UNINSURED SHUN OBAMACARE

UNINSURED SHUN OBAMACARE
The goal of ObamaCare is to cover the uninsured. The effect of ObamaCare so far seems to be un-insuring those already covered and then re-enrolling some of them. A pair of new surveys say that the years-long effort to get Americans without health coverage to sign up for ObamaCare has fallen flat. A study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. says that of the millions of Americans who have signed up for insurance under ObamaCare, only about a quarter were previously uninsured. Why? A study by the left-leaning Urban Institute says that only one in 10 of those without insurance enrolled as of last month and that nearly a quarter of those eligible to enroll had never heard of the program.

[“That's not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way.” –
Gary Cohen of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services when asked by insurers how many of the enrollees were previously uninsured, via National Journal]

Self-destruct cycle - The McKinsey study found that the main reason uninsured Americans who knew about the program weren’t signing up was that they believed they could not afford the benefits. This is part of a self-destruct cycle for ObamaCare. The more delays the president enacts in a bid to save his law, the more distorted the insurance marketplace is likely to become. The pressure is growing on Obama delay the looming punishment for those fail to comply by the end of this month. He is so far refusing Democratic pleas for mercy, knowing that such a delay would cause insurance costs to soar even higher as the industry tried to accommodate new, expensive ObamaCare beneficiaries without the policy checks from the million or more healthy, less expensive consumers who actuaries say will sign up to avoid the penalties. If Americans are shunning ObamaCare because it is too expensive now, imagine what will happen if that kind of rate spike come into play.

[Pessimism, fear and anger were the most common emotions voters expressed about ObamaCare in the latest Fox News Poll About 38 percent of voters favored the health law, while 57 percent opposed it. Results here.]

President says he won’t delay deadline for ObamaCare fines - Washington Examiner: “Making a direct sales pitch to Hispanic voters on Thursday, President Obama insisted that his administration would not delay the March 31 deadline for consumers to obtain health insurance or pay a fine. ‘We are going to enforce the deadline,’ the president said at a town hall… ‘You have time now to sign up,’ Obama insisted. ‘If everybody waits until the last minute … then in some ways it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy’…When asked whether the latest delay was an admission of a problem with the health law, Obama replied, ‘No, no, no’…”

[“And none of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services. So that’s something we’ve been very clear about.” – President Obama urging Hispanic consumers to enroll in ObamaCare.]

If only they had this before the ObamaCare vote - Samsung is about to go public with a new wearable app that increases a readers’ word per minute by four times, reports Elite Daily. Boston-based Spritz manipulates the format of the words to line them up with the eye’s natural motion of reading. The app claims to turn the average reader—250 words per minute—to a speed reader at 1,000 words per minute.