Thursday, November 18, 2010

Obamacare Over-Regulation

From a November 12th Wall Street Journal editorial:
Democrats think they know how to run the insurance industry better than the insurance industry, and they're getting the chance to prove it under ObamaCare. Consider the early returns on its plan to insure Americans denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

To judge by President Obama's rhetoric, the insurance industry's victims have been wandering the country like Okies in "The Grapes of Wrath." Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare's broader regulations kick in.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that "uninsured Americans who've been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they'll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care--some for the very first time in their lives."

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana--63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven't had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn't what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. . .

The government didn't need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.
Agreed. As Ed Morrissey summarizes: "HHS falls short of pre-existing coverage prediction by . . . 97.8%"

(via readers Doug J., Warren)

5 comments:

WARREN said...

WHITE HOUSE HANDS OUT 111 OBAMACARE WAIVERS - HIDES IT ON WEBSITE

It takes 6 clicks to find out this information on the government’s health care website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Uu_tI0hTw

Here's the list of companies.

http://www.hhs.gov/ociio/regulations/approved_applications_for_waiver.html

According to the government, one company (# 104) has only one employee. Another has two.

OBloodyHell said...

> The government didn't need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.

Sure it did. How else is the Fed to expand its power...?

I mean, if it helps JUST ONE PERSON... it's worth it!!!!!

:^9

OBloodyHell said...

Alachua County, FL, found similar experiences -- They passed a sales tax addition which served to do two things --

1) Half of it was to provide remuneration to the local hospitals' ER for uninsured patients they treated.

2) The other half was to provide insurance coverage (of some vaguely undefined sort) to local low-income residents who could not afford, and did not have, insurance coverage of their own. As of something like two years after its passage, there were still only a fraction of the nominally eligible residents who took any advantage of its services.


Perhaps one of the reasons a large percentage of the uninsured are uninsured is because, when push comes to shove, they just can't be bothered....

MaxedOutMama said...

Well - right now a lot of them just can't afford it. Even in MA, the numbers are going the wrong way. There, where a lot of people had insurance, it is hard to assume that those dropping coverage are doing so because they just can't be bothered.

Anonymous said...

Somehow I am sure this is Bush's fault.