The Real Story Behind the Phony Canceled Health Insurance Scandal

traditional plans have used vendors like Broadspire to evaluate and negotiate treatment invoices going back more than 30 years. The invoices patients saw were NOT paid in full. Discounts have been applied all along. Have you ever looked at what your insurer paid vs what the initial provider invoices showed?

You may not have realized you were networked, but you were.

Did you really not understand your previous insurance plan?

Bite me, nitwit, you're despicable. And so's your mother.

Good News for Obamacare Is Bad News for Conservative Pundits
The warnings that insurance premiums will skyrocket next year look increasingly hyperbolic.

photo of Lucia Graves
By Lucia Graves


April 18, 2014

Conservatives were sure at every turn that Obamacare would fail, but as the numbers roll in, those convictions are looking increasingly ideological.

First they said nobody would enroll. Then they said first-year premiums would be through the roof. And later, they warned of a "death spiral," wherein premiums would go up uncontrollably. My colleague Sam Baker has written an excellent analysis of the situation, the upshot of which is that Obamacare is on a winning streak.

The next great frontier of conservative hyperbole concerns premiums for 2015, with critics warning that costs will double or even triple next year.


As of this week, we have good evidence to the contrary. Health insurance premium rates are expected go up just 7 percent—a rate of increase much lower than what critics were predicting. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is predicting that premium hikes will be relatively modest.

"The double-rate increases we've been hearing are probably exaggerated," Dave Axene, a fellow with the Society of Actuaries, told USA Today. "That's not what we're seeing from the actuarial organizations—I guess we're being a little bit more optimistic."

"A little bit more optimistic" is something of an understatement. For weeks, pundits have been spouting apocalyptic notions about the costs of insurance premiums, warning Americans that "the worst is yet to come."

Writing in The Washington Post last month, Michael Gerson speculated that premium increases could hit triple digits. "Over the past several years, increases in insurance premiums have averaged nearly 6 percent," he wrote. "Because of the rocky launch, age distribution, and delayed provisions of Obamacare exchanges, insurance company officials expect far larger premium increases this spring—in the double digits, if not the triple digits, in many places."

He goes on to reprimand the Obama administration for failing to prepare Americans for these drastically increased premiums, calling it "another round of Obamacare overpromising." In fact, it's Gerson who's blown the expectations game—not that he's alone in that.

Just last week, Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in Forbes that "health insurance premiums are showing the sharpest increases perhaps ever" and that "rate hikes have accelerated as Obamacare's regulations have started to get implemented."

In an appearance on Meet the Press, John Sununu cited a report from WellPoint that predicted "double-digit-plus" increases. The report startled analysts at the time, with some saying they suspected the company was "hedging bets" in case of a change in rules. But that nuance didn't make it into Sununu's talking points.

And conservative blogger Ed Morrissey cited a sensational headline to make his case. "Remember how Barack Obama and Democrats promised to 'bend the cost curve downward' with ObamaCare?" he wrote on Hot Air. "Well, they got most of that promise correct. Obamacare has bent the cost curve all right, but sharply upward—and in 2015, expect them to not just bend but absolutely 'skyrocket.' "

That report was widely bandied about in the conservative blogosphere. "In politics, there's only so much massaging of the truth and flat-out lying that one can do before the headlines catch up with the deceit," wrote National Review's Charles Cooke. "Here's one that ought to scare the hell out of any Democrats who are still hoping that The Charge of the Light Brigade can be an effective electoral strategy for them: 'O-Care premiums to skyrocket.' " In this case, of course, it was deceit that caught up with the headlines.

The origin of these critics' argument can be traced to a thinly sourced article in The Hill, which quoted a former Cigna executive saying things like, "My gut tells me that, for some people, these increases will be significant." The reports about insurance rates possibly tripling, which were widely repeated, appear to come from a single anonymous insurance executive.

The irony is that, had conservatives been a little less quick to trumpet every nugget of potentially bad news, the administration would be riding a little less high right now—and their own predictions would look a little less silly.

Nobody knows for sure what will happen next year. And there are still plenty of Obamacare supporters who envision premium increases in the double digits. But pundits like Gerson and even some straight news outlets have been far too confident that everything will be terrible.

Eh.

*PLONK*

Bobsal is not providing good information. He is spewing outright lies.



No, it was definitely a lie when Mr. Obama said that people could keep their existing insurance if they liked it.

I am not sure if Mr. Obama was the one who said that the reason plans were canceled was because they offered subpar coverage, but whoever came up with that one was also lying.

If so, it was not any sort of network that would require me to see certain providers in order to have my treatment paid for.

The networks I'm talking about are the kinds that say a patient has to see certain specific doctors if they want the insurance company to pay their bills. There is none of that kind of nonsense in a traditional plan.

I understand that there was no requirement for me to see specific doctors in order to have the insurance company pay my bills.

oralboy, If you know how to read and comprehend what you read, try this article about canceled health insurance.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/obamacare-canceled-health-insurance

If you can refute the claims made in this article, please provide credible evidence from any credible source - and NOT YOUR PERSONAL OPINION - which has absolutely no credibility.

He's making up his 'plan' as he goes. He's never given simple responses as to what his plan specifically is or what it specifically details. He admits he's never even looked at the ACA website or sought information on the ACA from anyone but his RW websites. He says his employer contributes about $700 per paycheck to his premium in addition to the premium he pays. He's dead set against ACA. He's not here to discuss the ACA, he's here to bash "ObamaCare".

Here's an excellent article written by a republican.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/republicans-over-the-cliff/

Here's the simple conclusion of the writer,

In the last month I've had and am completing a three part CPE, my first since 2005. Lab work, EKG, Treadmill, hands on physical, colonoscopy, all preventative care, all FREE, because my ACA BCBS policy apparently recognizes that healthcare as opposed to sickcare makes more sense. Screw all haters.

Also, my annual physical with my physician is now free, because it's considered preventive care.

What most conservatives fail to understand about health care is that prevention saves money. Identifying cancer early can be treated successfully most of the time. Late id means more treatments, drugs, and healthcare worker time and eventual premature death.

"Penny wise and pound foolish."

bingo

Accurate enough.

We must also remember that during the past decade, we saw double-digit increases in many of those years. 7% is reasonable when we consider the fact that more Americans are now going to have health insurance; a very small price to pay. That's worth the better health, happier lives, and longer life worth every penny!

Rents are increasing at a faster rate!

Here’s how we got to 8 million Obamacare signups

By Jason Millman
April 17 at 5:18 pm

After a two-week extension of the Obamacare open enrollment deadline, the White House announced today that 8 million people have signed up through the health-care law's insurance marketplaces since it opened in October. That means about 900,000 people picked a health plan in the two weeks since the end of the original March 31 enrollment deadline.

When signups hit 7 million on April 1, I wrote about why that number alone didn't necessarily say whether the Affordable Care Act would succeed. The same goes for the newly announced 8 million signups.

Now that we pretty much have the final tally (a few state-run exchanges, including the District's, are still allowing enrollment through the end of the month), here's what enrollment actually looked like vs. expectations set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in September before the insurance marketplaces opened.



You can see that signups surged in March as expected, and the two bonus weeks of enrollment in April essentially matched signups for the entire month of February. CMS never made a projection for April enrollment because it was not supposed to happen.

If we learned one thing from this enrollment period, it's this: Never underestimate the power of procrastination. California's exchange on Thursday reported that April 15, its last day of enrollment, saw 50,000 people sign up — its best day ever.

Youth Enrollment

If you tuned into President Obama's news conference Thursday afternoon, you heard him say that 35 percent of people who signed up for exchange plans were under 35. That's true, but there's a number that matters much more to the success of the new insurance markets: how many enrollees are between 18 and 34 years old. In the end, young adults accounted for 28 percent of signups.

Obamacare supporters predicted all along an enrollment bump in the crucial young adult demographic, and it sort of happened. In January and February, young adults accounted for 25 percent of total signups.

Last summer, the administration had hoped that 40 percent of exchange enrollees would be between 18 and 34, based on the Congressional Budget Office's estimates that 7 million people in all would enroll in 2014. Instead, the administration got 28 percent, which the White House and supporters very eagerly pointed out Thursday was nearly identical to youth enrollment in the first year of the Massachusetts health-care law that Obamacare was based on.

Is that rate good enough for the federal law? Probably. Previous analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that enough young people have signed up to avoid a major spike in premiums next year. And the CBO earlier this week said it expects a small increase in premiums in 2015. Young people may benefit the most from special enrollment periods between now and the November start of open enrollment, so their numbers may still grow.

The 2014 enrollment stories aren't over, however. We're still waiting to find out at least the following: How many purchased coverage off the exchanges, how many paid their premiums, what kind of coverage they purchased, how many joined Medicaid because of the expansion and more.

So, stay tuned.
Jason Millman
Jason Millman covers all things health policy, with a focus on Obamacare implementation. He previously covered health policy for Politico. He is an unapologetic fan of the New York Yankees and Giants, though the Nationals and Teddy Roosevelt hold a small place in his heart. He’s on Twitter.