Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The ACA's Diminishing Return(ees)

"Any resemblance to Satan is purely coincidental and is not necessarily indicative of your expected health care experience"
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Yes, men, women, boys and girls, this upcoming Saturday, we'll have the rare opportunity to dip our collective toes into the ObamaCare 'Marketplace' once again!!!  And, if you know what's good for you, you'd better get BUSY doing it...  
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Just don't do it all at once and break the website again - got it?
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Monday, November 10, 2014, WashingtonTimes.com:  Obamacare may not have enough enrollees to stay solvent  - Fewer than 10 million projected; 13 million needed to stay solvent
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The administration on Monday said fewer than 10 million Americans will enroll in Obamacare’s health exchanges this go-around, well short of the 13 million target congressional scorekeepers deemed critical to its economics, suggesting another rocky rollout in the law’s second year of full operation.

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.Policy advisers at the Health & Human Services Department estimated that 9 million to 9.9 million people would enroll through the exchanges — or only a slight increase over the 8 million that the administration says were active at the end of the first enrollment period this April. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the government’s official scorekeeper, had predicted the law would need 13 million customers on the exchanges.
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The number of enrollees is key, because if too few take part in the exchanges, the pool of customers is too small, and it could skew the economics of Obamacare, forcing insurers to raise premiums and pushing even more people to forgo coverage, choosing to pay the tax penalty instead.
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.The second round of enrollment begins Saturday and ends Feb. 15, 2015. The administration has been reluctant to set a goal for itself this time.
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As quoted above,
"The Congressional Budget Office, which is the government’s official scorekeeper, had predicted the law would need 13 million customers on the exchanges."  Um, okay, I'll ask the logical question, "So if the plan is short by 3+ MILLION subscribers, what does this mean to the subscribers who ARE participating in ObamaCare?"  
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A couple of things might happen:
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  1. Premiums can be increased to raise the revenue necessary to manage the program  with its lowered participation rates
  2. Deductibles can be increased to raise the required revenue to keep the plan solvent
  3. More people will be forced into the program when Obama Administration-hosted exemptions expire at the end of 2014
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Add to this the article on Fiscal Times I saw the other day that 53% of currently enrolled subscribers (or, roughly 4.6 MILLION current subscribers) do not plan to re-enroll because it already costs too much...  
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Where are all the replacement subscribers going to be coming from?  [Note to self:  Check to see how many illegal aliens (oops, sorry, 'undocumented workers') who are currently in the U.S. and then let's watch the President very closely over the next 90 days].  
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If the 2015 enrollment numbers are going to be as bad as are forecast, I'm thinking the train illustration above is nicely positioned to illustrate the ObamaCare 2015 roll-out.  
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Luckily for US, the smiling man driving the Affordable Care enrollment train is Jolly Old St. Barack himself - and he'll do whatever he can do between now and January to make it FREE for everyone (provided that they are here illegally). 
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The question facing the incoming freshmen in the House and Senate is this,  "Will you be better than those your replaced in limiting / repealing the pain inflicted on America by the ACA?"  Please feel free to answer in the affirmative, or make plans to leave Washington now to avoid the 2016 rush out of DC.  
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Thank you.

 

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