HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resigns

[upsideguy]

That's not quite accurate. They expected 7 million to enroll in just the exchange portion - with almost all being previously uninsured. They then expected 8 million to enroll through Medicaid.



http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/obamacare-enrollment-keeps-growing

Based on the Rand study, it sounds like the Medicaid enrollment was off too... With most of the Medicaid enrollments not due to the expansion and actually just renewals or people that were already qualified for Medicaid just had not signed up yet.

Your link actually confirms my statement:

".....A recent Gallup poll found the rate of Americans without insurance dipped to a five-year low in the first quarter of 2014. A RAND Corp. study released this week found 9.3 million people gained health insurance under the law....."

Bear in mind, the Rand study was done when only 3.9 million had signed up for the exchange (its now almost twice that)

 

[buck]

Your link actually confirms my statement:

".....A recent Gallup poll found the rate of Americans without insurance dipped to a five-year low in the first quarter of 2014. A RAND Corp. study released this week found 9.3 million people gained health insurance under the law....."

Bear in mind, the Rand study was done when only 3.9 million had signed up for the exchange (its now almost twice that)

Right... The Rand study found that only 1.4 million previously uninsured gained insurance through the exchange. This projects to 2.5 million including the surge at the end of the enrollment period.

So, through just Medicaid and the exchange, the CBO projected 15 million (mostly uninsured) to sign up for Obamacare. Instead, only a couple of million actually gained insurance through those two methods.

A large bulk of the 9.5 million uninsured gained insurance through employers. These would be few of the uninsured that were uninsured due to the reasons we needed to enact Obamacre. I.e. because they couldn't get any insurance. This was, instead, people that just didn't want insurance.

 

[upsideguy]

Right... The Rand study found that only 1.4 million previously uninsured gained insurance through the exchange. This projects to 2.5 million including the surge at the end of the enrollment period.

So, through just Medicaid and the exchange, the CBO projected 15 million (mostly uninsured) to sign up for Obamacare. Instead, only a couple of million actually gained insurance through those two methods.

A large bulk of the 9.5 million uninsured gained insurance through employers. These would be few of the uninsured that were uninsured due to the reasons we needed to enact Obamacre. I.e. because they couldn't get any insurance. This was, instead, people that just didn't want insurance.

Actually, its more like.... 2.0 million uninsured from exchanges + 4.5 million from Medicaid expansion + 3.0 million on expansion of coverage to 26.... is 9.5 million previously uninsureds now with insurance.

Obamacare has led to health coverage for millions more people - Los Angeles Times

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...ollment-hits-7-million-23.html#post1063122275

 

[fedupwithgov]

Thank god. She should have never been put in the position she was in to begin with. She had no first hand experience in the health care administration field. Good she is gone, now who will Obama replace her with? Another who knows nothing about how providing health care has worked in the past and what is needed to change it to make the cost of "providing health care" more affordable. The President and the dems don't understand that lowering the cost of providing health care is not the same as lowering the cost of medicare and Medicaid. Since the mid 1990's when ppo's, hmo's came on board and physicians were virtually forced to sign on to these programs or no longer be able to treat their patients; reimbursements for services have declined. Then came managed care, another private health insurance plan that once again forced providers to either sign up of lose their long time patients, forcing them to accept even lower reimbursements for their services. Then with the passage of Obama Care, only the private insurance companies win. The providers are once again forced to accept lower reimbursements or opt out of many private insurance plans, medicare and Medicaid.

Instead of regulating the private health insurance companies, the Dems, the President and the PPACA bails out private companies that will lose money due to the new PPACA regulations, and the insured's and the providers that provide their treatment are huge losers.

The PPACA promised to reduce the number of those seeking ER care, but it will not, so those who have insurance will pay higher premiums due to this. Plus, the taxpayers will also pay to subsidize premiums for those that qualify for premium assistance. Yet premium assistance won't be available for those that earn to little, instead, they are told to apply for Medicaid. What a crock. And, those who had affordable coverage that didn't include benefits for maternity of newborn care, or pediatric care because they simply would never need these benefits(women past child bearing age, children over the age of 27, single males)lost their insurance and were forced to pay higher premiums through their State or the Federal Exchange for benefits they will never need and higher deductibles and out-of-pocket.

Don't care why she resigned, just glad she is gone. But, now, we need to look at who Obama is proposing replace her.

 

[Linc]

Should be an interesting confirmation hearing.

Will the GOP vote to confirm Burwell, as they did 98-0 as the budget director, or play politics and try to put ACA on trial. Without the "nuclear" option, the GOP would stall the nomination process for the next seven months, as they did before the "nuclear" option .

 

[Linc]

Did you GOPs ever wonder how a RED state like Kansas could elect Sebellius as governor? And to show their populist streak is still alive, DEMs are currently favored to take back the governorship. As well, the GOP is only rated "likely" to win the Senate, not "solidly" .

 

[buck]

Actually, its more like.... 2.0 million uninsured from exchanges + 4.5 million from Medicaid expansion + 3.0 million on expansion of coverage to 26.... is 9.5 million previously uninsureds now with insurance.

Obamacare has led to health coverage for millions more people - Los Angeles Times

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...ollment-hits-7-million-23.html#post1063122275

There is a discrepancy between the source you provided and the other sources. My guess is that it is due to the LA Times reporting before the survey was even released.

The Number of Uninsured Is Dropping, but Not Thanks to Obamacare Exchanges

Only 1.4 million of the 3.9 million people who gained insurance under the exchanges were uninsured last year. If you extrapolate RAND's data out for the full 7 million people the government says enrolled by March 31, some 2.5 million previously uninsured people will have gained insurance thanks to the exchanges. (We'll note at this point that the margin of error on the RAND data is pretty large.)

The RAND survey also found that 7.2 million of the 9.5 million previously uninsured obtained the coverage through employer provided benefits... So, again, the cite you are using is incorrect.

Most of the people who got new insurance didn’t buy it on the Obamacare exchanges but rather signed up with an employer, the survey found. Rand says that 8.2 million people have gained insurance from an employer since September — more than 7 million of them who had no health insurance before.

Nine Million Got New Health Insurance, Study Finds - NBC News

If you add the numbers you provided, that would be 9.5 million people.. Which leaves zero room for the 7 million previously uninsured that obtained coverage through employers... So, those numbers couldn't possibly be correct.

 

[MTAtech]

It is funny reading posts from the above conservatives, whining about how Obama 'really didn't make the numbers,' how expensive Obamacare is going to be, etc., etc. Why wouldn't they believe these tales of disaster? They get their news from incestuous sources that feed the same news back. Their failure is placing faith in these sources -- the same sources that told them that Romney was going to win in a landslide.

 

[buck]

It is funny reading posts from the above conservatives, whining about how Obama 'really didn't make the numbers,' how expensive Obamacare is going to be, etc., etc. Why wouldn't they believe these tales of disaster? They get their news from incestuous sources that feed the same news back. Their failure is placing faith in these sources -- the same sources that told them that Romney was going to win in a landslide.

NBCNews and Yahoo said Romney would win in a landslide?

 

[MTAtech]

NBCNews and Yahoo said Romney would win in a landslide?

I was referring to right-wing pundits -- the same sources that claimed Obamacare would be a train wreck.

 

[fedupwithgov]

I was referring to right-wing pundits -- the same sources that claimed Obamacare would be a train wreck.

And it is a train wreck.

Loss of Sebilius good, replacing her with another woman with no first hand medical care management experience not so promising.

 

[CanadaJohn]

Will the GOP vote to confirm Burwell, as they did 98-0 as the budget director, or play politics and try to put ACA on trial. Without the "nuclear" option, the GOP would stall the nomination process for the next seven months, as they did before the "nuclear" option .

Since the Senate, as obstructed by Harry Reid, refuses to take up a discussion of the ACA except at such hearings, I fully expect many members, including Democrats trying to cover their own asses, playing politics and putting the ACA and its implementation on trial. I suppose you believe that since the name Burwell was spoken by the messiah, it should never be questioned. Fortunately, there are some politicians who are independently minded, including some Democrats.

 

[MTAtech]

And it is a train wreck.

Loss of Sebilius good, replacing her with another woman with no first hand medical care management experience not so promising.

As Josh Marshall said:

Now that the implementers managed, improbably, to not only get respectable numbers but actually hit the notional enrollment targets, along with other positive metrics, the 'Obamacare is failing' meme just isn't very credible anymore. So she could resign or be pushed out (whatever happened) with little cost.

This is, in a word, obvious.
...
[some but conservatives just can't accept the truth and double-down] 'the numbers from HHS and the states are fake. No one has paid their premiums. No young people have signed up because, well, where are the numbers? Why isn't Obama releasing them? Everybody has lost their insurance and prices are skyrocketing.'

Snark in itself isn't surprising. What is notable is the total shock that there's not total unanimity that the program is failing. As we've noted in reporting over the last week, conservative policy hands are pretty much all coming around to the conclusion that the ACA isn't collapsing and is here to stay.

Ezra Klein said similarly:

Klein observed that embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was resigning because "Obamacare has won."

But conservatives continue to ridicule.

The criticism reflected a refusal on the right to accept that Obamacare is on the rebound.

Yet, some conservatives are getting it.

Conservatives Discover That Obamacare Will Help A Lot Of People
Despite the caveats, "it's clear now that one scenario with a lot of purchase among conservative opponents of Obamacare -- that the law would 'implode,' 'collapse' or 'unravel' -- is highly unlikely," Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor for the conservative National Review, wrote Tuesday in a column for Bloomberg View.

 

[buck]

I was referring to right-wing pundits -- the same sources that claimed Obamacare would be a train wreck.

Ah. OK, I apologize then. Your reply was apparently not meant for my post and the cites I used.

 

[LetsGoBrandon]

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resigns

"WASHINGTON — After a difficult five years shepherding President Obama's signature health care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has tendered her resignation, according to two senior administration officials."

The obama administration is hoping against hope that the Sebelius resignation will take the public heat off of obamacare in the lead up to the midterms. Several other attempts have failed such as pushing a $10.00 an hour minimum wage and equal pay for women.