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.

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!