Get ready for the ObamaCare
bailout
by John Hayward 26 Oct 2013, 2:11
PM PDT
The new word from ObamaCare's IT gurus and their freshly
appointed crisis manager, Jeff Zients, is that everything should be up and
running by the end of November. That's
still several weeks beyond the point where insurance companies will...
... wait a second. Jeff
Zients? Formerly of Bain Capital? (Cue the Mordor theme from "Lord of the
Rings," as Glenn Beck was wont to do when Bain Capital was under attack by
the Obama campaign.) I thought Barack
Obama told us Bain Capital was the focus of evil in the world. Then again, he told us he could launch a
working website, and we could all keep our health care plans if we liked them,
and our premiums would go down by over $2000 a year, and ObamaCare was going to
create jobs and reduce the deficit...
So anyway, Zients says things will
be up and running by the end of November, but that's several weeks past what
has been largely seen as a crisis point for insurance companies. Reuters explained it back on October 10:
Up to 7 million Americans are
expected to enroll in health plans for 2014 under the law, formally known as
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Insurance executives, policy
experts and former administration officials said the federal government's
technical problems need to be largely sorted out by mid-November.
That would help ensure that large
numbers of enrollees - especially healthy young adults needed to make the
program work financially - can be processed by a December 15 deadline for
January 1 coverage.
"Mid-November would be a time
where folks who are getting online or accessing in other ways should really see
things move pretty efficiently," Dan Hilferty, chief executive of
Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross, said in an interview. "As we
get closer to January 1st, if in fact some of these glitches are not fixed,
then I think people will become more and more concerned, and maybe panic about
it."
Well, I guess it's time for people
to "maybe panic" then, because even the highly improbably promises of
the A-team to fix the B-team's mess by the end of November aren't going to meet
that deadline. Which is why talk of
delaying the individual mandate is in the air.
And I don't want to jinx the
efforts of Mr. Zientz and his little band of miracle workers, but I strongly
doubt he's going to be able to deliver on his promise. He might be able to get the front-end
crapware steamed clean by then, although I'm even skeptical about that, but the
core IT problems of the ObamaCare system go much deeper. Frankly, at this point there's no reason for
anyone on the ObamaCare team to offer anything but the rosiest scenario. Painful honesty could cost the Administration
dearly right now; false promises will leave them roughly where they are right
now, with no great political price to pay.
The time they might buy by promising to fix Healthcare.gov in five weeks
is far more valuable than the admonitions they'll face five weeks from now, if
they can't deliver.
But the other problem with the
website launch is that ObamaCare's structural problems run even deeper than the
worst of its information technology failures.
The evidence continues to mount that the vast majority of people
"enrolling" in ObamaCare this month have been going onto Medicaid,
not purchasing insurance policies. Of
course, since this titanic fraud of an Administration refuses to release the
actual enrollment figures, there's a lot of guesswork going on.
The hard numbers we do have are
"surprising" to Medicaid officials and state administrators,
according to CBS News: "In Washington,
of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for
Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82
percent are in Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000
enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent. And there are similar stories
across the country in nearly half of the states that run their own
exchanges."
Holy cow. That's not only going to break the already
broken Medicaid system even further,
it's going to bankrupt the insurance companies, which not only must sell
millions of ObamaCare policies, but must rope in healthy young suckers to pay
sky-high premiums to support the rest of the system.
Of course, a lot of those high
premiums were supposed to be looted from the taxpayer's pockets through
subsidies - ain't socialism grand? - but we might be on the verge of seeing
Obama demand an even more obvious bailout of the insurance companies, which are going to be submitting some
terrifying Q4 financials if these trends continue. We'll be told we must authorize higher taxes
and/or more deficit spending to cover the insurance industry's losses, and
anyone who refuses is just a greedy SOB who wants poor people to die.
That's how the most far-Left
anti-capitalist President in U.S. history is going to push a billion-dollar
bailout for the same big corporations he demonized when explaining why the
government had to seize control of the health insurance industry. And it will all be done to save a scheme that
was supposed to extend coverage to the uninsured, but in fact seems far more
efficient at stripping insurance plans away from paying customers who were
happy with them.
Bain Capital
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for Bain Capital.
Note: Jose H.
Villarreal is senior adviser at Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, and a director at the Center for American Progress.
John
D. Podesta is the chair & counselor for the Center for American Progress, and his brother is Anthony T. Podesta.
Anthony T. Podesta
is John D. Podesta’s brother, and the
founder & chairman for the Podesta
Group.
Podesta Group
is the lobby firm for the Blue Cross
Blue Shield Association, and Blue
Shield of California.
Jeff Ricchetti was
a lobbyist for the Podesta Group,
and a lobbyist for the Blue Cross Blue
Shield Association.
Tom Daschle is a director at the Center for American Progress, was an
adviser at the UnitedHealth Group Inc.,
the nominee for health and human services secretary for the Barack Obama
administration, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think
tank).
Melody C.
Barnes was the EVP for the Center for American Progress, the
domestic policy council, director for the Barack Obama administration,
and is Barack Obama’s golf partner.
Ezekiel
Emanuel is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Rahm I. Emanuel’s brother, and was the health
care policy adviser at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for the Barack
Obama administration.
Donald
M. Berwick is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress,
and was the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services.
Thomas
A. Scully was the administrator for the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services, and an associate director at the U.S. Office of
Management and Budget.
Jeffrey
D. Zients is the deputy director at the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget for the Barack Obama administration.
Rahm
I. Emanuel was the White House chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration, is Ezekiel Emanuel’s brother, the Chicago
(IL) mayor, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago,
Members Directory
Please note: This link for the
members of the Commercial Club of Chicago can no longer be found.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, an
honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), a senior
counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer
& Feld, LLP, a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for Bain Capital.
James
W. Cicconi was a partner at Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, and is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Center for American
Progress, the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Committee for Economic
Development.
George
Soros was a supporter for the Center for American Progress, and is the
chairman for the Foundation to Promote
Open Society.
James A. Johnson is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank),
a member of the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), was a director at the UnitedHealth Group Inc., a trustee at the Committee for Economic
Development, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant
(think tank).
John P.
White is a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development, and was
the deputy director for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
George P.
Shultz is a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development, and was
a director at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Donna S.
Morea was a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development, and
the EVP for the CGI Group Inc.
CGI Group
Inc. was the contractor that developed Healthcare.gov web site for Obamacare.
Obamacare
is Barack Obama’s signature policy initiative.
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