ObamaCare Insurance Risk Corridor Nearly Depleted, S&P Warns

Obamacare is a failure many times over no matter how the administration and the propaganda machine spins it.  Increased costs, increased emergency room visits, lower enrollment rates than predicted and bankrupt healthcare 'coops' are just a few of the failings of  Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.  Executive action delaying the rest of the roll-out until next year and later will not stop the inevitable failure of Obamacare.  As The Hill reports, Obamacare was sold using many BIG lies as a few more come to light.

A key ObamaCare program intended to cushion health insurers from high costs is facing a massive cash shortage going into 2016, Standard and Poor’s said Thursday. 

Under the so-called “risk corridor” program, the Obama administration charges insurers with more-than-expected profits and redistributes the money to plans with losses.

In the first two years of the healthcare law, more insurers than expected have ended up with balance sheets in the red. As a result, the risk pool now has only about $1 to cover every $10 in claims – an equation that is not likely to improve until the market stabilizes. 

“We estimate that that the 2015 ACA risk corridor will be significantly underfunded, as was the case the previous year,” Standard and Poor’s analyst Deep Banerjee predicted in a report Thursday. 

Banerjee said external funding would likely be needed to add to the funds in 2016, a move that would likely have to be made by Congress. 

Federal health officials had expected a rough few years after new rules that said insurers couldn’t reject customers with pre-existing conditions – adding more risk to the marketplace. 

But the risk pool has been depleted faster than expected as insurers intentionally lowered costs in the early days of the ObamaCare maketable with hopes of reeling in new customers. 

The situation could improve this year, with more insurers raising their premiums, Banerjee said.

The risk pool was designed for insurance companies to offer artificially low premiums to entice customers to their plans and enabled the Democrats to say these rates are proof Obamcare was a good deal. Of course now the premiums are rising many times faster than inflation so what is left? Skyrocketing premiums and more deficit spending by bailing out Obamacare with tax money as the article concludes. Where will the Democrats find the funds for their fiasco? ( Incidentally, Barack Obama is the president that asked for and signed 'pay as you go' ).

“In our view, it looks like appropriations may be the only way to fully fund the risk corridor deficits,” the analysis warned.\

 Obamacare was designed to fail and was based on LIES.. It was always a Trojan Horse for a single payer government controlled healthcare system The Democratic party's zero information voter base was expertly exploited by Obama's apparatchiks and they relied heavily on the stupidity of the Democratic voter and their representatives to get Obamacare passed, just as they will when they push for single payer 'medicare for all' .



BTW, single payer is a failure, just ask Vermont....



Other blogs on Obamacare

MN Individual Healthcare Premiums Increase Up to 49%

Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare

Jonathan Gruber Had Larger Role in ObamaCare Than Previously Known

Nation’s 'Elite' Cancer Hospitals Off-Limits Under Obamacare

Jonathan Gruber Had Larger Role in ObamaCare Than Previously Known

 Once the Jonathan Gruber videos were discovered about the deception and the outright lies used to pass Obamacare, the Democrat party and the Obama administration tried to distance themselves from the trash-talking MIT economist. TheHill published the following:

The ObamaCare consultant who once mocked the “stupidity of the American voter” had a bigger impact on the healthcare law than previously known, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Jonathan Gruber frequently contacted Obama administration officials via email while crafting ObamaCare, according to the newspaper. 

The Journal said that previously unreleased messages show that Gruber repeatedly messaged the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) between January, 2009 and March, 2010. 

He offered advice on healthcare policy and informed officials about media and lawmaker interviews concerning ObamaCare, it added. 

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told the newspaper that the communications disprove Gruber’s past assertions that he was a limited participant in creating the healthcare law. 

The House Oversight Committee chairman added that his committee had obtained 20,000 pages emails after working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Gruber is an economist. 

“His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” Chaffetz said of Gruber’s relationship with the Obama administration, according to the Journal.
“There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said,” he added.
Chaffetz also said on Sunday he has sent HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell a letter for additional information over Gruber’s contract with her agency. 

Outrage erupted last year when video footage emerged of Gruber insulting the American electorate over ObamaCare.  

He was filmed in 2013 reportedly praising “the stupidity of the American voter” for helping pass President Obama’s sweeping healthcare reform law.

Jonathan Gruber always took credit for Obamacare, before he had to distance himself from it...




The King versus Burwell decision should be a no-brainer for the SCOTUS, since the state exchanges were required to be set up to get subsidies.  Jonathan Gruber always said so......



The  'cadillac tax' was another of the LIES told by this administration in order to pass Obamacare. 



Then again, Obama and the Democrats always lied about Obamacare not being a tax


Hey Democrats feel stupid yet or do you just like being lied to ?

Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare

The Obamacare law was passed without transparency, was based on lies and relied on the stupidity of the Democrat voter. The failure of Obama's 'signature' legislation is evident reading many different news items. 

Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare

Five years after the passage of ObamaCare, there is one expense that’s still causing sticker shock across the healthcare industry: overhead costs. 

The administrative costs for healthcare plans are expected to explode by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade, according to a new study published by the Health Affairs blog.   

The $270 billion in new costs, for both private insurance companies and government programs, will be “over and above what would have been expected had the law not been enacted,” one of the authors, David Himmelstein, wrote Wednesday. 

Those costs will be particularly high this year, when overhead is expected to make up 45 percent of all federal spending related to the Affordable Care Act. By 2022, that ratio will decrease to about 20 percent of federal spending related to the law. 

The study is based on data from both the government’s National Health Expenditure Projections and the Congressional Budget Office. Both authors are members of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a single-payer system. 

"This number – 22.5 percent of all new spending going into overheard – is shocking even to me, to be honest. It’s almost one out of every four dollars is just going to bureaucracy," the study's other author, Steffie Woolhandler, said Wednesday...

A breakdown of the costs...... 

The extra administrative costs amount to the equivalent of $1,375 per newly insured person per year, the authors write.

About two-thirds of the new overhead costs are the result of rising enrollment in private plans, which the authors say carries “high costs for administration and profits.” 

The rest is the result of expanded government programs, such as Medicaid. It also includes the cost of running ObamaCare exchanges at both the federal and state levels. 

The federal exchange, as well as the 13 state-run exchanges, have all been boosted by grant money, though those funds will run out by 2016. The exchange will then need to rely on fees to plan premiums.

Next from the Wall Street Journal: 

Health Insurers Seek Hefty Rate Boosts
Proposals set the stage for debate over federal health law’s impact

Major insurers in some states are proposing hefty rate boosts for plans sold under the federal health law, setting the stage for an intense debate this summer over the law’s impact. 

In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products. Moda Health, the largest insurer on the Oregon health exchange, seeks an average boost of around 25%. 

All of them cite high medical costs incurred by people newly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act.....

Next from CNBC

Obamacare's special enrollments draw little interest

Many were called. Few chose to respond.

The federal Obamacare insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov signed up 147,000 people in 36 states during a special tax season enrollment period, officials revealed Tuesday. That relatively light level of sign-ups was similar to what was seen in 11 other states and the District of Columbia during their own grace periods.

HealthCare.gov issued the final tally via Twitter rather than a press release or news call that Obama administration officials have previously used to announce other numbers and results.
The federal exchange's special enrollment period was open to people who learned they were subject to a tax penalty for failing to have health insurance coverage last year when they were preparing their tax returns. 

In all, it appears fewer than 250,000 people signed up nationally. In Hawaii, no people—as in zero—signed up during the special tax season enrollment...

Lastly, from The LaTimes

Amid slower growth, California's Obamacare exchange cuts proposed spending

After using most of $1 billion in federal start-up money, California's Obamacare exchange is preparing to go on a diet.

That financial reality is reflected in Covered California's proposed budget, released Wednesday, as well as a reduced forecast calling for 2016 enrollment of fewer than 1.5 million people.

The recalibration comes after tepid enrollment growth for California during the second year of the Affordable Care Act. The state ended open enrollment in February with 1.4 million people signed up, far short of its goal of 1.7 million.

A number of factors contributed to the shortfall, but health policy experts said that some uninsured folks still find health insurance unaffordable despite the health law's premium subsidies....

Obamacare is not sustainable by any measure and has failed the American people, just like Barack Obama.