Free Republic

Either version of the law (Upton’s or Landrieu’s) likely creates an adverse selection problem that will further hurt the insurance industry, which let’s recall, was in bed with the administration on Obamacare because of all the new customers that would be required to buy its product. Obamacare has, with an impressive combination of incompetence and irony, seemingly been optimized to create a death spiral. But is it logistically possible for people to keep their plans? For insurance companies to reinstate them? John McCormack at the Weekly Standard: With millions of Americans losing their health insurance because of Obamacare, bills have...

So I am sitting here contemplating some business decisions and doing my forecasting for 2014. Suddenly it occurs to me the insurance companies must have done the same thing and expected a certain amount of customers and revenue relative to each spend. Bit...here it comes....this forecasts are crap since ObamaCare® website doesn't make it easy to acquire a customer and in fact, it impedes utilization. How are the presidents of these companies going to explain their churn and a funnel that operates more like a sieve ?

A blunt critique from Bill Clinton on President Obama's handling of the rocky ObamaCare rollout is prompting the White House to pledge another set of health law fixes -- though in doing so, it could inadvertently build the case for those calling for a delay in the law's implementation. Aside from scrambling to fix the broken HealthCare.gov website, the administration is now trying to deal with the millions of Americans who have received cancellation notices. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the president's team is trying to figure out a way to offer relief to some of...

It’s not so easy to repair the White House’s broken promise that millions of consumers would be able to keep their insurance coverage under Obamacare, according to several health and insurance industry experts. President Barack Obama apologized Thursday to the Americans who are losing their coverage despite his pledge and has ordered aides to look into options to try to fix the problem. But there are no obvious solutions that would restore their plans without significantly disrupting the insurance market. -snip- The White House is “just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one: our...

A senior Chinese official who oversees the country's largest state-owned enterprises has publicly slammed Western investment banks for "maliciously" peddling complicated derivative products that caused huge losses for Chinese companies over the last year. In Beijing's strongest criticism on the matter to date, Li Wei, vice director of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, singled out Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup in a long and highly critical article in the latest issue of an official Communist party newspaper. The large losses suffered by Chinese state companies were "closely associated with the intentionally complex and highly leveraged...

Even Timmy is slowly realizing that the Administration will need to find a way to deflect Main Steet's anger at Goldman and keep it focused exclusively on Wall Street instead of equating it with Obama et al. The problem is - you make some very serious, tentacled enemies in the process. Geithner also flip flops on his prior position on the transaction tax. While before he was more opposed to the transaction tax than even Marla, his new "windsocked" position on the topic may now provide a challenge even to Nitric Oxide inhibitors. But here is the clincher for the...

Americans have begun an angry backlash against bailouts that could become a national revolt in 2009. The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by some 500 basis points. Government agencies have poured close to $8 trillion into banking bailouts. The Treasury secretary has promoted massive government support of troubled, failed and corrupted institutions. This program is a 100 percent top-down exercise involving the largest amount of money in history. Virtually none of this money directly helps average Americans. Virtually none of it trickles down to the people who suffer the most and pay for the program. After $8 trillion we...