Category: MNSure Debacle
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Snail Mail
Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails: I turn 65 this Summer. I went online to apply for Medicare. Can’t, must apply for Social Security first. Okay, filled all the boxes, established a strong password, set up two-factor authentication, entered the confirmation code, received acknowledgement of the code, so are we done? No. They’ll send…
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Just Joe’s Imagination
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: is an imaginary conversation that could never happen in a Minnesota bureaucracy: Colleague: Trump is an idiot. “Who knew health care could be so hard?” Moron. Single-payer is the answer and easily affordable. For example, if 3M didn’t have to pay employees’ health insurance premiums, 3M could afford to…
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Princess Pander
It’s almost a year until the convention, but Saint Paul DFL gubernatorial candidate Erin Murphy’s campaign is already doomed. Perhaps with that in mind, she’s swinging for the (Metrocrat) fences, calling for single payer helathcare: Murphy criticizes capitalist models of health care, saying that a for-profit model of any part of the health care system…
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The Strib: Lowering Their Own Bar?
The Strib “reported”, after a fashion, about attitudes about Obamacare after an election where it was primarily responsible for ejecting the DFL from power in the Minnesota Senate. And it’s either a masterpiece of selective fact, or some fairly incurious reporting: Anxiety is greatest among Minnesotans with preexisting medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurance companies could…
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About Those Death Panels
As we’ve noted in this space in the past – while no health insurance provider has a room with the words “Death Panel” on an embossed brass plate on the door, the notion of allocation of services, including life-saving ones, to make sure scarce supplies of life-extending medicine and treatment go to the people who’ll…
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You Can Keep Your Doctor, Provided Your Doctor Is A Unicorn
Obamacare’s state exchanges are melting down – some faster than others, none faster at the moment than Tennessee: Seventy-three out of Tennessee’s 95 counties will have only one insurer on the exchange, meaning no meaningful competition whatsoever. In regions where BlueCross BlueShield is pulling out, there will be two remaining major carriers, Cigna and Humana.…
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Blind Squirrel
Governor Dayton admits Obama care is a flaming goat rodeo. On its surface, the story is about one of the most left of center governors in America throwing Obamacare under the bus. And that’s all interesting, don’t get me wrong. But the governor – and depressed it’s been covering for him for six years –…
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This Is DFL Government
You, the DFL voter, wanted a government-managed healthcare market? You got it! And we’re all paying for it! Health insurers are hiking premiums and limiting enrollment in Minnesota’s individual market next year, with regulators saying the emergency measures were needed to avert a market collapse. The moves are a clear sign that the market for…
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“You Can Keep Your Doctor” Update
Next year, if all proceeds as expected, one out of six Americans will have exactly one option in their Obamacare exchange: According to an analysis done for The Upshot by the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform, 17 percent of Americans eligible for an Affordable Care Act plan may have only one insurer to choose next year.…
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MNSure: All Is, Naturally, Proceeding As Predicted
The Blues are eliminating scads of individual plans. In response Gov. Mark Dayton highlighted gains in enrolling more Minnesotans in health insurance plans since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He also acknowledged the BCBSM departure reflects the instability in the market for individual and family coverage. In other words, as people have been…
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Pass
My mom worked at a nursing school. My niece is a NICU nurse. I have quite a few nurses among my closest friends. So it’s hard not to say “I have all the sympathy in the world for the nurses that are striking at the various Alina hospitals”. So I will let Larry from…
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Attention, DFL Voters
I’m not sure whether to react to stories like this with compassion, or contempt. I’m leaning towards contempt. Note to all you clueless people who voted DFL: when you vote for socialism, government will act like… a socialist government. Socialists gonna socialize!
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Who Warned You…
…that this was the inevitable result of Obamacare? Every conservative Everyone who hasn’t had a lobotomy Everyone who hasn’t suffered a traumatic brain injury (or similar intellectual / political self-mutilation)
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We’re Finally #1!
To: All you Obama voters From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant Re: Thanks for nothing Gabbling Hamsters, Minnesota has the highest healthcare premium increases in the nation under Obamacare. Please recuse yourselves from voting. Forever. That is all.
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Crawling From The Wreckage
By every rational measure, Obamacare is a complete failure – a fraternity-rush-week of terrible assumptions and economic ignorance that have turned a sixth of this nation’s economy into a hapless dumpster fire. Kevin Williamson takes stock of the failures – and, in this notable passage, breaks down the “why” of how we got here: The architects…
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Passive-Aggression
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Obama-care is the federal program, but Minnesota Democrats rushed to set up our own parallel Minnesota Care system so every Minnesota family could easily find affordable health insurance. But insurance companies are dropping out of Minnesota Care to avoid administrative hassles and taxes to reduce overhead, and that makes…
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We Interrupt The All Trump, All The Time…
…menu in the mainstream media for an actual substantive policy argument among Republicans. Walker’s concept: Walker’s proposal would repeal all of ObamaCare, dismantling its federal healthcare exchanges and eliminating the tax credits now provided for people to buy health insurance policies. It would replace them with a system that doles out federal dollars based on an individual’s age,…
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The Truth About MNSure…
…is so bad, even Larry Jacobs can’t shill for it anymore.
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“It’d Be A Shame If Your Insurance Company Were To..Break, Or Something”
The reason Preferred One – provider with all of the least-expensive plans in the MNSure exchange – left the exchange last month, giving most of its subscribers a 60+% increase in rates to keep a MNSure plan, was that they were basically strong-armed into providing the unsustainable low rates to begin with: Sometime after the…
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Chanting Points Memo: “Only 4.5%!”
A friend of mine on Facebook (who admits he based it on a statement by Senator Michelle Benson, on the Dave Thompson show) notes the wierdness of the state’s math in arriving at the “4.5% increase in MNSure Premiums” number that the media is trumpeting. He put it this way: If a fast food restaurant…
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More Sunshine Blown Up Minnesota’s Skirt, Part III
I went into a chain diner the other day. I had a bowl of soup. I promptly felt ill, and before long came the projectile vomiting, and then the projectile diarrhea. I went to the manager after I cleaned up to complain. “Yeah” said the manager, “we’ve had a lot of that today with the…
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More Of That “Blowing Sunshine Up Minnesota’s Skirt” Thing…
I read yesterday’s headlines about the new, Preferred-One-Free MNSure rates, and got ready to write. Then, I got an email from a friend who works in the Healthcare industry, which explains it much better: The headlines on MNSure saying premiums rose only 4.5%. This reminds me of an old story. A friend of mine was flying…
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There Will Be No SwissSure
What’s the difference between Switzerland and Minnesota? The Swiss don’t have a football team – but if they did, they’d be better than the Vikings The Swiss are too smart to socialize their healthcare system: And it wasn’t even close: 62 percent, mostly German, voted to tube the proposal to socialize Switzerland’s healthcare system. Hey,…
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So It Appears Preferred One Aren’t The Only Ones Wrong For Minnesota
The Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters is worried about MNSure – for the same reason Preferres One bailed: [MAHU chair Alycia] Riedly says there is no computerized renewal system in place, and if it is not functional by the next MNsure open enrollment, Nov. 15, it could affect tens of thousands of people who are…