Tag: "Uninsured"

Will Enough Young People Sign Up?

The Obama administration hopes that 40% of enrollees in the new health care exchanges will be between the ages of 18 and 34. The worst outcome would be 40% enrollment of older people (age 55 to 64). According to The New York Times, that unfortunate outcome is occurring in many states. Here are the counts in states reporting so far:

  • The ratio of older enrollees to younger ones is 2 to 1 in Colorado, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Washington, and Minnesota.
  • The ratio of old to young is 1½ to 1 in California and Kentucky.
  • Only in Maryland and Massachusetts do the number of young exceed the number of older enrollees.

The ratio of 2 older enrollees for 1 younger one does not give the real flavor of the age skew in Colorado, where as of November 30, 43 percent of enrollees were over age 55, and 61 percent were over age 45. Just 17 percent are aged 18 to 34.

No one knows the health status of exchange enrollees. Connect for Health Colorado, one of the more successful state exchanges, says that 15,074 people had enrolled as of December 9. The problem is that this is only 177 more Coloradans than were enrolled in the state and federal plans for the uninsurable, plans that are ending soon.

Dec 17, 2013 | 11 comments | by

What’s The Worst Case Scenario?

Suppose that only two million people enroll through the exchanges, instead of the projected seven million. Seth Chandler dissects the results:

Insurance sold through Exchanges without medical underwriting — a central promise of the Affordable Care Act — is likely to implode in a significant number of states by 2015 while limping along in several others but providing little net desired decrease in the number of people without quality health insurance.

Dec 09, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

social-networkingEven doctors don’t know which plan networks they are in.

Delaware spends $4 million to enroll 4 people.

Larry Summers: the ObamaCare website’s glitches are the result of a government brain drain.

Aetna CEO to Sebelius: shut site down until it’s fixed.

Good news: CMS’ chief information officer is leaving.

The Obama administration estimates that more than a third of the nearly $2 billion it has lent to nonprofit health insurance co-ops will not be repaid.

Fewer that one in five uninsured have visited an exchange website.

Nov 08, 2013 | 17 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

AdmApplications are seen at a rally held by supporters of the Affordable Care Act in Jackson, Mississippiinistration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, but won’t say how many people have actually enrolled.

Nearly three-fourths of the uninsured have never heard of the (ObamaCare) exchanges.

Krugman reverses course: after denying for quite some time that public policy uncertainty is holding the economy back and after engaging in class warfare in column after column, he now concludes that both uncertainty and class warfare are bad and at fault are…Republicans?

Al Gore: Global warming is producing “increasing storms, floods, droughts and other extreme events.”

New study: “2013 ranks as one of the least extreme U.S. weather years ever.”

Oct 21, 2013 | 19 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Insuring the uninsured in Massachusetts is crowding out access for the Medicare population. HT: Jason Shafrin.

Park Service Ranger: “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Oops. ObamaCare’s first enrollee may be bogus.

Illegal drugs are cheaper than ever; they’re also purer.

Oct 07, 2013 | 16 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

25% of uninsured say they plan to stay that way.

Only 6.6% of EPA employees deemed essential.

Congress gets paid during a shutdown; staffers do not.

Africa: Despite high reported growth rates, poverty at the grassroots remains little changed.

Oct 02, 2013 | 16 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

us-stethHHS: 11 million uninsured Americans to obtain coverage next year. Down from about 22 million projected a year ago and 28 million originally.

World’s top climate scientists told to “cover up” the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years.

Laura Tyson: Over the last year, more than 40 percent of job growth has been in low-paying sectors including retail, leisure/hospitality (hotels and restaurants) and temporary help agencies. Many of these jobs are not only low-wage but also part-time.

ObamaCare ads are getting weird and creepy.

Sep 20, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Hospital Transparency in California

This is Jason Shafrin:

30-ways-to-cut-your-health-care-costsHow did hospitals respond to the law? Over 95 percent of all California hospitals reported that they offered free care to uninsured patients with incomes at or below 100 percent of poverty. However, higher-income uninsured patients still faced the risk of high prices based on billed charges.

Further, this policy did not help improve the accuracy of the billed charges to Medicare. Medicare billed charges are as ridiculous as ever. As shown in the figure below, Medicare payments equaled 20 percent of billed charges by California hospitals in 2010, down from 43 percent in 1997. Thus, although the uninsured are paying less for hospital care, the insured may be paying relatively more.

Health Affairs study.

Sep 16, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Hits and Misses

Did stock_market_screen350_5220ea003c846you know that selling stocks makes you richer, even if you buy them back? One more reason to ignore the latest inequality claims.

Ethics question: should we redistribute organs?

Should medicine still be considered an art?

Good news: no evidence that primary care physicians offer less care to Medicaid, community health center, or uninsured patients. Bad news: access is not the same.

Sep 12, 2013 | 22 comments | by

Commonwealth Report Shows Why ObamaCare Is Not Needed

obamacare-sign-350x250The Commonwealth report’s most revealing evidence comes in Exhibit 2, reproduced below. According to Commonwealth’s own survey data, fewer than one in 10 (9 percent) of Americans were always uninsured during the period 2011-2012. Among adults with incomes above 133 percent of the poverty level (just under $15,000 for a single person), only one in 20 (5 percent) Americans lacked health insurance for all of 2011 and 2012. (Chris Jacobs)

Sep 11, 2013 | 14 comments | by
« Previous Page — Next Page »