“Consider this in light of the de rigueur Watergate question: When did HHS know about the failing ObamaCare co-ops, and when — if ever — did they do something about it? A damning report from the Senate oversight panel’s subcommittee on investigations shows that HHS had evidence from the very beginning that the co-op business model contained a high amount of risk, and that the data following their launches showed that failure accelerating faster than even their worst-case scenarios predicted. Despite all of this, the panel’s majority staff reports, HHS continued to pour cash into the co-ops — up to $2.4 billion, even as half of them folded.
“HHS approved the failed CO-OPs despite receiving specific warnings from a third-party analyst about weaknesses in their business plans,” the report states. Deloitte Consulting warned HHS of “several significant weaknesses” in the co-op proposals. In seven of the twelve failed co-ops, Deloitte noted enrollment strategies with defects including “inadequate actuarial analysis, to unsupported assumptions about sustainable premiums, [and] a lack of demonstrated understanding of the health demographics of the COOP’s target population.” Ten of the twelve failed co-ops had incomplete budget proposals flagged by Deloitte, and one even noted that their plan had a “stated target profit margin [of] zero.” Deloitte also raised concerns about leadership in all twelve failed co-ops.
Still, HHS provided a grading scale that allowed Deloitte to give passing marks to all twelve business proposals, which then allowed HHS to provide taxpayer-subsidized loans for the 2013 launches. By 2014, HHS had plenty of evidence that the co-ops were in serious trouble, the Senate panel reports, but more than a year passed before HHS took any corrective action. Even though the agency had included “significant accountability tools” in the loan agreements, “HHS took a pass. … Five of the 12 failed CO-OPs were never subject to corrective action by HHS, and HHS waited until September 2015 to put five others on corrective action or enhanced oversight,” the report notes. “Two months later, all twelve CO-OPs had failed.”
It’s not as if HHS wasn’t aware of the problems that arose. By the beginning of 2015, the financial reports from the co-ops showed “severe financial losses that quickly exceeded even the worst-case loss projections they had provided to HHS as part of the business plans in their loan applications.” Even so, HHS continued its planned loan disbursements to the co-ops, and in some cases accelerated payments, amounting to $848 million — while the co-ops lost $1.4 billion.
If that weren’t bad enough, HHS then “approved additional solvency loans for three of the failed CO-OPs in danger of being shut down by state regulators, despite obvious warning signs that those CO-OPs would not be able to repay the taxpayer.” Three more co-ops also received solvency loans, with total additional disbursements amounting to $352 million.”
—————————————–
“Health Care Service Corp.’s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law’s state exchanges for buying coverage.
In anticipation of ACA-related losses in 2015, HCSC set aside nearly $400 million in 2014 to boost reserves to $680.9 million. The company spent $657.3 million of those reserves to cover the medical expenses associated with ACA plans in 2015.
HCSC is the latest large insurer to report losses on 2015 ACA business, a troubling sign for the state exchanges that are the heart of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The far-reaching legislation has increased access to insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. Though the law has brought new customers to many insurers, much of that growth has been unprofitable, reflecting higher-than-expected medical expenses, regulatory challenges and unexpected shortfalls in federal risk-sharing programs.”
“UnitedHealthcare said it had losses of about $475 million on its 2015 ACA business. Aetna didn’t break out the loss on its individual health plans but said the operating losses on that line of business were 3 to 4 percent of the sales.
As a result of the losses, some insurers have considered withdrawing from the state marketplaces. Any exodus would threaten the stability of exchanges, making the online marketplaces less attractive to consumers.
“2015 was not a good year as far as the ACA went,” said Stephen Zaharuk, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service, who covers the health insurance industry. “Insurers had no idea what to expect.”
————————————-
That poor reporter in the second is doing his best to put a good spin, but the numbers don’t lie.
“We all pay attention when Barack Obama criticises David Cameron. Such things rarely happen. Although Anglo-American relations are quite often fraught, the conventions of the alliance are strong. Disagreements are private, or expressed publicly only in oblique language. This week, however, the President said that Mr Cameron had been “distracted by a range of other things” after bombing Libya. Britain and France, he suggested, had left Libya a “mess” – or something more unprintable, which was, nevertheless, printed.
If the public wondered how serious this attack was, doubt was quickly dispelled when the administration rushed to correct their boss’ outburst. The BBC could not stop reporting that the follow-up email they had received from the White House expressing sudden presidential joy in the Special Relationship had been completely unsolicited.
Great was the rage in 10 Downing Street that provoked this grovel from Washington. Here was Mr Cameron trying to show British voters in our forthcoming EU referendum that his leadership bestrides Europe and America and that his foot in one camp secures his foot in the other. And here was the President of the United States saying that the Europeans in general (“free riders”), and his closest European ally in particular (Mr Cameron), were useless.
As I say, we noticed. What we did not attend to, however, was the context. The anti-Cameron bit forms only a fraction of a long interview profile of Mr Obama in The Atlantic magazine. In it, Mr Obama discusses what you might call his pre-legacy. Although still in office, he is already preparing his place in history. He is drawing the preliminary sketches for the colossal, craggy rendering which, he must hope, will eventually be carved (along with Washington, Jefferson etc) on Mount Rushmore.”
“Mr Obama is talking about his world leadership, and a very odd sort of talk it is. He keeps emphasising how he has chosen not to lead. In 2012, he declared that President Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria would be “a red line” for the United States. Assad duly crossed that line, killing hundreds, but then Obama decided to back away from his own threat. “I am very proud of this moment,” he tells his surprised interviewer – proud because he broke with what he calls the foreign-policy establishment “playbook”. None of us much likes foreign-policy establishments, but if their playbook says it is a bad idea to threaten a tyrant with punishment and then not carry out that threat, it might just be right.
Since then, America has no longer been believed and Assad has been empowered. President Obama, in the Arab spring, compared Middle East demonstrators protesting against Arab dictators with the “patriots of Boston” He called for Assad to “step aside”. But when that dictator, assailed by such people, showed he really meant business, Mr Obama decided to let him off. The United States passed influence on the future of Syria to Vladimir Putin, who doesn’t much mind bombing anyone.
After the Islamist outrages in Paris last autumn, the President upset opinion at home by not talking about them, since he was busy “pivoting to Asia”. “Why can’t we get the bastards?” an exasperated CNN reporter asked him. He didn’t get much of an answer from the President who worries more about xenophobia than terrorism. The later, considered Obama reply to this question seems to be that one must not encourage “tribalism”, which he regards as the root of all evil. Thus he presents a golden political opportunity to the new big white chief of American tribalism, Donald Trump.
As the coasting President looks back, he finds something wrong with all of America’s friends. Mr Cameron gets off relatively lightly (though he is also criticised for speaking out against “radical Islam”). The then President Sarkozy of France is attacked for enjoying photo-opportunities, Israel for intransigence, Saudi Arabia for repression, Turkey for not being his designated bridge between East and West. Poor, loyal King Abdullah of Jordan complains: “I think I believe in American power more than Obama does”. It is not the Blessed Barack who has failed, but everyone else who has disappointed his high ideals.”
—————————————-
And Barry wants you to know it’s not his fault, because nothing ever is….
“To hear Barack Obama tell it, his career trajectory from backbencher in the Illinois state legislature to president of the United States has gone flawlessly. It’s everyone else who’s let him down.
Behold the Immaculate Administration — conceived in sinlessness and discharged with purity of heart. If only others would pull their load.
After all, it can’t be his fault that, seven years on, the economy is still a mess, the national debt is pushing $20 trillion, Russia is gobbling up bits of central Europe and his handling of the Middle East has sent a tidal wave of Muslim “refugees” streaming toward the heart of Europe while ISIS builds a caliphate, can it?
Case in point: Libya.
Obama made a great show of “leading from behind” when the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner ordered regime change there in concert with European allies.
Everything would have been just fine, but — wouldn’t you know it — those darn foreigners let the president down. As he told Jeffrey Goldberg in a far-ranging apologia in the Atlantic this month: “When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”
Obama bashed former French president Nicolas Sarkozy for glory-hogging, and blamed the Libyans for an excess of tribalism “greater than our analysts had expected.”
But he saved his greatest scorn for a “distracted” conservative British prime minister David Cameron who, Obama said, simply stopped paying attention, allowing Libya to become “a s – -t show.”
——————————
Much like his presidency, and pretty much everything he touches.
“Al-Qaida militants swept through a rebel-held town in northern Syria in a display of dominance Sunday, arresting U.S.-backed fighters and looting weapons stores belonging to the Free Syrian Army.
The militants belonging to the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front along with allied jihadists have been moving to exert their authority over rebel-held areas in Idlib province since a partial ceasefire to the country’s five-year conflict took effect two weeks ago, extinguishing patriotic demonstrations and sidelining nationalist militias.
The FSA’s 13th Division said on Twitter Sunday that Nusra fighters were going door to door in the town of Maarat Numan and arresting its cadres after Nusra, alongside fighters from the Jund al-Aqsa faction, seized Division 13 posts the night before.
Seven Division 13 fighters died in the clashes.”
“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said Nusra seized anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles, a tank, and other arms from the division, which has received weapons, training, and money from the U.S. government. It said Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa detained 40 fighters from the division.”
———————————
Time for Barry to give another of his “Al-Qaida is on the run” speeches……
“This is the sort of classy (and not exactly hyper-masculine) behavior that we associate with members of the Democratic Party. That’s the thing about Tommy DiMassimo: he isn’t just a random nutcase. He is, I think, a good example of the prototypical liberal Democrat of our time.”
___________________________
One day recently, I joked about my upcoming 30th anniversary being called Super Tuesday. I had seen references to the March 15th primaries as Super Tuesday before I wrote that. But then I read references to a previous Tuesday of primaries having been Super Tuesday. So when is/was the real Super Tuesday?
I keep thinking about ’68 withe the emotions running so high — I was in high school then but remember all the tension and I was glued to tv during the Chicago convention.
The candidate parallels he draws also are pretty interesting
I have given National Review a hard time on several occasions over the last several years. They let a wimpy editor run off Mark Steyn and some of their people went soft on perversion.
However, their writers have been heroes in the war against The Great Buffoon. Twitter has been a place where older conservatives can give a pat on the back to young NR writers.
Some of the Trump folks (like their boss) are very nasty, but Buckley’s boys are generally able to hold their temper and dish out a hilarious string of one-liners as well as thoughtful articles.
Wandering Views 
So how much more will they squander before they put this horse out of it’s misery?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/03/10/senate-report-hhs-kept-shoveling-money-into-obamacare-co-ops-it-knew-were-failing/
“Consider this in light of the de rigueur Watergate question: When did HHS know about the failing ObamaCare co-ops, and when — if ever — did they do something about it? A damning report from the Senate oversight panel’s subcommittee on investigations shows that HHS had evidence from the very beginning that the co-op business model contained a high amount of risk, and that the data following their launches showed that failure accelerating faster than even their worst-case scenarios predicted. Despite all of this, the panel’s majority staff reports, HHS continued to pour cash into the co-ops — up to $2.4 billion, even as half of them folded.
“HHS approved the failed CO-OPs despite receiving specific warnings from a third-party analyst about weaknesses in their business plans,” the report states. Deloitte Consulting warned HHS of “several significant weaknesses” in the co-op proposals. In seven of the twelve failed co-ops, Deloitte noted enrollment strategies with defects including “inadequate actuarial analysis, to unsupported assumptions about sustainable premiums, [and] a lack of demonstrated understanding of the health demographics of the COOP’s target population.” Ten of the twelve failed co-ops had incomplete budget proposals flagged by Deloitte, and one even noted that their plan had a “stated target profit margin [of] zero.” Deloitte also raised concerns about leadership in all twelve failed co-ops.
Still, HHS provided a grading scale that allowed Deloitte to give passing marks to all twelve business proposals, which then allowed HHS to provide taxpayer-subsidized loans for the 2013 launches. By 2014, HHS had plenty of evidence that the co-ops were in serious trouble, the Senate panel reports, but more than a year passed before HHS took any corrective action. Even though the agency had included “significant accountability tools” in the loan agreements, “HHS took a pass. … Five of the 12 failed CO-OPs were never subject to corrective action by HHS, and HHS waited until September 2015 to put five others on corrective action or enhanced oversight,” the report notes. “Two months later, all twelve CO-OPs had failed.”
It’s not as if HHS wasn’t aware of the problems that arose. By the beginning of 2015, the financial reports from the co-ops showed “severe financial losses that quickly exceeded even the worst-case loss projections they had provided to HHS as part of the business plans in their loan applications.” Even so, HHS continued its planned loan disbursements to the co-ops, and in some cases accelerated payments, amounting to $848 million — while the co-ops lost $1.4 billion.
If that weren’t bad enough, HHS then “approved additional solvency loans for three of the failed CO-OPs in danger of being shut down by state regulators, despite obvious warning signs that those CO-OPs would not be able to repay the taxpayer.” Three more co-ops also received solvency loans, with total additional disbursements amounting to $352 million.”
—————————————–
And it’s not just the exchanges…..
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-blue-cross-obamacare-insurance-0313-biz-20160311-story.html
“Health Care Service Corp.’s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law’s state exchanges for buying coverage.
In anticipation of ACA-related losses in 2015, HCSC set aside nearly $400 million in 2014 to boost reserves to $680.9 million. The company spent $657.3 million of those reserves to cover the medical expenses associated with ACA plans in 2015.
HCSC is the latest large insurer to report losses on 2015 ACA business, a troubling sign for the state exchanges that are the heart of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The far-reaching legislation has increased access to insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. Though the law has brought new customers to many insurers, much of that growth has been unprofitable, reflecting higher-than-expected medical expenses, regulatory challenges and unexpected shortfalls in federal risk-sharing programs.”
“UnitedHealthcare said it had losses of about $475 million on its 2015 ACA business. Aetna didn’t break out the loss on its individual health plans but said the operating losses on that line of business were 3 to 4 percent of the sales.
As a result of the losses, some insurers have considered withdrawing from the state marketplaces. Any exodus would threaten the stability of exchanges, making the online marketplaces less attractive to consumers.
“2015 was not a good year as far as the ACA went,” said Stephen Zaharuk, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service, who covers the health insurance industry. “Insurers had no idea what to expect.”
————————————-
That poor reporter in the second is doing his best to put a good spin, but the numbers don’t lie.
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Leading from behind isn’t leading at all…..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/12191637/By-choosing-not-to-lead-Obama-has-left-the-West-dangerously-exposed.html
“We all pay attention when Barack Obama criticises David Cameron. Such things rarely happen. Although Anglo-American relations are quite often fraught, the conventions of the alliance are strong. Disagreements are private, or expressed publicly only in oblique language. This week, however, the President said that Mr Cameron had been “distracted by a range of other things” after bombing Libya. Britain and France, he suggested, had left Libya a “mess” – or something more unprintable, which was, nevertheless, printed.
If the public wondered how serious this attack was, doubt was quickly dispelled when the administration rushed to correct their boss’ outburst. The BBC could not stop reporting that the follow-up email they had received from the White House expressing sudden presidential joy in the Special Relationship had been completely unsolicited.
Great was the rage in 10 Downing Street that provoked this grovel from Washington. Here was Mr Cameron trying to show British voters in our forthcoming EU referendum that his leadership bestrides Europe and America and that his foot in one camp secures his foot in the other. And here was the President of the United States saying that the Europeans in general (“free riders”), and his closest European ally in particular (Mr Cameron), were useless.
As I say, we noticed. What we did not attend to, however, was the context. The anti-Cameron bit forms only a fraction of a long interview profile of Mr Obama in The Atlantic magazine. In it, Mr Obama discusses what you might call his pre-legacy. Although still in office, he is already preparing his place in history. He is drawing the preliminary sketches for the colossal, craggy rendering which, he must hope, will eventually be carved (along with Washington, Jefferson etc) on Mount Rushmore.”
“Mr Obama is talking about his world leadership, and a very odd sort of talk it is. He keeps emphasising how he has chosen not to lead. In 2012, he declared that President Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria would be “a red line” for the United States. Assad duly crossed that line, killing hundreds, but then Obama decided to back away from his own threat. “I am very proud of this moment,” he tells his surprised interviewer – proud because he broke with what he calls the foreign-policy establishment “playbook”. None of us much likes foreign-policy establishments, but if their playbook says it is a bad idea to threaten a tyrant with punishment and then not carry out that threat, it might just be right.
Since then, America has no longer been believed and Assad has been empowered. President Obama, in the Arab spring, compared Middle East demonstrators protesting against Arab dictators with the “patriots of Boston” He called for Assad to “step aside”. But when that dictator, assailed by such people, showed he really meant business, Mr Obama decided to let him off. The United States passed influence on the future of Syria to Vladimir Putin, who doesn’t much mind bombing anyone.
After the Islamist outrages in Paris last autumn, the President upset opinion at home by not talking about them, since he was busy “pivoting to Asia”. “Why can’t we get the bastards?” an exasperated CNN reporter asked him. He didn’t get much of an answer from the President who worries more about xenophobia than terrorism. The later, considered Obama reply to this question seems to be that one must not encourage “tribalism”, which he regards as the root of all evil. Thus he presents a golden political opportunity to the new big white chief of American tribalism, Donald Trump.
As the coasting President looks back, he finds something wrong with all of America’s friends. Mr Cameron gets off relatively lightly (though he is also criticised for speaking out against “radical Islam”). The then President Sarkozy of France is attacked for enjoying photo-opportunities, Israel for intransigence, Saudi Arabia for repression, Turkey for not being his designated bridge between East and West. Poor, loyal King Abdullah of Jordan complains: “I think I believe in American power more than Obama does”. It is not the Blessed Barack who has failed, but everyone else who has disappointed his high ideals.”
—————————————-
And Barry wants you to know it’s not his fault, because nothing ever is….
http://nypost.com/2016/03/13/obama-from-libya-to-partisanship-its-never-ever-my-fault/
“To hear Barack Obama tell it, his career trajectory from backbencher in the Illinois state legislature to president of the United States has gone flawlessly. It’s everyone else who’s let him down.
Behold the Immaculate Administration — conceived in sinlessness and discharged with purity of heart. If only others would pull their load.
After all, it can’t be his fault that, seven years on, the economy is still a mess, the national debt is pushing $20 trillion, Russia is gobbling up bits of central Europe and his handling of the Middle East has sent a tidal wave of Muslim “refugees” streaming toward the heart of Europe while ISIS builds a caliphate, can it?
Case in point: Libya.
Obama made a great show of “leading from behind” when the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner ordered regime change there in concert with European allies.
Everything would have been just fine, but — wouldn’t you know it — those darn foreigners let the president down. As he told Jeffrey Goldberg in a far-ranging apologia in the Atlantic this month: “When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”
Obama bashed former French president Nicolas Sarkozy for glory-hogging, and blamed the Libyans for an excess of tribalism “greater than our analysts had expected.”
But he saved his greatest scorn for a “distracted” conservative British prime minister David Cameron who, Obama said, simply stopped paying attention, allowing Libya to become “a s – -t show.”
——————————
Much like his presidency, and pretty much everything he touches.
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And this one? Well, that’s exactly what many, including me, predicted would happen. There are no “good guys” in Syria.
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-03-13/al-qaida-seizes-weapons-bases-from-us-backed-syrian-rebels
“Al-Qaida militants swept through a rebel-held town in northern Syria in a display of dominance Sunday, arresting U.S.-backed fighters and looting weapons stores belonging to the Free Syrian Army.
The militants belonging to the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front along with allied jihadists have been moving to exert their authority over rebel-held areas in Idlib province since a partial ceasefire to the country’s five-year conflict took effect two weeks ago, extinguishing patriotic demonstrations and sidelining nationalist militias.
The FSA’s 13th Division said on Twitter Sunday that Nusra fighters were going door to door in the town of Maarat Numan and arresting its cadres after Nusra, alongside fighters from the Jund al-Aqsa faction, seized Division 13 posts the night before.
Seven Division 13 fighters died in the clashes.”
“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said Nusra seized anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles, a tank, and other arms from the division, which has received weapons, training, and money from the U.S. government. It said Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa detained 40 fighters from the division.”
———————————
Time for Barry to give another of his “Al-Qaida is on the run” speeches……
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I wonder what God’s plan is in this election? I have many thoughts but doubt them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting background on the guy who stormed the stage at the Trump rally on Saturday:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/03/who-attacked-donald-trump.php
(bad word warning):
__________________________
“This is the sort of classy (and not exactly hyper-masculine) behavior that we associate with members of the Democratic Party. That’s the thing about Tommy DiMassimo: he isn’t just a random nutcase. He is, I think, a good example of the prototypical liberal Democrat of our time.”
___________________________
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One day recently, I joked about my upcoming 30th anniversary being called Super Tuesday. I had seen references to the March 15th primaries as Super Tuesday before I wrote that. But then I read references to a previous Tuesday of primaries having been Super Tuesday. So when is/was the real Super Tuesday?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think this is Super Tuesday 2
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apparently, this is what really happened at that Trump rally on Saturday – Bernie Boo!
http://giphy.com/gifs/3o7abkti7UphSopcl2:
LikeLiked by 3 people
Interesting comparison of 2016 to the election of 1968
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/1968-2016-election-parallels_us_56e5fb49e4b0b25c91824dce?
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is scary.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I keep thinking about ’68 withe the emotions running so high — I was in high school then but remember all the tension and I was glued to tv during the Chicago convention.
The candidate parallels he draws also are pretty interesting
LikeLike
And humorous and scary at times
LikeLike
I have given National Review a hard time on several occasions over the last several years. They let a wimpy editor run off Mark Steyn and some of their people went soft on perversion.
However, their writers have been heroes in the war against The Great Buffoon. Twitter has been a place where older conservatives can give a pat on the back to young NR writers.
Some of the Trump folks (like their boss) are very nasty, but Buckley’s boys are generally able to hold their temper and dish out a hilarious string of one-liners as well as thoughtful articles.
LikeLike