In a Friday bad-news dump that was a whopper even by its own standards, the Obama administration added to the announcement of a near-record annual deficit and an escalation of undeclared war in Uganda the news that the CLASS Act, an ill-conceived adjunct of the Affordable Care Act, is no more. The upshot is this: Obamacare just got a whole lot more expensive than advertised, and there is reason to believe that its Democratic architects have long known this would happen.
The Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act was the brainchild of the late senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and it was supposed to be a kind of Social Security that provided long-term care for the elderly. It figured heavily into the Democrats’ dubious accounting of the cost of the Affordable Care Act, and at the time of passage was expected to account for $70 billion out of a total $143 billion in “deficit reduction” claimed in the bill.
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But that number was a lie twice over. The revenue created by CLASS—more recently projected to be not $70, but $86 billion, as the CBO’s ten-year budget window has moved forward since passage—comes in the form of insurance premiums paid to the government, which eventually would have been disbursed to cover care, not reduce the deficit. Yet Democrats designed CLASS to collect premiums for five years before paying out benefits, which made it look like it was running surpluses within the CBO’s ten-year budget window.
That would have been bad enough, but it gets worse. You see, the CLASS model was unworkable from the word “go,” coming as it did with all the features you’d expect to see in a health-care “death spiral.” The program was voluntary, meaning that those more likely to require its benefits would be more likely to enroll, and the healthier individuals required to offset the actuarial risk would stay away. This adverse-selection problem would mean higher premiums, and higher premiums would mean more adverse selection. As a result, CLASS was projected—by the government’s own chief Medicare and Medicaid actuary—to begin paying out more in benefits than it took in in premiums just ten years after it got off the ground.
This was not a secret. To anybody who had bothered to do the math, it was a simple reality. But reality is not the strong suit of the Obama administration, and so it has spent the last year and a half charging the Department of Health and Human Services with the impossible: figuring out a way to make CLASS actuarially sound over a 75-year horizon while maintaining the minimum benefits of the program prescribed by law. When HHS downsized CLASS’s chief actuary last month, we might have had a hunch as to how this exercise had turned out. But it wasn’t until today that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made it official, telling Congress in a letter that “despite our best analytical efforts,” no implement was found that could cut the Gordian Knot. As Sebelius’s deputy Kathy Greenlee (under)stated it: “We found some tension between those two objectives. The things we could do to achieve actuarial soundness take us too far from the law.”
In other words, the United States Congress passed, and the president of the United States signed, a piece of politically convenient legislation that was essentially—that is, mathematically, logically—unworkable, and were either too foolish to realize it, or too cynical to care.
But even as we marvel at the perfidy of our leaders, conservatives have something to cheer in this failure. This is the first major component of Obamacare to collapse under its own weight, but by no means is it likely to be the last. The law is replete with nonsensical economic assumptions and shameless gimmicks. Democrats may have hoped these would not start to become clear until after the 2012 election, but we now already have a good idea of what the world will look like under Obamacare: waivers for the politically connected, rising premiums for the rest of us, and massive spending programs that can’t survive their own assumptions. The fact that much — even all — of this was was predicted by conservative opponents of the law should give its supporters cause to look back at what else was portended. Be sure that there is more to come, with far more harmful consequences, unless the bill is repealed.
So...at what point do people come to the realization that Obama and the Democrats was LYING to pass Obamacare? The editors are coming closer to that position with the recognition that the accounting for Obamacare was a lie.
"Lying"... you really don't understand the way the world works. Progressives never lie.
Conservative programs are condemned if anyone is harmed, regardless of the number helped. Progressive programs are praised if anyone is helped, regardless of the number harmed. Conservatives are evil and the good they may do is an unintended byproduct, while progressives have the purest of motives and any harmful outcomes merely mean the program needs more tweaking.
This is NOT tongue-in-cheek, this is the way progressives and their MSM poodles actually view the world. Until and unless conservatives (including all GOP candidates) can really grasp this mindset, they will continue to ineffectually fight symptoms, and totally miss the underlying cause.
Interesting contrast. However, I think you have left out a significant factor: conservative programs tend to benefit achievers, while liberal programs tend to benefit (or reward) non-achievers. This is relied upon to justify any disparity in who benefits, because non-achievers need help from everyone else, and achievers don't need help at all. The problem, of course, with that line of thinking is that the liberal programs end up rewarding and encouraging non-achievement and thus swelling the ranks of the eligible non-achievers, while making it more difficult for achievers to, well, achieve. The idea that by allowing achievers to achieve creates more wealth for everyone and thus expands the economy is an anathema to liberals.
Say it ain't so! This administration, in full collusion with the entire Democrat congress, LIED in order to pass a putrid piece of social legislation? I am shocked. If a private citizen had tried this, he would be arrested, tried and sentenced to jail. Our elected officials instead get thrown out of office (maybe) with a pension and lifetime retirement perks.
How does HHS unilaterally decide not to implement the law? What happened to the executive branch's duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed? I realize the law itself is a catch-22 but the executive branch's response should be to request Congress to amend or repeal the law. This arbitrary power, coming on the heels of the unilateral decision not to enforce DOMA, EPA's assumption of legislative power on carbon emissions, and Obama's exhortations to implement his infrastructure agenda by going around Congress, is a canary in the coal mine for republican government.
Of course, a LOT of people already realize the Democrats were/are lying. Perhaps the salient question is - at what point will the mainstream media be unable to continue turning a blind eye to the lying?
It boggles the mind that supposedly educated people in government would actually bank on people to voluntarily enter into a pooled cadre of people and pay the ever-increasing costs as the number of those needing the benefits would most certainly increase over time.
The hell of it is, that the program is currently voluntary, which is not possible unless force and coercion are utilized to increase the size of the pool with healthy folks to dilute the risk ever increasing in the pool.
That's what should be the most concerning thing of all.
The CLASS act in particular and Obamacare in general illustrate the near total corruption that has engulfed the modern Democratic Party. It's not just Obama, it's Reid, Pelosi, Shumer, Frank, and the rest of them. If the American voters don't turn them out in 2012, we could become like many Latin American countries where corrupt political parties remain in power for decades through lying, bribery, cronism, and intimidation. I never thought I would live to see anything like this in the US.
Hey, y'all, what's with this talk about the Dems LYING? You can't lie about things you have no knowledge of! Nance Pelosi was being truthful when she insisted that we HAD to pass it so we could find out what's in it. Now that she knows, I'm sure she is shocked, SHOCKED!
"In other words, the United States Congress passed, and the president of the United States signed, a piece of politically convenient legislation that was essentially—that is, mathematically, logically—unworkable, and were either too foolish to realize it, or too cynical to care."
Great line, but remember, there are a lot of them there that voted for this ugly monster. I'd say that some of them fit each of these descriptions, but all of them definitely fit one or the other.
Feeling generous tonight, I'll assign most of them to the 'foolish' category. Most are just not bright enough to be that conniving and cynical - and, should you doubt that, please review tape of Hank Johnson and his capsizing islands, or any tape of Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney, Stuart Smalley, or Alan Grayson. Wow, what some people will vote for!
Enough of the health insurance debate already. Private insurance is the primary driver for the outrageous health cate costs and great numbers of uninsured.
Think about: where is the value-added component to private insurance companies? Anyone care to answer that one? This mess of a heslth care delivery system has been run by private companies, and look how it has turned out.
Of course, now that socialize medicine is on the horizon, and its already turning out to be a black hole that will strip all the light from the American public (wait till the push to change personal habits become codified in law to reduce government health care costs) now the time for debate is over.
What is it about socialism that is so wonderful that can't stand a open and free debate?
As to what insurance companies add to the US health care system is simple. They allow someone to plan on basic and catostrophic health care cost. Most private insurance has a monthly premium and any use charges (co-pays and the like) clearly spelled out. Now this is a incredibly simple statement of a incredibly complex industry (like most industries more complex - or expensive interreact with now thanks to lawyers) but simply put, remove the vast majority of regulations that have been adopted since 1994 (when dems last tried to socialize medicine, got thunked hard for it, and learned what they needed to change in the US health system to sell us socialized medicine as a salive to what they broke) and you will see a massive change for the better, as to the uninsured numbers, until you convince 20 somethings to pay there ipad money on health care, getting a handle on the illegal immigration population, your likely to have a large number of uninsured. But what does it greatly matter as uninsured does not mean unable to get health care, as federal law requires ER's in the US to treat everyone who go into a ER for health treatment. So I don't see a big change that would require the US to socialize medicine as a fix.
If all the object is to lower uninsured numbers, offer private health insurance companies a monitary bonus for every person they sign up in the US who doesn't have health insurance, the number will disappear rapidly. If you doubt it, call a insurance agent to come by your house sometime, those folks don't take 'no' for a answer.
And if you think on it, the proof is, obamacare is projected to only reduce the uninsured number from 30 million to 20 million, and insurance rates are skyrocketing on the regulations its imposing now, before it starts in full in 2014. None of this was supposed to happen, and those conseratives who said it would were called racists who wanted only to watch old people & illegals die in the streets from lack of care.
In case you weren't aware, the bulk of the ACA hasn't gone into effect. That will happen in 2014. How about a Public Option? Oh wait, that will be way too competitive and drive some of these bloated and inefficient insurance companies out of business. How can Medicare operate with such low overhead? Seen the overhead rates of your favorite insurance companies?
Public Option (read as any service rendered by the government sans the aforementioned Military/Police, etc., that are for our own protection...and because of the rise of government unions, etc., those last couple might have to be dropped from this rule exception)...
...and "competitive" should NEVER be used in the same argument. They are form a logical incompatibility.
