Pirate's Cove

Democrats up for re-election in 2014 hardest hit

(The Hill) President Obama criticized Republicans on Thursday for “the same old song and dance” on ObamaCare, vowing to “blow through” their criticisms to implement his signature healthcare law. [WATCH VIDEO]

Seeking to bolster his unpopular healthcare law in a speech from the White House, Obama contrasted positive headlines about the law’s effects with Republicans’ continued efforts to undermine the law and said his administration would plow ahead with full implementation.

Which is funny, considering that Obama has had to violate the law in pushing the employer mandate out a year from its legally scheduled start date of 1/1/2014. Unions are saying that Obamacare will shatter their benefits. The testing requirements for state exchanges could delay them. HHS and the other agencies involved, including the politicized IRS, are constantly missing their deadlines. Heck, they’re at 20,000 pages of regulations and still adding.

But, hey, Obama tells us that NY is the perfect example of costs coming down

The reason New York premiums are forecast to drop under Obamacare is that the state has required insurance companies to offer coverage to all applicants since 1993. This mandatory coverage has made New York’s insurance rates the highest in the nation, meaning that by adding the federal requirement that all humans not covered by a government program purchase insurance, the risk pool will expand and rates will drop.

Dr. Sreedhar Potarazu notes that this is like buying at a sale where the prices were already hyper-inflated

Ohio’s rates will be more typical of those experienced by consumers in the rest of the nation: Insurance regulators in Columbus are forecasting an 88 percent individual rate hike next year as those previously refused insurance or unable to afford it come into the system.

Democrats up for re-election should probably breathe easy: Obama rarely spends much time pushing anything. He gave a speech, he might spend a week or two pushing O-care (which is still just as unpopular as it was before it was passed), then forget about it. But, they do have to worry about the dreaded “pivot” close to voting time. Because more than half of Americans think Obamacare will make their lives worse. And

(Weekly Standard) A new Gallup poll of small-business owners indicates that Obamacare is having a dramatic and deleterious effect on Americans’ employment prospects.  More than 40 percent of small-business owners say that Obamacare has caused them to freeze hiring, while nearly a fifth say that it has caused them to cut existing workers.  According to the poll, 41 percent of small-business owners have frozen hiring, while 19 percent have “reduced the number of employees [they] have in [their] business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare]” (italics added).

But, hey, Republicans should thank Obama for giving them talking points as the 2014 mid-terms approach.