$1 billion in Federal Tax Dollars and a One Star Rating on Yelp––Quite an Expose––Behind the Scenes at Covered California

California’s Obamacare Insurance Exchange Posts Poor Results and is the Subject of an Expose

What a difference a year makes.

Last year the California Obamacare insurance exchange, Covered California, was touted as the poster child for the Obamacare launch. Supporters said it worked well, enrolled lots of people, and was off to the kind of start that proved how successful Obamacare could be.
SOURCE: Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review – Read entire story here.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s Medicaid Policy––and Now His Position Not to Save Insurance Subsidies if the Supreme Court Strikes Them… Speaking to a conservative group in Wisconsin this week, presumptive presidential candidate Scott Walker said he would not move to establish a state exchange in order to preserve the Obamacare federal insurance exchange subsidies if the Supreme Court strikes them down in an expected June ruling: We're going to push back. The President of the United States––they've got to come up with a solution....
Republicans Would Extend Obamacare Subsidies If the Supreme Court Strikes Down State Exchange Payments––But With Lots of Conditions The Republicans should offer an unconditional subsidy extension if the Supreme Court strikes them down Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R) has offered a plan to extend the Obamacare state exchange subsidies into 2017 if the Supreme Court strikes them down this summer. The Republican Senate leadership is supporting his bill. But Johnson has some pretty big conditions: Existing subsidies in the...
Supreme Court Takes the Obamacare Subsidy Case–Justices Will Rule Before July 1 In a Wow moment, the Supreme Court announced Friday that they will take one of the four pending "Halbig" cases––specifically King v. Burwell. The issue is over whether the new health law actually authorizes the payment of premium subsidies in the 37 states that will rely upon the federal government to run their exchange in 2015. This effort is being made on a number of fronts but has been...
The New York Times: Has Obamacare Enrollment Stalled? Readers of this blog know that I have made a number of points about Obamacare in recent months: The number of people signing up for Obamacare is well below the level necessary to make the rates stable over the long-term––the longstanding insurance industry standard calls for getting 75{c754d8f4a6af077a182a96e5a5e47e38ce50ff83c235579d09299c097124e52d} of an eligible group in order to have enough healthy people in the pool to pay the costs of the sick people. I...
The Single-Payer Health Insurance Failure in Vermont For 25 years I've been saying that I wished a little state like Vermont would implement a single-payer Canadian-style health insurance system––"Medicare For All." My argument has always been that such a small and limited experiment would give us the opportunity to see the ideological arguments for such a system play out in the face of fiscal reality and the stakeholders fighting it out in the...