Another deadline looms…
…and the Obama administration and the Democrats may not be able to finesse this one:
According to an Affordable Care Act timetable established by administration officials, early next October insurance companies will announce their new menu of health care plans for the ACA marketplaces — plans that may be more varied and numerous than those offered this year, but that almost certainly will come with higher prices.
The likely price hikes will hit the individual and small-business insurance markets only weeks before Election Day on Nov. 4, 2014.
“What genius came up with that timetable?” asked one key Democrat, who declined to be quoted by name because he is involved in private White House talks.
Democratic senators and their political advisers have been lobbying the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to push back the next “open season” date until after the election, to no avail.
The concern about the 2014 timetable highlights a fundamental political reality of Obamacare: The success or failure of the program depends largely on the kindness of strangers — the insurance companies — and whatever happens in the marketplace, for good or ill, will be ascribed to President Obama and the Democrats, since Republicans refused to vote for the law or cooperate in efforts to make it work.
Obama may come to regret dissing the insurance companies.
He may come to regret a lot of things. Of course, he could postpone the announcement date till after the election—but even low-information voters might start to get a mite suspicious.
[ADDENDUM: Scary stuff. Well, it is Halloween.]
“Democratic senators and their political advisers have been lobbying the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to push back the next “open season” date until after the election, to no avail.”
😉 unintended consequences are a bitch. The house repubs should be pushing for full bore Obamacare with no exemptions or exceptions. Feel the pain USA, you elected this motley crew of whores and thieves. I have no mercy for those who vote for serfdom. Suffer for your sin.
And if the plans are going to be so wonderful compared to the scams and junk we had before, wonder why the Dems are so worried?
” . . . even low-information voters might start to get a mite suspicious.”
No, they won’t. If they haven’t by now, no, they won’t.
Rasmussen shows no appreciable drop in Obama’s popularity among likely voters. Boy, was H.L. Mencken ever right about no one going broke under estimating the taste of the American public.
If it wasn’t for the near certainty of an Iranian bomb taking out chunks of the free world due to Obama’s incompetence I would be laughing my head off at the idiocy of the whole thing. Gee who could have thought a novice Senator with a track record of nothing but America hating would make a mediocre president; quick someone call a soothsayer to explain this!
Watch how the Leftoids try to re-label Obamacare as “the ACA.”
Don’t let them.
As Tony Danza would say, hang it around their necks “like a albacore!”
I’m still waiting for word to get out that the bronze and silver “non-grandfathered plans” do Not cover pre-existing conditions.
Another huge lie.
Beverly:
Do you have a link for that? I haven’t encountered that.
Obama delayed the employer provisions of the PPACA for one year. Puts it after the next election, right? Wrong. It is October and we are hearing of millions of policies in the private market being cancelled because they do not comply with the requirements of PPACA. How many existing group plans (employer) do you suppose are non-compliant? We should start hearing about those same time next year.
At last the MSM is focusing on what I’ve posted: the approaching cliff of un-insureds.
They will NOT bankrupt the insurance industry. How could they?
Instead, the cross will be borne by the medical-pharma complex. It’s a high overhead, high fixed-costs cartel.
Consequently, even a throttling back of even 20% of the cash flow will cause immense disruption.
It’s this prospect that has the Cleveland Clinic laying off 900 souls.
0bamacare may be, belatedly, causing the cost-plus economic model of American health provision to be tossed over.
Naturally, the first to go are the proles: no clinic is laying off physicians.
Instead, they’re boycotting serfdom. For, at the end of the day, the contracts that the government/ industry is requesting of practicing physicians amount to serfdom.
Under serfdom, the serf is NOT permitted to leave the estate. He’s required to put shoulder to plough — from dawn to dusk. The laird decides what scraps are to be permitted, etc.
The monopsony characteristics entailed wit 0-care are retread serfdom.
There will no longer be ANY incentive for professionals to toil away. Income redistribution is to haunt their waking hours, too.
Much, much, more needs to be focused on the impact of 0-care on those who’re expected to step-up and make Barry look good.
As it stands, the profession is in rebellion. The insurance syndicates have not signed up remotely enough talent to square up the policies that they’re expected to sell.
Like Prohibition, we may well see epic ‘lawlessness’ as the community of man gives Barry the finger.
========
The sear insanity of 0-care! It would ‘ve been a no-brainer to just kick more funding to the states and have Medicaid enhanced. All by itself, Medicaid could’ve been endowed with blended assistance — such that the bottom gets a 99% free ride — and the working poor gets a 60% free ride — etc.
The states would have an option to pick up the 1% or more for the indigent, making care zero cost for those living on the streets. This could’ve been mated to a slew of benefits that would not break the bank.
In modern medicine, the practice is to diagnose and prescribe, usually to prevent hypertension, diabetes, etc.
That’s not brutally expensive.
What’s breaking the bank for the poor is just getting prescription medicines — since they require a doctors authority — which typically is six times as expensive as the drug.
The poor do not expect to receive deluxe interventions, which normally occur in a futile attempt to stave off death. Across all of humanity, we spend 70% of all of our medical dollars in the last year off life. Extreme interventions is how and why.
President Eisenhower had to beg his doctors to let him go. They made his final months a living hell, by trying to keep him alive.
“Of course, he could postpone the announcement date till after the election–but even low-information voters might start to get a mite suspicious.”
Wrong. That’s the point–low information voters never hear about these political machinations (hence, low information) and thus can’t grow suspicious.
” Feel the pain USA, you elected this motley crew of whores and thieves. I have no mercy for those who vote for serfdom. Suffer for your sin.”
This is wrong and counterproductive. First of all, most of the people you seem to want to punish probably voted AGAINST Obama. At the very least, a lot of them did.
Second, you’re creating an opening for the dems and media to pin the hardships on the GOP for refusing to take remedial action to solve the problems.
The reality of the situation is that there’s nothing that CAN be done to “fix” Obamacare; it’s problem are structural and inherent. But the GOP needs to be able to make that case. It can’t simply project glee at the suffering that Obamacare is meting out to the American people. That’s crazy, politically, and it’s morally reprehensible too given — again — that the people suffering the most from this are in fact NOT pro-Obama. His biggest support groups are lower-class folks on the public dole, govt employees, and well-to-do coastal elites.
I also reject the defeatism implicit in your remark. The goal should be to repair the damage caused by Obama and the dems. It shouldn’t be to witness the final destruction of America just so we can say “I told you so.” Anyone who has given up on America should frankly just leave.
Beverly; “Watch how the Leftoids try to re-label Obamacare as “the ACA.”
Yea, I’ve noticed that as well. Obama himself, early on, even said he was proud that it got the name Obamacare; but, now suddenly it is “the ACA.”
No surprise either that the news media is doing the same.
GAWD…Watching the Demo snakes slither for their holes is a hoot. They’ll re-emerge with kevlar vests and machine guns. Please, ohhhhhh pleassseeee, Repubs: play hardball and take no-prisoners with these toads. Stop with the McCainly nice-ieosity crap and Face REALITY. The Dems will LIE, LIE, LIE. Nail their Lying Azzes!!!
Bill O’Reilly had a producer wandering around Times Square asking people about Obamacare versus Affordable Care Act. Which would they choose? Which was likely to cost more? Be better?
Asked 25 people. One knew they were the same.
Lofos aren’t solely west of the Hudson. And this crew no doubt thought themselves Very Fine Folk and superior to the rubes in flyover country.
I don’t see much diff between high and low information voters.
Mitsu is a relatively high information policy person, after all.
What I think matters more is whether a person is infected by the Zombie virus and how much resistance they have to being zombified and made into a weapon or tool.
Look what Althouse has today, coming from NPR, of all places:
http://www.althouse.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-obamacare-website-doesnt-show-which.html
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s administration asks, “So why are today’s Republicans so upset with an act they designed and their patrons adore?” Then answers, “Because it’s the signature achievement of the Obama administration.”
Reich’s lie is meant to deceive the low-info voter and reassure the troops. There will be a constant refrain of lies such as this over the next year, demonizing Republicans and the insurance companies with the meme told to the public that only a majority democrat House can rein in the greedy insurance companies.
It’s coming down to whether the government has the force to push this monster through, over citizens, over other law, over insurers, over doctors, or not. As much as has already been run through, and easily illegally, as much as the IRS, NSA, this admin, the DOJ, and others have done, I’m not seeing any means for resistance in the legal or political fields. There is no checks and balance, there is no recourse.
Either the people will grumble, settle down, and take it, or they won’t. But they don’t have any allies in government, or at least none with any teeth. Should be interesting to see, and most likely sad.
Doom…
Perhaps you’ve overlooked the fact that the physicians are NOT SIGNING THE DOTTED LINE.
It’s a Potemkin Website.
So, Barry is pitching a health insurance scheme that has no connection to medical care, for there are no doctors willing to enslave themselves to his dictat.
That’s a serious hitch in his giddy-up, fatal, I’d say.
M J R
Here is anecdotal refutation. An elderly friend and neighbor is a staunch Democrat. She is a low information voter who gets her political information from TV, which is always going when she is knitting,crocheting, or even talking on the phone. [When I visit I always have to request that she turn the TV down. ]
I never bring up politics with her. However, when she has repeated some political talking points she has heard on TV- invariably Democrat talking points naturally- I do make a short reply.
She recently brought up Obamacare, and how incensed she was about it. Also a surprise- she said that most of her friends from the synagogue were against Obama- or at least Obamacare. Her anger at Obamacare mostly came from daytime TV- so even there the truth is slipping in.
blert,
There are ways to get doctors to sign, especially incompetent doctors who prefer bureaucratic “oversight”, and see it as just a job. I hate to say it, but that’s what most socialized medical doctors are. I wrote about this recently. A solid way to get doctors, enough of them if there is a problem, to sign that line is to over them all but (and possibly even) criminal exemption. The V.A., essentially, does that now. Trust me, you won’t like it but they will sign that line.
“… is to over…” = “…is to offer…”, sorry, just woke. Bleh.
I predict they’ll plan to enforce not only partial birth abortion on a federal level but also post birth abortion, once the doctors and medical unions fall into line and are “secured”.
Mitsu is not a high information voter. He is surrounded by (and has surrounded himself with) a cultural and ideological processing layer that filters out or rationalizes away information that does not have a place in his heuristics. He cannot be said to receive disconfirming data, and so enormous amounts of information are not available to him at all. It is as if it doesn’t exist.
He plays a useful role here as a very fine example of the semi-educated and unwitting Leftist; but it is impossible to have a real conversation with him, because he can’t hear what you are saying.
That kind of definition automatically falls into the artificial bias category, where high information voter becomes people who agree with you and have access to the same channels as you do. Which is not a reference to the amount of information people get, but where they get it from.
People normally don’t need filters unless the information and data content is already high. The vast majority of the Left merely shutdown when encountering foreign data, because they have no algorithm or command directive with which to process it.
Double think and self deception works better the smarter a person/cpu is and the more information they have. It makes for a more realistic simulation, or brain in a jar context.
The Left’s zombie control is advantageous in that it doesn’t matter if a subject receives a high dose of information. They will still filter out anything that would point towards the truth.
In a computer sense, it’s like the hard disc is constantly writing 1010 over 4 data bits, and then repeating the drive and writing 0101 over the same 4 data bits. Whenever it sees a certain pattern, the data is collected and the information is processed and recognized, then the pattern recognition algorithm activates and reverses the pattern and not only deletes it, but reformats it by randomizing the 1s and 0s.
In a railroad context, one guy would be laying down tracks, another guy would come up behind him to set the rails\switches, and then the last guy would be coming up behind all of them stripping all of the rails out for decommission. This would continue on for the 10^27 times the circumference of the planet in distance.
If information was strictly limited and not available, that would be categorically the same as ignorance. Ignorance can be cured via external medicine and education. Zombie viruses and mind controlled tools cannot be cured externally.