I guess that’s what you’d call the latest White House move to encourage the insurance companies to become wards of the state:
The U.S. government has issued a proposal that would likely increase risk payments in 2014 to health insurers offering plans on the Obamacare exchanges after the companies complained a recent policy change allowing people to keep their insurance policies had changed the financial equation.
The rule, published on Monday in the Federal Register, lowered the threshold at which risk payments kick in for the sickest health plan members. The government proposed paying insurers 80 percent of claims greater than $45,000 in 2014. Previously the lower limit was $60,000.
Subsidies for everyone! Except you, comrade — you’re still able to work, da?
But then there’s this:
In addition, the government has proposed a state-specific adjustment for risk payments based on how many people in the state extend their current polices, Citibank analyst Carl McDonald explained in a research note.
The exchanges are being created as part of President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law. An estimated 7 million people are expected to sign up.
Ahem. Seven million people. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider Enroll Maven can’t locate even 200,000 who have managed to sign up, with the enrollment period nearly one-third complete. But when you consider that the rational behind ObamaCare was to provide — right now! — health insurance for 47 million needy Americans, then those seven millions don’t seem like very much.
I want you to remember, please never forget, just a few things:
• The new normal of low growth and high un- and under-employment
• The overt politicization of everything
• The tax hikes
• The doctors driven from their fields
• The small private practices consolidated into government-friendly giant institutions
• The millions who have lost their coverage
• The tens of millions more who will lose their coverage
• The normalization of permanent part-time employment
• And all the lies, brazenly told, to make it all happen and to steal an election
All for the sake of getting a couple hundred thousand people signed up on a website.
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