Another State Healthcare Exchange Says “Bye-Bye”
Well, it looks like we have yet another casualty among the state healthcare insurance exchanges created to support that Putrid Pile of Amazingly Counterproductive Asininity 2010 law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), AKA “ObamaCare”. And I think this one going belly-up is gonna make someone very unhappy – as well as maybe leave a mark, politically speaking.
The state exchange that’s shutting down is in the POTUS’ home state of Hawaii. According to Alexander Hendrie at Americans for Tax Reform,
“ . . . . the Hawaii Health Connector will stop taking new enrollees on Friday and plans to begin migrating to the federally run Healthcare.gov. Outreach services will end by May 31, all technology will be transferred to the state by September 30, and its workforce will be eliminated by February 28.”
It’s clear that Hawaii and the Federal government simply must have starved the program for resources. After all: taxpayers (and since most of the funding was Federal, that means “you and I” regardless of where in the USA you live) only spent about $205M in Federal tax money to set up that exchange. In its first year of operation, it only spent about $23,400 per individual to sign people up. Now, it’s only going to cost Hawaii (and/or the Federal government) about another $30M to transition to the Federal healthcare exchange. Clearly they’d have been successful if only they’d spent more money!
For those who perhaps missed it: yes, the preceding paragraph was pure sarcasm. From day one this effort was following the same course as the SS Titanic’s maiden voyage.
It turns out that the Hawaii Health Connector failed simply because not enough people used it.
Its business model funded continuing operations from fees assessed to each enrollee’s plan. Unfortunately, only about half as many people used the Hawaii Health Connector to obtain their health insurance as was required for the system to sustain operations. And when you err that much in forecasting demand, the end result is almost always easily predictable.
Gee, yet another state healthcare insurance exchange bites the big one – after pouring literally tens of millions in taxpayer dollars down the toilet, of course. What a surprise.
Add to Hawaii’s total of $205M the Federal funds flushed by Oregon ($305M); Maryland ($190M); New Mexico ($123M); and Nevada ($101M) and you’re up to nearly $925M in cash down the tubes. With Massachusetts ($225M), Vermont ($200M), and Minnesota ($189M) looking like they might throw in the towel any day now, the total of Federal cash flushed down the toilet on unused ObamaCare “healthcare exchanges” may soon be well over $1.5 billion – from those 8 failed state healthcare exchanges alone. God only knows how much of the other roughly $4 billion in Federal funds spent to date setting up health exchanges has will eventually join it.
Hell, even that “success story” in California can’t seem to do any better than around 40% of its estimated potential for enrollment. “Only” somewhat over $1.065 billion in Federal tax money was spent on that PoS operation wonderful healthcare exchange.
It’s got a great website, though. Yelp was so impressed that they gave it a highly noteworthy “one-star” rating.
I didn’t know better I might start thinking that maybe this whole concept might be flawed.
But our Fearless Leader current POTUS keeps telling us that this ObamaCare stuff is a “really good deal” and will “make healthcare more affordable”. I guess that means something else must be causing all these failures.
And everyone knows that the current POTUS would never lie to us about healthcare. After all: everyone that liked their health insurance or doctor got to keep them when ObamaCare rolled out, right?
Category: Government Incompetence, Health Care debate
I wonder how much of those bargeloads of tax dollars lined the pockets of fatcat demo-rat campaign donors?
There is some serious criminal fraud going on here.
Over 1 BILLION dollars to stand up a damn website?
WTF!
No cookie for you.
My kids don’t have health insurance right now because of this POS law. I jumped through all the hoops on the exchange site, they denied coverage for my kids and said the state would cover them…. then got about 5 letters of unintelligible bureaucratic bullshit from the state saying they were ineligible for coverage. So to sort it all out, I guess I get to donate a week or two of my fucking time to talk to morons on the phone, etc. In the end, I am sure I will be told that I am not in compliance with something or other. I am so sick of this shit.
“And when you err that much in forecasting demand, the end result is almost always easily predictable.”
Where they went wrong is they didn’t hire a brilliant analist from UC Berkley. They need someone who can forecast the wind and make up probability data at will!
Health care under the ACA is losing money in every state…Oregon has some classic examples:
Even Providence which had been showing earnings over 40 million was down to about 20 million in Oregon…some reports have Providence losing close to 100 million nationwide…which is okay with me as Providence seems equally about denying services under the law as it is about providing services.
One man had the power to stop the madness: in the whole country, one man. Sure, many failed us before him–politicians all– but he was the very last line of defense. Instead of saving the day and using the operative portion of the Constitution to toss Obamacare out on its ass, he turned his back on the Interstate Commerce Clause and, instead, used the most contrived, idiotic, asinine rationale that no one agreed with, to ensure disaster. I give you Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
“(U)sed the most contrived, idiotic, asinine rationale that no one agreed with, to ensure disaster. I give you Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts”. That about wraps it up, 2/17. It would have been so easy, not to mention, absolutely correct to have ruled against this train wreck known as Øbamacare.
This whole healthcare thing was set up for one reason, to provide single payer health care under the T-19, (medical assistance) system.
The insurance companies, AARP and a host of other business interests supported passing it.
Karma is a bitch, but it looks like most of the insurance companies that supported this law are now feeling the pain of their shitty decision in the first place.
Good, dammit…
The whole “single payer” idea is total BS.
Look at Vermont. Their governor ran for his current term promising to make the state a “single payer” state. Then, earlier this year, he had to throw in the sponge on the whole idea, because the taxes that would be needed to support it were WAY more than the average citizen would want to pay – or, in many cases, more than they could even afford.
Multiply that by 50 and you’ll see why “single payer” will NEVER happen in this country.
But, the Donks will try to shove single payer up our collective asses because “they know what’s best for us” and they “won’t make the same mistakes like in Europe or Canada”.
That’s what they say – they know what’s best for us. Meanwhile, most Democrats and liberals can’t find their ass with both hands.
AARP. Another traitor. They finally stopped sending me fat envelopes. I miss not being able to throw them out, unopened.
It was more fun sending back the return envelopes empty.
Send the envelopes back with proctologists’ business cards.
“Maybe he can help you get your head out of your ass”
I hereby give notice that I am “appropriating” a variant of that line for future use. Thanks, Stacy0311.
Actually, it was way more fun to send that envelope back over the 1 ounce limit, so that AARP had to not only cover the postage, but pay extra. Just to read the local shopping rag or what laughingly passes for a “newspaper” around here.
Know how I got AARP to stop mailing their crap to me… wrote on one of the enrollment forms “FUCK AARP” and mailed it back to them
Haven’t seen one in 6 months…
I’s even more fun to stuff their return envelopes with all kinds of trash and then mail them back. The prepaid envelope is only prepaid for the weight of the form they want you to return. Excess weight equals excess postage paid on their end on receipt.
It’s petty I know but it’s still fun to stick a pin into their left wing Commie butts. Remember, AARP went against the wishes of its members and supported Obamacare wholeheartedly.
Not to mention they are heavy gun-control supporters.
Hell, PT – been doing that to folks that send me unsolicited junk mail for years. You do that, and you’ve hit them in the wallet 3x:
a. They had to waste money to print and send the stuff to you in the first place.
b. They had to pay for you to send the same junk back – and, as you say, if you send back enough junk they end up paying extra.
c. They now have to pay extra for trash removal, since you sent them a bunch of extra stuff.
There also may be a fourth. If they use automatic equipment to open those returned envelopes, if there’s enough junk in the envelope there’s a chance it will get stuck in the works and they’ll have to pay someone to clear the jam.
I’ve noticed over the past few years that many places no longer send you a prepaid envelope to return your reply. Maybe too many people are doing this. (smile)
Sending it back to them after running it through a shredder is another favorite stunt of mine. 😈
Putting their junk in the prepaid return envelope with some Elmer’s glue is another fun stunt.
What I find worse in all this is the fact that for all that money, they cant even secure the system. Sigh…
In addition to flushing the state exchange money, it has been identifed that the exchanges have virtually non-existant fraud protections. No ability to verify income levels to accurately determine subsidy amounts. And no ability to even verify if the SSN and person matches. We’ve seen unscrupulous “medical providers” create people and SSN’s out of thin air be approved, with an income level equating to 100% subsidy. Those providers then bill the crap out of claims to the insurance company for a service that didn’t occur for a person that doesn’t exist.
Different issue – but yeah, there’s that problem too.
Last I heard, the Federal exchange (healthcare.gov) also didn’t make any attempt to match claimed vice IRS-reported income. Perhaps that’s changed in the last year.
And perhaps I’ve been named HMFIC-Earth, too.
(smile)
Hondo, it still doesn’t match. It’s still based on the “honor” system, and we all know how well that works.
Over $2.565 BILLIONS down the crapper?
YA-A-A-A-Y!
Oops! I didn’t mean to gloat there quite so loudly. My bad.
There is a case presently before the Supremes that visits this exchange issue. It’s titled King v. Burwell. Here’s my summary of the matter: The Affordable Care Act (obamacare) provides that “Each State shall, not later than January 1, 2014, establish an American Health Benefit Exchange … for the State.” The problem with that, for starters, is that there’s this crazy federalism thingy that serves as a bar to enforcing that provision. Well, the army of legal beagles who wrote the law knew of that problem so they included another provision that directs the DHHS (Sibelius’ old shop and now Burwell’s, thus King v. Burwell) to set up federal exchanges in states to cover the citizens whose states elected not to set-up (or, presumably, maintain after set-up) an exchange. No one really expected federal exchanges to be needed, so no money was earmarked for their creation. The prevailing wisdom was that states would fall over each other to set up exchanges in order to get the billions available for the state exchanges. Well, that didn’t go as planned so, ultimately, after a failed attempt by the House of Representatives to set-up a national exchange (that bill died in the Senate), someone said, “Screw Congress. We’ll just do it all though regulation.” And that’s what happened. DHHS promulgated regulation that extended subsidies to the federal healthcare exchange (HealthCare.gov.) This contradicts the plain language of obamacare. Then, for 2014, the IRS announced that anyone in any state can use the federal exchange, meaning that if a state had an exchange, it need not be used. Consequently, 34 states declined to set up exchanges last year. The IRS action had another consequence: because everyone could go through the fed exchange, if one failed to do so, he would now be subject to the retribution promised in the law. So, now the matter is before the Supremes (and that idiot John “I know it’s not a tax but that’s all I can use to uphold obamacare” Roberts ) to determine whether the wording in the obamacare law that nobody read actually means what it… Read more »