ELDER PATRIOT - Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee is warning of the insolvency of the state’s Obamacare exchange. Mr. Lee’s concern is being confirmed by the state’s auditor.
Mr. Lee and the agency’s board of directors have fallen 300,000 enrollees shy of the target they set to insure solvency. That represents a shortfall of enrollees in excess of 21%. Even more troubling, of those who had previously signed up, only 65% renewed their coverage this year. Given that most people only use their health insurance occasionally, if at all, during most years, this raises serious questions about the satisfaction of the enrollees’ who did use it. With a greater number of people leaving Covered California than enrolling, the exchange has some daunting numbers to overcome.
Well, no duh! Obamacare had been modeled after Medicare, that, itself, was insolvent and facing bankruptcy within a decade or so.
The federal government had directed 1.1 billion to Covered California to get the exchange up and running. That’s $1,100,000,000.00 of your tax dollars for just one state. California state law prohibits the spending of any state funds to keep the exchange operational. Without an infusion of additional federal monies the exchange will have to be abandoned and the free market system will be all that remains for Californians.
Now that the exchange’s coffers are almost empty it should be interesting to see what the Republican’s in the U.S. House of Representatives do about it. Many Republicans ran their last campaign on repealing Obamacare. Once elected, they chose to do nothing instead, infuriating their electoral base.
If things progress to the likely conclusion, Republicans in Congress will likely be asked to ante up to save Covered California. Considering that these “guardians” of our finances are spending over a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000.00) more than the government takes in every year, any bailout of California’s Obamacare exchange will necessarily be in the form of additional borrowing. This will result in more debt for your children and their children to pay for the health insurance of certain Californians. In the minds of liberals and progressives this is more acceptable than individuals going into debt for their own healthcare that had been the prior norm for the uninsured.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. This could just as accurately serve as the definition of liberalismwhere doubling down on historically proven failed policies and programs is the norm .