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Obamacare Tag

The Obama administration and some state exchanges have rolled out a number of curious advertising campaigns intended to sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people. Last fall we got a series of ads about 'Brosurance' featuring photos of college guys doing keg stands, then in December we were introduced to Pajama Boy. More recently, we were lectured to by Big Mother. Now, the White House has pulled out all the stops and is featuring animated GIFs you would expect to see in a BuzzFeed post about TV shows from the 1990s but not on the official White House website. The images are part of an interactive contest that encourages readers to vote for their favorite reason to get covered...
As millions of Americans scramble to fill out their March Madness brackets, we've got another big milestone coming up: the March 31st deadline to sign up for health insurance. If you need affordable coverage, head over to HealthCare.gov and #GetCoveredNow. If you've got insurance, help spread the word by voting for your favorite reason to get covered.
I can't help but wonder what Vladimir Putin and his associates in Moscow must think of all this. Read on to see examples of the ridiculous images which are actually posted on the website for the United States White House.

That's what Ted Cruz tweeted about this Branco cartoon that ran at Legal Insurrection in October, Branco Cartoon – Delay and Conquer. How far we've come...

Last night we covered Republican David Jolly's surprise win over Democrat Alex Sink. Sink supposedly had it all -- no contentious primary, more money, an unpopular Republican Governor and national Democratic support. But even the best of Democratic candidates went down under the weight of Obamacare and big government.  Jolly hit those themes throughout his campaign. ) Why do I call it an Earthquake? Because that's what I called Scott Brown's unexpected victory in Massachusetts in January 2010. Brown caught lightning in a bottle, and that lightning was opposition to Obamacare in an off-year special election. It portended huge Republican and Tea Party gains the following November. Adam Smith, Tampa Bay Times, David Jolly's victory spells trouble for Democrats nationwide:
If I'm a Democratic House member in any competitive district in America or a Democratic incumbent senator up for re-election this year in a moderate-to-conservative state like North Carolina, Arkansas, Colorado, Alaska or Louisiana, I'm waking up more than a little anxious about what happened in Pinellas County on Tuesday. In Alex Sink, Democrats had a better-funded, well-known nominee who ran a strong campaign against a little-known, second- or third-tier Republican who ran an often wobbly race in a district Barack Obama won twice. Outside Republican groups — much more so than the under-funded Jolly campaign — hung the Affordable Care Act and President Obama on Sink. It worked.
Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, Why a Republican Wave in 2014 is Looking More Likely Now:

From Philip Klein at The Washington Examiner, Obamacare signups slow down in February, youth enrollment well below target:
The pace of Americans signing up for privately administered insurance through President Obama's health care law slowed down in February, according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services, and youth enrollment is well below target levels set before the program's launch. Weeks before the health care law's exchanges launched Oct. 1, an HHS memo projected that 5.7 million individuals would enroll in a plan through one of Obamacare's exchanges by the end of February. In reality, HHS said Tuesday, just 4.2 million Americans had signed up in the first five months. HHS still hasn’t disclosed how many Americans who have signed up for a plan through the website have consistently paid their premiums, which is how enrollment is typically measured. Thus, HHS figures could overstate enrollment by around 20 percent to 25 percent.
WaPo notes the disappointing numbers:
About 4.2 million people have signed up for health plans on Obamacare exchanges through the end of February, making it unlikely that the Obama administration will hit the estimate of 6 million enrollees by a key deadline at the end of March. Whatever momentum appeared to be building in January dropped off in February, as the number of sign ups fell below the administration's expectations.
The report is here. How many paid? Don't know. Reactions are coming in fast and furiously:

Deep blue Maryland was quick to accept the federal dollars offered for Medicaid expansion as a result of the passage of Obamacare. It has become a common theme among Democrats to blame the failures of Obamacare on Republican unwillingness to accept the law. It seems, however, that even the most ardent supporters of Obamacare can’t save the law from its inherent flaws. Indeed, apart from the federal healthcare rollout debacle, we’ve seen blue states that wholeheartedly embraced Obamacare share in a litany of procedural and substantive follies of their own. HotAir recently reported on one such case in Maryland.
The situation is bad enough that this essentially one-party state has devolved into a fight over whether they should abandon their $100 million dysfunctional site for the federal site, and Democrats running for governor are whacking each other with its failure.
The Washington Post also reported on the clear failure,
Maryland was one of 14 states that chose to build their own health-insurance marketplaces to implement President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which politicians and residents in the state strongly support. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) boasted that the marketplace and the Web site Marylanders would use to access it would be among the best in the country. But the site failed within minutes of its Oct. 1 launch, blocking residents who were trying to get health insurance. The system has limped along since then. Ultimately, state officials say, they may have to rely at least partially on the federal health-care Web site or on sites operated by other states.

As reported by the Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald, Joe Manchin said he would vote to repeal Obamacare. That quote (below) has received a lot of attention, but in context it's not at all clear that Manchin was doing anything other than playing both sides of the fence because he also said he supports fixing Obamacare (emphasis added):
Although Sen. Joe Manchin had planned to discuss the Charleston-area chemical spill and his recent piece of legislation the Chemical Safety and Drinking Water Protection Act of 2014, he instead turned his focus on a hodgepodge of topics, including minimum wage, balancing the nation’s budget and health-care issues.... He asked for all the listeners to let him and other lawmakers know their thoughts on the variety of topics, including the Affordable Care Act. “We spend more on health care than any state, but we rank 43rd on wellness and longevity.” Both parties agree on many aspects of the ACA, such as pre-existing conditions not being excluded from coverage and no lifetime caps, but there are still many kinks that need to be fixed, Manchin said. “I will vote tomorrow to repeal (the ACA), but I want to fix the problems in it.” He said the ACA is essentially a product and the government needs to find a way to “sell it” and make their customers want to buy it.
As Ed Morrissey points out, there isn't even a Senate bill coming to vote "tomorrow" (i.e., today), so it's not clear about what Manchin is talking. Manchin has warned before about a "complete meltdown" of Obamacare:
The West Virginia Democratic senator said Sunday that the federal health-care law could be headed for a "complete meltdown" if costs rise too fast and individuals are not happy with their coverage.
From this vague and unclear statement, it appears Manchin is doing nothing more than criticizing Obamacare in order to save it. Here's video from August 2013 in which Manchin argues to save Obamacare through changes:

More evidence that the Obamacare health insurance offerings are a cruel joke on the public. We already have covered how there will be few doctors willing to see the millions more Medicaid patients -- in many cases people who previously had private insurance. We've also covered how insurance companies have no choice but to hike deductibles and narrow in-network provider networks in order to keep premiums artificially low. It's all caused by Obamacare's one-size fits all philosophy, loading up so-called acceptable plans with so many things most people don't want or need that it raises the cost of insurance to unsustainable levels. The reimbursement rates are so low for hospitals that even major research hospitals like Stonybrook Medical Center on Long Island are refusing to participate in any of the state health exchange plans unless reimbursement rates are renegotiated. There is a cruel and heartless bureaucratic pox on the healthcare system, and we're just in the infancy of seeing the symptoms. The latest, from CBS News, in how in Washington State the major children's hospital in Seattle is excluded from all but two of the Obamacare plans (via Marathon Pundit): This is just the start. The first response inevitably will be a system of forced labor where doctors and other providers will be compelled by force of law to offer services through government plans under threat of license revocation or other punitive measures. And then, when the system is so screwed up it is beyond repair, single payer. Obamacare is just the gateway drug to single payer. If you don't believe me, just listen to Martha Robertson, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Jumpstart candidate in NY-23:

Yesterday we covered the CBO Report on loss of labor provided by workers as a result of Obamacare subsidies,  CBO confirms Obamacare subsidies create disincentive to work harder. It's all about how the implicit marginal tax rate -- taxes plus loss of benefits -- creates a disincentive to work hard because for each dollar you earn, you lose a huge percentage, sometimes more than 100%, of that earned dollar through higher taxes and loss of government benefits. It is economically rational, in this circumstance, not to work harder.  It has nothing to do with laziness, but with government creating an incentive not to work. Here's the testimony today from Doug Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office, via National Review:
“By providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income, and then withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, the act creates a disincentive for people to work relative to what would have been the case in the absence of that act,” Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. “By providing a subsidy, these people are better off, but they do have less of an incentive to work.”
None of this is new. Here's Elmendorf's testimony from February 2011 regarding the same effect, although at that time the projection was only 800,000 jobs: