We estimate that a 16 percent reduction in premiums will lower the total cost of tax credits by about 21 percent. As the example above illustrates, the percentage reduction in the tax credit will often be much greater than the percentage reduction in the premium. Because the amount that individuals pay is fixed at a percentage of income, a reduction in premiums will result in a proportionally larger reduction in government spending.

In its May 2013 baseline, CBO projected that the tax credits would cost $920 billion through 2023. But CBO made this projection before data on actual premium rates became available. A 16 percent reduction in premiums will lower this cost by about 21 percent, or about $190 billion.

Without looking at their methodology it appears they are suggesting the current price underrun will be persistent until 2023 and average out across all the entrants in the ACA exchanges. That's pretty unlikely given the diversity in premium costs already being reported, the history of price increases in healthcare costs, and the fact that we don't yet know how many people are seeing which rates. We don't even know how many people are getting to the point were rates are being presented and there are lots of reports of the estimates that the federal exchange is displaying are not correct due to errors in the software.

I'd also like to point out that's not like the government is not going to return that projected $190 billion in lower subsidy costs to the tax payers. It'll probably just spend it on more anti-brown-people missiles.

yeah, but we won't be TAXED for those anti-brown-people missiles.

I swear, the shit you guys don't understand about politics.

Obamacare mandate may be delayed

By Jen Wieczner
The Obama administration may give Americans extra time to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, postponing when penalties for failing to buy coverage will go into effect, MarketWatch has learned.

The health care law requires most people to have health insurance by Jan. 1, 2014, but allows for “short coverage gaps” of up to three months before imposing the penalty, which is $95 or 1% of an individual’s income (whichever is greater) next year. That means someone must be covered by March 31, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed, which is the final day that people will be able to purchase health insurance on the public exchanges, or marketplaces, created by the ACA.

But because the new health policies take effect on the first day of each month, in order to be covered by March 31, people would actually need to have insurance by March 1. And since it takes up to two weeks to process insurance applications, consumers would have to apply by Feb. 15, the Associated Press reported recently. (People must apply by Dec. 15 if they want coverage starting Jan. 1.)

The Administration, however, has recognized that there’s a “disconnect” between the actual and effective deadlines, as the deadline to have health insurance under the ACA is currently six weeks earlier than the deadline to buy it. Now, the Administration is working to revise its current policies making sure the two deadlines line up with each other, says the HHS official. Official word on a possible new deadline will come shortly, the official adds.

The administration declined to say whether people who purchase health coverage late in the enrollment period—say, on March 31—would be exempt from a penalty, even if their policy doesn’t kick in until April or May. Nor would the department give a specific date by which people would need to buy coverage to escape a fine. The HHS official, however, indicated that the administration may extend the deadline beyond Feb. 15: “We are exploring options currently and will issue guidance at a later date.”

The potential extension comes as the federal health exchanges are under fire for ongoing technological problems that are making it difficult for some people to enroll. The Obama administration has so far resisted GOP pleas to delay the requirement that individuals purchase insurance next year, but has lately expressed frustration with the technical difficulties. Those problems, perhaps the elephant in the room during deadline discussions, may influence a decision to provide an enrollment grace period to avoid fines.

There is another sign that the penalty policy may be in flux: While HHS referred MarketWatch’s previous inquiries about the fine, and the deadline to avoid it, to the Treasury, a spokesperson there referred a request Wednesday back to HHS, suggesting that the health officials are now the ones writing new rules for the law.

It’s worth noting that the open enrollment period has already been extended to a full six months this year for the implementation of the ACA: In future years, people will have a few months in the fall to enroll in health insurance starting the following January.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57608843/healthcare.gov-pricing-feature-can-be-off-the-mark/
HealthCare.gov pricing feature can be off the mark

(CBS News) CBS News has uncovered a serious pricing problem with HealthCare.gov. It stems from the Obama administration's efforts to improve its health care website. A new online feature can dramatically underestimate the cost of insurance.

The administration announced it would provide a new "shop and browse" feature Sunday, but it's not giving consumers the real picture. In some cases, people could end up paying double of what they see on the website, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported Wednesday on "CBS This Morning."

As President Obama promises to fix HealthCare.gov, his administration is touting what it calls "improvements" in design, specifically a feature that allows you to "See Plans Now." White House press secretary Jay Carney has said, "Americans across the country can type in their zip code and shop and browse."

But CBS News has learned the new "shop and browse" feature often comes with the wrong price tags.

Industry analysts point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: "49 or under" and "50 or older."

Jonathan Wu is co-founder of Valuepenguin.com, a consumer finance website focusing on the impact of health care reform. His company has built a tool that provides quotes for plans on the federal exchange. He said it's "incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they're paying."

Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.

CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's website costs $360, more than 50 percent higher. The difference: Blue Cross and Blue Shield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.

The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman said the government added the "shop and browse" feature to provide "estimates of premiums without tax credits."

Chini Krishnan is the chief executive officer of GetInsured.com. His company helped design California's new health-care-exchange website. It requires people to enter their birthdays to get a real price quote. Krishnan said, "It's important that the users have a proper, trustworthy, honest brand experience when they interact with HealthCare.gov, and I think providing accurate prices is an integral component of that."

Industry executives CBS News spoke with could not believe the government is providing these estimates, which they said were useless and could easily mislead consumers. They also said that the website repeatedly states the actual prices could be lower, but it makes no mention that they could be higher.

in Massachusetts penalties are on a sliding scale according to income and some other factors- and in general are quite a bit higher than quoted in that article:

http://www.mass.gov/dor/businesses/help ... -13-1.html

my annual insurance costs are fairly high, and have been higher during the amount of time "RomneyCare" has been in effect, to the point where I considered just paying the penalty - which was something like $1500 for the year i considered it, since this is ultimately much cheaper than carrying insurance only provided by my company at the time, to the tune of thousands of dollars...

so am I correct in thinking that Rush Limbaugh finds it more beneficial to make some extended effort in 'restructuring' your tax set up (which I assume could include costs since not everyone can do this without some assistance from a tax service provider) so you don't get a refund?

and ultimately, if an individual does that, which is generally the best way to deal with income taxes anyway, no refund and no owed taxes, that money seems like it's being collected by the government in the form of whatever other taxes you're paying anyway?

getting a refund at tax time indicates you've paid too much to the government to begin with, it just doesn't seem like an individual is really pulling one over on the govt by only paying what they legally owe in the first place to me... but I don't have much understanding of how this new Health Care funding is managed anyway. different budget? I guess?
even if the individual is 'pulling one over" on dumb Obama - it's not like the IRS is incapable of taking cash from your paycheck... they do that all the time.

It's not that hard to "restructure" your taxes, all you have to do is change your withholdings via the W-4. It's takes about five minutes and doesn't require any assistance.

so nothing else I said was worthy of response, then? ok, thanks for the lesson to the idiot.

Was the terrible exchange website an attempt to deflect from the large numbers of people on individual plans getting forced into more expensive coverage?

No remember all the benevolent goodly 20-year-olds are going to buy coverage and prevent that from happening

http://www.globalresearch.ca/criminal-health-care-industry-us-government-exempts-new-health-exchanges-from-anti-fraud-standards/5357053

Criminal Health Care Industry: US Government Exempts New Health Exchanges from Anti-Fraud Standards
By David Walsh
Global Research, November 06, 2013
Theme: Science and Medicine

In an October 30 letter, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius revealed that the Obama administration has determined that programs created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are not federal health care plans. This decision, which flies in the face of common sense, exempts the Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) and state-based and federally facilitated Marketplaces from laws banning kickbacks and various forms of semi-legal fraud perpetrated by pharmaceutical companies and other interested parties.

As the New York Times wrote November 4, “The surprise decision, disclosed last week, exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs, stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare.”

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the anti-kickback rules “went into force in 1991 and broadly bar companies from making payments to beneficiaries or other firms to induce business paid for by Medicare and other federal programs. That could range from paying rebates to Medicare beneficiaries for buying specific drugs to paying physicians to refer their patients to a specific imaging facility.”

Sebelius’s letter was a reply to an August 6 inquiry from Rep. Jim McDermott, Democrat from Washington, asking whether the government’s role in subsidizing individuals to purchase health insurance in the exchanges meant that the latter “qualify as federal health programs.”

The HHS secretary responded that her department did not consider the new programs to be such, a conclusion “based upon a careful review of the definition of ‘Federal health care program’ and an assessment of each program” of the Affordable Care Act “and consultation with the Department of Justice.”

Permit us to be skeptical.

When is a “federal health care plan” not a “federal health care plan”? When it stands in the way of certain giant corporations, already awash in profits, raking in even more.

Contrary to Sebelius’s claim, it is quite likely, as certain commentators have suggested, that the decision to exempt the ACA was made in 2009 as part of the deal reached with the pharmaceutical giants ensuring their support for Obama’s health care “reform.”

The exemption is important to these latter firms in particular. As the Wall Street Journal noted November 3, the ruling is a “significant win” for the leading drug makers.

The pharmaceutical firms have been engaged in a campaign against lower-cost generic drugs for decades. One of the means they have hit upon to advance that effort is the issuance of prescription drug coupons handed out to consumers. The coupons temptingly subsidize co-pays on expensive brand-name drugs and steer patients away from therapeutically equivalent generic drugs.

A June 2012 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) reported, for example, that Pfizer subsidizes the average co-pay for the anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor, decreasing its cost from $30 a month to $4. The generic equivalent simvastatin costs $10. As Kaiser Health News summarized the situation: “It’s a great deal for the patient, but not the insurer. According to the JAMA article, the insurer pays $18 a month for simvastatin and $137 a month for Lipitor,” more than seven times the cost. Of course, this “great deal” turns out to be the opposite, when the insurer passes on this additional cost to the consumer in the form of increased premiums.

In a useful interview conducted in September by RxObserver.com, Washington lawyer Kevin G. McAnaney, former chief of the Industry Guidance Branch, Office of Counsel to the HHS Inspector General, explains how a co-pay coupon comes within the anti-kickback statute:

“A copayment subsidy by a health care entity, whether by actual payment of the copayment or by waiving the copayment, is a classic kickback scheme: the subsidy is a payment to the enrollee to use the entity’s product or service. The federal government has repeatedly stated that Medicare copayment subsidies (other than those based on financial hardship) can violate the anti-kickback statute.” Violation of the statute is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

(McAnaney, incidentally, assumed in September that the ACA would be included in the anti-fraud regulations, observing that “The term ‘federal health care program’ is defined in the anti-kickback statute and would appear to cover the subsidized insurance plans in the exchanges.”)

The government’s definition of the drug coupons, when it comes to Medicare and other federal health care plans, as a form of fraud or bribery, and their resulting ban, costs the pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars a year. And it only stands to reason that they would apply considerable pressure on the Obama administration to exempt the plans and programs under ACA, where a new pool of tens of millions of consumers is involved, from such regulations. And not without success, as Sebelius’s decision indicates.

As noted above, the Wall Street Journal reported the happiness of the pharmaceutical firms at the news of Sebelius’s letter: “Drug makers had been anxiously awaiting word whether they could extend their copayment programs. GlaxoSmithKline PLC … said the ruling ‘appears to be good news for patients, and may provide important assistance for those who need help affording medicines under exchange plans.’ The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s trade group, said it welcomed the HHS’s determination.” The headline of one Journal piece was relatively candid, “Kickbacks From Drug Makers Given All-Clear on Health Exchanges.”

Sebelius’s letter provides further confirmation of the fact that the ACA has nothing to do with improving the health care system or providing decent care for the uninsured. It is a measure aimed at lowering costs on governments and corporations, on the one hand, and funneling billions of dollars in profits to pharmaceutical firms and other major companies, on the other.

The decision to exempt the exchanges brought into being by the ACA from the anti-corruption rules is more telling than Sebelius can possibly realize. It points a finger at the essentially criminal character of the for-profit health care industry in America.

So do you folks still want to see the feds try and run single-payer?

I'd like to see several other things happen first, but I suspect single-payer would have worked better than this mess. Really though, if the Obama administration had just been upfront about it years ago rather than hiding the truth in federal docs and revising the law just before it begins to apply, things would be perceived as being better.

So the entire governmental angle here has been on access, when do we get to quality for the money?