A Billboard in Texas

Medical Loss Ratio Fight Looms

Obamacare specifies medical loss ratios for individual and small group at 80% and large group at 85%. NAIC officials are currently meeting to provide reccomedantion's that HHS would enact which would detail precisely what components of cost would count toward calculating the medical loss ratio. Claims are easy but what about nurse hot lines? What about premium taxes or the new taxes imposed by Obama Care--the market share tax on insurers and the $20B tax on medical devices? Should these taxes count towards the medical loss ratio or should it come out of the insurer's margin? Politico covers the story well here as it seems top Democrats are still not happy they cannot dictate policy after pushing the bill through via reconciliation. Former US Congressman J.C. Watt's provides some accurate perspective here.

Of course, the end game here for Democrats is to eliminate the insurance companies from the playing field so they can point out there is no option but single payer remaining as the big bad insurance companies simply could not operate at an efficient medical loss ratio. Very Orwellian--some pigs are more equal than others you see. When the government has a horse in the race with a giant bureaucracy poised to be filled with unionized federal workers who will owe their allegiance to the Democratic Party the stakes are high.

This is what Nancy Pelosi meant when she said we had to pass the bill to find out whats in it. Imagine competing in an industry where your competitors get to write the rules which put you out of business? Of course today this is the fundamental issue the US economy faces in addressing the 9.5% unemployment; small business is just not hiring because we have no freaking clue what our cost structure will look like in the near future thanks to all the 'help" the US congress is giving us "fixing' health care and spending like a drunken sailor coming off an extended cruise with the taxpayers debit card.

See The Future?

Consider the difficulty of gaining approval for SSDI or SSI benefits today. Its hard. You have to hire an attorney familiar with the intricacy of the bureaucratic Social Security system and pay them a percentage of your award to get approved. Failure to do so will result in a bureaucrat who will take advantage of your innocence to deny and delay the benefits you are "entitled to". FICA is after all a finite resource. It takes years to get approval in some cases and the SS administration rations through denial and delays. Many people just give up. Yet, this is the very future Americans can expect from ObamaCare with respect to their Health Care. How has SSDI worked out for America. The "trust fund " is bankrupt as a tidal wave of baby boomers hits the ages of 50-60 when disability and healthcare utilization rates are highest. The next time a liberal tells you how great ObamaCare is ask them if we can expect billboards on buses for attorneys assisting citizens in obtaining benefits that were promised to them like SSDI requires today.

The ObamaCare Disaster

Peter Ferrara has written a piece describing the impact of ObamaCare on the US. Focus just on the immediate impact on the average family premium which is aleady occurring;

...one study concludes that under Obamacare a typical family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will cost $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019. Another study concludes that insurance costs for young (up to 40) and healthy workers will double and triple in many cases.

These cost increases have already begun. But expect the liberal/left to insist that the soaring insurance costs caused by Obamacare prove that the public option, or even more overt socialized medicine, was needed after all. They will seek to prohibit the necessary premium increases, as in Massachusetts, and will be glad if that forces private insurers out of business.

Blame Canada II

Very interesting article that looks at the path Canada and Massachussets (which was the model for ObamaCare) have taken in Health Care and the implications for ObamaCare.

Dangerously Out Of Touch

Despite the debt induced meltdown which occurred in Greece President Obama asked G20 leaders recently to spend more only to be rebuffed by European leaders. Yesterday President Obama in the face of 9.5% unemployment figures for June told the American people we need comprehensive immigration reform before our border can be secured. On Wednesday the courthouse in El Paso was fired upon by Mexico and Texas' Attorney General begged President Obama for help;

Yesterday, gunfire from the cartels pierced that threshold and struck City Hall in El Paso. Fortunately no one was injured or killed. But that good fortune was not the result of effective border control - it was mere luck that the bullets struck buildings rather than bodies.
Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies. The shocking reality of cross border gunfire proves the cold reality: American lives are at risk.

In case your interested in the magnitude of the illegal problem in border states perhaps you might check out gamecam pictures from south Texas ranches where instead of deer photo's you are just as likely to find illegal immigrants who are increasingly carrying backpacks filled with cocaine and methamphetamine.

 CBO has weighed in on the stunning magnitude of America's debt time bomb and Obamacare has not even kicked in yet except in the form of massive rate increases to fund the Obamacare taxes as well as to boost reserves for dependents with pre-existing conditions as well as the coming days when the uninsured and all their costs must be absorbed with community rates. Small group health renewals of 30%-40% are common due to declining membership, risk pools that no longer include the young and healthy who are now unemployed, Obamacare taxes, a provider feeding frenzy of utilization driven by plans to accelerate retirement before reimbursement drops further and the certainty that the future holds no hope for improvement.
 
The harsh reality is that President Obama is in a race to secure a permanent reliable majority Democratic voting block. He needs a recipient class of reliable voters. Already almost 47% of Americans pay no income taxes and almost 49% approve of the IRS so providing 10-20M illegals a path to citizenship will be a game over strategy.

There was a time illegal immigrants traveled by night through South Texas and slept by day. We have reached a point to day where they travel by day with well armed coyotes carrying backpacks laden with drugs through well planned routes painstakingly planned by narcotics cartels.

As pointed out on this blog previously the uninsured in Texas create a significant tax burden on citizens through property taxes to fund their free healthcare. Now if Democrats succeed in passing immigration reform the rest of the counry will get to pay for their free Obamacare tax credits.Medical trend will accelerate as providers cost shift to private payers to close their reimbursement gap. Barack Obama is the shamwow salesman in a suit.