Republicans are tired of Lying and Dishonest Politicians so we Nominated Trump!

Remember back when President Obama was awarded PoltiFact’s Liar of the Year for the infamous “If you like your plan you can keep your plan” pledge?  Boy we sure had some fun lamb basting him over that one didn’t we!  Then there was that time back in 2012 when he was given 4-Pinocchios by the Washington Post’s FactCheck.org website for claiming that Romney was a corporate raider who intentionally killed American jobs and outsourced them to China.  And how that other 4- Pinocchio moment back in 2014 when FactCheck.org crushed his argument for his Executive order on Immigration.  Man that guy can sure spin a tall tale can’t he?

And Hillary too, she’s managed to earn few of those quad Pinocchios herself, a couple as recent as the last two months with the false claims she has been making over the little email thing that’s been dogging her.

Yes, I guess you can say that we have had to deal with our fair share of dishonest politicians over the years, not just Democrats, we’ve got them on both sides of the fence.  It grows more and more disheartening each time we learn that one of the folks we elect falls short of expectation.  But we can only try to get it right the next time around by picking the  guy or gal who, to the best of our knowledge, is most likely to be truthful and honest in their pledge to serve in the best interest of our nation.


Enter Donald Trump!

The really really rich businessman who, up until recently, was far better known as the host of his own reality television show and former owner of the Miss USA/Miss Teen USA Pageants, burst on to the political stage last June when he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination.  A business man by trade, name recognition and a few pseudo comments Donald Trump made during his announcement speech, made from his Trump Tower office, far outweighed what he lacked in political savvy.  Specifically, his depiction of the people who Mexico was sending across their border into the United States coupled with a promise to build a great wall to keep them out was all Trump needed to secure the unchecked devotion of many disgruntled Republican voters. 

Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed anti-establishment, politically incorrect, self-funded man who professed to have the answer to every problem of which everyone else was either too stupid or too incompetent derive, had arrived!  But 14 million hastily made, un-vetted votes didn’t just bring the GOP its first non-establishment nominee since Ronald Reagan, it also brought us the most untruthful candidate the party has ever embraced.

Of the 174 statements Politifact judged from the start of Trump’s campaign until this past July 1^st, they found a mere 16 to be true or mostly true.  Of that same 174 statements, 70 were ruled to be false and another 34 astoundingly received their Pants of Fire award, meaning the claim was not only totally inaccurate but ridiculous as well.  Since July 1^st, Trump has placed an additional four Pants on Fire trophies to his shelf.

Trump has fared no better with the Washington Post’s FactCheck.org which has bestowed upon him 41 of their coveted 4-Pinocchio awards (8 added since June), the latest coming just this morning after the release of a campaign ad the makes the ridiculously unsubstantiated claim that illegal immigrants would receive social security benefits under Hillary Clinton’s plan.  He must have read that from the same source that has him claiming Clinton wants to abolish the 2^nd Amendment.


So how do Obama and Hillary stack up against the Donald?

In addition to Obama’s 2013 Liar of the Year award (Trump earned the same title for 2015), as of two years ago he had amassed a total of three 4-Pinocchio ratings.  Obama seems to have cleaned up his act a bit in the big lie department over the past couple of years, manage to steer clear of FactCheck’s worst rating.

Hillary has not been quite as successful at avoiding the big untruths as her former boss has, racking up five 4-Pinocchio awards from the start of her campaign until mid-July.  Of course, she’s snatched up a few more since that time with her continued efforts to convince voters that FBI Director James Comey didn’t actually say what he actually said in sworn testimony!

So how do they all compare?  It looks to me that even when you combine Hillary and Obama’s 4-Pinocchio awards, Trump still has them beat nearly fourfold.  OUCH!

But it’s not just Trump himself, it’s his entire campaign that has a lose relationship with facts and the truth.  We just witnessed the departure of Trump’s former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, the only true campaign professional Trump had on staff, over a sticky situation he found himself over past political dealings with Russia.  And then there is the crazed Queen of Conspiracy, National Campaign Spokesperson Katrina Pierson who, this past Thursday, made claim that Hillary Clinton is suffering from a rare brain disorder.  Where did she come up with such an outlandish claim?  From a fake medical records that surface earlier in the week of course.  The fake record by the way was immediately identified as being such days before Pierson made her false accusation regarding Clinton’s health.  Being a fake report mattered little to Pierson however, she ran with the lie like a boss!

This is far from the first time the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory supporting Pierson has knowingly engaged in spreading damaging untruths on a national stage and she does so with grand conviction.  Personally, I don’t know how this woman sleeps at night.  But in her defense, doing what she does is exactly why she was hired.  Trump brought her on board because of her willingness to do or say anything, not because of her devotion to ethical behavior.

And with Trump’s recent hiring of the equally unethical Stephen Bannon as his new Campaign Chief Executive, Kristina now has a partner in crime.  Bannon has zero experience running a political campaign but for the past four years, serving as Chairman of Breitbart News, he has turned the spreading of political lies and the spreading conspiracies into an art form.

The frustration of lying and dishonest politicians clearly reached a boiling point with a large swath of the Republican electorate this election cycle and, in what many outside this group sees as more of an act of unchecked hope and desperation, have thrown their heart and soul behind what is clearly the most dishonest of them all, the political outsider Donald Trump.  Oh the irony!

The 411 on Trump’s Economic Advisory Team

Dan DiMicco: While not strangers to one another, Trump and DiMicco had never formally met until just two weeks ago where, at Trump Towers they sat down and discussed trade issues.  DiMicco has however spoken with the Trump campaign on economic issues roughly a half dozen times since having being approached by a senior Trump policy advisor two months ago and was asked to serve as an economic policy advisor, an offer DiMicco accepted.

DiMicco was a logical choice for Trump despite having no past relationship or business dealings.  The fact of the matter is, Trump knows little if anything of DiMicco’s business history however, DiMicco does share many of the same critical views on free trade that Trump does which has resulted in him speaking out in favor of Donald Trump’s trade ideas on nationally televised news programs which of course caught Trump’s attention.

FEC records indicate that DiMicco has not contributed to Trump’s campaign although he has done so for at least one of the other Republican candidates who ran against Trump in the primaries.  When asked about endorsing Trump, DiMicco’s answers were pretty subdued, stating the he supported Trump’s trade policies and provided more of a defenses for Trump rather than an endorsement on issues such as immigration and his political ability.
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Howard Lorber:  A great friend of the families, golf buddy, real estate developer and fellow Manhattanite, Lorber has appeared on The Apprentice.  In addition to being a major contributor to the Trump campaign, Lorber was one of the large donors to Trump’s Veterans fundraiser he threw as a ruse in order to not have to face-off with GOP debate moderator Megyn Kelly in the second GOP primary debate last year.  Lorber is the President and CEO of the Vector Group, which through several of its subsidiaries has deep roots in the tobacco and e-cig industries.
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Andy Beal:  Trump has been acquainted with banking tycoon Andy Beal for some time however, has had little love for him as it was Beal who teamed with Carl Icahn to try and take over Trump Entertainment Resorts back in 2009.  The takeover failed in the courts but left Trump with a bitter taste in his mouth for Beal.  This past March, all was righted in the world however, when Beal gave Trump his full endorsement.  With that simple gesture, in true Trump fashion, Beal went from zero to hero in an instant.  In a press conference following the endorsement, Trump describing Beal as “the most successful and wealthiest investor in the country.  Of course neither is true, Warren Buffet is at least 5 time wealthier but what’s $50 billion here or there right?

Some may remember Andy Beal as the guy who, earlier in the campaign, contributed $100,000 to a pro-Trump spending vehicle only to have it returned by Trump in holding with his primary pledge to be self-funded.  Beal continues to be a YUGE supporter and donor to the Trump campaign.
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Harold Hamm:  There is little in common between a real estate developer turned reality TV show host and a gas and oil tycoon which is large and in part why Trump and Hamm’s paths really never crossed through the years.  Where the connection between the two are made dates back to the 2012 Romney campaign with Hamm being an energy advisor and top contender for Energy Secretary.  At that time, Trump was already contemplating a 2016 run for the presidency and asked for a meeting with Hamm to pick his brain a little.

Their paths did not cross again until 2014 and not even directly.  Trump happened to notice Hamm was wearing one of his ties in a Forbes Magazine cover story (a gift from their first meeting).  Trump sent Hamm a new batch of ties with a short letter telling him how impressed he was with him.  Trump has been quoted as saying the two are longtime friends but there is little to link the two as much more than acquaintances, first coming together during Mitt Romney’s 2012 run.

With limited resources to reach out to and Hamm most certainly being well in the know in the energy sector, at least in the oil and gas world, the relationship between Trump and Hamm did not come to fruition until Tramp tapped Hamm again on advice during his campaign and in April received a full endorsement from Hamm who is said to be Trump’s top (and possibly only) candidate to fill the Energy Secretary position.

Hamm is an unconventional choice for Energy Secretary to say the least, some saying that it is an expression of Trump’s lack of depth and understanding of what the Department of Energy, to which the Energy Secretary heads up, actually does.  It’s not just about sucking energy out of the ground, the job also requires an open mind to new and alternative energy technologies, global energy economics and nuclear waste handling.
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Steven Mnuchin:  Did you make it to the opening night of Suicide Squad this past Friday?  Did you know that the movies executive producer’s name is on Trump’s list of economic advisors?  That’s right, Steven Mnuchin is the Executive Producer of the summer block buster that just released.

A highly successful film financier, back in May, Mnuchin somewhat quietly took on the role of Trump’s National Finance Chairman.  However, in his new role he may face a great deal of criticism, especially from those who conspiratorise (not sure that is really a word) that Trump is a Clinton plant put in place to help Hillary win the election.  Mnuchin also has a long history of donating and working for democratic fund raising machines and is a little know commodity amongst major Republican donors, making him a bit of an unusual, even questionable choice.  Oh and there is that $3.2 million windfall the Mnuchin family received from the Madoff Ponzi scheme that some might object to as well.  His success in finance is mixed, with some big wins under his belt and a number of failure as well.  On a lighter note Trump and Mnuchin have been personal friends for some 15 years.

Oh and Mnuchin just happens to be a major donor to the Trump campaign.
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John Paulson:  Yes, the same John Paulson whose company in 2007 earned $15 billion on a bet that the sub-prime mortgage industry would collapse, the event that sent our economy into a tail spin resulting in our nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression.  Paulson himself pocket a cool $4 billion in the deal.  Despite the jobs lost, savings erased and lives ruined as a result, the financial windfall still makes Paulson look like a winner in Trump’s eye and we all know how much Donald loves a winner.

It was not long after Paulson’s grand bet against American however, that his odds changed significantly and for many years now his company has been taking major losses.  Last year alone Paulson’s assets fell 22%, he’s just not been doing well reading the markets and it’s a trend that has been going on for some time.

Is there a tie between Paulson and Trump?  Sure there is, Trump is an investor in several of the mega hedge funders funds!  To show his gratitude Paulson recently paid $250K for a couple’s seat at a Trump fund raiser.
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Steve Feinberg:  Co-founder and CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, Feinberg has had great success in his career as a private equity investor, his resume is not without failure however.  As some may recall, it was Cerberus who responsible for the failure of Chrysler Capitol just two years after benefiting greatly from the Obama Administration’s auto bailout.

Other than giving Trump his endorsement and being one of the mega hedge funders that attended Trump’s $50K per plate ($250K for a couple) fundraiser back in June, there is little that I could find to connect Trump and Feinberg in any way, personally or professionally other than being a major contributor to Trump’s campaign.
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Stephen Moore:  One of only three actual economist on Trump’s 13 person economic advisory panel, Stephen Moore (along with Larry Kudlow) was recently solicited by Trump to re-write his costly ($10 trillion) regressive tax plan, that he introduced last year, into something more palatable to critics and voters.  The revised plan of Moore/Kudlow was abandoned by Trump however, after an analysis conducted by the Tax Foundation concluded that any benefits to the middle class (realized in the original plan) were essentially washed away and ultimately only gave tax breaks to the top earners.

The best that I can tell, it was an August 2015 email Moore sent to Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski that first brought Moore and Trump together.  Merely showing interest in helping Trump with tax plan ideas and his personal endorsement, seemed to be enough to have earned Moore and instant position as an economic advisor to Trump.
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David Malpass:  The only individual in the group with any direct political experience, David Malpass has spent his entire career working primarily in the realm of economics and has served both in both Reagan’s and Bush41’s administrations followed by a 15 year stint as the chief economic advisor to Bear Stearns.  If the name Bear Stearns seems familiar to you it’s because they made headlines as being  the first of a long string of investment banking firms to come under destress in the 2007 home mortgage industry collapse.

Not to be confused with the bankers who actually orchestrated the collapse, it happened however, much at the advice of economic advisors, such as Malpass, who read the economic climate of the time incorrectly and failed to warn thus ward off the impending danger of the sub-prime loans which were being handed out like rain drops in a thunder storm.

There is nothing that I could find that suggests Trump knew Malpass prior to entering the 2016 race for the GOP nomination, personally or professionally.
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Steve Roth:  Another New Yorker, Steve Roth and Donald Trump are odd bedfellows as far as real estate magnets go.

The story that brings these two together is long and complex and certainly not one Trump cares to boasts about, at least not in a factual sense, although elements of the story have be well embellished by Trump of course making himself out to be a magnificent deal maker.  In a nut shell, it all started from a very large piece of Manhattan property Trump purchased with other people money, that never got developed and was heading into foreclosure.  An odd sequence of events took place that ultimately landed the property in the hands of investors from Honk Kong (Trump “I’ve traded billions with China” connection).  Trump maintaining 30% but no control of the property of its development, the remaining 70% ultimately ended up in the hands of the Vornado Realty Trust of which Steve Roth is the founder and CEO. 

Despite Trump’s countless legal objections, claims of being cheated and underhanded dealings by the other parties along the way (every one of which turned out to be untrue), the property has become the most lucrative on Trump’s balance sheet and makes up a substantial part of his wealth.

While Trump describes Roth as a great friend, I’m not sure the sentiment is shared however Trump does owe a great deal to Roth, not just for being responsible for a major portion of Trump’s wealth but also for not calling Trump out on his highly embellished story.  Few outside the world that Trump and Roth live in have any idea of their co-ownership of some of the most lucrative office property in New York and San Francisco and you’re not likely going to hear Trump speak of it.
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Stephen M. Calk: Founder, Chairman of The Board and Chief Executive Officer of Federal Saving Bank, how or why Investment Banker Stephen Calk made the cut to Trump’s economic team is a bit perplexing.  

Calk claims he met Donald Trump at a fund raiser many years ago but there is nothing that I could find that tied the two together professionally or personally over the years.  This does not mean that they are not, I simply could not make the connection.  In a recent interview, Calk described Trump’s interest in him being that of a business person and as someone who was a military officer and family man.  He also stated that Trump liked that he was an entrepreneur who built his own business. 

Again there seems to be no business or personal link between the two.  Calk’s Federal Saving Bank does however, cater to helping finance home loans for our nation’s veterans so maybe Trump thought this was a marketable attribute.  And then there is the fact that he was named Stephen, number five on the list of Stephen/Steven/Steve’s who serve on Trump’s economic advisory panel.
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Tom Barrack:  Another on a long list of billionaire bankers and real estate investors that are throwing their money and support behind Donald Trump, Tom Barrack is a major contributor to the Trump campaign, Barrack also formed a super PAC for Trump.  The two have been friends for some 35 years and have partnered in several real estate development projects together over the years.
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Peter Navarro:  The two have never met but it is Peter Navarro’s widely unaccepted views on free trade and especially the trade deficit with China that Donald Trump has embraced and made into the cornerstone of his economic plan.  Navarro is the sole PhD (Harvard) carrying economist on the Trump’s economic advisory panel and only one of three, in the group of thirteen, that are not billionaire bankers or real estate mogul.

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So there you have it, a brief rundown of what has turned out to be a pretty lack luster list of personal friends, billionaire bankers and folks that have endorsed Trump’s 2016 run for the presidency.

I’m really not sure where Trump is going with this team he has put together but it certainly does not reflect his claim of knowing and/or tapping in to the best and the brightest minds.  What I found the list most lacking was economists! 

More than half of the team Trump never met until throwing his name in the hat for the GOP nomination last year (some he still may not have met).  Several others, while acquainted with, Trump has a bit of a tenuous business relationship with.  There also seems to be quite a bit of quid pro quo going on with Trump’s selections.

Along with being nearly void of actual economists, the Wall Street heavy team of 13 is totally void of women, which will certainly not go unnoticed.  Likely not to go unnoticed is the average age of the team, which happens to be 62.  Is this really the best that Trump could come up with?  Is he really that shortsighted or are their rally so few experts that care to be a part of the Trump team?  One critic went as far as to describe the list of advisors as looking like something thrown together by an unknowing intern who got stuck on the letter “S”, I can’t say that I disagree.

To be honest, Trump’s weak economic team comes as no surprise considering the B-list cast that Trump put together as his foreign policy team earlier this year but a dark reflection of what could be in store for cabinet picks of Trump were to win the White House.

Bush Was In Fact a Better Jobs Creator than Obama!

George W Bush will certainly not go down in history as one of our nation’s great job creators, but one thing is for certain, he was far better at creating jobs than President Obama has turned out to be.  I know, on the surface the numbers say otherwise and what a convenient argument for Democrats they make.  But the reality is the number of jobs created is just one piece of a complex puzzle.  When you consider the economic environment each of these presidents operated in, which is a must if you care to make an honest argument, job creation turns far in Bush’s favor.

As an example, let’s first look at Bill Clinton, the great job creator, and see just how he did it.

Clinton is credited with creating 23 million jobs according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reporting.  That’s pretty darn impressive no matter what you think about Slick Willy but to give all the credit to Bill himself would be wrong.  Yes Clinton played a very big role in job creation, he also had a boat load of help and good fortune along the way.

First, Bill Clinton came to office heading in to the 4^th year of what became our nation’s greatest decade of economic growth.  What kick started that growth?  A few things, two of the biggies being the technology of the personal computer and internet which, at the time, were rapidly being integrated into business.  That integration created the largest leap in increased productivity since the introduction of the gasoline engine at the turn of the 20^th century.  George H W Bush’s massive military spending cuts, made possible by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, had huge positive effects on the economy as well.  These two economic growth factors gave Bill Clinton a huge leg up at the start of his presidency. 

But things got even better for Bill as record low oil prices played their part as well and the fact that there were no major wars that took place on his watch which would have upset global trade and chewed up a big chunk of the federal budget.  And the most significant attributing factor that nobody ever seems to mention is the number of able bodied men and women who were unemployed and looking for work when Clinton took office.  When Clinton took office, unemployment was relatively high, at 7.1% and was coupled with good labor participation rate meaning that there were plenty of folks lined up and ready to grab one of those jobs the robust economy was creating almost in its own. 

Bill Clinton could not have been dealt a better hand in regards to job creation and is why he was able to log 23 million jobs created on his watch.  He of course did his part, mostly by not imposing anti-business policies or hurtful regulations.

But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end and so did the decade long growth spirt which ended after Clinton’s 7^th year in office.  During his final year, the economy cooled off significantly and for the first time in his presidency, Slick Willy recorded several months of negative job growth.  This was the start of what would become the 2001 recession which officially started just two months after he left office.


Enter George W Bush (Bush43)

A decade of robust economic growth had just come to an end, unemployment was at near record lows and the economy was just starting to slip in to recession.  By all accounts, Bush should have been in significant trouble but instead he managed to minimize the effects of the recession, hold the economy stable and create enough jobs to maintain the low unemployment rate handed off to him by his predecessor.  On his watch Bush turned in 44 months of unemployment at or lower than Clinton’s 2 term 5.1% average, 31 of those months being below 5.0%.  He managed this despite dealing with negative global economic factors caused by the single largest terrorist attack our nation had ever experienced, fighting two wars and last but certainly not least, having to fight the coming effects of the housing bubble resulting from policies that attributed to much of his predecessor success.

At the time the housing bubble began to show signs of real danger and started to have an adverse effect on the economy, unemployment was still held at a mere 4.7% due to the Bush Administration economic policies.  And while Bush was not gifted with any of the pro-growth economic factors afforded to his predecessor and spent his first year in office tuning around the small recession he inherited, he still managed to create 8.7 million jobs before the bottom fell out.  Had the bubble not burst and the economy remained on its same trajectory, Bush would have ended his tenure having created roughly 11 million jobs.  And while this figure may not look all too impressive standing on its own, when you consider that unemployment had been pushed to its lower limits during the Clinton Administration and the large number of negative economic factors Bush fought against throughout his 2 terms in office, 11 million jobs created would have in fact been pretty impressive.

But the bottom did fall out which spurred the greatest recession since the Great Depression.  In the end Bush had a 2 term unemployment average of 5.6% and if you were to exclude the 19 month downturn heading in to the Great Recession, Bush’s 77 month unemployment average was an impressive 5.2%.

In summary, Bush was not handed an economy with high unemployment and a robust economy creating jobs almost on its own, Bush instead was handed a someone neutral economy that had just experienced its longest growth period history.  The 2001 recession was a natural occurrence to such an end, it was short, shallow and most of all, it was dealt with, allowing Bush to carry on in the healthy economic environment that afforded him 4 years of unemployment figures that match or exceeded the great job creator’s {Bill Clinton} 5.1% 2 term average.  Last, Bush’s second term as president was marred with the housing bubble bursting and collapse of our nation’s financial sector.  But as horrible as the recession was in a real sense, politically it was a gift to Obama, or at least is should have been.


The Gift of the Great Recession and what Obama Did With It

Sure Obama took over as President in the depths of the Great Recession but what was really handed over to him was an incredible opportunity to emerge as the President who saved the US economy, all the pieces were in place to make that happen and yet he somehow managed to piss it all away.

The fact of the matter was that most of the hard work to right the heavily listing ship had already been accomplished on George W Bush’s watch.  Bush did include President Elect Obama in many of the discussions and even consulted with Obama on some of the decision making processes as he knew this would soon be Obama’s recession to deal with, but it was the actions of the Bush Administration that set the wheels of change in motion.  Dozens of provisions in the TARP had already been implemented and their effects begun to stabilized the financial sector before the change of command.  As well, the monetary policy of Quantitative Easing had already been implemented to stimulate the economy, alone with other emergency actions taken by the Bush administration as the walls began to cave in.

And so it was, 5 months after Barack Obama took office that the National Bureau of Economic Research determined that in June of 2009 the Great Recession officially came to an end. Yes, the efforts put forth by the Bush Administration had in fact done their job.  All that was left to do now was for the newly elected president to instill confidence in the American business person, business investors and the middle class that that the economy was in fact stable again so that spending and investment would resume.  Unfortunately for our nation, economic policy was not President Obama’s strong suite and in his own naivety and inexperience as a leader he placed his personal agenda in front of the good of the nation with devastating effect.

From the very start of his term as POTUS, Obama pushed for and received, through his Democratic controlled congress, three highly unpopular pieces of legislation that proved detrimental to an already frail economy desperately trying to recover.

First, a near $1 trillion stimulus package, largely crafted by Obama’s “economic team” before even taking office.  The stimulus offered little if anything in the way of new jobs creation.  The “shovel ready” jobs fallacy the new president used to sell his stimulus to the American people was flawed on its face and at his own much later admission, turned out to be a failure.  Instead of a package to stimulate job growth, the President’s stimulus provided for more relief to individuals and families which Obama promised would somehow magically lift 2 million people out of poverty.  This too failed and today, the number who live in poverty under the care and protection of President Obama has increase somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million.  Last, Obama’s stimulus package had a large green energy component that again, also failed.  But worse than it failing was the cold hard fact that it had nothing to do with immediate job creation but instead everything to do with Obama’s long term agenda.  The American people and business investors saw right through Obama’s stimulus ploy which was the first of several actions that broke their confidence in both the new President and the economy.  The vote on the bill was a tell tail sign of things to come as well passing in both the Democratic controlled House and Senate in a near party line vote.  Republicans obviously shared the same sentiment for the stimulus deal as did business persons, investors and the majority of the middle class, they saw it as hurtful to the growth of the economy and they were right!

Second, the Auto Industry bailout.  The American people were already pissed that they had to bail out Wall Street and now the President was suggesting a massive bailout for the failing auto industry.  Most preferred that the normal course of bankruptcy be allowed to occur but the President was adamant about the bailout because of course, like the stimulus, it gave him a vehicle to push his green energy agenda.  This was another clear sign to investors and business owners that the best interest of the economy was not the top priority of this President.

And just as the stimulus was a massive failure, so was the bailout as both GM and Chrysler still ended up filing for bankruptcy although Team Obama meddled in that process as well in order to protect the interests of the auto unions which the bank restructure most defenatly would have come down hard on.  Nearly two thirds of American’s opposed the auto industry bailout however, Obama showed early on in his presidency that he had little regard to the will of the people.  Today, a huge portion of both GM’s and Chrysler’s taxpayer funded bailout has been forgiven and Chrysler is no longer American owned.

Third was ObamaCare.  There was significant outrage across the nation when President Obama made it crystal clear that ObamaCare was the top agenda item, vowing that healthcare reform legislation would be passed during his first year in office.  As each new piece of the bill was introduced, across the nation town hall meetings were erupting in chaos as small and large business owners alike expressed their outrage over the hundreds of provisions in the law, most of which did not work in favor of creating a better and more stable economy.  Even before its passage in to law, small and large businesses began making employment decisions based on the effect they believed the law would have on their business and now that it is in fact law, small and medium businesses hiring practices have been significantly impacted in a very negative way.  And here we are, five years later and ObamaCare is still negatively impacting small and medium business owners and stifling job growth. 

And in a sick twist of ObamaCare irony, it took 14 million taxpayer funded recipients of the Medicaid expansion to generate roughly 1 million new healthcare sector jobs.  The Obama Administration likes to call this an expansion of the private sector job market but any rational thinking person understands that it is nothing but a government created, taxpayer subsidized jobs program.  Wouldn’t it have been so much nicer if the economy of those 14 million were improved such that allowed them to become active participants in the healthcare insurance marketplace on their own instead of the recipient of another government run, taxpayer funded entitlement program?

And Obama’s suppression of economic growth did not end at these three pieces of legislation as he quickly put his team to work in trying to think of every way possible that they could somehow push his green energy agenda forward by somehow disguising it as an economic recovery program.  From that we got wonderful failures such as Cash for Clunkers and a mountain of new federal regulations that weakened instead of strengthened small business owners and investors belief in the nation’s economy.  President Obama also did not possess the political nor personal maturity to put off his war on coal until the economic crises was over.  Instead the threat of cap and trade emerged along with another mountain of regulations the targeted the energy sector which only further troubled those waiting for signs of a stable economy so that they could begin to start spending and investing again. 

As a result of all Obama’s economic blunders and the pushing of his many progressive agendas in the midst of the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the economy shed another 4.6 million jobs during his first year in office.  Pile that on to the 4.4 million jobs which had already been lost during the previous 18 months and you have a jobs hole in the economy 9 million deep that needed to be filled.  But in order to start filling that hole, confidence would need to be instilled in business owners and investors before the would start taking on any new risk, a task that President Obama proved that he simply was not up to. 

So despite there being enough economic indicators for the National Bureau of Economic Research to call the end of the recession in June of 2009, sadly the Obama administration did more to tear down Americans confidence in the economy than to restore it.  It was not just small business owners and investors who were not willing to take on any new risks, the middle class chose not to either and instead of spending they held back, afraid of what might happened, tomorrow, next week, next month and even next year.  The uncertainty of the poor Obama economic recovery plan had everyone worried and rightly so.

Obama had an economy dying to recover with near zero inflation to deal with and interest rates at near zero as well.  Over 4 million jobs has been lost thus creating a more than able unemployed workforce just waiting to take their jobs back.  And there was plenty of money just waiting to be sunk into the economy by investors as well.   The only thing lacking was business and investor confidence and it was clear that this was not going to be restored any time soon.

Within 9 months of Obama taking office unemployment rose from 8.3% to 10% where it hovered for the next 6 month before finally starting its lengthy downward trend, remaining at 9.0% or greater for 30 consecutive months.  Obama would not see the unemployment rate fall to the same point it was when he first took office for a full 3 years and sadly that lower rate was not achieved through job growth but instead by a drop in the labor participation rate.  Americans were simply giving up on looking for work, a sad trend that continues today with more than 11 million Americans having fallen out of the work force.


There is a lot to digest here I know but what it really all boils down to is the given the set of economic circumstances that were passed to President Obama should have easily resulted in job creation numbers  in line with Bill Clinton.  What we have instead is a situation where, seven years after taking office, the nation is still short of breaking even by 4.3 million jobs when you take in to account the increase in the number of people eligible to enter the workforce.

Had the rolls been reversed and Bush applied his economic policies to the economy handed to Obama it is more than clear that our nation would have been significantly better off in regards to job growth.  This is by no means an endorsement of George W Bush’s economic policies but it is however, a scathing indictment to the utter failure of President Obama’s.

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.