by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY, POLITICS, TAXES
Last week, Kathleen Sebelius peddled the idea that Obamacare is merely “a very bad brand” and blamed misinformation via “a lot of paid advertising” for it; she also calculated spending on anti-Obamcare ads to be around $400 million:
“So Obamacare no question has a very bad brand that has been driven intentionally by a lot of misinformation and by a lot of paid advertising and I think we may need to call it something, in the future, different. But it’s working and now people are getting coverage. I think by the time that the enrollment started in 2013, clearly we had a terrible eight weeks of website disaster, which didn’t help. But by that time there had been $400 million worth of ads that had been run against the law”.
The problem with the narrative is that the Administration spend nearly $700 million during the same time frame touting the law. What’s more, even the government’s own advertising used the term “Obamacare”, which completely dispels the idea that Obamacare is “a very bad brand”.
Three days after the close of the first enrollment period, Washington Free Beacon gave a rundown of various federal and state costs associated with advertising Obamacare. The amount, compiled by the AP, was calculated to be $674 million for TV, radio, social media, and print advertising. The Obama Administration also took some some unconventional approaches to reach various audiences, including cartoons, a hippie playing the guitar, “doge” memes, cat GIFs, and paying NFL teams. You can read the detailed breakdown here.
And what about those government advertisements? Most of the ads paid for by the federal government with your tax dollars used the term “Obamacare” in them. For instance, remember the particularly visual ads run for the Colorado exchange? You can still view them here, at the catchy “Do You Got Insurance” website (can we at least use proper grammar?) EVERY single one of the ads has “thanks Obamacare!” emblazoned on them. That is the very definition of “branding” right there.
The Obama Administration embraced the term Obamacare because it was supposed to be the signature policy of Obama’s presidency — until disaster after disaster occurred: the website went awry, enrollment was under projection, Jonathan Gruber spoke out; you name it. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
Just how much as the Obama Administration paid to advertise Obamacare? No one actually knows. In September, 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) explicity reported that the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) “did not provide estimates of fiscal year 2014 obligations for certain categories of Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight-related transactions, such as advertising and other public relations activities.”
And that’s not all the GAO report found, with regard to Obamacare spending. The report also stated,
“GAO was unable to consistently verify the reliability of the data received from CMS. Specifically:
GAO was able to determine the reliability of CMS’s estimates for total obligations for fiscal year 2014, which was $3.7 billion; the number of staff as of September 30, 2013, which was 347; and total salary expenditures from March 2010 through fiscal year 2013, which were $79.8 million.
GAO could not determine the reliability of any of the other financial information CMS provided because CMS’s core financial system did not produce totals for much of the CCIIO-related information requested. For example, the system did not produce expenditure totals for CCIIO-related polling, focus groups, or advertising and other public relations activities because of how these activities are captured in the system.
Similarly, information related to reassignment of staff to CCIIO from other CMS and HHS units was not readily available. Consequently, the staff reassignment information provided to GAO was not complete, was not supported by documentary evidence, and could not be verified.”
So, $3.7 billion was spent on Obamcare for Fiscal Year 2014 alone — we just don’t know where. For Kathleen Sebelius to whine about $400 million in advertising against Obamacare just goes to show the depth of desperation for the Obama Administration to blame someone, anyone, for the failure that is Obamacare. And that the most toxic part of the brand Obamacare is “Obama”.
by | BLOG
On the heels of the Gruber scandal, more misinformation has been admitted in regard to Obamacare. Bloomberg has reported that “the Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million.”
Health and Human Services clarified the total number of Obamacare plans as 6.7 million, a decrease of about 5-6%. “The new count puts enrollment short of a 2013 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, adopted last year as a goal by the Obama administration, that 7 million people would be enrolled this year. Federal officials said in September they had 7.3 million people enrolled in coverage through new government-run insurance exchanges. They didn’t distinguish between medical and dental plans, breaking from previous practice without notice.”
Prior to, the administration had separated medical from dental when accounting for enrollment figures. Last May, 8 million persons were reported to have signed up for health plans, while dental enrollments were 1.1 million.
Over time, enrollment dropped for various reasons. As Bloomberg reported, by “September, the numbers became less transparent. The Medicare agency’s administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, released a new enrollment figure, obtained from insurance companies participating in the exchanges: 7.3 million people were “enrolled in the health insurance marketplace coverage,” she said at a hearing by the Republican-led Oversight committee.”
This same blurring of numbers and parsing of words was seen as recently as November 10. Sylvia Burwell, the HHS Secretary announced updated Obamacare numbers: 7.1 million in October, stating, “That’s the number of people currently enrolled and paying in the marketplace.” These numbers also included dental plans, which again was not disclosed until a few days ago.
“The error was brought to light by Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, using data they obtained from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services”, which was admitted by HHS when asked about the data.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
With all the discussion swirling with regard to Jonathan Gruber, the stupidity of the American voter, and the funny scoring of Obamacare by the CBO, it’s worth it to note that CBO trickery is still ongoing.
Hats off to The Weekly Standard last month for delving into the question of true Obamacare costs. The Senate Budget Committee (SBC) took the time to analyze the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections related to Obamacare and this is what they found:
**”The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not actually scored the deficit impact of Obamacare since the summer of 2012″.
Why is this the case? Is it to leave rosier information available to the public so Obamacare backers can continue to peddle positive talking points and obfuscate the financial impact of this legislation?
The most recent CBO scoring was done using the 2013-2022 ten year budget window — and the estimate was that Obamacare would reduce the deficit by $109 billion at that time. So the SBC took the same growth rate used to tabulate that projection and applied it to a new, more relevant 10 year window, 2015-2024.
The SBC found that the surplus would have grown to $180 billion for 2015-2014… ”if nothing had changed in the interim” . And that’s the key. So much has changed in with regard to Obamacare in the last two years that the surplus will now be a deficit — but they don’t want you to know that yet.
What has changed since the summer of 2012? We had the fumbled rollout of the Obamacare exchanges in 2013. We also had Obama declining to enforce the employer and individual mandates on schedule per the law. Both of these significant items affect revenue and costs, and certainly make it clear that the CBO projections on deficit impact from 2012 are no longer meaningful, relevant, or accurate.
Interestingly, the CBO has found the time to make “technical adjustments to its baseline projections for federal health spending, has updated its economic forecasts, and has scored the legislation’s effect on labor markets.” But it just hasn’t gotten around to updating the impact of Obamacare on the deficit. In two years.
How does the CBO go about determining deficit impact? There are three areas that comprise this figure, which, added together, provides the deficit number in its totality. They are:
1) “‘Net changes in the deficit from insurance coverage provisions.’ That’s the spending side of Obamacare (or at least its net spending on insurance coverage provisions).”
2) “‘Net changes in the deficit from other provisions affecting direct spending.’ That’s the money that would have been used to fund Medicare (or, to a lesser extent, other federal health programs) but is now slated to be used to fund Obamacare instead.”
3) “’Net changes in the deficit from other provisions affecting revenues.’ That’s the taxes, fees, and penalties under Obamacare that don’t have much, if any, relation to insurance coverage provisions. (The taxes that do relate to insurance coverage provisions — namely, the tax on “Cadillac plans” and the fines for those who violate the individual or employer mandates — are instead included in the first area.)”
Only the first of those three areas has been updated — the spending side of Obamacare — and that was done in April of 2014. Noting the “lower-than-expected enrollment in the Obamacare exchange, changes in health cost assumptions, and reduced penalties collected from individuals and employers due to the president’s selective enforcement of the law”, the CBO updated its numbers regarding the “net spending on insurance coverage provisions”, from $1.171 trillion in 2012, to $1.383 trillion in 2014.
But what of the revenue side of the deficit numbers? That’s the part that has not been updated since 2012. This includes the revenue from Medicare, as well as “non-coverage-related taxes, fees, or penalties”.
By not updating these important revenue figures, the Senate Budget Committee (SBC) found that the CBO therefore “hasn’t incorporated the technical adjustments it has made to its baseline projections for federal health spending as they pertain to Medicare, its updated economic forecasts, or its scoring of Obamacare’s effects on labor markets”. That’s a huge problem. Essentially, they are still hanging onto pre-Obamacare roll-out projections and assumptions in these areas as it relates to revenue.
The Senate Budget Committee (SBC), therefore, has taking the time to calculate the revenue side of the deficit tally, specifically using the technical adjustments the CBO made to its baseline projections when it updated the federal health spending numbers earlier in 2014. Here’s the results of the analysis:
For the area related to Medicare and other federal health programs, (#2 above), the SBC found that the
“baseline changes reduce the amount of projected federal health care savings from the other provisions affecting direct spending in the legislation by a total of $132 billion over the 10-year period, from $979 billion under the CBO 2012 extrapolation to $847 billion based on the SBC staff calculation.”.
In other words, the expected revenue from Medicare and other federal health programs over the newest 10 year period is estimated to be $132 billion less than what was projected in 2012 before Obamacare started.
In the final area which deals “other provisions related to revenue”, such as taxes, fees, and penalties, the lack of expected revenue is even more substantial. (Interestingly, a recent TIGTA report analyzing the just the medical excise tax in this regard corroborates the finding that they are not meeting Obamacare revenue estimates).
Ultimately, the provisions “related to revenue” all concern the labor market — and not in a good way. As noted above, the CBO did score the affect of the labor market’s effect on Obamacare in order to update its federal health spending numbers. That was done in Feb 2014, and the CBO found that “by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time workers will exit the labor force as a result of the law. The CBO estimates the law will reduce the total number of hours worked by 1.5 to 2 percent during the FY 2017–2024 period and will reduce aggregate labor compensation by 1 percent over the same period.”
Therefore, the Senate Budget Committee (SBC) took this updated labor analysis and applied it to the third area, specifically looking at how that reduction in aggregate labor compensation would affect taxable income. The SBC found that “based on these assumptions, Obamacare is now projected to get $262 billion less in (non-coverage-related) revenue because of its detrimental effect on job growth, a notion that wasn’t registered in the CBO’s July 2012 scoring.”
And what was the final tabulation of Obamacare’s impact on the deficit?
“So, compared to the deficit surplus of $180 billion for 2015-24 that a straight extrapolation from the CBO’s 2012 scoring would yield, current projections now indicate that Obamacare’s decreased spending (in relation to prior expectations) will reduce deficits by another $83 billion (bringing the estimated surplus to $263 billion), but those projected surpluses will be more than offset by the projected $132 billion decrease in Medicare revenue and $262 billion decrease in tax revenue due to lower job growth.
In all, therefore, CBO projections indicate that Obamacare will increase deficit spending by $131 billion from 2015-24. That’s a $311 billion swing from the extrapolated 2012 numbers, a $240 billion swing from the actual 2012 numbers, and a $255 billion swing from what we were told when Obamacare was passed.“
That’s a mighty big change in only 2 years. How will Obamacare make up the revenue? Will it be an increase in premiums? We still don’t know. Unlike last year, when Obamacare enrollment began on October 1, this year, Obamacare enrollment was held off until November 15 — 11 days after midterm elections.
As recently as this past Monday, the NYT reported that, the Administration lowered its estimate of enrollees by about 30%, “projecting that “9.1 million people would have such coverage at the end of next year. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that 13 million people would be enrolled next year, with the total rising to 24 million in 2016. In the past, the White House has used the budget office numbers as a benchmark for success under the Affordable Care Act.”
4 million fewer enrollees is a large difference in target numbers. So when will the CBO update its data so that the public can accurately ascertain Obamacare’s impact on the deficit?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, BUSINESS, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Reason does a good job (un)covering some clips from 2012, which feature the Chief Architect for Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber. They come at an awkward time just as a Circuit Court judge panel ruled that Obamacare was limited to only providing subsidies in state exchanges, not federal, per the text of the law. The government unsuccessfully argued that everyone meant both federal and state exchanges, and the text was akin to a typo.
Back to the clips and the article. Apparently, in 2012, Jonathan Gruber described precisely the opposite of the government’s recent argument — that Obamacare was limited to state run exchanges and the threat was that, if states did not set up exchanges, the residents of those states would lose out on millions and billions in tax subsidies. Oops.
After being presented with the video, Gruber denied that position and suggested the bill really just contained a typo. And then, a second video was found, also from 2012, which Gruber again argues the same point — that Obamacare only meant to have state-run exchanges. Remember, Gruber was the “chief architect of Obamacare”. Oops again.
The government did not anticipate that a majority of governors would reject the carrot of tax subsidies dangled in front of them when presented implementing Obamacare in their states. They simply did not comprehend that most states would find Obamacare too expensive or too bureaucratic. That is why the bill never said “federal exchanges”. The allure of tons of tax subsides was supposed to woo all the governors to be enticed by this poorly-crafted-bill-that-was-rammed-through-Congress.
When the embarrassment emerged that only a handful of states chose to participate, they scrambled to create federal exchanges, even though that was never intended in the first place. Now the courts have to fight it out. Now we have courts who are split between the language and the spirit of the law.
That is why this unearthing of video footage of the handpicked Obamacare crafter is particularly awkward for the government’s defense.
From the Reason article: (also worthwhile to go there and check out the videos)
“Obamacare’s defenders have responded by saying that this is obviously ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense in the larger context of the law, and what’s more, no one who supported the law or voted for it ever talked about this. It’s a theory concocted entirely by the law’s opponents, the health law’s backers argue, and never once mentioned by people who crafted or backed the law.
It’s not. One of the law’s architects—at the same time that he was a paid consultant to states deciding whether or not to build their own exchanges—was espousing exactly this interpretation as far back in early 2012, and long before the Halbig suit—the one that was decided this week against the administration—was filed. (A related suit, Pruitt v. Sebelius, had been filed earlier, but did not challenge tax credits within the federal exchanges until an amended version which was filed in late 2012.) It was also several months before the first publication of the paper by Case Western Law Professor Jonathan Adler and Cato Institute Health Policy Director Michael Cannon which detailed the case against the IRS rule.
Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who helped design the Massachusetts health law that was the model for Obamacare, was a key influence on the creation of the federal health law. He was widely quoted in the media. During the crafting of the law, the Obama administration brought him on for consultation because of his expertise. He was paid almost $400,000 to consult with the administration on the law. And he has claimed to have written part of the legislation, the section dealing with small business tax credits.
After the law passed, in 2011 and throughout 2012, multiple states sought his expertise to help them understand their options regarding the choice to set up their own exchanges. During that period of time, in January of 2012, Gruber told an audience at Noblis, a technical management support organization, that tax credits—the subsidies available for health insurance—were only available in states that set up their own exchanges.
A video of the presentation, posted on YouTube, was unearthed tonight by Ryan Radia at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank which has participated in the legal challenge to the IRS rule allowing subsidies in federal exchanges. Here’s what Gruber says.
What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this. [emphasis added]
There can be no doubt, based on his record, that Gruber is a supporter of the law. He says so in the presentation. “I’m biased, I’m in favor of this type of law, I won’t hide that,” he says. He also explains early on that his entire presentation is made of “verifiable objective facts.”
And what he says is exactly what challengers to the administration’s implementation of the law have been arguing—that if a state chooses not to establish its own exchange, then residents of those states will not be able to access Obamacare’s health insurance tax credits. He says this in response to a question asking whether the federal government will step in if a state chooses not to build its own exchange. Gruber describes the possibility that states won’t enact their own exchanges as one of the potential “threats” to the law. He says this with confidence and certainty, and at no other point in the presentation does he contradict the statement in question.
In early 2013, Gruber told the liberal magazine Mother Jones that the theory advanced by the challengers in this case was “nutty.” Gruber also signed an amicus brief in defense of the administration and the IRS rule. But judging by the video it is quite clear that in 2012 he accepted the essence of the interpretation advanced by the challengers.
Unless this video is a fraud or there are relevant details missing, there are only two options here: Either Gruber, a key influence on the legislation who wrote part of the law and who consulted with multiple states on setting up their own exchanges, was correct, and the law explicitly limits subsidies to state-run exchanges.
Or he was wrong in a way that perfectly aligns with both the clear text of the legislation and the argument later made by the challengers to the IRS rule allowing susbidies in federal exchanges.
Update: Earlier this week, Gruber was on MNSBC to address the Halbig ruling. He was asked if the language limiting subsidies to state-run exchanges was a typo. His response: “It is unambiguous this is a typo. Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it’s a typo, that they had no intention of excluding the federal states.”
Update 2: The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon, who was instrumental in developing the arguments that laid the groundwork for the legal challenge in Halbig, responds to the video at Forbes:
I don’t mean to overstate the importance of this revelation. Gruber acknowledging this feature of the law is not direct evidence of congressional intent. But Gruber is probably the most influential private citizen/government contractor involved in that legislative process. He was in the room with the people who crafted this bill.
Update 3: Gruber says the statement in the video was “a mistake.” Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic got a response from Gruber this morning. Here are a few snippets:
I honestly don’t remember why I said that. I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake. People make mistakes. Congress made a mistake drafting the law and I made a mistake talking about it.
During this era, at this time, the federal government was trying to encourage as many states as possible to set up their exchanges. …
At this time, there was also substantial uncertainty about whether the federal backstop would be ready on time for 2014. I might have been thinking that if the federal backstop wasn’t ready by 2014, and states hadn’t set up their own exchange, there was a risk that citizens couldn’t get the tax credits right away. …
But there was never any intention to literally withhold money, to withhold tax credits, from the states that didn’t take that step. That’s clear in the intent of the law and if you talk to anybody who worked on the law. My subsequent statement was just a speak-o—you know, like a typo.
Update 4: Gruber appears to have made a second “speak-o.” In a separate speech, he spoke of the “threat” posed by states declining to build their own exchanges. And he once again explicitly ties the creation of state-based exchanges to the law’s tax credits (its subsidies for private health insurance insurance).
On January 10, 2012, in a speech at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Gruber said that “by not setting up an exchange, the politicians of a state are costing state residents hundreds and millions and billions of dollars….That is really the ultimate threat, is, will people understand that, gee, if your governor doesn’t set up an exchange, you’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens.”
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
Are you a genetic lottery winner? Too bad.
The legislative name for Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act. This name was chosen precisely to appeal to Americans to consider buying a health insurance plan from a government-run exchange. Who doesn’t like the idea of something that is “affordable”? By using that term, it suggested that the current system of health care was the opposite –“unafforable”. But the Affordable Care Act was merely a red herring for what the government really thought about the healthcare system — that it was discriminatory, and could be used as another vessel for wealth transfer.
Yesterday’s interview transcript between Chuck Todd and the Architect of Obamacare, Mr. Jonathan Gruber, M.I.T. should be screaming from every newspaper this morning. But there was hardly a blip on the radar screen. Real Clear Politics has the video. Mr. Gruber revealed the singular truth about the real reason our government created and passed Obamacare — it was not about an “affordable” new system; it was about a “discriminatory” old system, and the government “fix”. Here’s what Gruber described:
“We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance. The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price.
That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate, is about four million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance“.
Where to start?
The most glaring and insulting concept in his statement is the idea that someone is a “genetic winner” and “a lottery winner” that has been “paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination”.
The idea of a “genetic winner” is incredibly chilling. Brave New world-ish even. It completely removes the idea of personal responsibility in the health equation. We are somehow only and entirely healthy or not because of superior genetics, and therefore those who are should be financially punished for it due to a government-imposed standard of “fairness”.
The next absurity goes hand-in-hand with that — the idea that people who “won” the “genetic lottery” are paying artificially low prices for insurance. By what standard is something “artificially low” (or not)? The government standard! Not the insurance market. The government tells us something is artificially low and therefore needs to be corrected. It is their justification to punish the “winners”, a form of reparation of to those who the government considers “genetic lottery losers”. Pay up! It’s not fair you have been paying too low of a price!
Gruber also describes in detail how the government has decided the system is discriminatory: “where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance. At every point in time — present, past, and future — the system discriminates. If you might get sick in the future, you cannot have insurance now! Such a statement defies all logic. But it doesn’t matter. The groundwork is laid bare: our health care discriminates.
What is the solution? Gruber explains that the only way to level the playing field and be fair is to force the “genetic winners” to pay their fair share (sound familiar?).And finally, finally, Gruber tells us, “In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance”.
A fixed system now. Because the government decided the system was “broken”. It was the fault of the genetic lottery winners and the artifically low prices who discriminated against those who did not have insurance. Are you a genetic lottery winner? The government finds you contemptible.
Of course, there was no distinction of the uninsured between those who could not get insurance or who chose not to have insurance either. The Uninsured were discriminated against. And that needed to be fixed — by the government. We’re here to help.
The Affordable Care Act is only about being affordable to some. It is revealed to be another giant wealth transfer. Take the genetic lottery winners, kick them off their freely chosen policies, put them on the more expensive Obamacare government exchanges, and subsidize those who have been discriminated against to make it fair for all.
Fairness is yet again the objective of, and gift from, the government — no matter the cost to our wallets or our dignity.
