<p>“GP, CMS announces the Medicare totals every month.”</p>
<p>True - however, according to their numbers they are reporting around 5 million in the Medicaid expansion states (more than 50% of new enrollees come from the non-expansion states). But they also admit the numbers are not reliable because they do not know how many of the enrollees qualified under prior law in the expansion states or were renewals in many of the states. Also, the numbers may not represent unique individuals, as an individual may have more than one eligibility determination (meaning they applied more than once). Finally, nowhere do they state how many of these people were uninsured. To reiterate, neither you nor anybody else knows how many newly insured people there are because of Obamacare. Don’t pretend that you do.</p>
<p>“Maybe someday you might vet something before posting. According to their web page, the Hospital for Special Surgery accepts the following Exchange plans:”</p>
<p>Of the sixteen companies offering Obamacare plans in NY, only 3 are accepted by the Hospital of Special Surgery. </p>
<pre><code>Market shares of some of the biggest insurers offering individual health policies on the N.Y. health insurance exchange
Wellpoint (Empire BlueCross BlueShield): 18 percent
Health Republic: 16 percent
Fidelis Care: 14 percent
Emblem Health: 12 percent
MVP Health Care: 10 percent
MetroPlus Health Plan: 11 percent
Excellus BlueCross BlueShield: 6 percent
United Health: 2 percent
Other insurers: 11 percent
</code></pre>
<p>2 of the three have 14% of the market. The other one has a negligible share.</p>
<p>The other problem is if I enroll in one of those three companies, then how many other good hospitals am I shut out of. </p>
<p>Okay, the article I posted was not even all that anti-Obamacare if you can get past the headline. It included people for whom the law was working nicely. The refuser states have budgetary concerns that go beyond Medicaid. They are apparently reluctant to create another entitlement which they will eventually somehow have to fund. And, these entitlement things have a tendency to grow while the funding has a tendency to shrink. Skepticism is warranted. imho.</p>
<p>LF- Nearly every link ever posted has been disputed by someone. Even the local links are challenged for not teling the whole story, which is obviously impossible. It’s very enlightening to see who some posters consider unbiased. LOL</p>
<p>Once again, GP, you have failed to vet your own links. Your chart, on page 24, predicted that the exchanges would enroll 16.9 million people in 2014. But it does not say they would enroll 16.9 million <em>uninsured</em> people-- that is just your imagination or your error in reading the chart. It also says that non-exchange private insurance would enroll 13 million fewer people than in 2013. So under the report’s scenario, 13 million people would move from non-exchange private insurance, many of them, presumably, to the exchanges, leaving far fewer than 16.9 million previously uninsured people on the exchanges.</p>
<p>Looks like we’re back here to discuss the issues about small business premiums. I’m still trying to understand exactly what’s happening in the small business market, and hoping that maybe some small business owners here will help me out.</p>
<p>Healthy people in the individual market saw, in some cases, substantial premium increases this year. We know why this is true: now the insurers have to sell to sick people too, and now insurance has to cover things like pregnancy that previously weren’t covered by the policies that men and older women bought. Those things cost money, and that makes premiums go up.</p>
<p>But what I don’t understand is why small business premiums are also going up. Small business insurance already covered pregnancy. It already covered everybody in a company, not just healthy people. So the reasons that made individual insurance (for healthy people) go up don’t apply to small businesses. OK, the insurance now has to cover contraception and a yearly physical, but that’s lunch money in insurance terms; that can’t be driving the big jumps I’ve seen reported.</p>
<p>So what is making small business policies go up? Is it now the case that all small businesses can get insurance at the same rate? What’s going on here?</p>
<p>The Commonwealth Fund has no relationship to the Commonweath Club of California. </p>
<p>And the article which cited the Commonwealth Fund’s data was in Forbes. Now if you want to try to make a case that Forbes has a liberal bias - be my guest. </p>
<p>I’ve got another question for small business owners.</p>
<p>Let’s say there are two small businesses, Twinkletoes Running Store, which sells running shoes, and Acme Barbecue Tasters, which travels around the US tasting barbecue and publishes a newsletter rating various barbecue restaurants. Say that Acme and Twinkletoes each have 10 employees, and each employee at Acme matches an employee at Twinkletoes in age and gender. So if we just knew the ages and genders of all the employees at Acme and Twinkletoes, and nothing else (such as where they work), we’d predict that they had the same health costs. But we might suspect that runners are healthier than professional barbecue tasters.</p>
<p>Pre-ACA, if Acme and Twinkletoes asked for insurance quotes, would Acme’s be higher? What about now-- are insurers allowed to charge Acme more, under the ACA?</p>
<p>One issue bugging me is why some posters just can’t remember what was already discussed. And why some continue to make unsupportable blanket statements like, “Nobody seems too thrilled with this thing, realistically.” Remember that only about 215 out of 1.4 million complained in CA? Does that tell you anything? Even if it grew tenfold, it would still be .0015. If you can find some other number of complaints, be my guest.</p>
<p>As for, “Nearly every link ever posted has been disputed by someone,” haven’t you noticed that when we vetted the slanted links, those linkers just moved on to another point? As if they knew there was no argument with the vetters? </p>
<p>I was so curious about small business insurance that I called up a broker (Earl Dworkin in Palo Alto, and if you ever need a broker, he seems like a nice guy who knows his stuff). Anyway, he said that pre-ACA, when a small business got insurance quotes, they were based only on the ages and genders of the employees, nothing else. And that is still true. He also said that for a given set of benefits, all insurers in the market offered the same price.</p>
<p>He also mentioned that in California, there is a bill going through the legislature to freeze for next year the plans and premiums of all small businesses that currently offer health insurance.</p>
<p>“But it does not say they would enroll 16.9 million <em>uninsured</em> people-- that is just your imagination or your error in reading the chart.”</p>
<p>Where, GP? Where does it say that? On page 24, the second table, the sixth line, it says that 16.9 million people will be enrolled in the exchanges in 2014. If those 16.9 million people were previously uninsured, then where in the table are the people who were insured in 2013 and who signed up on the exchanges in 2014? </p>
<p>From the Commonwealth Fund’s history statement. I mean, really. Non-partisan? Unslanted? Good grief.</p>
<p>“The foundation underwrote a considerable part of the research underlying the development of the reforms in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and reports of its Commission on a High Performance Health System (1995–2013) helped inform the debate leading up to this landmark legislation.”</p>
<p>As for moving on to another point after “vetting”. Well, duh. It’s gets tiresome bickering about the same old thing. That does not mean any minds were changed, obviously.</p>
<p>“The foundation underwrote a considerable part of the research underlying the development of the reforms in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and reports of its Commission on a High Performance Health System (1995–2013) helped inform the debate leading up to this landmark legislation.”</p>
<p>How is that partisan? </p>
<p>Lest you forget - the basis for the system we have now came from the Heritage Foundation and a bill similar to ACA was put forth by the Republicans in 1993. It didn’t pass but the idea was revived by Mitt Romney and became Romneycare. </p>
<p>Why are you stuck on the 16.9 million people on the exchange (incorrect estimate as it turns out)? The chart say there would be 26 million less uninsured people in 2014. This is consistent with the author’s claim in the Daily Signal article. Don’t change the subject.</p>
<p>This baffles me - maybe it differs from state to state? Every year, our broker gives us quotes, and the prices vary widely, even for the same set of benefits.</p>
<p>Can’t admit that you were wrong, I see. You said that the chart you posted says there would be 17 million fewer uninsured. You were wrong-- it doesn’t say that-- but instead of gracefully apologizing for the mistake, now you try to change the subject.</p>
<p>Also, the chart says that there will be 23.8 million fewer uninsured, not 26 million. Certainly there would be a few million fewer uninsured than there are now if half the states didn’t refuse Medicaid. But even allowing for that, the 23.8 million number turns out to have been too high.</p>