https://www.beckerspayer.com/payer/employer-healthcare-costs-to-rise-9-in-2025-5-notes.html

The Biden folks have released what they claim is a “fix” for the alleged “family glitch” this week (if you don’t know what the family glitch is, look it up). Somehow, the folks at IRS and Treasury got themselves a new set of tea leaves, because the statute hasn’t changed in many years, since 2010. In fact, Team Obama made it a top priority for eight years and came to the conclusion that they couldn’t do it.

They were right; the statute is clear. Absent Congressional action, the fix they are proposing is fanciful legalese at best and an outright lie & deception (imagine that, from Washington D.C.) at worst.

Let’s be specific – in spite of media hyperventilation and Democrat machinations, the so-called “family glitch” isn’t a glitch at all. The statute, passed as part of the laughingly named Affordable Care Act, in the middle of the night, as a budget reconciliation bill, with no severability clause and with absolutely no Republican support, was the direct result of political consideration and policy restraint, designed to keep the costs below the threshold supported by Obama, as well as avoiding any disruption to the employer-based healthcare system (that would come later). In short, its language could not be more succinct.

That has now all been thrown out by artful lawyering by political appointees at IRS and Treasury, opening a veritable can of worms (not to mention class actions law suits .. “were you denied subsidized health insurance? Call Dewey Cheatam & Howe today!”) and an explosion of federal spending in the forms of large premium tax credits, made larger by the American Rescue Plan Act.

But apparently everyone thinks this is such a great deal! Sure, lets shrink the employer based healthcare system, moving 20 million or more people from employer-based coverage to taxpayer-subsidized health insurance on marketplace exchanges, continue to expand the federal deficit (hey, no shortages there, right?) and strengthen government subsidized healthcare at the expense of private health insurance. Cool, eh? Why, even my lobbying group, NAHU, apparently is all in on this (while ignoring the fact that the very benefit professionals who pay them dues to keep their lights on are endangered to extinction with this illegal expansion of Obamacare).

The Obama Administration concluded that the fix could not be accomplished without legislation from Congress. This fact, coupled with this new “rule”, means that the IRS and Treasury are now thoroughly politicized (if that fact doesn’t worry you.. well, more tea anyone?). The “firewall” has been breached.

What firewall, you say? The ACA has a provision that prevents employees from choosing between premium tax credits to buy an subsidized plan and enrolling in their employers’ private health insurance. This was designed to prevent people from ditching their employer-based health insurance in favor of a subsidized marketplace exchange policy (read: massively cheaper). This isn’t about maintaining and strengthening the healthcare system as we know it, far from it! It’s clear that the vast majority of people who gain eligibility under this scheme already have access to employer-based coverage. Do the math.

You can’t beat a government with a printing press. Insurance companies love getting free money from the government, because it never stops. Displacing private spending with government subsidies will greatly expand federal spending and actually lead to making life more complicated for folks who can’t understand their health insurance now – wait until they have two or more policies to deal with. Strengthening the public sector at the expense of the private sector has been a long, time-honored tradition with Democrats back to the age of FDR – and Democrats have made no secret that their end game is the destruction of health insurance companies in favor of a single payor government system. Right, Jan?

But I’m the canary in the coal mine. Step right up, folks, the gravy trains a-rollin’.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house-to-send-principles-for-obamacare-replacement-plan-to-capitol-hil

An excellent idea, assuming the engineered gridlock can somehow be broken

This isn’t “consumer protection”: it’s state-mandated equal sharing of misery:

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/dora/news/updated-regulation-govern-short-term-health-plans-colorado?inf_contact_key=add714bd3ea171cf2aa5ce879e9473b5

There will be virtually NO short-term medical plans available in Colorado after this regulation goes into effect, I predict. Since when did “consumer protection” extent to The State simply demanding that all things must be one size/shape/form, eliminating any chance of the consumer being able to make his own decision for his or her own needs, supplanted by the “we know what’s best for you” overregulation that actually causes more harm than good? Elections have consequences: Big Brother won, and guess who loses.

Oh, and to be clear: the intent of this regulation is a thumb in the eye to the Trump Administration, and its attempts to bring market forces to work, to expand choices, and provide relief for people who simply want to buy something that might work more effectively for them, even if it *gasp* isn’t a lock-step, over-priced, ACA clone that many can’t afford. Egads! We can’t have that, can we?

Government: we know what’s best, so shut the hell up.

I’ll not likely be posting anything else in 2016; open enrollment consumes most of my time.

Trump is the President-Elect; Obamacare is likely due to see some changes. What will the State of Colorado do? Good question, we will see!

“Repeal and Replace”: Will likely be a two year process; at the minimum, eighteen months to more than twenty four months seems to be about right. Make no mistake: Republicans have plans. I suspect they will move quickly, because moving slowly won’t capitalize on the mandate won by Trump.

Trumps’ appointment to HHS is a good indication he will likely lean more towards actively “repeal and replace” rather than tinker with the existing framework; already, the MSM is spinning it negatively, such as “the investments made to ensure Obamacare would work will likely now be lost” yada yada. As with any investment in business, market conditions change and businesses change with it; usually the last thing the MSM is concerned about would be business investments being lost. Read into this what you will.

I’m already seeing positive changes because of the election, and I’ll be more pro-active in 2017, now that conditions are ripe for tax reform, health insurance reform, and economic growth.

Merry Christmas  |  Happy Holidays  |  Happy New Year!

Many years ago (ancient history for many, since it was in the last century) a certain Colorado Governor demanded the reform of Colorado’s health insurance regulations, or he’d bring a “single payor system” down on our heads. it was to be called, if memory serves, ColoradoCares. Reform happened, so it went away. But you know, the relentless need to have a government-run health care system never goes away with Democrats.

Well, its back, and it’s even worse. Here’s a quote: ” a “risky and untested state-run health insurance system.” State-run, as in, the state of Colorado, and financed with a whopping big tax increase, larger than the size of the entire Colorado budget. It will replace Obamacare. And no, that would not be the kind of replacement I’d be in favor of!

If you love Obamacare, you’ll love this – until you don’t.

Read the full story here.

It should not come as a surprise that the current Administration would eventually take steps to abolish or otherwise destroy Health Savings Accounts, which were legalized as part of a deal made with Democrats to get Medicare Part D passed in 2003. Democrats universally loathe the idea that you could be allowed to buy a higher deductible plan and then contribute to your own “medical IRA” to pay for out-of-pockets expenses; they’d prefer you give the whole amount to an insurer (and the government) so they can re-distribute it properly. They’ve been gunning for HSA’s for at least a decade.

Health Savings Accounts represent one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growth segment in health insurance, and this has not gone un-noticed by the one-size-fits-all redistributive Left. I originally thought HSA’s would be eliminated via executive fiat in 2012; lo and behold, the gov needed the flexibility of HSA’s to keep Obamacare from foundering on the rocks. Those days are long gone; since the ACA has weathered all of the legal arguments thrown against it, regulators at CMS feel confident that they can now move against HSA’s, at least as far as the exchanges are concerned (and this will have repercussions in the private, individual market as well, I’m sure).

For 2017, it is highly unlikely that HSA’s of any kind will be legal or allowable on any exchange, federally-facilitated or state-run. The reason for this has to do with the ever-increasing deductibles required by the ACA, as well as new requirements, laid out in a brand-new, 500+ page rule, that mandate that some services other than preventive care must now be covered under the deductible. Since, under HSA plans, services other than preventive can’t be covered until the deductible is met, this means that, in CMS’ convoluted reasoning, that HSA’s are simply not relevant to their ever-higher deductibles and ever-expanding “first-dollar” coverage requirements. Its – yes – death by executive fiat, via a thousand cuts.

What is of course not talked about yet is the idea that, as soon as the new benefit plan design become mandated, old plans will bo longer be ACA-qualified: in essence, the elimination of ALL HSA-qualified plans in own fell swoop, and also the elimination of ANY HSA deductions into your HSA account.

Based on this, HSA’s as a valid health coverage will disappear by 2018. Who are you voting for in 2016?

Here’s an article that explains it more fully – go here.

Along with the collapse of Colorado’s own co-op, Colorado HealthOP, comes new that about 50% of the non-profit health coops spawned as a result of Obamacare have failed, with the loss of $2.4B in loan money. See the story here.

The Colorado Division of Insurance moved swiftly to remove Colorado HealthOP from the list of approved insurers in Colorado and through the Connect 4 Health Colorado Marketplace Exchange. See the news release here.

Politico, May 19, 2015: “Colorado has repeatedly revised its average enrollment estimates to account for increases. Early on, officials had projected that for the fiscal year ending June 30, about 144,000 new adults would be covered in any given month. In November, they bumped the number to nearly 205,000. It currently stands at about 234,000.”

See the full story here.

Insurers have a new year of data and the numbers don’t look good. It will be very interesting to see what Colorado rate increases will look like. As usual, for those on subsidized policies, this news will be met with a shrug, since the “I got mine” mentality is in full swing. For everyone else, the rates increases, be they at the low end (say, 10%)) or the high end (say, upwards of 30%) will be particularly savage, and, as individual rates continue to resemble small group rates in all states, it will be increasingly difficult to absorb rate increases coupled with assessment fees to Connect For Health Colorado (on ALL health policies sold in Colorado), along with high deductible and out-of-pocket costs. The reaction I get from people with families looking for individual plans run the gamut, with “HOW MUCH??” and simply stunned silence the most common refrains.

More Health Insurers Seek Double Digit Premium Increases

Everyone’s aware of the infamous Gruber statements. Let me paraphrase: you’re all idiots – now pay me. Followed by an evil laugh.

Well, apparently the good folks over at your local Marketplace Exchange, Connect For Health Colorado, fell for it, too. (And I should add a disclaimer that I am a Certified Agent for C4H-CO, and I’m just reporting the facts, Ma’am).

Those pesky folks over at the Independence Institute, namely their Health Care Policy Center, run by the charming Linda Gorman, an economist by trade and a member of Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform, have published a very interesting piece of analysis titled “How The Gruber Model Failed In Colorado”. You can get it here. The bottom line assessment? “Its poor predictions will likely end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars”.

This is so good it’s hard to summarize: I think anyone interested in the effects of Obamacare and the lackeys employed to carry the water for it should read it, re-read it, and pass it around. And, if you know anyone in Vermont …

Seriously, I’m no economics expert (or anything else for that matter, except maybe good coffee) but for really educated folks to buy into Grubers’ predictions, as highlighted in the reports and analysis he got paid to do by Colorado, simply defies explanation. I mean, really: the idea that, based on somebody’s economic assumption, there wouldn’t be an almost catastrophic rise in Medicaid recipients is simply stunning. As almost anyone who’s been around the health insurance business knows, it isn’t the folks who can buy insurance and don’t who are the biggest problem, it’s the folks who couldn’t buy coverage at all due to extreme low-income or other circumstances. The farcical notion that many more people would get subsidies rather than a short trip to Medicaid says that no one really understood what’s been happening in Colorado. Guess what? Medicaid enrollment has exceeded expectations by 40%, and drastically overestimated the demand for subsidized policies (one-sixth of what was projected!).

Even unsubsidized policies are far below Grubers’ prediction. (And here’s an odd thing: why would anyone buy an unsubsidized policy through the exchange, anyway? There is simply no reason to buy an unsubsidized individual policy through the Marketplace exchange – something that comes as a surprise to many people.)

The reports go on to (laughably) suggest that insurance premiums would go down “27% on average”, with people buying richer plans because of their tax savings. I should send this to my clients who have a) had their premiums rise at least that much, b) their deductibles go up dramatically, and c) their networks and doctor choices curtailed, seeing that the market switched from PPO to HMO offerings almost immediately. That would be all of them, by the way.

The list of predictions that were wrong read like a list of Obama statements, that’s for sure! Like Grubers’ predictions that people in grandfathered plans would “see no change in their premiums”. Actual fact: they rose by 37% by early 2014.

And we won’t even talk about how Obamacare wrecked a high-risk pool that was actually cheaper than it’s replacement (and rather than an HMO was an any willing provider network, to boot).

This, my friends, is what happens when common sense and good public policy get replaced with redistributive ideology: any argument works so long as it advances the political objective, true or not. And the essence of Obamacare wasn’t about “health insurance reform”, it was about federalizing the health insurance markets prior to a move to a single-payor system (that’s my own opinion, by the way, not anything taken from the report).

Best take-away quote: “.. substituting tax subsidies for direct payment does not affect the cost of health insurance”. Of course not.

Download it, have a good read, and discuss it. Better yet, share it with every Colorado legislator you can! Good job, Ms. Gorman!