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.

 

The Democrats Lost - Why?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz - The Public Face of the Democrat Party

Yeah, I know, the photo above is a cheap shot at the Titular Head of the DNC (because it looks just like her).  In my defense, I was looking for an image of Debbie Wasserman Schultz that would visualize the range of emotions she was feeling the day after last week's election results were released.  Was it a bad day for the Nation?  No.  But it was a very bad day for the Democrat Party.  
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Not only did they lose, but they lost - BIG  
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You may be asking the question which I did last Wednesday morning, "So how big did the Democrats lose on Tuesday?"  Don't ask this question aloud as it's akin to asking an obviously pregnant woman, "Hey, how pregnant are you?"  
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Two likely answers can be provided at this point from the woman (and yes, I've heard both so I learned NOT to ask the question any longer), "Buddy if you are pregnant, you ARE pregnant, regardless of 'how pregnant' you are.  There's no such thing as being 'almost pregnant'."

Or, the even worse response follows,  "Honey, I'm not pregnant, I'm just fat."   (I heard this response about 14 years ago when my four-year old son asked the lady behind us at the check-out line, "When are you going to have your baby?".  Luckily the woman was laughing after she told him that she was 'just fat'.  Then we shuffled our son out of the cashier line of the local Publix super market and signed him up for 'Education Camp' for the summer.)  
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GET ON WITH IT MOOS, HOW BAD DID DEMOCRATS LOSE??? 
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Well, I found the map which follows on the National Journal website under the title of "This Is What A Republican Takeover Looks Like".  
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It is a map of the United States with RED indicating House Seats held, or won, by Republicans for the 114th House of Representatives.  The BLUE areas, of course, are those held, or won, by Democrats which will make up next year's House of Representatives.   
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Okay, a couple of housekeeping items from the above:
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1. Keep in mind that I wrote about the seats "Democrats lost", and that,
2. I never said that Republicans won the 'lost' seats

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There is a huge distinction to be made here between voting FOR someone, and AGAINST someone.  Fox News conducted an Exit Poll on the day of the election and asked a series of questions, one of which was this, "Do you feel the country is on the right or wrong track?"  
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The answer, in percentages, to this question follow...
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65% of all respondents said that the country is on the 'Wrong Track'.  
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Folks, if you told people that the airliner they were about to board has a 65% of crashing with a large amounts of fire, screaming, and large piles of twisted and broken metal prior to getting to its ultimate destination, there's an EXCELLENT chance that 'quite a few' people would be heading back to the terminal with their bags to wait for another (i.e.:  less doomed) flight.  
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However, given the same scenario outlined above, apparently slightly less than a third of the seats on the 'Greater-than-50%-of-Aircraft-crashing-travelers' WOULD have people sitting in them sipping on their free Coca Cola and reading the latest 'Air Mall' Catalog.  Upon reflection, illustrates very nicely the mindset of the 30+% of the population which is your traditional Progressive Democrat Voter...   

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They don't care what's happening to THEM as long as they feel other people are being punished for something - Nana nana boo boo, so there...

 
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The lesson which needs to be learned is that while the Republican Party had their 'wave election' (mostly as a result of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid's 'undertow' on Democrats), the American People didn't so much vote for Republicans, they, in most cases, they voted against the "Party In Power" in an attempt to decrease the chances of our USA airliner slamming head-first into the Earth at 622 MPH.  Voters voted to slow our Nation's rate of descent and now it's up to the Republican Party to figure out where the air brakes are.  
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But here's the thing...
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I didn't vote merely for a slowing of our descent, I voted for a NEW flight plan, and God help us (and the GOP in 2016) if the Republicans don't have one stashed away in their back pocket just like President Obama had his Health Care Plan (all 20+ Thousand Pages of it)  within a year after his election.
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In short, the 2014 Election Campaign for the Republican Party was like the Seinfeld episode pitching George and Jerry's TV show about 'Nothing'.  Republicans, for the most part, kept their mouths shut and let the Democrats flail about with the War on Women, Birth Control, and How Great the Economy Is.  Yeah, good luck with those winning strategies, Dems...  
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Boehnor and McConnell had better come up with some pro-active strategies other than merely opposing Obama.  Yes, we need a firewall to slow the decline of American greatness, but we also need new ideas in Washington to once and for all end the Great Recession of 2007/2008.  We need leadership we can believe in.
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We'll see if we have it soon enough.  

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