want to get the maximum subsidy you are eligible for, you may have to do some tax planning. I’m not sure what your point is here.
3) Get it now or get it later – no big deal either way.
4) The differences between my old plan and my new one are insignificant. There is a value to being able to compare plans offered by different providers on an apples-to-apples basis. If you believe in a transparent marketplace where you can compare the plans offered by insurers competing for your business, then whether you pay a $55 copay but lower premiums (the old plan) or no copay but slightly higher premiums (the new plan) is a distinction without a difference.
Those who disfavor Obamacare have the burden of explaining why status quo ante (or some alternate plan) is better. Nitpicking the details of Obamacare ignores the fact that the old system has higher costs, worse results, and less coverage (i.e., fewer people with insurance) than nearly any country in the developed world. As the plan rolls out over the next few quarters, those who favor it will use anecdotal evidence to say why they were right and those who disfavor it will do the same. However, the law is here to say, prompting the question: for those who are against it, what possible scenario would constitute a success? If, in a few years, we had lower costs, better results, and greater coverage, would that qualify Obamacare as being successful?
Of course not, if is has had catastrophic external effects.
We could also end poverty by guaranteeing every citizen an annual stipend of two hundred thousand dollars. This would be “successful” by its internal criteria, but in broader terms, not so much.
Bad analogy. Paying every citizen $100K a year costs a lot of money and would blow a hole through the budget. According to the CBO, Obamacare is revenue neutral. (Actually, they project that it will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years.)
Let’s posit the following scenario in a few years’ time:
1) Obamacare is revenue neutral
2) The rise in health care costs is less than the rate of inflation
3) Over 95% of Americans have health insurance
4) The shift in incentives from quantity of care to results of care leads to higher longevity, lower infant mortality, and so forth.
In the event that these things occur, would you then consider Obamacare to be successful?
Leaving aside how realistic any of those assumptions are (especially the first one), there are still more external factors to keep in mind: first and foremost, the effect it’s already having on employers and their hiring of full-time workers; that the law itself is so vast as to be utterly incomprehensible in its details, and so brings into existence entirely new layers of government bureaucracy simply to cope with its complexities; the replacement of free markets with ever-increasing centralization of power in Washington; the awful example of existing systems like the NHS; further government intrusions on privacy; that the IRS will be enforcing it; that it’s paid for by coercing millions of people to buy plans they don’t need and don’t want; that it was enacted by sheer force, in a completely non-partisan way; that it expands the reach of government into our private and business lives in a thousand different ways and greatly enlarges the scope and complexity of government itself; that much of the ACA is not itself actual law, but mere placeholders for regulations to be determined at the whim of unelected bureaucrats; that it places yet another huge chunk of the nation’s economy under state control; that it is yet another milepost on the Progressives’ long march to “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”; and so on.
Many of these things don’t bother you, I realize. I think they should, of course, but I’m a reactionary Yankee conservative, and you’re a California liberal.
So when will I think it’s a success? I guess we’ll just have we’ll see. Don’t hold your breath.
I would quibble with your predicates. If there is a causal effect on hiring, it isn’t showing up in the numbers (and in any event, the deleterious effects of the recent temper tantrum in Washington will far outweigh any putative economic drag from Obamacare, at least for the next few quarters). The “free markets” we have had in health care have been a disaster, allowing insurance companies and the brutality of laissez-faire capitalism to take over the vacuum created by the lack of a government role. The bill passed without any Republican votes because on the evening of Obama’s inauguration, Republican leaders pledged themselves to a strategy of opposing every agendum which the President proposed, in hopes of causing his Presidency to fail and turn into a one term event. (What is he supposed to do: sit on his hands for four years?) There are no “government intrusions on privacy:” the government knows nothing more about me than it did before I signed up through the health exchanges. All that Uncle Sam knows about me is what I file on my income tax every year. Facebook knows a lot more about me than the government does.
As for people “buying plans they don’t need and don’t want:” I have no problem with people not being insured, provided they get a tattoo certifying that they will refuse any medical treatment they cannot pay for. If they show up at the ER in a coma and can’t afford the treatment: it’s yit-gadal v’yit-kadash sh’may raba for you, pal. Just don’t ask me to pay for it. Your freedom to be irresponsible smacks right into my freedom not to have to pay for your irresponsibility.
However, even though you are a self-described “reactionary Yankee conservative,” I will give you credit for not having the epistemic closure which is exhibited by the many people in your cohort who refuse to concede that Obamacare could possibly be a success. After all, one thing which inevitably happens when more people get health care is that fewer of them die and many of them live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. Channeling my inner Zhou En Lai, whether this outweighs your suggested parade of horribles is far too soon to tell.
It’s not just hiring; it’s hours.
You cannot seriously believe that this is the only, or even the principal, reason that conservatives (and even mainstream Republicans, too) opposed the ACA.
The percentage of part time workers has fallen since Obama’s inauguration, from about 20% in 2009 to about 19% now. If Obamacare caused a rise in part time workers, it should show up in the data.
Do I think that partisanship is the primary reason why conservatives oppose Obamacare? I do. Considering that its provenance is a Heritage Society white paper, and its first iteration was provided by a severely conservative governor, I think that the right wing obsession about Obamacare has much more to do with seeking a return to power by denying his administration any real achievements than a disagreement about its principles.
John Boehner and his raucous caucus have yet to pass a single major piece of legislation, and they have opposed everything Obama has proposed, no matter what it is or whether they supported similar agenda in the past. This seemingly comes from a widespread loathing of the man personally, as well as the conviction that anything he tries to do originates from malevolent and sinister motives. I don’t expect the opposition party to agree with everything that Obama does, or even most things. However when opposition to his policies – even in times of national crisis – is uniform, inflexible, and reflexive, then I think it’s fair to say that passion and not reason is holding the reins.
I would add that if Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, et. al. were true small government fiscal conservatives, then they might have said something instead of voting for the appropriations bills and tax cuts during the Bush administration which led to this mess. If they truly were against big government entitlement programs, they would not have voted for the Medicare Part D program, or at least they would have demanded concessions from the pharmaceutical companies in return for their increased business (as Obamacare does with providers, insurers, and device makers).
So do I think their newfound fiscal conservatism and professed small government beliefs have more to do with who is in the White House than principled convictions? Yeah, I do.
As Theodore Roosevelt said: “I could carve a better man out of a banana.”
This I agree with. The Tea Party arose (this is often forgotten) as a reaction to Bush-era excesses, in particular TARP. The main reason that squishes like Boehner are acting like fiscal conservatives now is because this newly energized base is holding their feet to the fire.
Sure, said base is united in opposition to the man in the White House. Why wouldn’t they be? But if George Bush had foisted ACA on the nation, the Tea Party would be fighting him just as hard.
This is not to say that there isn’t, as you say, “widespread loathing” of Barack Obama on the Right. There is. I loathe him myself. (I seem to recall some pretty widepsread loathing of “Chimpy McHitler” on the Left too, for eight years prior to that.)
It isn’t as if the Republicans haven’t been involved of lots of bipartisan bill-passing during the Obama adminstration; they have. And it’s expecting rather a lot for them to have passed any “major” legislation when they have held only the House since 2012, and controlled neither chamber for four years before that. (As for passing “major legislation” the Democrats couldn’t even manage to pass a budget when they ran the whole show.)
And as for part-time jobs: I remain unpersuaded. The delay of the employer mandate (by executive fiat, on no authority that I can discern) has, as they say, “kicked the can down the road” a piece, but the incentive that ACA creates to reduce full-time staff in favor of part-time workers is as plain as day. How could it NOT have such an effect?
TARP was not an “excess.” It was a necessity. Had it not passed – because Democrats made a tough vote and bailed out Bush – we would not have a banking industry today. It turned out to be phenomenally successful: the banks were recapitalized at no cost to the taxpayer (TARP actually turned a profit for the government). The Tea Party was dead wrong in opposing it, as they both did not understand the nature of the problem or what was required to fix it. This is the consequence of being unable to comprehend any policy issue more nuanced than what can fit on a bumper sticker.
I don’t loathe Bush, but I can understand those who do. When you launch a nation into war based on deceptions and half-truths, cause the deaths of tens of thousands, bungle another war, mismanage a natural disaster, and crash the economy, people are likely to get upset. What has Obama done? He got the economy back on track, killed bin Laden, ended the occupation in Iraq, and fixed many of the other problems he inherited. You can disagree with him on policy grounds, but he was not the walking disaster which W was. False equivalency.
Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, not 2012.
Budgets are political documents which have no force of law, and are routinely ignored. Budgets were not approved in 2002, 2004, or 2006. The reason that the Obama budgets were defeated is that Republicans used them as political theater to attach poison pill amendments they could use in attack ads. To get the details, research why the last one was introduced by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions.
TARP has NOT turned a profit, and in many cases the returned funds have come from other Federal programs that support banks. Was the cost worth it? Maybe, maybe not. But the project was hardly a neat, surgical intervention, all upside and no downside. Also, many healthy institutions were pressured into appearing sicker than they were, creating an appearance of general mortal peril for the financial sector that became, it may be plausibly argued, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meanwhile, as the middle classes, GM shareholders, etc., were trampled underfoot, the banks partied on, their lavish bonuses and compensation untouched, having successfully arranged matters so as to socialize their losses while privatizing their profits.
If both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street can agree that there’s something rotten about this unholy alliance between the State and big business, they may be on to something. (Next up: the amnesty bill, which plutocrats love for the cheap labor, and Dems love for all the new, dependent voters it will provide, and for all the government jobs it will create to serve them.)
Aside from your correction — yes, I meant 2010, not 2012 — the rest of your remarks are just the usual “Lives of the Saints” stuff, so I’ll pass over them in silence.