Tennessee -- Ground Zero For ObamaCare Implosion; The War-Time, Nobel Prize-Winning President -- October 6, 2016

Updates

October 12, 2016: wow, this is quite a story. Remember, Minnesota was the most visible among states jumping on the ObamaCare bandwagon. Governor Dayton loved ObamaCare. Now, not so much. Governor Dayton: Affordable Care is no longer affordable.  Geico Rock 2016 award nominee. Even if he does not win "best in show," he will most likely win the honorary award.

Minnesota’s Democratic governor said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act is “no longer affordable” for many, a stinging critique from a state leader who strongly embraced the law and proudly proclaimed health reform was working in Minnesota just a few years ago.

Gov. Mark Dayton made the comments while addressing questions about Minnesota’s fragile health insurance market, where individual plans are facing double-digit increases after all insurers threatened to exit the market entirely in 2017. He’s the only Democratic governor to publicly suggest the law isn’t working as intended.

Dayton’s comments follow former President Bill Clinton’s saying last week that the law was “the craziest thing in the world” before he backtracked.

“The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable for increasing numbers of people,” Dayton said, calling on Congress to fix the law to address rising costs and market stability.

Much more at the link.

Original Post

 

I've seen numerous stories along the same line, but this may be one even folks in Hillary's camp can understand. In the WSJ today, an op-ed on page A15 -- ObamaCare's meltdown has arrived. Not linked; easy to google.

Helloooooo! Knock-knock, knock-knock. Hellooooo! Anyone home? Two new nominees for the Geico Rock Award 2016: Andrew Ogles, Tennessee state director, and Luke Hilgemann, CEO of Americans for Prosperity. The implosion began two years ago. I guess the folks at ground zero are now just climbing out of the rubble and writing about it. Wow.

The lede:

Tennessee is ground zero for ObamaCare's nationwide implosion. Late last month the state insurance commissioner approved premium increases of up to 62% in a bid to save the exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act.

"I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near collapse," the Tennessee insurance commissioner said.

Very. Near. Collapse.

Then last week BlueCross/BlueShield of Tennessee announced it would leave Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville.

BC/BS said they had experienced losses approaching $500 million over the course of three years on ACA plans. This is unsustainable.

And it just gets worse from there. I don't think I will even link the article. As noted earlier, only the folks climbing out of the ObamaCare rubble are learning about this for the first time.

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The War Time President

This is a link to an AP story. The bottom line: President Obama would not be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize at this time.

AP tried to spin the story, suggesting that not everything Obama has done has been "bad." For example, "He is the commander-in-chief who pulled more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops out of harm's way in Iraq, ...." except that Obama's self-planned vacuum resulted in, everyone agrees, with the rise of ISIS. In response to  this "JV team," according to the AP, President Obama "also began a slow trickle of US soldiers back in." Incredibly bad policy to begin with, losing a war that had been won, and then, a response that was way to late, way to weak. (We won't even talk about Syria; and, of course, there are now pundits in Russia  who suggest a nuclear war between the US and Russia is closer than ever.)

I did not read the whole story, so I may have missed it, but it appears that the AP failed to note that President Obama is the first US president in history to have been at war the entire time he was president: and he was president for two full terms (assuming he doesn't find a constitutional loophole or create a constitutional crisis to extend his presidency, and his wars, which is not beyond the pale, if Trump has more electoral votes than Hillary at 11:00 p.m. Central Time, election night).