What we learned about Obamacare March 5-10, 2014

From Natalie Scholl of AEI. Excerpts:

3.) AEI’s Scott Gottlieb writes on the “Hard data on trouble you’ll have finding doctors in Obamacare”:

The graph below illustrates data we developed on the doctor networks found in the Obamacare health plans versus comparable private health plans.The black text illustrates the average number of specialist doctors found in private health plans. The red text shows how many fewer doctors are found in the Obamacare plans being sold in the same markets, and by the same insurer. To assemble this data, we looked at the health plans sold in the most populous county within each of these different states.

The data is for Anthem BlueCross BlueShield. We chose this insurer because it is regarded to offer higher quality plans in both the commercial market and on the exchanges. Moreover, it operates in these markets nationally, in about a dozen states. This allows us to look across the experience in different states and regions.

5.) Obama has officially given “health plans added two-year reprieve”: “The latest delay came Wednesday, when federal officials said insurance companies could continue selling plans that don’t meet the law’s more rigorous standards until 2016 in some instances. It was the second time the administration delayed that requirement after the law’s tougher standards prompted insurers to cancel millions of people’s health plans last year. The latest delay averts another raft of cancellations before this year’s midterm elections…. But the law will only make a dent in the ranks of the roughly 50 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2014. By 2020, there will still be 30 million people without coverage, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”

7.) The Wall Street Journal reports that “For many individuals and families, the penalty for not having health-insurance coverage will run a lot higher than the $95 figure often cited — and it could run into the five figures in some cases. That’s according to the Tax Policy Center, which has just rolled out a tax penalty calculator — the ACA Tax Penalty Calculator. The calculator helps people figure out how large their tax penalty will be if they fail to obtain required health-insurance coverage.”

8.) James Capretta, an AEI visiting fellow, looks at Obamacare and Medicare:

If Obamacare retains a surface resemblance to a private-sector-driven, market-based system, it is only because those who wrote it and pushed it through Congress believed they could go no farther in 2010 without fragmenting the coalition in support of the legislation. There should be no doubt about the overall direction, though: Obamacare is a massive step toward centralized government control, and that was its purpose. This explains why the same administration that claims to be implementing a market-based reform for working-age Americans is simultaneously trying to undermine the only market-driven elements now operating in Medicare — namely, the Medicare Advantage program and the prescription-drug benefit….

The administration and its allies complain that MA growth has been fueled by overpayments to health-care providers, and that was their justification for including large MA cuts in Obamacare. Of course, these cuts were also useful in transferring resources out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare’s large subsidies to expand health-insurance coverage for those under age 65. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare’s MA cuts will total more than $150 billion over ten years, including $14 billion in 2015 alone…. The Obama administration is determined to proceed with the planned cuts in Obamacare, and to add to them with administrative decisions that would cut MA rates still further.

9.) The Washington Post says, according to two new surveys, “New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans”:

Only one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private plans through the new marketplaces enrolled as of last month, one of the surveys shows. The other found that about half of uninsured adults have looked for information on the online exchanges or planned to look. The snapshots from the surveys released Thursday provide preliminary answers to what has been one of the biggest mysteries since HealthCare.gov and separate state marketplaces opened last fall: Are they attracting their prime audience?

….One of the surveys, by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., shows that among people who are uninsured and do not intend to get a health plan through one of the exchanges, the biggest factor is that they believe they cannot afford it.

11.) Investor’s Business Daily notes “White House admits ObamaCare work study ‘misleading’”:

The White House last month quietly amended a study aimed at disproving any negative ObamaCare effect on the workweek, admitting it counted 29.5-hour workers as clocking 30 hours. At the same time, the White House Council of Economic Advisers suggested a more reliable measure to gauge ObamaCare’s impact on work hours: the ratio of workers clocking 31 to 34 hours relative to those working 25 to 29 hours per week.Yet that CEA-endorsed measure yields a surprising result: In the fourth quarter of 2013, that ratio sank to the lowest level in 13 years. That’s consistent with employers moving workers below ObamaCare’s 30-hour-week full-time threshold.