Of the great Democrat entitlement programs, the most recent – Obamacare – is by far the least popular and has been by far the quickest to fail. I’ll start the tale with this from Powerline:

In 2013, millions of Americans received notices informing them that their existing health insurance plan would disappear once Obamacare’s major provisions took effect. President Obama’s “if you like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan” mantra was exposed as a lie.

In response, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services agreed [i.e., were ordered by the White House] to ignore the requirements of Obamacare and allow people to keep their prior coverage. Insurers could permit individuals who purchased coverage after the law’s enactment but before October 2013 to keep their plan for a few more months (later extended until December 2017).

The Administration made the retroactive change to the Affordable Care Act in order to dampen the political heat caused by the law’s initial implementation. This led to “unintended consequences.”

As Christopher Jacob of the Federalist explains, this move, in addition to being unlawful, placed insurers in an untenable financial position. Healthy individuals kept their existing plans and stayed out of the Obamacare risk pool, while sicker individuals signed up for Obamacare in drove. Because insurers hadn’t anticipated the Obama Administration’s rule change that produced this phenomenon, they had substantially under-priced their Obamacare products.

How bad is the problem? This piece of local news out of Minneapolis gives you some sense for that:

Minnesota’s top health insurance regulator says the state’s individual market is in “an emergency situation” amid big rate increases for next year.

Department of Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman said Friday that the five companies offering plans through the state’s exchange or directly to consumers were prepared to leave the market for 2017. He said big rate increases were the tradeoff to convince all but one company to remain for now.

Rate increases finalized this week range from a 50% average hike for HealthPartners plans to a 67% jump on average on Ucare.

Yikes. Bear in mind this isn’t just what the insurance companies asked for, it’s what the government regulators – Democrats all – approved. But nobody can afford that kind of price inflation. So the government will have to kick in more taxpayer-funded subsidies, right?

Back to Powerline:

To induce insurers to maintain existing plans, CMS stated that “the risk corridor program should help ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue” and that it “intend[s] to explore ways to modify the risk corridor program final rules to provide additional assistance” to insurers. As Jacobs puts it:

“The Administration conjured a political bailout. It pledged not to enforce the law [requiring cancellation of polices], so people could keep their plans, and President Obama could get off the hook for misleading the American people. This necessitated a financial bailout through risk corridors.”

The risk corridor money has proved to be grossly inadequate to cover the losses of insurers. Several health plans have sued the US government to collect the shortfall. The Justice Department then signaled its willingness to settle the claims and, indeed, to offer payments to approximately 175 health plans selling coverage on [Obamacare] marketplaces. The money would come from the obscure source known as the Judgment Fund.

This is exactly the way the Obamaites paid for the illegal ransoms to Iran. They got away with that one.

In this way, the recent congressional ban on the use of HHS money to pay the insurers would be avoided. The Obama Administration would, in effect, collude with the insurers by rolling over in lawsuits (and encouraging additional lawsuits in which to roll over) in order to bail out insurers. This raises the following question, posed by Jacobs:

“Why should the executive branch be allowed to break the law [which didn’t allow the continuation of non-Obamacare compliant plans]… and then force… taxpayers to pay the tab for the financial consequences of that lawbreaking?”

Why indeed? Yet… Hot Air provides the latest twist in the story:

The Obama Administration is moving to dismiss lawsuits filed by insurers under a provision of Obamacare known as risk corridors. That’s a big change from just a few days ago when the Administration seemed to be signaling it would settle the lawsuits as a way to bail out insurers without having to go to Congress for funding…

The fact that this bailout would be an unconstitutional executive brach disbursement of unappropriated (and indeed explicitly forbidden) federal funds is clearly no deterrent to them – witness the Iran payoff. So what gives? Hot Air provides a little more:

The document filed to dismiss the lawsuits states, “Under Moda’s [one of the insurers suing the government] interpretation, HHS would be the uncapped insurer of the insurance industry itself.” The documents adds, “Congress did not intend that result.”

Again, you can dismiss the pious reference to congressional intent. But were the Obamaites worried about creating an open-ended (“uncapped”) liability for the federal government? I doubt it. We’re not talking about fiscal conservatives here, comrade. It’s not like they would be spending their personal money, and it’s not like they are deficit-adverse. As always with them, I think the balk on the Judgement Fund bailout represents a political calculation. To move forward with this would create a firestorm just before the presidential election. Obamacare is already a net-negative for Democrats. They need to keep it out of the news, or at least off the headlines, until after the election.

You doubt the political toxicity of the Affordable Care Act? Then answer me this: How many times in recent months has candidate Hillary mentioned Obamacare? That would be zero.

Surprisingly, that’s not true of aspiring First Husband Bill. Powerline has that part:

Bill Clinton ripped Obamacare during a campaign rally for his wife in Michigan [Monday]. Calling Obamacare, “a crazy system” and “the craziest thing in the world,” the former President said “it doesn’t many any sense; the insurance model doesn’t work here.”

Clinton went on to say that Obamacare “works fine” for people with “modest” incomes or who are eligible for government subsidies, but “the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.” He added:

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”

Now he tells us! Why?

Donald Trump has been usually competitive for a Republican nominee in Michigan. By expressing sympathy for “the people out there busting it,” and by criticizing an unpopular program, Bill Clinton hopes to help his wife with lower-middle class voters in this state.

But Slick Willy is also expressing the view held by most leftists. They see Obamacare as a stop along the way to a system that provides “free” insurance for everyone – the single payer [i.e., full socialist] system.

Or he was just off-message. That happens from time to time with Bill.

But do they think single-payer sells well with voters? Nah. A state-level single-payer initiative is on the ballot this November in Colorado. It proposes to double both the state budget and state income taxes. Even so the numbers don’t add up – it will immediately start running deep into the red. The ballot measure is expected to fail badly. Democrats are avoiding it like the plague.

For the left, socialist healthcare is a matter of not no, but not now. Later. As in next year, when they presume Mrs Clinton will be President and they will have improved their position in Congress. Then they’ll have to deal with the issue, one way or another. Even the rigorously on-message New York Times admits that Obamacare will have to “change to survive.” For the left that means facing the delicate task of convincing the American people that the solution to the failure of government-run healthcare is even more comprehensively government-run healthcare.

Don’t laugh. Their whole platform for this election is centered on reinforcing failure.

– Tacitus

Copyright 2016 Tacitus
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