ObamaCare in Maryland
Well, numbers are out on how well ObamaCare did in one of the most liberal states in the Union – Maryland. It must have worked well there, right?
Um, not exactly. The numbers ain’t pretty.
I’ve previously reported that Maryland spent $125M on an ObamaCare exchange that didn’t work worth a damn. It was so bad, Maryland finally decided to pull the plug on it and use the BD Federal insurance exchange instead.
Well, signup numbers are now out. In Maryland, 60,000 people signed up for ObamaCare.
However, during the same period 73,000 Maryland residents also lost their existing health insurance due to ObamaCare’s rollout and its new requirements. That means ObamaCare resulted in 13,000 fewer Maryland residents having health insurance when was forced on the American public.
That bears repeating: if ObamaCare did not exist, 13,000 more people in Maryland would have health insurance today than they do under ObamaCare.
Help people get insurance? Sounds more to me like “helping people lose their existing health insurance”.
We really need to sh!tcan this idiocy. Pronto.
Category: Health Care debate
Yeah, I’ll chance the so-called penalties this year. By not signing up. They’re less than the premiums will ever be.
National numbers can’t be much better.
The “victory lap” seemed forced.
And attempt to push the opposition into “fixing” the current plan rather than a redo?
Yep, as been mentioned before…Dems facing the voters in Nov stayed far away from the festivities touting the 5.1M…oops 7.1M signups.
Is HHS Sebelius in the dog house? Well…she didn’t get one mention from the Emperor at the presser. Something stinks.
I guess even liberals, uh, I mean progressives can only stand so much horse hockey from fellow progs…alphabet networks told Emperor “no” to national TV airtime so he could continue “spiking the football”.
The ACA is a classic example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
I don’t fault President Obama for thinking it’s a good idea to have most Americans covered by health insurance, but I certainly fault him and the democrats for unleashing this debacle while thinking it would be the right law to get the job done. There’s not a chance in hell that this law would ever have worked. The CBO had to torture the mathematics and still couldn’t make the numbers work so they fabricated the parameters and extended the time frames of the ROI to try and fool people into thinking it could work…
I hope the democrats learn this lesson in November and learn it hard and deep.
Um, VOV – before Obamacare was forced on the US population (unread) in the middle of the night (literally), most Americans DID have health insurance. This abomination was supposed to fill the gap by making such insurance legally mandatory and subsidizing those who needed it.
It was a monumentally stupid idea from square one. First, the concept that the government can tax you for NOT buying something is simply stupid and, bluntly, un-American. It strikes me as a form of per-capita tax, which is forbidden by Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution. (And no, the 16th Amendment did NOT grant Congress blanket authority to do levy such taxes, Roberts’ opinion notwithstanding. That amendment only authorized taxes on income. ObamaCare’s “tax penalty” is not an income tax, but is instead a per-capita tax. It’s essentially a tax on breathing.)
Second, it’s been an implementation f**k-up from day one.
Third, it was predictably counterproductive. ObamaCare’s stupid mandates (continuing kids on parent policies until freaking age 26, mandating coverage for any/all pre-existing conditions without any waiting period) have driven health insurance costs through the roof – and they’re not done jacking up preimums, either. Employers are thus cutting hours to make as many employees as possible part time and thus avoid providing coverage vice paying those new, higher premiums. People are not bothering to start new businesses due to the extra cost and/or headaches involved. And soon, I predict we’ll see a sh!tload of employers start saying “f-it” and paying the penalty vice offering coverage anyway. In many if not most cases, that will be cheaper – even after they give their employees a significant raise to “compensate” for the lost health insurance.
The clowns running the show in DC who rammed this through are either dyed-in-the-wool kool-aid drinkers, are brain-dead when it comes to basic economics, or both. My money’s on the third option.
We’re on the same page Hondo, I only meant I have no qualms about a president who believes health care is an important domestic issue for his administration.
My problem, as is yours, lies with the enactment of a piece of legislation that will bankrupt hospitals and businesses and ultimately bankrupt the nation.
I am in total agreement with you, I suspect due to not having my morning energy drink I was not nearly as explicit and eloquent as I would have liked.
Hondo, even if ACA is ever repealed, premiums won’t go down. Once they’re up, they stay there.
Good point Ex-PH2. Prices never seem to go down. A Prince in Saudi Arabia farts, gas prices go up $10 a barrel and the local gas station s out that afternoon increasing their price signs. But when the price goes down $10 a barrel, the news reports always say, “Good news on lower price per barrel oil today, although, it may be several months before we see it at the pumps.”
Yeah, gonna go with “both”, Hondo.
“dyed-in-the-wool kool-aid drinkers, are brain-dead when it comes to basic economics, or both” — yes, I agree, and I’d go with the third option myself. They aren’t the recipients of this idiocy disguised as ‘good will’, they don’t have to pay for it, and they don’t have to figure out how to make ends meet on an income severely reduced by the insurance premiums created by this abomination.
VOV, Think you’re being overly generous in attributing this piece of crap legislation to Obama’s caring so much about the uninsured, rather than to its true purpose, seizing and consolidating political power through a federal takeover of such a huge and essential segment of the economy. This move has long been a goal of the left going all the way back to the Russian Revolution.
Quite frankly, I don’t think the hard left wing of the Democrat party gives a rat’s ass if Obamacare wrecks our existing medical system. They view it as a temporary setback but a long-term, major, political victory. The worse the situation becomes the more justification there is for the federal government to “Do Something,” which will enable them to push through reactive legislation to fix the problems that will ultimately cement the federal government’s control of the entire health care system.
A federal health system and gun control are both essential to achieving the socialist utopia they so fervently desire.
And lastly, after the way this president clearly lied, blatantly and repeatedly so, and still is as of Tuesday’s press conference, I fail to see how you can see him as acting from ANY good intentions.
Hammer meet nail! That is one of the best analysis and descriptions of the whole intent behind this law I’ve seen yet. Anyone who looks at the history of the left going back to the turn of the twentieth century and earlier can understand what the intent of this clusterfuck really is. They see themselves on the cusp of achieving one of their major goals and will push until it until it blows up in their collective faces. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
As a Maryland resident, I had the pleasure of seeing my premiums go up twice due to the ACA, the losing my plan and being forced onto a different one.
When I hear liberals bleat things like “well, you had a junk plan” I beat them like a pinata.
Said it before I’ll say it again, “Mr. President, please, please don’t help the American people anymore! We can’t stand all you’ve done so far. Just go on vacation for the next two years please”.
Look at it this way, Sparks: the ACA is the worst piece-of-crap legislation that has even been forced down the throats of the American people.
It’s his legacy. He’ll be remembered for it eternally. Bodaprez – the guy who completely wrecked a perfectly good, working insurance system.