2013-05-24

Quote Of The Day (Again)

"People who pay attention to the words of politicians are Republicans or Democrats.
People who pay attention to the actions of politicians and follow the money are libertarians."

From comments threads in The Obamacare Nightmare Scenario:

"It wasn’t just that too few people signed up. It was that the people who did sign up were, on average, very sick. And thus, very expensive to cover. 

Which left states with very costly programs helping very few people: Last year Alaska said that its PCIP would cost $10 million in 2012—and cover just 50 people. New Hampshire enrolled just 80 people in its program, but spent twice its allotted federal funding. California had the highest enrollment of any state in the nation, but per-beneficiary costs came in three times higher than expected.

And what is the administration doing in response? Cutting payment rates to providers in order to hold costs down. 

This could be Obamacare’s future: Not a broad middle class benefit, but an expensive program with low enrollment that mainly covers the very sick and serves as a catalyst for driving doctor reimbursements down. Granted, this is far from the only possible future for the law, and far from the only way it could go wrong. But right now, I suspect, it's the disaster scenario that many liberal supporters of the health law fear the most.


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