By John W. Lillpop
Although Barack Obama continues to proliferate gross misinformation about ObamaCare as part of his legacy-building campaign, the truth is not nearly so flattering.
As reported at reference 1:
After two previous extensions, the open enrollment period for Covered California ends April 30. That deadline just might prove to be the tipping point for the state’s two-year-old health insurance exchange.
That’s because this is the year Covered California is supposed to become completely self-sustaining.
Indeed, there’s no more money coming from Washington after the state exhausts the $1.1 billion it received from the federal government to get the ObamaCare exchange up and running. And state law prohibits Sacramento from spending any money to keep the exchange afloat.
That presents an existential crisis for Covered California, which is facing a nearly $80 budget deficit for its 2015-16 fiscal year. Although the exchange is setting aside $200 million to cover its near-term deficit, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee acknowledged in December that there are questions about the “long-term sustainability of the organization.”
Mr. Lee’s disquieting assessment actually jibed with a 2013 report by the state auditor, which stated that, until the state’s health insurance exchange actually started enrolling Californians in health plans, its “future solvency” was ”uncertain.” Thus, Covered California was listed as a “high-risk” issue for the state.
The state auditor’s warning appeared prescient as of Feb. 15, which was supposed to be the close of open enrollment for 2015: Covered California had fallen 300,000 enrollees short of the goal set by Mr. Lee and the agency’s board of directors.”
Notwithstanding the referenced report, it would be a mistake to disregard the disintegration of sound public policy in the Golden State.
To wit: Governor Brown and liberal co-conspirators in Sacramento share the insane desire to honor and enhance the wonky notion that socialist government can insure millions of previously-uninsured residents, and, as a direct result, simultaneously reduce overall health care costs!
Anyone not educated in one of California’s pathetic public schools will immediately recognize the idiocy of that postulation, which was smugly, but accurately, summarized by MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber thusly:
“Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really critical for the thing (ObamaCare) to pass.”
The unblemished truth is that voter stupidity is alive and flourishing in California, where voters have installed corrupt, incompetent Democrats throughout state and local government.
Combine voter stupidity with wickedly corrupt politicians and the leftist goal to make Barack Obama into a political icon with the combined attributes of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, and you have a perfect formula for extending California Covered into perpetuity, regardless of how damaging to public health and prohibitively expensive!
ObamaCare on the Ropes in California? Only if voter stupidity and political corruption can be countered!
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-658869-covered-state.html
