WillHHSbothertoprovidealegaljustification

Will HHS bother to provide a legal justification for ObamaCare’s risk corridor program? Inquiring Republicans want to know

posted at 8:31 pm on June 12, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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The Obama administration has lately been attempting to calm the fears of a jittery insurance industry that’s rather concerned about its long-term profitability should the ObamaCare insurance marketplaces not turn out according to plan. In February, the Obama administration was toying with the idea of extending the bailout risk-corridor program — designed to provide money to insurance companies struggling to make ends meet, should the need arise during ObamaCare’s initial phases — beyond its original sunset date set for 2016; and in May, the administration assured insurance companies worried about “unexpectedly” high premiums that they would break the program’s original budget-neutral provision and find even more moolah for the insurance companies if need be. As CMS put it in the relevant regulatory filing, “In the unlikely event of a shortfall for the 2015 program year, HHS recognizes that the Affordable Care Act requires the Secretary to make full payments to issuers. In that event, HHS will use other sources of funding for the risk corridors payments, subject to the availability of appropriations.”

Mmm, hmm. Where, pray tell, might these appropriations come from, if not with the approval of Congress? And, if it comes to that, does the administration really have the authority to carry out this risk-corridor program at its own discretion, at all? This is pretty much the same question Sen. Marco Rubio asked of the administration last fall, and evidently, the White House has yet to deign to provide answers. Via the WFB:

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Tuesday, asking whether her agency has the statutory authority for the risk corridor program, which some have called a bailout of the insurance industry.

“Under current law, payments made under the risk corridor program would constitute an unlawful transfer of potentially billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers offering qualified health plans under the president’s health care law,” Sessions and Upton Wrote. …

“HHS may not make payments under Section 1342 absent additional congressional action appropriating funds for such payments,” they wrote.  “Without an explicit appropriation, any money spent on the risk corridor program would be based on an illegal transfer of funds and your agency could be held in violation of the Antideficiency Act.”

The letter raises concerns that HHS has “left open the possibility that it will make payments to health insurance companies under the risk corridor program without seeking additional funding from Congress.”

Sessions and Upton ask Burwell to kindly provide them with HHS’s independent legal analysis on the matter, as well as with a list of the funding sources from which it believes it has the authority to cough up the cash on demand. I do so wonder if the White House will bother to get around to it this time, or even pretend to care about providing legal justifications for what basically amounts to them making things up as they go along.

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Tags: bailouts, health insurance, Obama administration, ObamaCare, premiums, Republicans, risk corridors, risk pool, Sylvia Burwell

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Today’sbigObamaCarelie:Sebeliusclaimsshenever

Today’s big ObamaCare lie: Sebelius claims she never set a goal of seven million sign-ups

posted at 4:41 pm on February 25, 2014 by Allahpundit

Via CNS and BuzzFeed, an egregious lie even by the administration’s usual standards for ObamaCare, which is saying something. In fact, this lie, that Sebelius herself never embraced the seven-million figure she’s now trying to pawn off on CBO, was exposed nearly two months ago by one of the biggest papers in the country — and here she is, two months later, still pushing it to try to cover her ass. Quote:

Here’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speaking to reporters last June: “We’re hopeful that 7 million is a realistic target.”

And here she is on Sept. 30, in an interview with NBC News: “I think success looks like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of March 2014.”

Moreover, on Sept. 5, 2013, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, sent Sebelius a memo titled, “Projected Monthly Enrollment Targets for Health Insurance Marketplaces in 2014.”

The memo offered an estimate of 7,066,000, drawing both on CBO’s estimate and the experience of the universal health plan in Massachusetts, Medicare Part D “and conversations with employers, issuers and states.” It projected that enrollment would be 3.3 million by the end of December.

WaPo gave her just two Pinocchios out of four for distancing herself from the “seven million” figure back in January even though she (a) had adopted that number months earlier and (b) already was (and still is) exaggerating the total number of O-Care sign-ups by refusing to say how many are facing cancellation due to not having paid their first month’s premium. By most estimates, that number is in the ballpark of 20 percent. If that trend continues all the way to the March 31st deadline, hitting the magic “seven million” number would mean that the official numbers were padded with more than a million busted enrollments.

Three clips for you, in order: Today’s big lie; Sebelius telling NBC on September 30th of last year that seven million is the target; and then, just for fun, Jay Carney trying to spin his way out of this clusterfark last month. Note that September 30, 2013 was literally the eve of ObamaCare’s launch. Up until the very last minute, when she knew (or certainly should have known) that the website was a disaster in the making and would be hobbled for weeks or months, she passed on an easy opportunity to set expectations for enrollment much lower. Sheesh.

Tags: deadline, enrollment, march, ObamaCare, risk pool, sebelius, sign ups

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FLOTUS:America’syoungknuckleheadsneedObamaCare posted

FLOTUS: America’s young knuckleheads need ObamaCare

posted at 2:41 pm on February 21, 2014 by Allahpundit

When I saw the Weekly Standard’s headline, I assumed she meant “knuckleheads” in the sense that they’re less likely to plan for unpleasant contingencies than older people who have more to lose. That’s not really what she’s saying, though; by “knuckleheads,” she seems to mean klutzy or foolhardy. Essentially she’s giving you the “Brosurance” pitch for why young adults should sign up. Why that idea, that twentysomethings eschew health insurance not for rational financial reasons but because they’re too stupid and happy-go-lucky to care for themselves, would appeal to the target audience, I have no idea. But then, that’s what mandates are for.

Never mind that, though. What makes this semi-newsy is that you’re watching the First Lady peddle one of the core lies of ObamaCare, arguably even more significant than “if you like your plan.” We’re forcing young invincibles to sign up, she says, because they’re not invincible. If anything, they’re accident-prone and way, way too risk-seeking. It’s for their own good. Which … is a lie. If you’ve read a single piece on how ObamaCare’s risk pools are supposed to work, you know the truth is just the opposite. The White House and its insurer friends are desperate for young’uns to sign up because they’re less likely to need medical treatment than most of the population. They’re the ones whose expensive new premiums can and will be used to subsidize coverage for people with preexisting conditions rather than to pay for medical care for themselves. It’s not for their own good that they’re being forced to enroll, it’s for the good of some less fortunate class. That’s how welfare programs work. But rather than be honest about that when Fallon asks her why young people should sign up — i.e. “we need to gouge them to pay for the sick” — she falls back on idiocy about drunk millennials falling off of bar stools or whatever. Deeply dishonest, as is par for the course for ObamaCare.

Exit question: How many people are “cooking for the first time” when they’re 26? What?

Tags: brosurance, insurance, Jimmy Fallon, Michelle Obama, ObamaCare, premiums, risk pool

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WhiteHouseweighingplantoextendObamaCare’s“risk

White House weighing plan to extend ObamaCare’s “risk corridor,” i.e. bailout, program beyond 2016?

posted at 4:41 pm on February 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

The program’s supposed to be transitional, sunsetting in 2016 after the new exchanges have had a few years to launch and then stabilize.

Emphasis on “supposed to be.”

Industry insiders told the Washington Examiner a plan to extend the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors” are under discussion, but that administration officials have not made a final decision…

The Obama Administration is now weighing a plan to grant an additional three-year extension for non-complaint plans on the individual market. Such a move would prevent millions of people from losing their policies in the critical weeks and months before the 2014 election.

But it would also allow people on the individual market to keep non-compliant plans beyond the risk corridor’s 2016 expiration date, leaving health insurance companies serving the exchange vulnerable to financial losses as the more healthy customers continue to stay out of the exchanges.

Health insurance companies are looking for something in exchange for the three-year extension, which will make it much harder for them to sign up healthier and younger customers. Extending the risk corridor program is part of that conversation with the White House, industry sources said.

Remember back in November when Obama was eating truckloads of crap for breaking his “if you like your plan” promise? His solution was to let insurers “un-cancel” canceled plans — but lost in the hubbub at the time was the fact that he said he’d allow it for just one year. The obvious problem with that timeline is that it means this issue will bubble up again this fall, just in time for the midterms. New solution, then: Quietly allow insurers to keep un-canceled plans in effect past the midterms, for another three years. That’s how Obama just “solved” his little electoral problem with the employer mandate, isn’t it? Three-year extensions across the board, to minimize the damage to Democrats from his pet boondoggle in November. The problem is, because the old un-canceled plans are typically cheaper than expensive new “comprehensive” ObamaCare exchange plans, the extension means insurers are suddenly looking at less revenue than they counted on all the way through 2017. That’s where the “risk corridors” come in. Assuming the Examiner’s report is true, the White House is going to make this worth the industry’s while by extending the timeline for the bailout program too. Any losses they suffer in 2017 would, presumably, be partly offset by Uncle Sam even though the “risk corridor” is supposed to have terminated by then. Your tax dollars will buy insurers’ complicity in yet another illegal extension.

Bob Laszewski kinda sorta saw this coming, by the way. Last month he published a post arguing that, for all its faults, ObamaCare won’t cause a death spiral in the insurance industry anytime soon. The reason: The “risk corridor” program. Since Uncle Sam’s on the hook for any heavy losses in the industry, insurers are under no immediate pressure to raise premiums, the potential trigger of a death spiral. They can keep premiums artificially low — at least for a few years, until the “risk corridor” sunsets. Laszewski figured insurers would give the White House one more chance next year to get their act together on implementation and to start signing up the uninsured en masse; if they failed, he said, he expected companies to start parachuting out of the exchanges in 2016 before the “risk corridor” program expires. Which is to say, it’s very much in the White House’s interest to keep the program in effect, if it can, to keep insurers from abandoning the exchanges, especially if HHS has reason to think the risk pools they’re projecting will be less young and healthy than they had hoped. (And they do have such a reason at the moment.) The last thing Democrats need in a presidential election year is “Insurers give up on ObamaCare” headlines. Promise them some more sugar and you can avoid that. Maybe.

It seems naive at this point to ask whether the White House could extend the “risk corridor” unilaterally or whether that would be illegal. If they want to do it, they’ll do it regardless. O’s theory in issuing periodic delays or extensions for ObamaCare’s provisions is that, during the law’s transitional phase, he has some latitude legally to tweak implementation to make it go more smoothly. Extending the “risk corridors” past 2016, though, would mean the “transitional” phase had lasted past the end of his own presidency. It’s dubious, but it’s also in character. Here’s a question, though: Why would insurers leak this info now, when Marco Rubio’s trying to build support within the GOP for a bill to repeal the “risk corridor” program? He’s had little luck getting it on the leadership’s radar but his luck could change now that rumors are swirling that the bailout provisions might be extended into 2017 and beyond. The recent CBO numbers that found that the “risk corridor” could actually make money for taxpayers is a problem for the GOP, but (a) CBO’s numbers can be challenged and (b) CBO assumed that the “risk corridor” would be gone by 2016. Even if O decides to unilaterally extend the program, a new Republican Senate next year could join forces with some red-state Dems and Boehner’s House majority to repeal it, forcing Obama to either acquiesce in the repeal or to veto it and be seen as singlehandedly defending indefinite bailouts for insurers. Very strange that insurance industry sources, who stand to benefit, would be blabbing about this now.

Tags: adverse selection, bailout, insurance, insurers, laszewski, ObamaCare, risk corridor, risk pool

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Comingupnext:ObamaCaretaxesandfees

Coming up next: ObamaCare taxes and fees

posted at 11:31 am on December 26, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

This reminder from the New York Post came on Christmas, when few paid attention, but it’s worth noting today. The disastrous rollout of ObamaCare is only the appetizer for Americans, the 2013 lead-in to higher costs and fees built into the so-called Affordable Care Act. What most people haven’t heard — yet — is the new fees that ObamaCare charges for access to those higher premiums:

The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.

Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.

But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, laid bare the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.”

The new taxes on one customer’s bill added up to $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, according to Kaiser Health News. It boosted the monthly premium from $322.26 to $345.40 for that individual.

These “fees” will add up to a considerable hike, as the Post notes. They include a 2% fee on the plans themselves for consumers, which will eventually raise $14.3 billion a year for the federal government. Insurers are paying a 3.5% fee for participating in the exchange, a cost to the risk pool that will get transferred — as all risk-pool expenses do — to the consumers in the form of higher premiums.  The medical-device tax has long been debated, and will also get passed to the consumer.

It’s going to cost consumers at tax time, too. Remember when you could deduct all of your medical expenses if they exceeded the normal threshold for itemization?

Americans are currently allowed to deduct expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their annual income. The threshold jumps to 10 percent under ObamaCare, costing taxpayers about $15 billion over 10 years.

That means that consumers will pay more for their medical care than ever, thanks to the tax limitation.

That’s nothing new about ObamaCare, though. We’ve been pointing out for years that this is just a wealth-transfer system, not a cost-containment system. It manipulates price to disguise the increased costs, but those are becoming more and more apparent, as USA Today reports today in a piece about the lack of choice for middle-class consumers throughout the country (via David Frum on Twitter):

Those making more than 400% of the federal poverty limit — $47,780 for an individual or $61,496 for a couple — are ineligible for subsidies to buy insurance.

The USA TODAY analysis looked at whether premiums for the least expensive plan in any of the metal levels was more than 8% of household income. That’s similar to the affordability test used by the federal government to determine whether premiums are so expensive consumers aren’t required to buy plans under the Affordable Care Act.

The number of people who earn close to the subsidy cutoff and are priced out of affordable coverage may be a small slice of the estimated 4.4 million people buying their own insurance and ineligible for subsidies. But the analysis clearly shows how the sticker shock hitting many in the middle class, including the self-employed and early retirees, isn’t just a perception problem. The lack of counties with affordable plans means many middle-class people will either opt out of insurance or pay too much to buy it.

The prices of exchange plans have shocked many shoppers, especially those who had plans canceled because they did not meet the ACA coverage requirements. But experts are not surprised.

“The ACA was not designed to reduce costs or, the law’s name notwithstanding, to make health insurance coverage affordable for the vast majority of Americans,” says health care consultant Kip Piper, a former government and insurance industry official. “The law uses taxpayer dollars to lower costs for the low-income uninsured but it also increases costs overall and shifts costs within the marketplace.”

Of course that’s what it is. David points out how the middle class gets hammered:

ACA taxes were imposed only high-income people. But large costs fall on middle class too, in the hidden, kludgey form of rate hikes (5)

— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 26, 2013

"Obamacare is deficit neutral" wasn't technically a lie, but it was highly misleading. Middle class will pay and is paying. (6)

— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 26, 2013

It got sold as a system that bent the cost curve downward, but it only does that with effective price, and only for those who get subsidies. Everyone else gets shafted in the sharp premium hikes and added fees. That’s why 2014 will be a disaster for Democrats, as middle-class voters start figuring it out through their pocketbooks and tax returns.

And that assumes they can sign up at all. Ike Brannon still can’t get enrolled, as he explains at The Weekly Standard:

What I like is that I can access the D.C. exchange in twenty different languages, including Apache, Navajo, and Irish. Which is great because I see so many Irish here who have a heck of a time assimilating, what with the fact that they only speak Irish and not the King’s English. (You can also receive notices in American Sign Language—l’d make a joke here but I might offend the deaf. But I guess since they can’t read and need American Sign Language I might as well let one rip. But I’ll refrain nevertheless.)

Maybe we should blame the federal government for this, but last time I looked (and at one point it was my job to do so) a government entity was only responsible for providing assistance in a foreign language if there was a significant number of people who spoke that language and had no facility with English. Of course, we can all quibble about what “significant” means in this context, but does anyone believe that it is at all conceivable that there are even ten people in the District who speak only Apache and need to buy their own health insurance? I would bet my entire net wealth that the number is, in fact, lower than that, if not zero. Ditto for Navajo and Irish. If there’s anyone in D.C. shopping for health insurance who speaks only German or French and no English I’d be shocked as well.

But while the exchange doesn’t work, at least we can get our messages telling us our application has been “disposed of” in the language of our choice, although to be honest I do not know at all what this message means and English is my mother tongue. Does it mean that I have insurance? I doubt that since I never got to select a plan. Or that I’ve been approved to buy a plan? if so why won’t it let me do so.

In any language, it’s a disaster.

Tags: fees, insurers, middle class, ObamaCare, redistribution, risk pool, taxes

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BobLaszewski:ThedemographicmixinsomeObamaCare

Bob Laszewski: The demographic mix in some ObamaCare risk pools right now is “very, very bad”

posted at 6:01 pm on December 11, 2013 by Allahpundit

I wish he had been more specific about what “very, very bad” means and how many plans are in trouble because of this, but his previous criticisms of O-Care and Healthcare.gov have been accurate so there’s little reason to doubt that this one is too. On the contrary, this is consistent with the dog that didn’t bark in the HHS enrollment data released this morning. If the composition of the risk pools looked good, with oodles of “young invincibles” signing up to subsidize people with preexisting conditions, Obama and Sebelius would be shouting it from the mountaintops. The progressive goalposts, always capable of quickly shifting, would move instantly from “how many people have signed up?” to “how’s the demographic mix of the risk pools?”. That’s what’s really important, don’tcha know.

The answer to each question in turn: Not enough people have signed up, and per Laszewski, not enough of the ones who have are the healthy youngsters insurers desperately need.

Older clients, aged above 40, comprise 60 percent of the new Obamacare customers at one of his client health-care companies, Laszewski told The Daily Caller.

The skew is “very, very bad,” said Laszewski, who is president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, Inc…

Precise predictions are impossible because the Obamacare system is so new, and executives do expect a surge of people to join in the next two weeks, Laszewski said.

But the apparent lack of young people “is a very poor omen,” Laszewski said.

Not the first time we’ve heard that the risk pools are older and grayer than HHS hoped. The October data for some plans showed the average age of enrollees climbing above 50. In Connecticut and Kentucky, the biggest segment of enrollees came from the 55+ group; in California, which operates the largest state exchange, 56 percent of October enrollees were older than 45 and, of that group, a majority were over age 55. Just 23 percent came from the coveted 18-34 demographic. But all of that was expected: It stands to reason that the first rush of sign-ups after the exchanges launched would come from older, sicker people who are desperate to get coverage. The significance of Laszewski’s comments today is that he seems to believe that the skew has persisted, at least in some segments, well into December. Again, though, I wish he’d given us numbers. According to HHS, the exchanges will be fine if 40 percent of enrollees are young and healthy. Laszewski told the Daily Caller that 60 percent of new enrollees in some plans are older than 40. That … doesn’t sound terribly skewed, frankly. And since it’s the lazy and/or distracted youngsters who are expected to finally sign up in the last enrollment crunch before Christmas, there’s reason to think that the risk pools might be even more balanced by New Year’s. It would, presumably, be very easy for HHS to clue us in on all this, but as I say, they’re keeping their mouths shut. Which almost certainly means it’s bad news, i.e. Laszewski’s right.

It’s not just the age mix that’s confounded predictions. Patrick Brennan notes a curious trend in the HHS data released today:

About one-fourth of the people who have entered their income information on their applications were deemed eligible for subsidies on the exchanges (about 900,000 out of about 3.6 million), which is lower than the number we saw in October alone and remains really far from what was projected. The CBO projected that just 1 million out of the 7 million people to enroll in the exchanges in the first year would be ineligible for subsidies, so the ratio is way off from what was expected (15–75 vs. 75–25). I had some thoughts on that surprising fact a month ago, and I’ll add a couple now: Unsubsidized customers (basically, those above the national median income) are generally savvier and more likely to have the resources to enroll and make their payments ahead of time, so maybe this is understandable and doesn’t say anything about who will eventually enroll. On the other hand, it may demonstrate that the people to whom insurance was supposed to be expanded — the uninsured, who tend to be low-income and not well educated — aren’t getting to the exchanges at all, and covering them will be a much longer term project.

CBO made a rational assumption: If you expand coverage to people irrespective of preexisting conditions and subsidize those with smaller incomes to make their premiums more affordable, it stands to reason that lower-income people who’d been priced out before will leap at the chance to buy insurance once it’s available in October. Right? They’re the “winners” from the law. Uncle Sam’s helping them out with a little welfare towards their health insurance. Why not avail themselves? What we’re seeing instead is higher-income people who don’t qualify for subsidies enrolling. Maybe that’s because they, more so than lower-income folks, used to have insurance and were recently canceled, making them desperate to get new coverage before January 1st. If you’re poor and have spent years without insurance, you might be so used to it that you don’t bother to hurry when the exchanges open. Or maybe the premiums are so high even after you discount them for subsidies that some poorer consumers still can’t afford them and are holding out for the time being. Or maybe the subsidy problem is a function of the poor demographic mix right now: The “young invincibles” who are just starting out in the labor market (if they’re lucky enough to find a job) are, I’d guess, way more likely than older middle-class people to need a little help paying their premiums. If they’re not signing up yet, then naturally the risk pool will be older and wealthier. Good news for taxpayers at the moment, in that the subsidies are flowing relatively slowly from the tap, but bad news later if the skewed risk pool persists and HHS has to bail out insurers from their adverse selection problem.

Anyway. Senate Democrats have decided that Obama’s fixes to the law aren’t nearly enough and so they’re working on their own fixes, pretty much of all which will only make the adverse selection problem worse and a bailout more likely. They’re the Smart Party, remember.

Tags: care, demographic, health, industry, laszewski, ObamaCare, risk pool

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Herewego:HHSannouncespilotprogramin

Here we go: HHS announces pilot program in three states to encourage direct enrollment in ObamaCare plans via insurers

posted at 6:41 pm on November 22, 2013 by Allahpundit

In case there was any shred of doubt left that they’re deeply worried about Healthcare.gov breaking down under the crush of traffic next month, this ought to take care of it. First they moved the deadline for enrollment back, now they’re lining up insurance companies to start handling enrollments directly as December 23rd approaches.

Kitchen-sink time:

Another one of those options is allowing insurers to sign up consumers from start to finish —called, “direct enrollment.” If consumers choose to directly enroll in a Marketplace plan through an insurance company, they still will be able to compare products, and choose the one that offers them the best value for their dollar. Consumers will be informed that they can compare and select other plans on HealthCare.gov, and prior to buying a health plan, consumer’s application will be securely routed to HealthCare.gov to assess their eligibly for coverage along with potential discounts on premiums and cost sharing. Consumers must have their eligibility verified through the Data Services Hub – regardless of which path they use to enroll.

The option of direct enrollment has been there from the start, and although some issuers have already begun using this option, it has been limited by recent problems with the website. However, we recently announced that we have put in place fixes for more than two-thirds of the high priority bugs related to the website. For this reason, today, we are announcing that issuers in Florida, Texas, and Ohio are ready to participate in a pilot program using this direct enrollment feature, which will help inform our efforts to make this option work better for issuers and consumers in the coming weeks. Under the new pilot program being launched today, issuers utilizing direct enrollment in these three states will provide detailed feedback on their experiences to feed into our real-time work to make improvements for both consumers and issuers. This will help make direct enrollment a viable option for all issuers that wish to use this feature.

Insurers have been pressing them to do this for weeks. The big problem to date was that there were too many privacy concerns involved in giving insurance companies access to federal data hubs about Americans in the name of verifying eligibility. Sounds like they’ve solved that problem somehow — or maybe they just think they’ve solved it. Despite tech experts testifying before Congress that Healthcare.gov presents “critical” security risks, newly-legendary tech moron Kathleen Sebelius says she’s confident it’s fine. Could be they’re rolling this out as a pilot program precisely because they don’t know how secure it’ll be in practice. Good luck, America.

But never mind all that. Isn’t there a bigger problem? Here’s how the Times described the logistical challenges in its story about direct enrollment 10 days ago:

The main stumbling block for some consumers is the need to determine their eligibility for subsidies, and the amount. Insurance companies can now only estimate the amount for them. It is up the government to verify eligibility, using personal financial information from tax returns and the like.

“The question is, can they create a separate direct pathway so consumers can get that information on their subsidies?” asked one industry official. “If they don’t have Healthcare.gov up and running by the end of the month, direct enrollment is critical.”

Actually, insurance companies don’t need to estimate the subsidies an applicant is eligible for because … you can’t get subsidies if you don’t enroll through an exchange. Remember? Read this post to refresh your memory. Sebelius herself is sufficiently worried about people being unwittingly disqualified from subsidies by enrolling directly with insurers that she took care to say a few days ago that only people who know they earn too much income each year to qualify for help from Uncle Sam should consider going that route. And yet, the issue isn’t mentioned in today’s HHS press release. Could be, I guess, that the reference to “potential discounts on premiums and cost sharing” is a veiled reference to subsidies. If so, is HHS suggesting that … they will allow people to apply for subsidies even if they enroll outside an exchange? That would be the third highly illegal move Obama’s made in the name of doing triage on this policy car crash. First was delaying the employer mandate, second was his declaration that insurers can go ahead and un-cancel plans if they like, and now this. Maybe the press release is simply written ambiguously, and what they really have in mind is insurers gently informing lower-income people who qualify for subsidies that they’ll just have to be patient and wait until the website’s working. But either way, I want to know. Either they’re breaking the law or they’re encouraging a de facto two-tiered enrollment system for the lower and middle classes, respectively.

Exit question: Chin up, Democrats. What could go wrong?

I was at yesterday's off-the-record session with #PresidentObama. Can't report it, but can say: he's all in on ACA.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) November 22, 2013

Tags: adverse selection, Al Franken, delay, healthcare.gov, individual, mandate, ObamaCare, risk pool

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