Notice The Enrollment Spin
Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
The disinformation coming from the Obama administration is unrelenting.
CMS has released Obamacare’s open enrollment numbers through 12/15/14.
On December 15,2014 all of last years enrollees who did not change their health plan or did not discontinued their plan were automatically re-enrolled for 2015.
“ Confirmed 2015 QHPs: 3,039,524 as of 12/15/14”
“Estimated 2015 QHPs (Cumulative):
11/21: 610K (462K HCgov) • 11/28: 1.02M (765K HCgov) • 12/05: 1.80M (1.35M HCgov) Thru 12/15: 4.70M (3.52M HCgov”
Enrollment by state can be studied in the following link.
The Obama Administration bragged with the following statement.
The number of people enrolling or re-enrolling last week was considerably higher than in previous weeks. Week one saw 500,000 enrollees, week two had 300,000 and week three saw 600,000 sign up through HealthCare.gov.
Week four saw 850,000 people enrolling or re-enrolling.
The cumulative estimate of people needed to sign up was 4.7 million through 12/15/14. The sign up number included people who were automatically re- enrolled with the same insurance policy they bought last year. This year’s premiums and deductibles will be higher that last year’s premiums in most cases.
The Obama administration picked up 1 million enrollees for the week as a result of the automatic re-enrollment. These enrollees have been warned that they will be paying a higher premium than if they searched for a different plan by a different insurance carrier.
Only 3.4 million sign ups were confirmed to receive healthcare coverage by January 1,2015.
This is only seventy percent (70%) of the expected enrollment through 12/15/14. The enrollment had been extended previously to February 15, 2015.
http://acasignups.net/spreadsheet
CMS told us that last year 8 million were enrolled. The number was modified to 7.2 million and then changed to 6.7 million as 400,000 were not enrolled in healthcare but bought dental care insurance.
We were never told that 65% of the enrollees received federal subsidies in the traditional media. How many of those people who received subsidies subsequently lost their subsidy because the IRS could not confirm their reported income?
The next critical question is how many of the people who lost their subsidy dropped their insurance because they could not afford the premiums and deductibles.
How many people that enrolled have preexisting illnesses? How many of the people who enrolled can pay the high deductibles and copays?
How many people in the individual market can afford to pay the insurance premiums with pre-tax dollars?
Whatever the premium is in the individual market the enrollee has to have twice as much disposable income to pay the premium because the premium is not tax deductible.
Healthcare insurance premiums are tax deductible to employers in the employer group markets.
How many taxpayers know that the Obama administration is subsidizing the healthcare insurance industry so the industry cannot loss money if the healthcare insurance is bought through Obamacare?
The original goal for enrollment for 2015 was 13.5 million. It was lowered to 12 million and now 9 million by the time the enrollment started. If 6.7 million were originally enrolled the increase in new enrollment will only be 2.3 million.
What happened to all the millions of people who lost insurance through their employer because they were shifted to part-time work?
It seems that Obamacare is unattractive or unaffordable to those who need it most. If taxpayers knew the waste in Obamacare’s administration and guarantees to the healthcare industry, taxpayers would not be very happy.
It goes back to Jonathan Gruber’s statement that the people are stupid and the lack of transparency is very powerful political tool.
Meanwhile, the enrollment rate is low but the Obama administration is feeding the traditional media the spin that enrollment is surging. This game is not going to promote Obamacare’s credibility.
“More than a million people signed up for health insurance plans onHealthCare.gov in the past week, bringing the overall total of signups for the first four weeks of the current open-enrollment period to nearly 2.5 million, the CMS announced Tuesday.
Dec. 15 was the HealthCare.gov deadline to enroll for coverage to go into effect Jan. 1.”
“More than half of the people who enrolled between Dec. 6-12 were renewing their coverage.
Many of the State Health Exchanges are already extending the deadline for coverage to begin January 1,2015, California, Maryland and Minnesota, Idaho, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Washington already have extended their deadlines for signing up.
If enrollment was going as well as the Obama administration claims, there would not be so many 2 week extensions.
“Our community wants to do everything we can to make sure consumers have greater peace of mind about their healthcare coverage and to support them throughout the open-enrollment process,” Karen Ignagni, CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement Monday.ė
Why wouldn’t the healthcare insurance companies want more enrollees? They are selling insurance policies for the Obamacare at no financial risk.
“Federal plans are underway for a special outreach campaign to the roughly 250,000 individuals whose existing plans are no longer being offered on the federal exchange for 2015. HHS plans to point these people in the direction of a plan that is substantially similar to the ones they've lost but they won't be auto-enrolled.”
The Obamacare’s enrollment period is desperate for more enrollees
HHS is rolling out online partnerships with three online firms to further promote HealthCare.gov during the current open-enrollment period,which ends Feb. 15.
The partnerships are with Monster.com, Peers.org, and Higi, a provider of interactive health stations tracking weight, BMI and other vital signs to supermarkets such as Kroger and Meijer. The company will post messages informing users of the open-enrollment period.
The partnerships are innovative but have a low probability of success.
President Obama and his administration continue its information spin. The real truth is the Obama administration is not transparent at all. It takes hard work to figure out what is the truth.
The public is beginning to figure out that they are not getting the truth. Consumers are directly affected by the manipulation of the truth personally. Consumers are not showing up to participate.
Presently, Obamacare is only covering consumers in the individual marketplace.
Just wait until Obamacare affects the small group and large group employers that are going to have to pay a penalty for providing unqualified Obamacare healthcare coverage.
One outstanding example is the worthless Mini-med plans of McDonald and Burger King that President Obama gave a waiver to until 2017.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone
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