Free Republic

A little more than 1.9 million people signed up for health insurance in the first three weeks of the Affordable Care Act open enrollment for 2019 coverage. That compares with almost 2.3 million during the first three weeks of open enrollment last year, which included an additional day. Americans are signing up for coverage through the federal marketplace at a slower rate this year, but the CMS numbers don't include enrollment in states that operate their own exchanges. It also does not include those who will be automatically enrolled in plans during the last week of open enrollment, which ends...

We hear about this surge in ObamaCare enrollments. The San Francisco Chronicle is even asserting that "the public embrace of the Affordable Care Act amounts to a stark rejection of administration and Republican policy". Maybe we can call it something like the revenge of the AHA. The editorial spends a lot of time bashing Trump but it does not say anything about the economic state of the people signing up. In other words, are these AHA policyholders going to pay their own premiums or will they be subsidized in some fashion? We don't know but the answer matters a lot....

Liberals are notorious for caring about “groups” of people, but when it gets down to individual persons, not so much. You’re about to see this play out in spades as Democrats cry crocodile tears over the coming repeal of Obamacare.You hear it over and over again: “This will be catastrophic for the 20 million people who were previously uninsured but now have coverage! You can’t take away their health care!”First of all, no one is talking about doing that. Any repeal legislation will have a transition period for those who got coverage through Obamacare to move to new plans. And...

For a product that is supposed to be so great -- and that was supposed to be in such high demand -- ObamaCare is having trouble getting people to buy it, or keep it.

Average Subsidy Cost Increasing Because of how far enrollment was below initial projections, I wrote the following on November 19: “While the aggregate subsidy amount will go down, the average subsidy amount will likely increase because of higher than expected premiums and a higher percentage of the subsidized enrollees having lower income and thus qualifying for larger subsidies than CBO anticipated.” According to CBO, this will likely be the case in 2016.

Obamacare enrollment is lagging far behind what economists had projected, the Congressional Budget Office said in a new report that cuts the total number of customers expected to buy plans on the exchanges from 21 million down to just 13 million this year. Of those, 11 million will be getting government subsidies - down from the 15 million the CBO had projected just a year ago. The updated projections came as part of the CBO's 2016 budget outlook, and confirm the administration's own dim estimates of how many people would take advantage of the health exchanges, which are at the...

With less than two weeks of open enrollment left, Covered California is reminding consumers that they will face increased penalties for not having health insurance this year. Since Obamacare's individual coverage requirement took effect in 2014, the federal government has imposed increasingly expensive fines to people who do not purchase coverage through health exchanges or obtain insurance through an employer or a government program such as Medicare. This year brings the highest penalty yet, Peter Lee, Covered California's executive director, said during a recent news conference. "This is real money going straight to the IRS, where the consumer gets nothing...

**SNIP** But even if enrollment tops 12 million, that's barely more than had signed up last year - when the administration said 11.7 million had enrolled. Whatever the number is, it's inflated, because the administration counts anyone who went through the process of selecting a plan, not those who have actually paid for it. It would be like Amazon counting anything anyone put in their shopping cart as a sale. Last year, the initial 11.7 million "enrollees" had dropped by 25% once the non-payers got subtracted out. That's why the White House figures that, by the end of next year,...

Now that ObamaCare is failing in the exact way its critics predicted more than 5 years ago, the White House is preparing to use threats to increase ObamaCare enrollment numbers next year. The threat, of course, is the ObamaCare tax. Next year the annual fine for not buying President Obama’s overpriced health insurance will jump to $695 or 2.5% of your income, whichever is greater. The White House intends to use the hefty fines as leverage in the upcoming 2016 enrollment period, which starts in November: Administration officials are looking for a balance. “We need to be make sure that...

Four exchanges insolvent, 11 receive warning letters . . . and nearly 2 million enrollees aren't paying their subsidized premiums Gosh, who saw this coming? The federal government sets up an artificial market for selling health insurance, sets the prices, subsidizes the premiums, goads people to buy who’ve never before been able to afford it, forbids profits and bans anyone who actually knows what they’re doing from running the darn things. How could that possibly fail? Quite spectacularly as it turns out. While the mainstream media ignores all of the following, lest it stumble in its role as Democrat campaign...

Enrollment in Obamacare insurance plans must double over the next year if budget projections by the Congressional Budget Office are to be met. An article in the Washington Times shows enrollment lagging far behind original estimates of where the program should be by 2016, and this will have unknown effects on the trillion dollar projection for the program's cost by 2020. As of June, the Department of Health and Human Services counted 9.9 million customers who have bought plans through the federal HealthCare.gov portal and a handful of state-run exchanges. That puts the administration ahead of it’s own estimates...

ObamaCare enrollment has fallen sharply since March, and that's before consumers confront huge rate hikes for 2016. These are not the signs of a successful program.

An IRS audit released this week shows that nearly half a million ObamaCare enrollees were able to claim more than $235 million in excess subsidies that they will never have to pay back, thanks to a quirk in the law that leaves the program vulnerable to potentially billions in excess subsidy payments.

Under resident Barack Obama's overhaul, taxpayers provided $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going, but only one out of 23 -- the one in Maine -- made money last year ... Another one, the Iowa/Nebraska co-op, was shut down by regulators over financial concerns. The audit by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office also found that 13 of the 23 lagged far behind their 2014 enrollment projections. The probe raised concerns about whether federal loans will be repaid, and ... Just last week, the Louisiana Health Cooperative announced it would cease offering coverage next year

As many as 7.5 million U.S. taxpayers reported that they owed a tax penalty for 2014 for not signing up for health insurance, the Internal Revenue Service said. That amounted to roughly $1.5 billion in penalties. That was at least 1.5 million more taxpayers than the Obama administration expected to see paying penalties under terms of the Affordable Care Act, according to reported forecasts, and as much as triple what some officials had forecast. The number, however, will come down, as the IRS says 300,000 should have claimed an exemption to the penalty. Further, penalties for those who failed to...

Earlier this year, the Obama administration boasted that well over 11 million people had signed up for an ObamaCare plan by the end of the second open enrollment period.

Two reports released in the past week demonstrate a potential bifurcation in state insurance exchanges: The insurance marketplaces appear to be attracting a disproportionate share of low-income individuals who qualify for generous federal subsidies, while middle- and higher-income filers have generally eschewed the exchanges. The overall picture presented is one of a bifurcated, or even trifurcated, system of health insurance. Individuals who qualify for very rich insurance subsidies or Medicaid have signed up for coverage, while those who qualify for small or no subsidies have not. It raises two obvious questions: Whether and how the exchanges can succeed long-term with...

Nearly nine in 10 people who signed up for healthcare from the federal government this year qualify for subsidies, the Obama administration announced Tuesday. A total of 7.7 million people would receive subsidies this year in the roughly three-dozen states using HealthCare.gov – a figure that has held steady since ObamaCare's first year. The Obama administration touted the figure Tuesday to show that the vast majority of people in states using the federal exchange rely on subsidies as the Supreme Court weighs a case that could eliminate them. A total of 34 states using HealthCare.gov could lose subsidies if the...

Health Reform: The Obama administration is touting the "fact" that nearly 12 million people either signed up or re-enrolled for ObamaCare this year. Why on Earth should anyone believe this?

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange call center in Spokane is so busy that staffing has been quadrupled, with the center receiving up to 10,000 calls a day. The problem is not enough of those callers are actually signing up for insurance. The state has enrolled 160,000 paying customers in ObamaCare exchange health plans but that's more than 50,000 short of goal, which has led to an extension of the enrollment deadline and a request that the Washington State Legislature fork over $125 million to fund the exchange. Republicans are angry because they were told the exchange would be self-sufficient by...