The survey also found that people, by a 2-to-1 margin, felt Obamacare had had a more negative than positive impact on their own, individual health care. The poll questioned 1,005 adults, and had a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.
Cancellation notices for small business policies will be going out in October. A month before the election. Anyone want to bet that the administration delays the employer mandate six months to a year again to get past the election?
Also, to satisfy DMC, the early data does show that the signups trend towards the sick and old:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/12/us-usa-healthcare-enrollment-idUSBREA0B07Y20140112
Another day, another news article.
This time reporting that just enough young people have signed up for coverage by year end - and more are expected in the remaining 3 months.
If the law will be fine with only voluntary signups, then the mandate can be dispensed with. Good news.
90% of Congressional staffers don’t have a very high opinion of ACA:
Seems like it’s quite the imposition on them. I’m sure we can all agree that Congress and their staffs should live with the laws they pass, so enjoy.
Some great pearls from that one:
Ninety percent of staffers surveyed for a report released Monday by the Congressional Management Foundation said they are concerned about benefit changes under the health care law, while 86 percent are anxious about the financial hit and 79 percent cited worries to access.
(People keep telling me that the benefits are great under ACA - way better than under "old insurance. And of course access is great too, right? When I mentioned hugely narrowed networks, I was shouted down as an alarmist)
79 percent said it was likely that the health care changes could contribute to staff exits. Fifty-two percent of those who responded worked in a Democratic office, while 48 percent were from GOP offices.
Those fifty-two percent shoulda talked to their bosses about it before they passed the law, shouldn’t they have? Of course, they probably didn’t know what was being passed, and neither did their bosses.
“With the changes in health care this year, even with [the] subsidy from Congress, my insurance will more than double with the deductible more than doubling as well,” one aide wrote in the survey. “That is for 3 people. How is this affordable? The entire staff is in this same position.”Probably a liar, right? Only a liar can say that the new and improved Obamacare policies are not affordable. Or maybe he had “crappy insurance” before (yeah, right) and now he is paying more for much better insurance?
“The move by some members to eliminate the employer contribution has also not been well-received,” one staffer said in the Congressional Management Foundation survey. “Everyone felt as if we were pawns in this political argument.”I guess being treated like the “hoi polloi” doesn’t sit well with the ruling classes, does it?
This is a gem. Thank you. I’m going to have this framed and I’ll display it whenever appropriate, like when you claim to understand statistics.
Congressional staffers used to be under the best healthcare in the country, the Federal Government system. Unlike the uninsured and the folks with junk insurance. So it is entirely possible that they will end up with plans that are worse than what they had. But that is because the system was not set up to handle people that had good insurance and were forced to quit it, it was designed to get insurance to people with none or with substandard policies.
And they have a right to be worried about the financial hit, because the Republicans that forced them to be on the plans are now trying to raise the costs they have to pay.
You mean the same costs the constituents in their districts/states pay, right?
Wait a minute, it’s the best insurance, yet cheaper? Economics 101 fail. Actually, that goes for 90% of the pro-ACA arguments. Supposedly ACA is bringing Americans better insurance at lower cost with networks just as large as before. Makes me wonder who in their imaginary world is paying for this miracle.
More participants = more revenue. Economics 101, so to speak.
Only if you assume the participants won’t be using much of their insurance. Which was the plan, but isn’t working out yet. Nor have insurers priced for it, since they can’t be sure it will happen.
Oh wait, forgot, the insurance is cheap and better than what most people had before. Never mind.
That’s a pretty serious death spiral you envision. Care to predict when that time bomb will detonate? And will it be loud enough for anyone outside your bubble to hear it?
You have data from the last 14 days that show how much the new younger participants have been using their new insurance? Really?
You’re not giving them much credit for having decent actuaries, are you? Well, who else would?
For millions, yes, that’s true. As you know.
Cool. A chance to issue a Mapcase Law.
Any substantial change, no matter how well-intentioned or well-wrought, will leave some people worse off.
Want to know why change is fiercely resisted? This. The people who will be hurt can and will complain and try to halt the changes. Those who dislike the change for any reason can always find a few individuals demonstrably hurt. Those who dislike change, or hate it because their enemies are behind it, can always cherrypick justification for why change is bad.
We’re going to go through this with self-driving cars. Someone, somewhere, will die as a result of a malfunction. It will dominate the news cycle and get people screaming endlessly. Yet while that screaming is going on, a much, much large number of lives which otherwise would have been lost will go on without ever knowing their fate. Affordable Care has the advantage of being able to show individuals with visibly positive outcomes. I’d say the net is unmistakeably positive, but it will be years before the system settles enough to spread that understanding throughout society.
So the nay-sayers have the advantage that some change is indeed bad, or has a net negative effect. A Mapcase Law corollary:
If you argue against all change, you will be right sometimes and you’ll always remember that.
Remember that.
There won’t be a death spiral. The risk corridors ensure that.
The bad stuff has already happened. People don’t like the product and aren’t buying it. So now a decision has to be made: drop the mandate or enforce it. And then see how that goes in the next two elections.
Nothing new:
*“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” *
- Samuel Johnson
“People aren’t buying it”, you say, adaher? So far, we’re up to 2.2 million. And counting.
How are you coming with that data on how increased enrollment isn’t working out?
IOW, you got a cite for anything you say? Any at all? For even once?
You can say the exact same thing about rightwingers too.
In other words, it’s a useless comment.
Exactly. Staff are political pawns in this.
Do you know what elections are, either?