Bill USA
Bill USA's Journal'victimization' of young invincibles by Obamacare largely exaggerated
Jimmy Kimmel had a bit on his show about "young invincibles" paying for penis - pumps presumably for elderly policy holders. Actually, this comic piece wasn't that much more ridiculous than most of the news coverage insinuating the victimizartion of the young 'invincibles'. Mark Twain once said: "the rumors as to my death have been exaggerated." ... I would point out that the narrative of the victimization of the young 'invincibles' is exaggerated.
All these 'plot-lines' presume as if all the medical expenses paid out by insurers for policy holders is covered by current revenues (premium payments by policy-holders). That is not close to being true. The insurance companies make a profit every year which is on top of additions to an investment account from current revenues. The insurance companies make every effort to make this pool of assets grow over time and it is from these accumulated investment assets that payments for medical claims are made.
Now, it's true that young people have a considerably lower medical expenses claims rate compared to people of advanced age. But it's also true that those 50 to 60 year olds who have had insurance for 25 to 35 years and have been paying in premiums over that period have contributed 25 to 35 years to that asset pool the insurance company maintains (and tries very hard to grow) from which medical expense claims are paid. And how much have the typical young person paid into that asset pool? Well, about 1/20th to 1/30th as much as the more mature policy holders - and that's on a cash basis. If you allow for a present value calculation of the older policy holders 25 to 35 years of payments it would be an much larger disparity.
While the older policy holders have a higher rate of claims, they have paid in a great deal more than the young 'invincibles' to that invested assets pool. The young policy-holders - if they should have the misfortune to make a sizeable claim (unexpected serious illness, or injury) even though they have not paid in very much to that invested assets pool they will have the entire amount of the approved claim paid. That's actually a pretty good deal... despite the narrative of young invincibles being 'victimized' by Obamacare - oh, and it's not Obamacare that's responsible it's the reality of running an insurance business model. (the way in which Obamacare changes the equation is by eliminating the "pre-existing conditions" clause in private insurance company policies. The private insurance model has to have the Pre-existing condition clause in there because most people think just like the young 'invincibles' are currently thinking regarding they purchase of insurance - "What ME ....buy insurance??? ... I think I'll just wait until I need it" (!?).
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/kimmels-new-obamacare-ad-shows-how-young-invincibles-end-up-paying-for-the-elderlys-penis-pumps/
Republican anti-Obama fanatics not letting up on anti-Obamacare propaganda campaign. Confident that
there are enough idiots out there who they can tell what they think of ObamaCare.
"HEY, it worked for me didn't it? Heh, heh."
Ads Attacking Health Law Stagger Outspent Democrats
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/politics/ads-attacking-on-health-law-stagger-outspent-democrats.html?hpw&rref=politics&_r=1
WASHINGTON — Democrats are increasingly anxious about an onslaught of television ads hitting vulnerable Senate and House candidates for their support of the new health law, since many lack the resources to fight back in the early stages of the midterm campaign.
Since September, Americans for Prosperity, a group financed in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, has spent an estimated $20 million on television advertising that calls out House and Senate Democrats by name for their support of the Affordable Care Act.
The unusually aggressive early run of television ads, which has been supplemented by other conservative initiatives, has gone largely unanswered, and strategists in both parties agree it is taking a toll on its targets.
Building on the success, the deep-pocketed organization disclosed on Tuesday that it was expanding its Senate efforts with $1.8 million in airtime to attack Democratic House members running for the Senate in Iowa and Michigan, where Democrats are viewed as holding an early advantage. The group was also moving into Montana, a state where Democrats may struggle to defend a seat, on behalf of a Republican House member running for the Senate.
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Don’t believe the hype: Health insurers think Obamacare is going to be fine
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/15/dont-believe-the-hype-health-insurers-think-obamacare-is-going-to-be-fine/(emphasis my own)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Obamacare's troubled rollout hasn't scared insurers out of the marketplace. Instead, speaking to thousands of health-care investors gathered in San Francisco, plan executives describe the Affordable Care Act as, at worst, a fixable mess and, at best, a major growth opportunity.
The executives' commentary was a reminder that the health-care industry doesn't set its watch by the election cycles which dominate Washington. They expected Obamacare to be a bit of a mess in 2014 -- but they're in it for the long haul.
"We believe that over time, a lot of these bumps will work themselves out," Joe Swedish, president of Wellpoint, the country’s second-largest health plan, said in an interview with The Washington Post."We have always expected it to have a sort of lumpiness to it, the rollout. It's certainly become more lumpy than one would have predicted [but] over time, this will work out."
“Our view is we’re still in the early innings,” Cigna chief executive David Cordani told a standing-room only crowd of investors at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. “The first couple of years will be choppy, and we’re learning whether it can find its legs.”
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Fox in Freefall as Rachel Maddow Beats Fox News For an Entire Week In the Ratings
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/14/fox-freefall-rachel-maddow-beats-fox-news-entire-week-ratings.htmlFox News is hemorrhaging young viewers, but last week, things hit a new low for Fox. Rachel Maddow beat Fox News for the entire week with viewers age 25-54.
According to TVNewser, “The Rachel Maddow Show” averaged 325,000 A25-54 viewers for the week, topping Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” which drew 305,000, and “Piers Morgan Tonight,” which had 159,000. It was MSNBC’s best 9pmET performance since the week of the Boston Marathon bombing (4/15/13). MSNBC’s coverage of the Chris Christie bridge scandal propelled MSNBC to#1 in the primetime demo on both Thursday and Friday of last week. Maddow won the 9pmET timeslot among younger viewers both nights.”
Moving Megyn Kelly to 9 PM was supposed to lure young viewers to Fox News. That move has failed as Kelly isn’t drawing the younger demographic that Fox News desperately needs for the future. The Maddow victory comes on the heels of Fox News seeing a 30% drop in young viewership in 2013. These numbers are also a huge victory for Maddow. She broke the Bridgegate story, and it is nice to see her being rewarded for some excellent reporting.
Rachel Maddow’s ratings have plummeted since Chris Hayes came aboard, and singlehandedly destroyed MSNBC’s primetime ratings. Despite her big week, Maddow still drew less than half of the total audience of Megyn Kelly (2.156 million to 1.034 million). Her program still has a long way to go before it is strong enough to overcome the weak All In lead in and challenge for number one, but this is real progress.
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Darrell Issa Commits A Treasonous High Crime By Leaking Sensitive Obamacare Documents
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/15/darrell-issa-commits-treasonous-high-crime-leaking-sensitive-obamacare-documents.htmlAccording to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Darrell Issa has jeopardized the security of the ACA website by leaking sensitive Obamacare documents to unauthorized consultants.
Cummings wrote,
On several occasions since November, I have written to you to request that we meet to discuss the adoption of a bipartisan protocol to safeguard sensitive documents obtained during this investigation and to develop a responsible approach to making information public that the Committee determines is important to its investigation.
I also remain concerned with the unilateral release by your office of partial transcripts and select document excerpts to promote partisan narratives that often turn out to be inaccurate, particularly when these releases are not part of any official report, correspondence, or other Committee action. Not only is this a disservice to the American people and the goals we share, but it undermines the credibility and integrity of the Committee.
Another concern is the security of documents in the custody of the Committee. Currently, the Committee has no procedure governing the storage and handling of these sensitive documents. As a result, there have been two separate occasions last week when sensitive documents were left unattended in unlocked rooms accessible by the public. Although I understand that your office believes these documents are not sensitive, one was produced to the Committee in encrypted, password-protected format, and both were marked as sensitive documents that require special handling.
A third concern relates to providing access to sensitive information to individuals outside the Committee. In December, you stated that you intended to “consult carefully with non-conflicted experts to ensure no information is released that could further jeopardize the website’s security.” Several days later, you wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that you had already begun this process, stating that you would “continue” consulting with outside security experts.
Based on your statements, it is unclear who these outside experts are, who they work for, and who they may be affiliated with, raising concerns about what they may do with the information. If they do not work for the government or any of its contractors, it is unclear what contractual or other restrictions they are under not to disclose this sensitive information further. There have been multiple reports about organizations and individuals who are deliberately targeting the Healthcare.gov website for malicious purposes. The risk that this information could get into the wrong hands increases dramatically as more individuals gain access to it, particularly when these individuals are under no obligation to safeguard it.
Darrell Issa is leaking sensitive Obamacare documents to consultants that he refuses to name. Even more troubling is the fact that he will not disclose what the individuals intend to do with this information. Rep. Issa is clearly not securing important documents, and making those documents available to parties that he refuses to identify. Given his partisan bent, it is a safe guess that this is all part of an attempt to destroy Obamacare.
Twice last week someone left sensitive documents unattended in an unlocked room that is accessible to the public. Why do you think someone would do that? Carelessness perhaps, but a more likely answer is that someone wanted those documents available to people who aren’t authorized to view them.
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The death of Obamacare’s death spiral - i.e. young invincibles making up 28% of pool ain't a killer.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/14/the-death-of-obamacares-death-spiral/1. Let's begin with what we know: The Department of Health and Human Services reports that 24 percent of the people purchasing health insurance through Obamacare's insurance marketplaces are between ages 18 and 34. That's below the 38 percent that most people -- including the Obama administration -- estimate the law needs if it's to keep premiums as low as everyone hopes.
2. But -- and this can't be emphasized enough -- this is not the final risk pool. No one anywhere expected that the risk pool would be balanced by Jan. 1. Major health laws always follow the same pattern: The people who badly need insurance sign up first, and they tend to be older and sicker. Younger people sign up later -- typically right before the penalty hits. So far, the age pattern in Obamacare enrollment is tracking the age pattern in enrollment for the Massachusetts reforms quite closely:
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3. The big question is what enrollment looks like on April 1 -- after the open enrollment period ends. The "important thing to watch," writes the Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt, "is [whether] enrollment among young adults trending upward? So far yes, based on graphs here." It's safe to say there will be many more young adults in the pool in April then there are now. But no one knows how many more.
4. The risk of a "death spiral" is over. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that if the market's age distribution freezes at its current level -- an extremely unlikely scenario -- "overall costs in individual market plans would be about 2.4% higher than premium revenues." So, in theory, premiums costs might rise by a few percentage points. That's a problem, but it's nothing even in the neighborhood of a death spiral.
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No, we don’t spend $1 trillion on welfare each year - WaPo, Konczal
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/12/no-we-dont-spend-1-trillion-on-welfare-each-year/If you’ve read any conservative commentary on the war on poverty in the past week, you’ve likely seen this talking point ("talking point" - i.e. LIE -Bill USA) : “We spend $1 trillion each year on welfare and there’s been no reduction in poverty.” That’s crazy! Then, a sentence later, you’ll probably see a line like this: “It’s true. According to a recent report, we spend a trillion dollars on means-test programs each year, yet the official census numbers show no reduction in poverty.”
If you are reading that second line quickly, you probably think it bolsters the credibility of the first line. It’s an “official” number, and the census and the report probably quote accurate numbers too, night? They do, but the second sentence is actually used as an escape hatch to say something that isn’t true. We don’t spend anywhere near a trillion dollars on welfare unless you mangle the term “welfare” to be meaningless, and we do reduce poverty.
First, Dylan Matthews has already dissected the claim that poverty hasn’t declined. It has. It’s just that the “official” poverty rate doesn’t factor in the earned-income tax credit or food stamps in its calculations. Given that these are two of the most direct ways that the government tries to lift people out of poverty, that’s a major problem. These programs do, in fact, lift people out of poverty--it just doesn’t show up in the official rate, because that’s how the rate is constructed.
The claim about $1 trillion on “welfare” is more interesting and complicated. It shows up in this recent report from the Cato Institute, which argues that the federal government spends $668 billion dollars per year on 126 different welfare programs (spending by the state and local governments push that figure up to $1 trillion per year).
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A National Strategy (GOP) Funds State Political Monopolies - Notes from the totalitarian Underworld?
... interesting that the NYT didn't feel it was necessary to specify with three letters whose strategy it was. Everybody would know which party would be pursuing such a strategy. --LOL! Oh, not so funny, really.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/us/politics/a-national-strategy-funds-state-political-monopolies.html?hp&_r=1
By his third year as chairman of the Alabama Republican organization, Mike Hubbard believed his party had just about everything it needed to win control of the State Legislature.
He had a plan: an 88-page playbook for the 2010 campaign, with detailed, district-by-district budgets and precise voter turnout targets. He had candidates: doctors, lawyers and small-business owners, most of them political novices recruited with an eye toward the anti-establishment fervor roiling the country.
What Mr. Hubbard did not have was enough money. Alabama law barred corporations, deep-pocketed natural allies for state Republicans, from giving more than $500 to candidates and parties — a limit that did not apply to the state’s unions.
So began a nationwide quest for cash that would take Mr. Hubbard, plan in hand, to the Republican Parties in states like Florida and Ohio, to a wealthy Texan who was one of the country’s biggest Republican givers and to a Washington organization that would provide checks from dozens of out-of-state corporations, among them Exxon Mobil, Google, Facebook and Altria.
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Reid calls out Repugnants! "continually denigrating our economy, our president ... our country"!!!
The Democrats agreed to compromise with Repugnants and give them cuts to programs to "pay for" extension of unemployment benefits to long term Supply-Side Prosperity benefactors - the long-term unemployed.
But then the Republicans wanted to add an amendment to push back one of the Obamacare deadlines. Sen. Harry Reid had 'had-it' with the Repugnants. He said we offered them a compromise but then they wanted MORE. He said they say they want something then when the Dems agree, the Republicans come back wanting more. So he said NO amendments -- and that the Republicans are : "continually denigrating our economy, our president and frankly, I believe, our country."
BUT TRY AND FIND IT REPORTED THAT WAY IN CORPORATE M$M. I've looked around and usually it is not mentioned that the Dems agreed to give Repugnants the cuts to programs they wanted (but did not specify themselves) BUT THAT THEN THE REPUGNANTS CAME BACK WANTING TO ADD AN AMENDMENT TO PUT OFF ONE OF THE OBAMACARE'S DEADLINES.
http://news.yahoo.com/jobless-bill-stalls-senate-221802455--finance.html
Gridlock asserted itself after majority Democrats offered to pay for a 10-month extension of a scaled-back program of benefits — then refused to permit Republicans even to seek any changes.
Instead Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of "continually denigrating our economy, our president and frankly, I believe, our country."
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Report: Suicide rate spikes among young veterans
http://www.stripes.com/report-suicide-rate-spikes-among-young-veterans-1.261283WASHINGTON -- The number of young veterans committing suicide jumped dramatically from 2009 to 2011, a worrying trend that Veterans Affairs officials hope can be reversed with more treatment and intervention.
New suicide data released by the department on Thursday showed that the rate of veterans suicide remained largely unchanged over that three-year period, the latest for which statistics are available. About 22 veterans a day take their own life, according to department estimates.
But while older veterans saw a slight decrease in suicides, male veterans under 30 saw a 44 percent increase in the rate of suicides. That’s roughly two young veterans a day who take their own life, most just a few years after leaving the service.
“Their rates are astronomically high and climbing,” said Jan Kemp, VA’s National Mental Health Director for Suicide Prevention. “That’s concerning to us.”
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