CBO:ObamaCarepremiumsandhealthcarespendingwillrise

CBO: ObamaCare premiums and healthcare spending will rise by less than expected, because…

posted at 6:41 pm on April 15, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The Congressional Budget Office released a report this morning that has received a lot of attention from ObamaCare’s many staunch media advocates because it essentially concludes that the cost of expanding coverage through the exchanges will be billions less than the CBO was predicting just a couple of months ago. That’s great news for the president’s crowning legislative achievement, right?

Health-insurance premiums for plans sold on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges will be lower than previously expected, according to a report released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

The findings, by Congress’s nonpartisan spending analysts, result largely from the fact that insurance companies have redesigned plans on the government-run exchanges to shave costs. CBO found that individual policies on those marketplaces have narrower networks of doctors and lower reimbursement rates for health-care providers than is typical of employer-sponsored health plans.

As a result, CBO expects the federal government to spend about $165 billion less over the next decade on subsidizing health-insurance plans for lower earners than the office projected two months ago. Total spending on those subsidies is projected at $1.032 trillion between 2015 and 2024. The report was part of a broader federal spending update released Monday.

Did you catch that? Let’s go straight to the report for a closer look:

A crucial factor in the current revision was an analysis of  the characteristics of plans offered through the exchanges in 2014. Previously, CBO and JTC had expected that  those plans’ characteristics would closely resemble the characteristics of employment-based plans throughout the projection period. However, the plans being offered through the exchanges this year appear to have, in general, lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do. …

The lower exchange premiums and revisions to the other characteristics of insurance plans that are incorporated into CBO and JCT’s current estimates have small effects on the agencies’ projections of exchange enrollment. Although lower premiums will tend to increase enrollment, narrower networks and more tightly managed benefits will tend to reduce the attractiveness of plans and thereby decrease enrollment. The net effect on projected enrollment in the exchanges is small.

In a nutshell, the CBO initially made its projections under the assumption that the plans offered through the exchange would be largely similar in terms of benefits to the sorts of plans being offered by employers — but that definitely isn’t going to be the case. The narrowed networks that insurers are using to keep costs down and the lower reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals are things that neither consumers nor providers tend to like in the long run — which will likely mean more strain on the system and higher costs further down the road.

Tags: CBO, doctors, exchanges, health insurance, network, ObamaCare, premiums

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Yep,RandPaul’salreadybuildinga50-statepresidential

Yep, Rand Paul’s already building a 50-state presidential organization

posted at 4:01 pm on March 27, 2014 by Allahpundit

You knew that, though, even if you didn’t formally “know” it. No American politician, Hillary included, has been clearer about his intentions in 2016 than Paul. CNN remembers him talking about running for president as far back as November 2012, just weeks after the last election. That reminds me of something a friend who works in Democratic politics once told me, that Obama had someone in Iowa quietly sniffing around about 2008 from virtually the day he was elected to the Senate in 2004. I didn’t peg Rand initially as someone who had his heart set on the presidency, but maybe I misjudged. Maybe, after watching his dad catch fire with libertarians in ’08 and fizzle with the rest of the party, he sensed an opportunity for a truer libertarian/conservative hybrid candidate. Paul père bequeathed him a network in Iowa and New Hampshire; if, Rand may have thought, he could build on that by reaching further towards the mainstream than his old man was willing to, he could be a legit contender in the early states and then for the nomination. It could be that his Senate run, a la Obama’s, was always just a stepping stone in taking his ideological vision to a bigger stage.

The only thing that could dissuade him, I think, is if he ends up having a legal problem in Kentucky that bars him from running for president and reelection to the Senate simultaneously. The state senate just passed a bill that would let him run for both but the Democratic-controlled house could block it, leaving the prohibition in effect. Paul has grounds for a legal challenge, but who knows what a judge will do. If he’s forced to choose between running for president and Senate, I suppose he might pass on the former in the name of building a bigger resume as a legislator. In that case, though, he’ll have problems running in 2020 — he’d face either a Democratic incumbent or be blocked by a Republican president — and he may worry that the “libertarian moment” the country’s having right now will have passed by then. Probably he’d run for president and forget the Senate in 2016 if made to pick.

Rand Paul’s nationwide organization, which counts more than 200 people, includes new backers who have previously funded more traditional Republicans, along with longtime libertarian activists. Paul, of Kentucky, has also been courting Wall Street titans and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who donated to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, attending elite conclaves in Utah and elsewhere along with other GOP hopefuls…

At the Romney retreat last year in Park City, Utah, Paul gained some fans among the GOP elite. Though few pledged to back him should he run for president, they did warm up to him.

“Going in, people weren’t sure. Most of them didn’t know him,” recalled Ron Kaufman, a Romney confidant. “But they had these one-on-one meetings with him and came away saying he’s a sharp guy. They were still in the grieving stage, not ready to think about 2016, but their opinion of him increased rather dramatically.”…

The decision to swiftly expand and announce Paul’s national political infrastructure — which will be fully unveiled this spring — comes after reports describing Paul’s operation as unready to compete nationally…

[Nate] Morris, previously a fundraiser for George W. Bush, has served as Paul’s guide as the freshman senator has navigated steakhouse dinners and tony receptions with Wall Street and Silicon Valley leaders.

That bit in boldface helps explain why this is being leaked now. Paul, more so than other candidates because of his pedigree, wants to show the GOP establishment that he’s serious about the nomination, not just running a vanity candidacy to ventilate the libertarian viewpoint a la Ron. That’s why he endorsed Mitch McConnell, the tea party’s public enemy number one, and has refused to budge despite grumbles from conservatives. His top priority is getting Republicans with deep pockets to take him seriously and one way to do that is by helping out an establishment guy they trust. Likewise, Paul has special reasons to start gladhanding GOP movers and shakers early, when the primary campaign is still more than a year away. With the possible exception of Ted Cruz, he’s the only guy in the field who’s running three different primary races. Everyone else is running the first two — the “invisible primary,” where candidates try to recruit millionaire donors and campaign talent, and then of course the early-state primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. If Paul wins those, though, and suddenly looks to be a heavy favorite to take the nomination, he’ll face one last “primary” — i.e., convincing the GOP establishment not to coalesce behind some alternative candidate like Rubio or Scott Walker in the name of stopping the kooky libertarian. The more millionaire hands he shakes now, the more likely it is that they’ll find him acceptable enough not to try to block him if he jumps out to a big lead in February 2016. He’d like their support, but if he can’t have it, he’ll settle for their indifference. It’s no coincidence, needless to say, that backslapping with donors is happening at the same time Paul’s hawkish side is suddenly emerging in high-profile op-eds. It’s all about reassurance.

Tags: benton, donors, invisible, network, organization, President, primary, Rand Paul

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SharylAttkissonresignsfromCBS,partlydueto

Sharyl Attkisson resigns from CBS, partly due to “liberal bias”

posted at 3:21 pm on March 10, 2014 by Allahpundit

First Liz Wahl quits RT over Crimea, now this. It’s been a bad week for state TV.

Coincidentally, Alisyn Camerota announced today that she’s leaving Fox News after 16 years, leaving a vacancy in the 1 p.m. hour. (Seriously, though, I think that’s a coincidence.)

Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her packages on television.

At the same time, Attkisson’s own reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. She iscurrently at work on a book — tentatively titled “Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington” — which addresses the challenges of reporting critically on the Obama administration…

But Attkisson had become a polarizing figure at the network, sources there said. While some championed her relentless dedication to investigations — ranging from defective Firestone Tires to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal — others saw evidence of a political agenda, particularly against President Obama. (The bulk of Attkisson’s work since 2009 has focused on the failures or perceived failures of the Obama administration, including the administration’s failed green energy investments and the attack in Benghazi, though she has reported on several Republican failures as well.)

Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Solyndra, the ObamaCare rollout — she’s spent the last five years digging into all of them. In a different world, she would have been promoted to “60 Minutes”; as it is, per Politico, she spent months negotiating an early end to her contract with CBS. The bit above about her being frustrated with liberal bias rings true, too. She’s been complaining about that, albeit in more oblique terms, for a long time now.

With the possible exception of Tapper, she’s the most respected major-network reporter working today among conservatives. It’s a fait accompli that her book will make a splash on the right. What then? Fox is the obvious choice, but if CNN decides to double down on hard news, maybe they’ll go after her. They’re planning to fill Piers Morgan’s 9 p.m. time slot at the end of the month with a rotating group of interim hosts, Tapper included. If a newsier hour is well received, maybe they’ll bring in more reporters like Attkisson — although Anderson Cooper’s show is already sorta hard news and he hasn’t ousted O’Reilly at 8. Maybe it’s time to be truly bold: “Sensible Reasonableness” at 9 p.m. with your co-hosts David Frum and Michael Smerconish. Take that, Megyn and Rachel.

By the way, did we ever find out who was behind that suspicious activity with her home computers? Attkisson had a suspicion about it last summer, but unless I missed something, that’s the last we heard.

Tags: bias, CBS, computer, hack, network, resign, Sharyl Attkisson

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LeftreadytotakedownScottWalkerover

Left ready to take down Scott Walker over an old investigation that’s already been closed in which he’s facing no charges

posted at 6:41 pm on February 20, 2014 by Allahpundit

With Christie pretty well neutralized, it’s time to turn to the GOP’s other successful blue-state governor and try to cripple him before 2016 too. Might as well have it on your radar now as you’ll be hearing about it sporadically, even though nothing will come of it. The scandal this time is the fact that, back when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive and running for governor, some of his county staff communicated with his campaign staff during county office hours, while on the taxpayer’s dime. It got to the point where a separate wireless router was installed in the county office so that they could converse without any trail being left on the state’s computer servers. Six people were convicted before the investigation was closed. Walker wasn’t one of them, and in fact was never charged. All of which is old news — so much so that his Democratic opponent ran an attack ad against him about all of this back during the doomed recall effort of 2012.

But it’s back again this week because 27,000 e-mails of one of the aides who was convicted have now been released and, well, there’s got to be a smoking gun proving that Walker condoned the secret wireless network in there somewhere — even though prosecutors went through the e-mails themselves, of course, and declined to charge him with anything. At the very least, if they can prove bad behavior by Walker himself, lefties are going to accuse him of running the same sort of poorly managed rogue operation as his pal Christie did in Bridgegate. Why they think this will hurt him when it didn’t stop him from beating the recall effort, I don’t know, but maybe they think there’s a certain osmosis effect at work. Christie and Walker are often compared to each other vis-a-vis 2016; if the national public is convinced Christie’s crooked, maybe they can build that into an “all these guys are crooked” perception.

Some used private email accounts to communicate even, apparently, with Mr. Walker, according to an email from the county’s administrative director, who at one point advised a colleague to do the same, adding imprecisely, “Consider youself now in the ‘inner circle.’ ” And plans for a daily conference call, the newly released emails show, included members from both his campaign for governor and his county executive staff…

Questions remain over how much Mr. Walker knew about activities of his staff. In the email from the county’s administrative director, Cynthia Archer, suggesting that a colleague use a personal email account and join the “inner circle,” she wrote: “I use this private account quite a bit to communicate with SKW and Nardelli,” apparently referring to Mr. Walker and Mr. Nardelli.

But there were also signs among the documents that Mr. Walker had called for a stop to some of the activities. At one point in May 2010, Ms. Wink resigned after allegations that she had posted pro-Walker comments on The Journal Sentinel website while at her county job. Mr. Walker sent an email to another aide, writing of Ms. Wink: “I talked to her at home last night. Feel bad. She feels worse. We cannot afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, et cetera.”

Is that what a guy writes when he’s condoning private business being conducted on county time or is that what he writes when he wants to limit it? See now why that attack ad in 2012 didn’t work?

Right Wisconsin has a list of reasons why this is a big fat zero. There’s actually a second investigation, this time into Walker’s recall campaign staff, that’s under way, possibly related to coordinating with outside conservative groups. (“John Doe investigations” in Wisconsin are kept secret until the findings are released.) That one’s probably going nowhere too, though: A judge quashed several subpoenas served on conservative orgs last month because they failed to allege any violations of campaign finance law. Walker’s going to win again, just as he always seems to do against the left.

As for the Christie parallel, lefties have two problems here that they don’t have with Bridgegate. One: Bridgegate is still under investigation. There’s a persistent element of suspense that Bridget Kelly or David Wildstein will turn on Christie and produce the smoking gun that places him at the center of it. There’s no risk of that with Walker. This is old news, which is why it didn’t hurt him in the recall. Two: Bridgegate resonates not because Christie’s staff went rogue on him right under his nose but because the petty retaliation involved lends a dark element to Christie’s “tough guy” routine. He presents himself as the no-nonsense leader who’ll get in the faces of the public’s enemies, but closing the bridge lanes hurt the public and made the no-nonsense shtick seem more like bullying. There’s no similar wound to Walker’s persona from this e-mail business. His staff crossed the line between campaign and official business, but that line is hazy for most politicos even when they manage to remain on the right side of the law. I’m trying to imagine the Democratic machine running a campaign accusing him of corruption on these grounds in 2016 when his opponent, in all likelihood, would be the Clintons. Suggested slogan: “America can’t afford scandals in the White House. Hillary 2016!”

Tags: campaign, county, e-mail, john doe, Milwaukee, network, Scott Walker, secret, wireless, Wisconsin

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BillMaher:EvenIcan’ttakeanymore

Bill Maher: Even I can’t take any more of this endless MSNBC feeding frenzy over Chris Christie and Bridgegate

posted at 11:21 am on February 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

When you’ve lost Bill Maher, you’ve lost smug-middle-aged-liberal-TV-host America.

How long before Bob Costas turns on them too?

Whatever we had is not working any more. You’re obviously interested in another man: Chris Christie. You’re obsessed with him. So I wanted you to hear it from me first. I’m going to start seeing other news organizations. I’ll miss what we had. It was a rocket ship ride. We were both passionate flaming liberals and we didn’t care what the world thought of us. It was a glorious time. We finished each other’s Sarah Palin jokes. But now we never talk about any of the things we used to talk about: global warming, gun control, poverty… All because Chris Christie came along and put you under his spell.

Look at yourself. You’re turning into Fox News. Bridgegate has become your Benghazi, and this isn’t easy to say, but you and I are no longer on the same news cycle. Sure, you read me the results of a recent Gallup poll, but you never really ask me how I’m feeling. It’s not you, it’s… Chris Christie.

You’ve stopped leaning forward.

Oh, come on. MSNBC’s still ladling out plenty of slop for its longtime fans. Just a few hours before Maher penned his break-up note, Chris Matthews was babbling about the GOP becoming Jefferson Davis’s party. And sometimes the heavy Bridgegate coverage is strategic, to the exclusion of less palatable topics. Remember when Obama delayed the employer mandate again last week? You don’t if you’re an MSNBC viewer.

It’s easy to mock them for Bridgegate fee-vah, partly because of the ridiculous breathlessness of it and partly because their motives in wanting to take him down before 2016 are so transparent. Two points in their defense, though. One: They’re giving the (liberal) people what they want. On Monday, February 3rd, the night that O’Reilly aired part two of his Super Bowl interview with Obama, MSNBC nonetheless beat three out of four Fox News shows in primetime in the 25-54 demo by focusing on Christie. (O’Reilly’s show was the sole winner on Fox.) Liberals have been playing defense for Obama for a long, long time. Must feel good to them to be able to punch a big name on the other side in the face for awhile. Two: Bridgegate is a rare case where the network actually broke some news. Their own CEO has warned reporters in the past that they’re … not really in the news business anymore. They’re in the progressive slop business — until recently, when Christie handed them this. Turns out viewers like tuning in not knowing if maybe there’ll be new dirt dished on Christie rather than just another hour of Chris Hayes finger-wagging about income inequality or whatever. Who knew?

Does anyone on our side care about this anymore, incidentally? Christie fans don’t, I think, because they concluded weeks ago that there’s no there there. No one has the goods on Christie himself. Christie haters don’t care care because they’ve also reached a conclusion, namely that he’s too badly damaged at this point to be a serious threat for the nomination. They’re happy to have lefty media continue to take a wrecking ball to him but there’s no need. They think he’s sunk.

Tags: Bill Maher, cable, Chris Christie, HBO, MSNBC, network, news

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Chaos:HHS“asks”insurerstoextendmultipleObamaCare

Chaos: HHS “asks” insurers to extend multiple ObamaCare deadlines

posted at 7:41 pm on December 12, 2013 by Allahpundit

The December 23rd enrollment deadline? Time to move that to next month. The deadline to pay your first month of premiums? Let’s go ahead and move that back too. Emergency treatment needed from an out-of-network provider? It’d be swell if that was covered the same way in-network treatments are. And what if your coverage is temporarily screwed up in January when you desperately need your prescriptions refilled? HHS “strongly encourages” insurers to pick up the slack.

In other words, they’re finally realizing that lots of people who had planned to have coverage next month won’t have it, whether because of their own procrastination, HHS’s technological incompetence, or the mind-boggling logistical problems that have been forced on insurers by Obama’s screw-ups and ass-covering political “fixes.” So now they’re going to pile another bunch of “fixes” on them — mere suggestions, wink-wink — and hope for the best, and if chaos ensues anyway in January, it’ll be insurers who are scapegoated.

Phil Klein’s right: It’s panic time in the White House. Let’s let this be the end of the “things are working better now” propaganda.

Among the guidance the HHS announced:

– It is requiring insurers to accept payments until Dec. 31 for coverage starting on Jan. 1. It is also “urging” insurers to give individuals more time beyond that to pay for coverage. In other words, if somebody pays for coverage in the middle of January, HHS is asking insurers to retroactively make that person’s coverage effective as of Jan. 1. HHS is also asking insurers to cover individuals who offer a “down payment,” even if that payment only covers part of the first month’s premiums.

– In a press release, HHS said it was also “strongly encouraging insurers to treat out-of-network providers as in-network to ensure continuity of care for acute episodes or if the provider was listed in their plan’s provider directory as of the date of an enrollee’s enrollment.”

– HHS is also “strongly encouraging insurers to refill prescriptions covered under previous plans during January.”…

Of course, for insurers who have spent years designing plans to comply with the law, this would present huge and unreasonable logistical hurdles.

To put it slightly differently:

At this point HHS may as well ask insurers to simply declare everybody in America covered http://t.co/G1VyAv1hcg

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) December 12, 2013

Would all/any of these new fixes be illegal if HHS flatly required them? I realize it’s gauche at this point to ask whether the King can rightly suspend elements of the law that are inconvenient to him, but I feel obliged to put it out there. Maybe that’s why they’re merely being “suggested” instead of mandated — if the insurers extend the deadlines “voluntarily” (wink wink) then there are no legal implications. My hunch, though, is that the fixes are being made optional more for CYA reasons than for legal ones. If HHS mandates them — and according to CNBC, they might yet mandate an enrollment extension if Healthcare.gov has another meltdown — then next month’s havoc can be laid squarely on them. If they merely suggest them, then the havoc is really kinda sorta the fault of insurers who should have done a better job gauging whether extending the deadlines were feasible. And if an insurer decides not to extend the deadline and people are angry that they weren’t able to enroll in time, well, then that’s just a bad-apple insurer showing why they’re a bad apple.

In other news today, because Healthcare.gov’s doing so amazingly well now, HHS announced that they’re going to extend the deadline for phasing out state high-risk pools from December 31st until January. Even some sick people, who have the strongest incentive to transition to the new exchanges, can’t get enrolled in time.

Tags: coverage, deadline, Department of Health and Human Services, network, obama, ObamaCare, providers, sebelius

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