It’s bad enough we have the jumbled manipulation of “talking points” designed to confuse consumers about Obamacare without the added ingredient of presumably “neutral” polls taking the lead in lies.
The latest culprit, in my opinion is KFF.ORG which published its “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: April 2015,” (4/21/2015, Bianca DiJulio, Jamie Firth and Mollyann Brodie) where they’ve got charts and all proclaiming: “Few Aware the Law is Costing Less Than Originally Estimated,” referring to the CBO’s March publication. Nice charts, nice statement EXCEPT it's not true.
Unfortunately, the poll is asking a question that they don’t know the answer to. According to the CBO in January of this year, we will NEVER know the costs of Obamacare from them because they’re restricting their calculation of costs to what the insurance-only provisions are costing, what the government is paying out on behalf of individuals and big surprise, yeah, the government’s managed to cut how much it’s paying for insureds. But in terms of COSTS including new Obamacare salaries, administrative costs and any other non-insurance government costs from the ACA? Surprise…we’ll never see those numbers.
The CBO states in January 2015, Publication, “As a result, CBO does not produce estimates of the budgetary effects of the ACA as a whole as part of the baseline process.” In fact, contrary to the misleading and inaccurate question and conclusion from Kaiser Family Foundation, the CBO stated: “Those estimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and do not reflect all of the act’s budgetary effects.” CBO publication 49892.
Is it really "MORAL" victory that regardless of what the federal government is spending on itself for new salaries, benefits, administration and management of Obamacare that the government is managing to trim the money it spends per person for the insurance-only provisions of money spent for premium assistance, cost-sharing, Medicaid?
That would be a new definition of “morality,” especially in lieu of the CBO’s March publication upon which Kaiser relies that states that Obamacare policies are projected to go up 8.5 percent per year for the years 2016 through 2018 (CBO, Publication 49973, page 21) for “TWO REASONS:” Reinsurance is being phased out (where government incentivizes cheaper health insurance plans by PAYING insurance plans that have insureds with higher costs of medical care AND because “Many plans will not be able to sustain…low provider payment rates or…narrow networks,” typical of Obamacare plans.
Since when is government saving money on individuals while sparing no expense on itself a victory, moral or otherwise? More importantly for the Kaiser pollsters, who mockingly asserted that "Only 8 percent correctly answered that the law is now costing the government less than originally estimated." Good for us! Though we can't be sure (because the government doesn't count money spent on itself to pay salaries, benefits, pensions for individuals to manage and administer Obamacare along with any other governmental functions)it seems likely 92 percent of us know more about Obamacare than the Kaiser pollsters.
