The 2016 Open Enrollment Period Starts Tonight - What Can We Expect This Time Around?

For the third time since the passage of the hotly contested Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known to both its supporters and opposition as ObamaCare, the healthcare Marketplace will open for enrollment at midnight tonight.

So what can we expect from this round of open enrollment now that we have two years of federally mandated healthcare insurance reform experience tucked neatly under our belts?  For the sake of preserving the law along with the dignity of those Democrats and the President who forced ObamaCare on the nation, hopefully we will get much more than the law has yielded from the previous two open enrollment periods.


Where Do We Stand Going In to the 2016 Open Enrollment Period?

In a news brief issued by HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in mid-October, she painted a less than rosy picture of the forthcoming open enrollment period.

With just over 11.6 million people having initially enrolled one the healthcare Marketplace (formerly known as the healthcare exchanges) during the 2015 open enrollment period, Burwell projects that only 9.1 million of those will still be insured at the end of the year (effectuated enrollment).

As for the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace when it was first launched in October of 2013, using information provided in two separate reports recently released by HHS, it appears that it has been reduced by fewer the 1.9 million.  This is significantly less than the 10 million the uninsured pool was projected to have been reduced by in 2015, when the law was first past.


HSS Enrollment Projections for 2016

As previously stated, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell does not paint a very optimistic picture of healthcare Marketplace enrollment for the coming year.

Of the 9.1 million projects to still have the healthcare insurance plan they obtained through the healthcare Marketplace in 2015, Burwell projects that only 7.3 to 8.8 of those will re-enroll this coming open enrollment period.  Burwell does however expect overall healthcare Marketplace enrollment to increase to between 11 to 14.1 million at the sound of the closing bell on January 31^st.  In the end, Burwell stated that the 2016 effectuated enrollment is expected to be between 9.4 to 11.4 million.

On the low side, the projected effectuated enrollment for 2016 is a gain only .3 million over 2015 and on the high side the gain is 2.3 million.

Speaking just of the uninsured, Burwell projects that from the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace at the onset, between 2.8 and 3.9 million will gain coverage through the healthcare Marketplace this enrollment period.

What Can We Really Expect for 2016

First, what we can expect is that in 2016 there will be a greater loss of the 2015 participants than Burwell has expressed in her news brief, at least if you wish to believe her projection that between 2.8 and 3.9 million uninsured will gain coverage in 2016.  Let’s take a look.

If you reduce the 2016 projected effectuated enrollment of be between 9.4 to 11.4 million by both the high and low figure of uninsured Burwell projects will participated on the healthcare exchanges this open enrollment period, worst and best case re-enrollment figures are 5.5 and 8.6 million.  In contrast Burwell reports re-enrollment to be between 7.3 and 8.8 million, numbers I have yet to figure out how she arrived at.

Regardless, the simple math says that if we want to believe Burwell’s optimistic predictions of uninsured enrollment, as few as .5 million and as many as 3.6 million 2015 participants on the healthcare Marketplace cannot re-enroll in 2016 for the numbers to work.

However, re-enrollment may not actually be as bad as stated here as it is based on a very optimistic, some would even say (including myself) fantasy like, enrollment predictions of the uninsured.

I have no clue as to the how HHS derived their uninsured enrollment projections, I am sure that they have a really cool model some number cruncher built for them (the name Gruber comes to mind) and the number of considerations that must be taken in to account to derive this figure is far beyond my very limited expertise.  But one thing is for certain, for whatever reasons, HHS and the Obama Administration has to as yet ever project new enrollment correct. 

Had their past projections been on target, there would be roughly 10 million fewer uninsured in that starting pool of 28 million and we would be looking at reducing the uninsured pool by another 6 million this coming open enrollment period.  But when you consider that fewer than 1.9 million of the oldest and least healthy of the uninsured have so far enrolled through the healthcare Marketplace over the 9 months of the first two open enrollment periods, the likelihood of nearly doubling that figure over the next 3 months is about as likely as Republican’s dropping their push to repeal the law.


In the Mean Time, Premiums Are Expected to Rise Considerably

While consumers in a few states and regions will see a reduction in healthcare insurance premiums, the majority of healthcare Marketplace shoppers are once again going experience rate hikes, substantial rate hikes in far too many cases. 

The Obama Administration has been pretty quiet on the matter, they have basically used up all their excuses.  What they have suggested however, is that consumers shop around for an affordable plan.  This is much the same advice President Obama gave us last year when rates on the most popular bottom tier Silver plans were hit the hardest.  Essentially what the administration is suggestion is that we need to ignore what a plan might have to offer us and instead we just look for a price tag we can afford.  This is what healthcare insurance has become on the individual marketplace I guess.

Despite what the Obama’s talking heads tell us, this will be the third year straight of rate hikes more substantial than the individual marketplace would have experience prior to the passage of ObamaCare.  The administration likes to mislead the American people by making the comparison to the individual marketplace rate increases the two years leading up to the opening of the healthcare Marketplace while failing to disclose that the individual marketplace suffered the highest rate increases in history over that two year period solely due to insurers having to cover all the new mandates that went in to effect just months after ObamaCare was signed in to law.  No person on the individual marketplace between 2010 and 2013 was exempt, each and every one saw their premiums increase from 40% on up to 100% and in some cases even more.

Roughly 85% of those individuals who are purchasing healthcare plans through the healthcare Marketplace are receiving taxpayer funded subsidies to offset the high cost of their new found insurance plans.  At the same time, better than 85% of those who are participating on the healthcare Marketplace are doing so after transfers from the private marketplace.  It is an easy connection to make that the majority of those who are now receiving subsidies once were willing and able to pay for their own healthcare insurance in full and without the need or desire for government assistance.  Again, this is what healthcare insurance has become on the individual marketplace.


Bigger Penalties are Coming

Whether or not you can afford to purchase healthcare insurance on or off the healthcare Marketplace is irrelevant, if you do not have a qualified healthcare plan in 2016 expect big penalties coming your way.

If you do not have health insurance in 2016, here is what the Federal Government demands that you pay:

·         2.5% of your yearly household income (Only the amount of income above the tax filing threshold, about $10,150 for an individual in 2014, is used to calculate the penalty.) The maximum penalty is the national average premium for a Bronze plan.

OR

·         $695 per person ($347.50 per child under 18) The maximum penalty per family using this method is $2,085.

 
So it all starts again at midnight tonight.  I don’t suspect that there will be much media coverage nor will Secretary Burwell or the President be reaching out to give us any enrollment updates.  They have already done their best to play down enrollment and continue to pass off the Medicaid Expansion enrollment as the measurement of success of the individual mandate.

Time will tell but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on things getting pretty contentious once the final 2016 enrollment number are in.

We must not forget that this $2.4 million “almost” Universal Healthcare plan by its own best projections would fail to ensure no less than 30 million Americans and as it turns out that number is likely to rise to 50 million.  Again, if I were a betting man, I would put my money on Republican’s making this a major issue for whoever wins the Democratic nomination and force them to not just defend this incomprehensible mess they have made of our healthcare insurance system but explain to the American people just exactly why they should continue to support this madness that remains as unpopular today with the majority as it did the day it was signed in to law.

Healthcare Exchange Enrollment Far Worse than Previously Reported

It has been just over two years since the opening of the healthcare Marketplace and yet we still do not know definitively how many people have purchased a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchanges.
After an abysmal turnout by the uninsured during the first open enrollment period, the Obama Administration completely locked down the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from releasing detailed enrollment data, particularly anything pertaining to the number of uninsured that purchased a qualified healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchanges. 

The Obama Administration had three years and spent nearly $1 billion taxpayer dollars to enlightening us all on the wonders of ObamaCare.  And as the opening day neared it was the President himself who repeatedly touting what a great success the individual mandate was going to be in bringing affordable healthcare to the 28 million uninsured individual who qualified to participated on the healthcare Marketplace.  And yet, so few showed that the administration was embarrassed to make public the enrollment figure.

The first open enrollment period was supposed to be the biggie with the millions of individuals who had been denied access to healthcare insurance due to a pre-existing condition knocking down the doors to sign up, along with others who the administration claimed always wanted healthcare insurance but were simply priced out of the marketplace.  As it turns out, only a handful of those thought to be at the front of the line on opening day ever turned out during the inaugural 6 month long open enrollment period.  Best estimates at the time were that just over 1 million of the 8.1 million who purchased a healthcare plan through the exchanges came from the pool of 28 million uninsured.  The balance was made up of individuals who had their non-ACA compliant plans canceled and re-insured themselves through the exchanges.  The Obama Administration never put an official head count to the number of uninsured who purchased and maintained a healthcare plan during the open enrollment period and they liked it that way.

The second open enrollment period fared no better than the first and the Obama Administration remained just as tight lipped to the number of the nations uninsured that purchased a healthcare plan through the exchanges.  And while they made no mention of this failure, the administration was constantly patting itself on the back for its success in enrolling millions on to taxpayer funded Medicaid as a result of the program’s expansion.

At the close of the second open enrollment period, best estimates at the time were that as many as 4 million of the nations uninsured might now have obtained healthcare insurance through the exchanges.  However, as more information became available, that number slowly dwindled to as few as three million.  It should also be noted that at the time ObamaCare was passed in to law, the administrations original enrollment goal for the close of the second open enrollment period was to have insured 10 million of our nation’s uninsured through the state and federal healthcare exchanges.


Drilling Down on Enrollment

Two reports recently released by the HHS together have helped to shed new light on enrollment of the uninsured through the healthcare exchanges.   

First is the ASPE Date Point Report.  Released this past September, from this report we can see that HHS has adopted the figure of 15.3 million as the number of people they are claiming to have gained healthcare coverage since the beginning of open enrollment back in October of 2013.  I say adopted as this is not a figure generated by HHS but instead one provided through an independent survey conducted by Gallup-Healthway Well-Being. 

The 15.3 million figure reported by Gallup-Healthway and adopted by HHS is reflective of all who have gained some form of healthcare coverage, since open enrollment first began, regardless of source.  In other words, amongst the 15.3 million are all those who are now covered through the Medicaid Expansion; those who purchased a healthcare plan on the private marketplace; those who are now insured through their employer and of course those who obtained healthcare coverage through the state and federal exchanges.
 
Just to be sure we are clear, this 15.3 million enrollment figure includes the entire universe of people that have gained some form of healthcare coverage since open enrollment started.  Also, this third party generated figure, adopted by HHS, is not based on an actual count and there is nothing that leads us to believe that HHS has validated it in any way.

If it strikes you as odd that HHS does not use their own enrollment count, it should as they most certainly have the resources to do so.

Second we have the CMS MedicaidEnrollment Report.  CMS publishes Medicaid enrollment updates monthly, this particular report being the latest release and represent enrollment through July of this year.  In the report we find that CMS has reported a figure of 13.2 million individual have taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion through July of this year.  Unlike the previous report, Medicaid enrollment is an actual count compiled internally by CMS so they own this. 

We will use the Medicaid enrollment figure to help us determine enrollment through the healthcare exchanges but first I am going to take the liberty of bumping it up by 200,000 to make it more representative of what enrollment looked like in September thus matching the same time period of the previously discussed ASPE report.  Bump the Medicaid enrollment figure to 13.4 million errors well on the side of caution, falling well below the average increase in Medicaid enrollment for the past three reported months.


Drum Roll Please

If we were to assume that since January 1, 2014 no uninsured person eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace became insured through their employer or an off-exchange insurer, then by removing the number of individuals who have taken advantage of the Medicaid Expansion (13.4 million) from the total reduction of the uninsured since open enrollment began (15.3 million) we would arrive at the number of individuals who have obtained healthcare insurance through the state and federal exchanges.  Under these assumptions, 1.9 million people obtained healthcare insurance through the state and federal healthcare exchages.

Out of the pool of 28 million uninsured who are qualified to participate on the ObamaCare created healthcare Marketplace, no more than 1.9 million have done so over the course of two open enrollment periods.  That does not speak will for the healthcare law that was intended to bring these 28 million people access to affordable healthcare.  1.9 million is also significantly less that previous projections and is less than 20% of the administration targeted enrollment for 2015, as originally forecasted by the CBO and used to sell ObamaCare.  This is also in no way, shape or form what was promised to the American people when congressional Democrats and the President jammed this law down our throats.

And 1.9 million still does not represent the number of people who actually purchased a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchanges as it still includes those who gained healthcare insurance through their employer and those individuals who purchased healthcare insurance through a private or off-exchange source.


How Much Worse Does it Get?

It gets quite a bit worse actually. 

We do not know the breakdown of the 1.9 million people who gained healthcare coverage through other means than the Medicaid Expansion but what we do know is that, since the opening of the healthcare Marketplace, 5 million new jobs have been created.  If just 10% of those new jobs provided healthcare insurance to their new employees this 1.9 million figure would be reduced by a half million.  If 44.5% of those new jobs provided healthcare insurance to their employees, as reported in a 2013 Gallup-Healthwaystudy, it would wipe out the 1.9 million figure in its entirety and then some.

How many of these new jobs are providing the employee with healthcare insurance we do not know but I think it is more than safe to assume that more than 10% do and it would not be inconceivable that 40% could be doing so, based on current trends.  This certainly gives us something to think about.  And let’s not forget, there are still those individual who purchased their healthcare plans off-exchange.


And It Could Be Even Worse!

Gallup-Healthway Well-Being is not the only industry expert studying the effect that ObamaCare has had on the reduction of the nations uninsured.  Other well respected organizations such as the Rand Corp, the Commonwealth Fund and the Urban Institute all have performed similar studies with varying results.

For example, sometime after the close of the first open enrollment period, each of these groups conducted their own studies on the effect ObamaCare was having on the reduction of the uninsured. Their results ranged from 9.5 million to as low as 8 million.  For the same period the Gallup-Healthway survey concluded a reduction of 10.3 million, more than 20% higher than the lowest resulting study.  It would be impossible to determine which of these studies was the most accurate and it is not important to do so.  What is important is to understand and accept that there could be as much as a 20% variation in the results of these studies. 

Clearly, which study HHS choses to adopt to represent the overall reduction of the nations uninsured will have a significant impact when determining the number of people who could have possibly obtained a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchanges.  If you were to lower the current adopted figure of 15.3 million by 20% you would actually arrive at a net negative enrollment through the exchanges.  (12.2 million – 13.4 million)
 

Enrollment May Even Be Upside Down

The pool of 28 million people qualified to participate on the healthcare Marketplace may have actually grown since open enrollment began.

As many as 2.2 million people are likely to have gained healthcare insurance through their new employer since ObamaCare enrollment started.  This figure surpasses the 1.9 million maximum non-Medicaid Expansion enrollments to date.  For this to happen the pool of uninsured qualified to participate on the healthcare Marketplace would have to grow by 300,000.  Of course, every one of those 2.2 million who likely gained insurance through their employer were not all uninsured but a good majority of them were.

A fair look at the overall reduction of the nations uninsured would all but close the gap between the overall reduction figure and those who have taken advantage of the Medicaid Expansion.  There being a 20% disparity between the results of the highest and lowest studies conducted by four of industries leading experts, if we were to take the average results the overall reduction in the nation’s uninsured would be reported at roughly 13.8 million.  With 13.4 million having taken advantage of the Medicaid Expansion, this accounts for almost all of the nation’s reduction of the uninsured leaving virtually all of the pool of 28 million eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace untouched. 

If the full 20% disparity were applied, the overall reduction in the nation’s uninsured would be reported at around 12.2 million.  Taking in to consideration the 13.4 million who have taken advantage of the Medicaid Expansion, this would mean that the pool of 28 million people who are eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace would have to grow by 1.2 million.


One Last Point

All this number crunching has my head spinning but it is important to take the time to drill down on these figures and understand how effective (or ineffective) the individual mandate has been in reducing the pool of 28 million uninsured Americans who are not qualified for Medicaid.   As you can see, things do not look so good, in fact that look beyond terrible.  Based on these finding, the Individual Mandate is a total failure and may actually be driving the uninsured rate up instead of down.

This was concluded using numbers derived, adopted and published by HHS and therefore are endorsed by the Obama Administration.  These are their numbers, they own this!

ObamaCare Could Realize a Net Negative Enrollment in 2016

Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell released a news brief last week which laid out her projections and an overall assessment of what we should expect from the forthcoming ObamaCare open enrollment period.  As per usual, the brief was littered with less than meaningful facts and figures along with a few key points sprinkled in between! 

Burwell did do a good job of tamping down enrollment expectations for 2016 although I do not believe she went far enough, but understandably so, as by all accounts there will be fewer insured on the individual marketplace at the end of 2016 than at the end of 2015.  Burwell also reported something quite unusual, she actually provided figures for the number of uninsured they project will gain coverage this enrollment period, something that has not been done since before the start of the first open enrollment period, back prior to October of 2013.

In her news brief Burwell states:

Finally, there are those who will come from the 10.5 million eligible uninsured. We expect to draw in about 2.8 million to 3.9 million of those individuals.

Burwell predicts that somewhere between 2.8 to 3.9 million uninsured individuals will purchase a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchange this coming open enrollment period.  That’s a pretty lofty goal when you consider the abysmal turnout by the uninsured during the first two open enrollment periods, turnout which yielded fewer than 2 million¹ enrollments combined.

It’s hard to imagine that with the news of significant premium increases coming in 2016 and the law’s continued loss of popularity, that as many as twice the number of uninsured who have enrolled over the past two open enrollment periods will elect to do so in 2016.  In fact, I am going to call foul on this prediction and make my own, that enrollment of the uninsured will be around 1 million.

I must also take exception to the 10.5 million eligible uninsured, as stated by Burwell in her news brief.  This is a gross misrepresentation of the pool of uninsured individuals eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace.   I address this misrepresentation in an earlier blog titled HHS Makes 14.1 Million Uninsured People Magically Disappear.


A Net Negative Enrollment

It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish and two full years after the implementation of the individual mandate and only 3 months left in the year, HHS is projecting that 2015 will close with an effectuated enrollment of 9.1 million.  What HHS does not disclose in their projection is that fewer than 2 million¹ of those enrolled were from the pool of 28 million uninsured, eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace.

Looking forward, HHS is projecting that 2016 will close with an effectuated enrollment between 9.4 million and 11.4 million.  Considering the starting point was 9.1 million, this projection does not look very optimistic.  And when you take in to account the administration’s history of grossly overstating the number of uninsured who will participate on the exchanges, you begin to gain the sense that enrollment could actually take a turn in the negative direction.

Consider if you will, that after 2 open enrollment periods, which together provided consumers 9 months of opportunity to purchase a qualified healthcare plan, fewer than 2 million¹ did so.  Also consider that those who did so were largely the most elderly and least healthy in the pool of uninsured, those with the most incentive to secure healthcare that was previously very costly or denied to them altogether.  With this in mind, it is hard to fathom that between 2.8 to 3.9 million uninsured individuals will purchase a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchange this coming open enrollment period as Burwell suggests in her newsbrief. 

A more realistic enrollment projection than that suggested in Burwell’s news report is something more in line to the average participation of the uninsured over the past two open enrollment periods, which is just under 1 million.  And when you substitute 1 million in place of the HHS 2016 projections, enrollment actually drops below 2015 numbers.

Achieving a net negative enrollment will not bode well for ObamaCare and will make it more difficult for Democrats to argue against the Republican effort for a full or partial repeal of the law.  And rest assured, once the 2016 open enrollment period closes and the dust settles, Republicans are going to make a big issue with the fact that the individual mandate has hardly put a dent in the pool of 28 million uninsured who are qualified to participate on the healthcare Marketplace.

¹ HHS reports that the nation’s uninsured has dropped by 15.3 million since January 1, 2014.  At the same time CMS reports that 13.5 million individuals have taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion over the same period.  The difference between enrollments is 1.8 million which accounts for all on exchange and off exchange individual plans purchased.

HHS Makes 14.1 Million Uninsured People Magically Disappear

Competing with all the election news and troubles in the Middle East last week, it didn’t take long for 2016 ObamaCare enrollment projections to get lost in the noise.

Last Thursday, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell released a news brief in which, buried amongst dozens of facts and figures, she released the less than stellar enrollment projections for the forthcoming opening of the ObamaCare exchanges.

 

“Finally, there are those who will come from the 10.5 million eligible uninsured. We expect to draw in about 2.8 million to 3.9 million of those individuals.” 

HHS expects that somewhere between 2.8 to 3.9 million uninsured individuals will purchase a healthcare plan through the state and federal healthcare exchange this coming open enrollment period.  While this figure is significantly lower than the 6 million originally projected when the law was passed, considering the abysmal turnout by the uninsured during the first two open enrollment periods, this is actually is a pretty lofty goal.  But I will save my amateur analysis of what I believe is Burwell’s unachievable enrollment projections for my next blog.  For now, there is a much more sinister figure reported in her news brief that needs to be brought to light.

Where Did This Number Come From?

10.5 million eligible uninsured, did I read that right?  Seriously, where did this number come from?  I’m pretty in tune to all the facts and figures related to ObamaCare enrollment and 10.5 million is not a number that I am familiar with.  But that’s okay, since it represents the number of uninsured eligible for Marketplace coverage, it should be simple to validate, all we need is a starting point and the number of long term uninsured that have purchased and maintain a qualified healthcare plan through one of the state and federal healthcare exchanges to reduce it by.

First, the starting point.  In 2009 the US Census Bureau reported that 48 million Americans lacked health insurance.  Of those 48 million, 29 to 30 million were eligible for Marketplace coverage.  The balance, of course, would be those qualified for Medicaid. 

Next, the number of long term uninsured that have purchased and maintained a qualified healthcare plan.  As no department of the Obama Administration reports this number specifically, we are going to have to do the leg work ourselves.  Fortunately HHS does provide us with enough information to do so.

From the HHS ASPE Data Point report released on September 22, 17.6 million uninsured individual are reported to have gained health insurance coverage since the implementation of the Individual Mandate on January 1, 2014.  This figure includes all forms of individual healthcare insurance including on-exchange purchases, off-exchange purchases and Medicaid.  For roughly the same period, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that there were 13.2 million individuals enrolled for Medicaid as a direct result of the Medicaid Expansion.  When we reduce the total number of those who have gained healthcare insurance by the number who have gained coverage through the Medicaid expansion we are left with 4.4 million {4.4 million is a significant overstatement of the actual on-exchange enrollment which I will address in my next blog}. 

So, if there were around 29 million in the pool of the uninsured eligible for Marketplace coverage at the start and we reduced that number by the 4.4 million uninsured who purchased a healthcare plan during the first two open enrollment periods then the remaining pool of uninsured should be roughly 24.6 million.  Wow, that’s a far cry from the 10.5 million HHS is reporting. Somewhere, somehow HHS made 14.1 million uninsured people magically disappear!


Where did the 14.1 Million Missing Uninsured Disappear To?

The better question is, where did HHS come up with 10.5 million as the number of uninsured eligible for Marketplace coverage?  And I have that answer!

Sadly, but hardly surprising, HHS willfully mislead the American people.  HHS arrived at their 10.5 million figure simply by reducing the original pool number of 28.1 million¹ by the 17.6 million reported to have gained healthcare coverage in the HHS ASPE Data Point report.

Likely at the direction of the White House, since the day the healthcare exchanges first opened, HHS has routinely misrepresented Marketplace enrollment by including Medicaid expansion participants in to the count.  Less than 25% of the 17.6 million HHS used to derive the 10.5 million figure actually makes up enrollment through the healthcare exchange.
¹ The size of the pool varies slightly depending on which source is use.  I chose to use the US Census Bureau figure as it is easily verifiable, HHS uses CBO data which also varies from one report to the next.


Why Would They Do Such a Thing?

Tell me, what looks better to the people, reducing the number of uninsured from 28 million to 24 million or reducing the number of uninsured from 28 million to 10.5 million?  Reporting a greater reduced pool of uninsured helps the Obama Administration play down the failure of the Individual Mandate.  The Obama Administration started doing this the first day the healthcare exchanges opened and has been doing so ever since.  And what has the media done?  The media has given the administration a fee pass on this gross misreporting of the numbers.

The faux 10.5 million figure also helps to improve how participation of the uninsured looks.  Let’s assume, for example, that HHS meets their projected goal of 4.4 million uninsured enrolling through the healthcare exchanges.  This would equate to the enrollment of 1 out of every 2.3 of those eligible to purchase a healthcare plan as opposed to 1 out of every 5.7 of those eligible to purchase a healthcare plan if compared to the actual uninsured pool of 25 million.


ObamaCare is without a doubt in serious trouble and the intentional misrepresentation we see here is affirmation of that.  And with guaranteed premium increases coming for 2016, we could be looking at a net negative enrollment this coming open enrollment period.

How many have actually purchased and continue to retain a qualified healthcare plan from the pool of 29 million eligible to participate on the Marketplace has not been answered definitively and remains one of the best kept secrets of the Obama Administration.  But as more enrollment information finds its way to the public a better picture of past, present and future enrollment can be painted, which is the topic of my next blog.

Hillary’s Faux Benghazi Anger

It looks like Hillary’s email scandal is finally getting the best of her and her campaign.  While she has tried to laugh the matter off in the past, it seems as though Hillary’s email situation has become serious enough that her advisors have recommended she shift course and play the Four Dead Americans anger card in an effort to save her run for the White House.

Taking advantage of the gaffe House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made last week, Hillary supporters and her campaign staff have moved the discussion as far away from the email scandal that surrounds the former Secretary of State as possible.  Instead of the email scandal, they have turned the focus to Benghazi, a topic of which they have vehemently avoided, for the past three years.  The poorly worded comment, made by Representative McCarthy, created an opportunity for Democrats and they pounced on it.  McCarthy’s comment, which was intended to stress the point that it was the result of, not the reason for, the investigative work of the Select Committee on Benghazi that Hillary’s email indiscretions have surfaced.

Democrats assuredly are aware that how McCarthy’s comment came out was little more than a wording gaffe but in a desperate effort to save their golden girl from a second loss at a run for the presidency, they have twisted the gaffe into what they are pushing in the media as an admission of guilt.  Democrats claim that McCarthy’s statement makes it clear that the sole purpose of Select Committee was to dethrone Queen Hillary.  There is one problem with this accusation however, it does not fit the most fundamental interpretation of facts.

Unless Democrats wish to go on record and claim that the Benghazi tragedy was some kind of sick and twisted Republican conspiracy crafted for the sole purpose of taking down Hillary, the attack can be attributed to nothing more than a failure of US foreign policy.  Stemming from the attack however, was a single event that raised a simple question by those whose task it is to conduct oversight on all such incidents.  A press brief, released by Secretary Clinton, which blamed the attack on an internet video set the wheels in motion which eventually led to the unexpected discovery of a private Clinton email address and server.

The attack on US assets in Benghazi could not have come at a worst time politically for President Obama, whose foreign policy was coming under heavy attack by Republicans and specifically Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.  And so, it is fair to speculate that when no viable explanation could be provided as to why Secretary Clinton blamed that attack on an internet video, an account that contradicted reports coming directly from the ground, the claim could be viewed as being politically motivated. 

Speculation of political motivation only increased after Hillary Clinton’s surrogate, U.N. Ambassador for the United States Susan Rice, was sent out the following Sunday to five times repeat a prepared set of talking points in an attempt to sell the narrative that the attack was spurred by a group of angry protestors said to be fueled by an internet video.  But now, several days after the incident, we knew a little more about the situation on the ground including the fact that just prior to the attack there were no protestors outside the US Consulate, as reported by Ambassador Stevens himself.


It’s Time To Put the Oversight Investigations Lie to Bed

Maybe the most misunderstood activity performed by the US Congress is congressional oversight.  There are a number of House and Senate committees and subcommittees, each with their own oversight responsibilities.  And as was the case with the Benghazi attack, several oversight committee responsibilities were involved therefor, by default, prompting a large number of targeted investigations.  It must be understood that each oversight committee has a well defined scope of responsibilities and while there may be some overlap in the investigative process, each committee reports only on its specific area of responsibility such as the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, the State Department etc.

In regards to Benghazi, three of the four completed congressional oversight investigations noted in their final report that while it was not in their purview to investigate the State Department, their investigation did require that they request documents from the State Department.  Each of these committees clearly stated in their final report that they received little or no cooperation from the State Department in fulfilling their requests.  A forth congressional oversight committee closed its investigation without conclusion, reporting that due to a complete lack of cooperation from the State Department, to turn over requested documents, became impossible to achieve its oversight goals.

So the narrative repeatedly put forth by Democrats that numerous oversight investigations have found no wrong doing is completely false.  Congressional Democrats, and senior members of the Obama Administration are willfully misleading the American people with their false narrative of the various investigations.  You can find a more detailed explanation to the purpose and findings of each of the Benghazi oversight investigations in my blog titled Congressional Oversight DoesNot Give State Department a Free Pass on Benghazi.


How Did This Become About Hillary?

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was the fifth and most aggressive of all the investigative committees in trying to get to the who, what, why, where and when answers in a broader scope of the Benghazi attack.  It was this committee that came up against the greatest amount of stonewalling, pushback and obstruction, not just from the State Department but from committee Democrats as well.  Public hearings were a sham and the State Department absolutely refused to comply with countless document requests.  It was clear that there was no way that requested information was ever going to be obtained from the State Department using the very limited number of tools available to the oversight committee.  The State Department was simply going to stonewall the committee into submission and the Department of Justice and Executive Branch were not going to intervene.

But that all changed in May of 2014, when the House of Representatives approved the formation of the Select Committee on Benghazi.  The reason for this new committee was to untie the hands of those investigating the events surrounding the Benghazi attack. The Select committee has significantly more investigative tools at its disposal and far fewer restrictions than congressional oversight.  It was through the use of these enhanced capabilities that the Select Committee hoped it could break the investigative stalemate between the State Department and the investigative body, and it worked!

For the first time the State Department was made to answer as to why they were not cooperating with document request and as the investigation pressed on, more was learned about how obstructive the State Department had been and continues to be.  It was not without the help of watchdog groups, such as Judicial Watch, that progress was finally being made in obtaining massive amounts of missing documents pertaining to Benghazi, documents which had repeatedly been requested over the prior two years.  And as a result of the persistence of the Select Committee, and the added legal pressure created by these watch dog groups that the Clinton email scandal surfaced.  The State Department was ultimately forced to release long awaited documents which lead to the Clinton private email account and email server discovery.  Now it was clear as to why the State Department had been withholding the release of documents pertaining to Benghazi.


So What’s With the Faux Anger Hillary?

A full two years after the Benghazi attack and a year and a half after Hillary Clinton left the State Department was it first learned by the Select Committee that the former Secretary held full possession of her email record as Secretary of State.  And shortly after this discovery it was learned the she housed those personal emails on a private home brewed server.  Since these discoveries, Hillary Clinton has been under constant scrutiny as her email scandal grows larger almost daily. 

Clearly the discovery of Hillary Clinton’s private email and server was not the result of a partisan witch hunt intended to take the former Secretary down as Democrats are wanting us all to believe.  The focus of the Select Committee has been to obtain the facts and answer the long pending list of unanswered questions, the objective has never changed.  And the Select Committee has made major headway in doing so, having recovered some 50,000 formerly unreleased documents pertaining to Benghazi, only a fraction of which have any ties to Hillary Clinton.  As well, the Chairman just advised that his committee has interviewed more than 40 new witnesses all of which had never before been interviewed by any of the past Benghazi committees.

Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, the Select Committee, nor any of the other oversight committees related to Benghazi for that matter, was formulated to target and destroy Hillary’s political aspirations.  Hillary Clinton’s name is rarely even mentioned by the likes of Trey Gowdy, other than when Hillary or Democrats running cover for her happen to bring her name up.  

Hillary is in trouble at her on accord.  She can direct her anger at anyone or anything she wishes but at the end of the day it has been her actions and her actions alone which have put her in the situation she is in, a situation that is not only killing her political aspiration of being the first woman to serve as President of the United State but also may help her find her way in front of a Federal Judge or worse.

And to think, this all stemmed from a single lie Hillary told about an internet video!

The Problem is not Guns, Gun Laws or Mental Health

The recent and tragic mass shooting on an Oregon junior college campus sparked the sadly predictable reaction for the liberal left.

It didn’t take but a minute for President Obama to find a camera and a microphone so that he could express his faux outrage and place blame on his usual list of suspects.  Republican lawmakers of course made the top of the President’s list with the National Rifle Association taking up a very close second place.  And of course the typical reasons for the blame was placed, uncaring people, greed and political posturing.

Social media lit up as well, with liberals reviving all the old MEMEs that said more of the same.  And to cap it all off, we now have Nancy Pelosi jumping in to the fray and calling on Speaker of the House John Boehner to create a Select Committee to investigate what she labels as a "crisis of mass shootings”.  In her letter to the Speaker she writes:

"As we pray for those who lost their loved ones at Umpqua Community College, we must address the tidal wave of grief guns have caused to so many families."

It is pretty hard to take Pelosi seriously.  Where is her concern, each and every Monday morning, when the reports roll in on how many lives were lost, over the weekend, due to black on black violence in the poor black communities across our nation?  Do these black lives not matter to Mrs. Pelosi?  Maybe it is that she is hiding from these particular deaths to shield herself from the shame she bears in being a part of the 50 years of failed social engineering responsible for these deaths, that failed social engineering fully orchestrated and supported by her Democratic Party.

But I digress.

In the President’s press address, shortly following the shooting, he was quick to politicize the tragedy and did so admittedly as he felt doing so would be the only way to bolster actions.  Obama stated:

“Somehow this has become routine.  The reporting is routine.  My response here at this podium ends up being routine,”

 

And President Obama is 100% correct, this has all become far too routine, even more so in recent years, which got me to thinking!  It got me to thinking as to just exactly how much more routine have these tragic mass shootings become in recent years?  I decided to find out for myself and this is what I came up with.

Using mass shooting data sited from a MotherJones investigation I looked for the number of times that four or more mass shootings occurred in a given calendar year over the past 27 years, starting in 1989 and going on through to 2015.  What this revealed was that in the first 18 years (1989 through 2006) there were only two years in which four or more mass shootings occurred.  In sharp contrast, the following 8 years, (2007 to current) there were four years where four or more mass shootings occurred.  This is a 400% increase over the previous 18 years and if one more mass shooting incident occurs in 2015, the figure will rise to 500%.

Clearly something has changed over the past 8 years that has driven up the number of these mass shootings.  There has not been a 400% increase in gun ownership and gun manufactures are not producing guns that are 400% angrier than they were before.  Our gun laws have not been relaxed by 400% and our nation’s mental health has not deteriorated by 400% in the past 8 years.

It became immediately clear to me that these shootings were irrefutably linked to a societal change.  Liberals are most defenatly barking up the wrong tree in their never ending pursuit to blame these tragedies on weak gun laws and mental health issues.  Mass shootings were hardly a blip on the map until 2007.  Something has shifted which, in more recent years, has begun driving these individuals to their breaking point.

It is time we put an end to the Liberal Democrat’s exploitation of these tragedies and force them to look at the real issue we are facing.  If the President, Pelosi and those who claim to be so passionate about preserving each and every life are truly interested in effecting change, they will move the discussion away from mental health and creating more restrictive gun laws and instead start taking a closer look at what has changed societally, over the past 7-8 years, that is driving these people to their breaking point.

Or, we can keep doing the same thing over and over again and hopes for a different result but we all know what the definition of doing that is!


UPDATE!

Only because Obama mentioned how many mass shootings have taken place on his watch did I decided to go back and look at how many mass shootings have been recorded since 1982.  I used the same Mother Jones source as provided earlier.

Reagan:  8 years in office  -  7 mass shootings

Bush41:  4 years in office  -  7 mass shootings

Clinton:  8 years in office  -  18 mass shootings

Bush43:  8 years in office  -  15 mass shootings

Obama:  6 1/2 years in office  -  25 mass shootings