Healthcare fail?

[audtatious]

Health plans for high-risk patients attracting fewer, costing more than expected
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2010; 10:54 PM

An early feature of the new health-care law that allows people who are already sick to get insurance to cover their medical costs isn't attracting as many customers as expected.

In the meantime, in at least a few states, claims for medical care covered by the "high-risk pools" are proving very costly, and it is an open question whether the $5 billion allotted by Congress to start up the plans will be sufficient.

Federal health officials contend the new insurance plans, designed solely for people who already are sick, are merely experiencing growing pains. It will take time to spread the word that they exist and to adjust prices and benefits so that the plans are as attractive as possible, the officials say.

State-level directors of the plans agree, in part. But in interviews, they also said that the insurance premiums are unaffordable for some who need the coverage - and that some would-be customers are skittish about the plans because federal lawsuits and congressional Republicans are trying to overturn the entire law.

The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, the program's official name, is an early test of President Obama's argument that people will embrace the politically divisive health-care overhaul once they see its advantages firsthand. According to some health-policy researchers, the success or failure of the pools also could foreshadow the complexities of making broader changes in health insurance by 2014, when states are to open new marketplaces - or exchanges - for Americans to buy coverage individually or in small groups.

Under the sprawling health-care legislation that Democrats pushed through Congress in March, the special health plans were designed as a temporary coping mechanism for a small but important niche among the nation's 50 million uninsured: people who have been rejected by insurance companies because they already are sick.

Twenty-seven states have created their own high-risk pools. The rest used an option in the law to let their residents buy coverage through a new federal health plan.

In the spring, the Medicare program's chief actuary predicted that 375,000 people would sign up for the pool plans by the end of the year. Early last month, the Health and Human Services Department reported that just 8,000 people had enrolled. HHS officials declined to provide an update, although they collect such figures monthly, because they have decided to report them on a quarterly basis.

"Like the rest of the country, we thought we'd have pretty much a stampede. That obviously hasn't materialized," said Michael Keough, executive director of North Carolina's plan. With nearly 700 participants, it is among the nation's largest so far, but it has one-third of the people expected by now.

According to interviews with administrators of nine of the state-run plans, only one - Colorado's - is close to its forecast enrollment. Maryland, the only jurisdiction in the Washington area that has created a plan, has 97 participants, compared with 19,000 in an older state high-risk pool, according to Kent McKinney, who directs both. HHS's November report said that Virginia had 75 participants in the federal plan. The District had none.

Potential lifesaver
The plans have been a boon and a heartbreak.

"I don't mean to be gushy about it, but they potentially saved my life," said Maureen Murray, 50, of Arlington County, who had dropped her individual insurance policy in July 2009, after her work as a freelance video producer dried up. Murray was getting ready for a gym class in October when she "felt something go down my left side." It was a stroke. She was still at Alexandria's Mount Vernon Hospital when a CAT-scan detected an aneurysm on the left side of her brain.

She was discharged two days before Halloween with a $25,000 hospital bill.

A friend recommended the new high-risk pool. Four days after Thanksgiving, she was approved. It will cover her surgery in January to repair the aneurysm. The plan's premiums, Murray said, are steep - $358 a month even after a rate reduction in January. "I'm in rough financial position, but . . . I can get another job," she said. Without the insurance, "I might not have that opportunity."

Expensive coverage
On the other hand, Will Wilson, 57, of Chicago said he is "really, really, really, really discouraged." After he received an AIDS diagnosis in 2002, he discovered that his insurance at the time paid only $1,500 for medicine each year. His AIDS drugs cost $3,000 a month. He ended up in bankruptcy.

Wilson, a tourist trolley guide, now gets help from the federal AIDS Drug Assistance Program, but he has no coverage for other kinds of care.

Wilson remembers tears streaming down his face in February 2009, the night that he watched Obama vow to Congress, "Health-care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year!"

Wilson became an activist for health reform, circulating petitions, going to demonstrations. And the day after the president signed the bill into law, a Chicago Sun-Times column quoted him as saying, "I've had a grin on my face all day" at the prospect of the high-risk pool he could join. That was before the rates were announced in July and Wilson discovered that the premium - nearly $600 a month - "was almost as much as my rent. It was like, no way! I was floored."

The law contains rules to make the high-risk pools more affordable than older ones that many states have run; the new ones cannot charge more in premiums than the average premium for other individual insurance in a given state. But "the individual market is expensive," said Jean P. Hall, a University of Kansas researcher studying the new plans. "From my perspective, it is not a good match for people who have expensive conditions."

HHS has made some changes for 2011 in the federal plan on which 23 states and the District are relying. It will have somewhat lower premiums and two new options with varying deductibles, according to Richard Popper, HHS's deputy director for insurance programs.

The agency also is launching a more aggressive marketing campaign, Popper said, focused on states, including Virginia, whose residents have not had any kind of high-risk pool in the past. And the Social Security Administration has agreed to tell everyone it approves for disability benefits about the new health plans.

Among the 27 states with their own plans, 17 have submitted changes for HHS to approve so they can lower premiums, adjust other costs or alter who is allowed to join.

And they are doing more marketing. Michigan is running Internet ads through Google. North Carolina is advertising on billboards across the state and on cable television.

Fretting about challenges
Whether the marketing and plan adjustments will translate into more customers remains unclear. Cecil Bykerk, the executive director for the new plans in Montana, Iowa and Alaska, said some people are wary over whether the health-care law - and the high-risk pools it has created - will last. "I think there is a lot of concern in the public with all the [federal court] challenges and all the political rhetoric about appeal," he said.

Montana is one of a few states in which the medical bills from those who have joined are huge. New Hampshire's plan has only about 80 members, but they already have spent nearly double the $650,000 the state was allotted in federal money to help run the program, said J. Michael Degnan, its director.

The spending, Degnan speculated, might slow down if it turns out that the early bills reflected a burst of pent-up need for care. HHS agreed to give New Hampshire more money, he added.

When the law was passed, proponents of the special health plans feared the $5 billion would run out before 2014. Today, HHS's Popper says of that financial help: "We want to use it - make it last but also use it to effectively to get people covered."

[tigersharkdude]

From someone with a pre-existing condition: Nobody wants to sign up because they want too much money to cover you.

I have 0 income because of my pre-existing condition, and they want like $600 a month for insurance......Im good, you can keep it

[audtatious]

Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus. The solution they setup has not been a solution at all.

On another note, I hope things get better for you my friend.

[IBCoupe]

From someone with a pre-existing condition: Nobody wants to sign up because they want too much money to cover you.

I have 0 income because of my pre-existing condition, and they want like $600 a month for insurance......Im good, you can keep it

That's pretty much why the mandate was put in place. Without it, the whole plan kinda falls apart, and costs continue to skyrocket. That's why the Republicans wanted it in '94, "Romneycare" included it in '06, and is set to go into play for "Obamacare" in '14.

[audtatious]

Romneycare is a failure. Repubs are wrong to require mandates. HC is not a "right".

[stebo0728]

^^ Completely correct. Nothing that requires a portion of someone else's life to acquire can ever be considered a right. Neither is it a privaledge, it is a responsibility of the individual to secure for themselves. All you have is the freedom to do so, not the right to have it

[audtatious]

Yet reaching in other people's pockets without their permission seems to be the "right" of the US Govt.

[stebo0728]

Again, if you cant tell already, I LOVE THIS QUOTE, it explains everything

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it

[audtatious]

I must apologize to the Obama Administration for using the term "ObamaCare" as that has now been deemed a partisan attack word and must not be used anymore. I'm not sure what to call it now. Maybe the MSM wants us to call it "Good For Us and Must Be Mandated Care" instead?

[telcoman]

I must apologize to the Obama Administration for using the term "ObamaCare" as that has now been deemed a partisan attack word and must not be used anymore. I'm not sure what to call it now. Maybe the MSM wants us to call it "Good For Us and Must Be Mandated Care" instead?

How about the repeal of the job killing healthcare bill

What a joke

The GOP will fail again and Obama will be reelected in 2012.
What are they doing on day 1. Increasing the deficit just like they did in the past.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/us/po ... l?_r=1&hpw


".....And the rush to repeal has opened Republicans to the same attacks they employed so devastatingly on Democrats — that despite promises to run a more open House, Republicans are racing to overturn the health care law without hearings, without allowing floor amendments and without worrying about its impact on the federal deficit.
“They talk about making deficit reduction a priority, yet the first thing out of the gate they’re planning to do is to try to repeal health care reform, which explodes the deficit,” Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, said Tuesday. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the incoming majority leader, dismissed complaints about the health care battle and suggested that it was a special case that was “litigated in this last election.”

They never learn

Telcoman

[audtatious]

Typical partisan response from you. "My party is right and that is not up for discussion....here's a NYT or HuffPo article which proves it"

Have you pulled your 401k and given it to the needy yet?

[telcoman]

Typical partisan response from you. "My party is right and that is not up for discussion....here's a NYT or HuffPo article which proves it"

Have you pulled your 401k and given it to the needy yet?

How about this

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm

"The Congress has recently approved major health care legislation in the form of two pieces of legislation: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, Public Law 111-148); and, following that, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872), which made a number of changes to provisions of PPACA along with significant changes to the federal postsecondary education programs.

On March 20, 2010, CBO released its final cost estimate for the reconciliation act, which encompassed the effects of both pieces of legislation. Table 1 (on page 5) provides a broad summary and Table 2 offers a detailed breakdown of the budgetary effects of the two pieces of legislation. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation will produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period. About $124 billion of that savings stems from provisions dealing with health care and federal revenues; the other $19 billion results from the education provisions. Those figures do not include potential costs that would be funded through future appropriations (those are discussed on pages 10-11 of the cost estimate)."

[audtatious]

Typical partisan response from you. "My party is right and that is not up for discussion....here's a NYT or HuffPo article which proves it"

Have you pulled your 401k and given it to the needy yet?

How about this

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm

"The Congress has recently approved major health care legislation in the form of two pieces of legislation: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, Public Law 111-148); and, following that, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872), which made a number of changes to provisions of PPACA along with significant changes to the federal postsecondary education programs.

On March 20, 2010, CBO released its final cost estimate for the reconciliation act, which encompassed the effects of both pieces of legislation. Table 1 (on page 5) provides a broad summary and Table 2 offers a detailed breakdown of the budgetary effects of the two pieces of legislation. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation will produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period. About $124 billion of that savings stems from provisions dealing with health care and federal revenues; the other $19 billion results from the education provisions. Those figures do not include potential costs that would be funded through future appropriations (those are discussed on pages 10-11 of the cost estimate)."

Time will tell. CBO takes the numbers given to it and runs it through a calculator. If the numbers given to it by the Dems are setup properly you will see exactly what they want reported. Unfortunately, reality steps in. Since when has a new entitlement saved us money? Since when has the Gov kept anything within budget?

Case in point, and I guess you missed this?
Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year

CBO makes estimates. Reality is completely different.

You still holding onto that 401k? There are people on welfare who could use it. Or are you only ok with it when someone reaches into another persons pocket for it?

[stebo0728]

On the subject of the CBO, interesting read here ...

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=2842&type=0

[audtatious]

Cliffs?

[stebo0728]

Its about the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and how the CBO approaches figuring their tactics.

[audtatious]

To the progressives the ends always justifies the means. Who cares what it costs and what it causes as long as the sheeple are fawning for more and more. If the sheeple are worse off then who cares. STFU and do what we say.

[stebo0728]

[audtatious]

CBO Confirms That Without Accounting Gimmicks, Obamacare Adds to Deficits

Responding to an inquiry from Rep. Paul Ryan, the Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that when you remove certain accounting gimmicks from the Democrats' health care legislation, it actually increases the deficit.

Democrats have touted a CBO report that found that their health care bill would reduce the deficit by $138 billion from 2010 to 2019. But that number assumes that hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts would be used to pay for the new health care entitlement. In a letter to Ryan, the CBO estimates that if the Medicare cuts were used to help shore up the effectively bankrupt Medicare trust fund instead, then the Democrats health care bill would run $260 billion in deficits over the next decade.

In an earlier version of the House bill, Democrats included a measure to avoid scheduled cuts in doctors' payments under Medicare. They removed the measure when they couldn't get the numbers to add up, but they have continued to pass temporary delays of the cuts and have vowed to tackle the issue separately from the current health care bill. In the letter, CBO projects that if the so-called "doc fix" were added to the legislation, it would produce deficits of $59 billion from 2010 to 2019.

Earlier CBO estimates also asume that future lawmakers would actually enact some of the unpopular measures, such as the Medicare cuts and the "Cadillac tax." These are crucial to Democrats' claims that the bill will reduce deficits even more -- by $1.2 trillion -- in the second decade. But in the letter, the CBO says that without the changes, deficits would actually increase -- by a quarter of a percent of GDP, or $600 billion -- in the second decade.

Liberals have tried to portrat any criticism of the Democrats' deficit reduction claims as an attack on the integrity of the CBO itself. But as this letter demonstrates, this isn't about attacking the CBO. It's just simply acknowledging that CBO analysis can vary greatly based on the questions you ask them. And clearly, Democrats kept tweaking the language until they were able to get the CBO score they wanted.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Lots of assumptions are part of the CBO analysis......

[IBCoupe]

So, basically, Representative Ryan's point is that without certain cost-cutting features of the Healthcare bill's plan, the healthcare bill becomes more expensive.

This year's obvious award goes to...