Obamacare Security Breach

Much has been made, at least in some circles, of the vulnerability of your personal information

that will be filtered through the #Obamacare #datahub.

For the most part, the lame stream media has ignored this topic and when they have mentioned it they simply parrot what DC says indicating there is nothing to fear.

Security watchdogs know that hacking is a potential threat but most data breaches come from within, not outside the firewall.

That being said, the first known problem in the Obamacare #exchange has already been reported.

Two reviews are planned of MNsure, the state's new online health insurance exchange, after an employee accidentally distributed confidential information about more than 2,400 insurance agents.

A legislative panel and the legislative auditor said Friday they want more information about the breach. MNsure officials acknowledged mishandling private information. They said the employee sent an email to the office of an Apple Valley insurance broker on Thursday afternoon that contained Social Security numbers, names, business addresses and other identifying information.

LaCrosse Tribune

"Only" 2400 insurance agents.

No big deal, right?

If you buy from the Minnesota health insurance exchange, or any other exchange, how can you be 100% this won't happen to you?

Users of the exchanges will have to provide sensitive information, including Social Security numbers. The information will be sent to a federal hub to verify such things as citizenship and household income. The privacy of confidential data has been a long-time concern for some skeptics of the exchange.

"The people who believe in this are so driven that there's a sub-context of, `Just let us do our job and get as many people signed up as possible, and we'll pick up the debris later,'?" said Steve Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor who specializes in information technology related to the health industry.

Yes, the push is to sign as many up as quickly as possible. Get more people dependent on the government for free money.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention another option for purchasing your new Obamacare health insurance plan, and it does not involve the data hub or navigators who have had 3 days of training..

Buy OFF exchange through a licensed insurance professional.

This Sceptered Isle, Part DCIV

From the Telegraph of London on 9/11: 

"Death rates in NHS hospitals are among the highest in the western world, shock figures revealed yesterday. British patients were found to be almost 50 per cent more likely to die from poor care than those in America."

Hat tip to Tim Worstall's enjoyable blog, which generally focuses on economics.

The Telegraph article also cites this comment from a U.K. Professor Sir Brian Jarman, who is considered a globally-recognised expert on hospital performance:

"I expected us to do well and was very surprised we didn’t do well – but there is no means of denying the results as they are absolutely clear."

Paul Krugman famously attempted to pre-empt this kind of factual finding several years ago, when he declared  "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."

Shucks, a school child knows facts cannot be both absolutely true and absolutely false.   Facts are facts, and in that sense are not political.

Yet in real life the debate over centralized government control of the medical care system rages on, in many cases fueled by expert disagreement over whether facts are true or false.

HHS Wants You to Meet Jamie

Continuing their ongoing effort to "educate" people on PPACA, HHS has introduced us to Jamie. Jamie is a 27 year old college graduate. She has been working at the coffee shop for four-and-a-half years and has never made more than $20,000 in a year.

Self admittedly, she really "has no plan...but that's just how her life has worked out." She hasn't been to the doctor since her junior year of high school. If she ever got really ill or injured she couldn't afford to pay for treatment. She doesn't have any savings and struggles to get by with all of her current bills.

For Jamie life with health insurance will provide her with "comfort and stability and safety". She's very eager to sign up for subsidized insurance.

Starting October 1st (maybe?) Jamie will be able to get the health insurance she so desires. Here is her scenario after running through the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator:

1. Purchase a Silver Plan: Cost to Jamie is $1,021 per year. She will also qualify for MOOP (Max Out Of Pocket) assistance under this plan which will lower her worst case scenario to $2250.
2. Purchase a Bronze Plan:  Cost to Jamie is $480 per year. However, if she takes this option she will not qualify for MOOP assistance and will face a worst case scenario of $6350.
3. Stay without insurance and pay Uncle Sam a "shared responsibility payment" of roughly $200 and role the dice that she will stay healthy.

I wonder what option Jamie will choose? Surely her Navigator will explain all of this and the implications behind each option.

Cavalcade of Risk #192: Call for submissions

Nancy Germond hosts next week's Cav. Entries are due by Monday (the 16th).

To submit your risk-related post, just click here to email it.

You'll need to provide:

■ Your post's url and title
■ Your blog's url and name
■ Your name and email
■ A (brief) summary of the post

PLEASE remember: ONLY posts that relate to risk (not personal finance tips and the like). And please only submit if you are willing to link back to the carnival if your submission is accepted.

What a Waste of Time

For the last several months agents have been working on educating ourselves and our clients on the various administrative atrocities of PPACA. The latest one is the so called "Notice of Exchanges". The notice is a three page document that essentially all employers must provide all employees about the Health Insurance Marketplace. The notice is to "assist" people as they evaluate options for health insurance products they are being forced to purchase in 2014.

My guess is that I have over 40 hours put into developing a plan of action for distributing the notices to my clients. Even yesterday Hank and I were exchanging emails on this topic. On top of my time, many hours have been put in across our professional organization in determining and defining things like minimum value standard and affordability.

According to the original draft, the notice was supposed to be sent out by March 1, 2013, but then there was a delay. So, now the notice must be distributed no later than October 1, 2013. The DOL guidelines state that non compliance will result in a $100 per employee per day fine. So you can see why we have such a sense of urgency behind this matter.

This came September 11, 2013 at 4:55PM. In a frequently asked questions release the DOL determined that while the notice should be distributed there are no fines or penalties for failing to provide the notice. So in the course of a couple of months the government has gone from "we will fine you" to "meh, no big deal".

Just another one of our great government efficiencies...

Chickens, Roosting

Although the ObamaTax was heavily promoted by various unions, it appears that buyer's remorse is inexorably setting in:

"The AFL-CIO on Wednesday approved a resolution critical of parts of [the ObamaTax] ... The strongly worded resolution says ... will drive up the costs of union-sponsored health plans to the point that workers and employers are forced to abandon them."

Oh, methinks that ship sailed some time ago.

But not to worry, the new health insurance Exchanges will provide a safe landing for union members (and regular folks), so there's a silver lining.

Or maybe not:

"Obamacare is likely to have a "rocky" enrollment start on October 1 in some U.S. states, because of ongoing technology challenges facing new online health insurance exchanges"

Oh.

According to consulting firm Leavitt Partners (a Utah-based consulting firm that "has been involved in the design and development of some state exchanges and tracks exchange progress nationwide"), "not a single state appears to be completely ready" for the roll-out, scheduled to begin in less than 3 weeks.

And remember, final security testing has been put off until (literally) the last minute, so October 1st should prove, um, interesting.

Obama to blow up cost of Drug Plans

The problem we have when people like Obama and his apostles write sweeping reform is they have no clue how the system works which leads to all sorts of unintended consequences. We have a doozy of one coming.

Large Employers and self funded plans must comply with the out of pocket (OOP) cap. For 2014 they can have separate caps if, for example, an Rx plan is administered separate from a medical plan; in 2015 they must be combined. Currently that cap is $6,350 for an individual.

Lets look at a real world situation:  we have a client with a member taking Xyrem. It cost $9,000 per month or $108,000 per year. Plan has a 20% co-pay currently so the plan pays $86,400 and the member pays $21,600.

Except the member doesn't really pay $21,600. Like most Brand name drugs Xyrem has an assistance program, the manufacturer increases the price then refunds the member some portion of their liability. In this case the member pays $35 per month; that is correct, they only pay $$420.00 a year of their $21,600 co-insurance. The pharmaceutical company writes off the rest.

Under Obama's ingenious plan though, once we show the member was liable for $6,350 we need to start paying it at 100%. Now my client will be spending $101,650 per year. That extra $15,250, is pure profit to the pharmaceutical company. In Obama's world that apparently translates into affordability.

And for the member, their OOP for the year, thanks to Pharmaceutical games, is a whopping $35.

In case you think this is an isolated problem: while not all Rx cost this much, almost every brand name drug has a similar program.

Health Wonk Review - Big Data edition

The delightfully-named Tinker Ready hosts this week's round-up of wonky posts, with a major emphasis on the role of data, its collection and application. As always, you're sure to find something interesting and new.

Another One (Thousand) Bites the Dust

As Nate noted some months ago, the Medical Device Tax has put a crimp in the medical R&D sector. The latest casualties of this component of the ObamaTax are the 1,000 soon-to-be-former employees of Michigan-based Stryker.

Adding insult to injury, the beleagured firm also owes Uncle Sugar some $100 million just from this year, and it's estimated to "cost the company fully 20 percent of its total research and development investments."

Train. Wreck.

9/11, 12 Years On

Seven years ago, we participated in the "Project 2,996" campaign to remember and honor those killed in 9/11. Today, on the 12th anniversary of that terrible day, we reprise our original post, to which I will append this prayer:

Baruch atah Adonai, dayan ha-emet ... Blessed are you, oh G-d, the righteous judge.

[Originally posted 9/11/2006]
As regular InsureBlog readers know, my better half has long maintained that “there are no coincidences.” That is, she believes that everything happens for a reason, although we may not be aware just what that reason is.

As for me, I’ve gradually become 90% convinced that she’s right on this (in everything else, of course, she’s 100% right). But one evening, a few weeks ago, that all changed.

I have a confession: My name is Henry, and I’m a news junkie. It is my habit to stay up way too late reading news blogs. Which I was doing several weeks ago, when I came across an item about one man’s extraordinary effort to harness the power of the blogosphere, in tribute to our fellow Americans who died in The Towers, exactly five years ago today.

The concept was deceptively simple: 2996 victims, 2996 blogs, each one remembering a single person. Bloggers were invited to sign up, and each was assigned – at random – one name.

Stop for a moment, and consider this: one blogger, reading one news item, decides it’s the right thing to do, signs up, and is assigned the name of a person he’s never even heard of, let alone met. We’ll come back to this shortly.

And so I was assigned the name of Jerome Robert Lohez, given a photo of him, and told the briefest of biographical information: age 30, lived in Jersey City, New Jersey.

That was it. A name, a face, a place.

The assignment was simple: On September 11, post his name and picture.

But I’m a news junkie, and that wasn’t good enough. I had to know more about Jerome. So I Googled his name (hey, why not?) and came across a site that CNN put together in December of ’01. It had pictures and names, of course, but I also learned that Jerome, born in France, married Dening Wu some three years before The Towers fell.

One month before The Towers fell, Jerome got his Green Card, and the happy couple flew to Europe to celebrate with his family. When they got back, two days before The Towers fell, Jerome told Dening “Only in New York do we have so much sunshine."

That was Sunday, September 9, 2001.

On Tuesday morning, he left for work. And The Towers fell.

And now we've come full circle: One. Random. Name.

Jerome didn’t just work in The Towers. He worked for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield. He worked in the insurance industry.

90% doesn’t cut it anymore.

Thank you, Jerome, for the lives you touched, the joy you brought, your love for New York and America, and for the privilege of paying you tribute.

Au revoir, Monsieur Lohez, au revoir.

What Will Congress Do?

By now we all have heard about Congress and their staffers being removed from the Federal Health Plan and being placed into exchanges marketplaces. Mike did a post on it here. We also know that the Office of Personnel Management has determined that they can still contribute to the employees premiums. This is a BFD when other employers are not allowed to do the same.

Here is another BFD that hasn't gotten any attention. Exchanges marketplaces are only available to people up through age 64. So what does OPM plan to do with the 140+ members of Congress (38 Senators and 106 House) who are over age 65?

But Will You Like The [Private Exchange] Insurance You Keep?

I recall hearing Obama say a couple of different things about "keeping your insurance" - -

    --"if you like your insurance plan you can keep it".  That's true if your plan claimed grandfathered status so that essentially current coverage is locked into place  until the end of time.  And it's only true after including the additional coverage (and cost) that ACA requires all health plans to include - even those claiming grandfathered status. So the law does not in fact grant an unfettered choice to "keep" the plan you like.  My opinion: Obama's  statement was carefully crafted to misdirect people about the intended effects of the law.
  
    --"nothing in the law will require you to change your insurance".   I think narrowly and technically that may also be true.  What Obama left unsaid is that the law does place requirements on insurance companies and other plan sponsors that may oblige them - or incentivize them, or permit them the latitude - to alter offerings or policy terms that WILL result in losing your current coverage, even if you like it.  My opinion: Obama's remark was another carefully crafted statement designed to misdirect people about the intended effects of the law.

Those are some of the reasons I think few people will be able to keep their existing insurance for long, even if they like it. 

So what will eventually replace your insurance?  Today Federal and State Exchanges are getting all the attention.  But will they replace group insurance?  That is, will they replace the coverage most people have now?  Maybe not.  Maybe new entities, the so-called private exchanges, will become major players. 

Recently IBM announced that it intends to adopt Towers-Watson's private exchange "ExtendHealth" for some of its retirees.  GE, Time-Warner and other large employers are doing, or considering doing, the same thing.

 At the same time a number of insurance companies have announced they intend to form their own private, proprietary insurance exchanges.  How might these private exchanges transform group insurance for employees and retirees ?

For example, Aetna "[President Mark]Bertolini is pushing Aetna down the ice to where he believes the company and the industry are headed. Employers may eventually stop providing insurance, he predicts, and Americans, whether they like it or not, will have to shop for, buy, and manage their own health policies"

The consulting firm Accenture predicts that

"Private health insurance exchanges will rapidly upend insurance purchasing for many of the 170 million people who receive benefits through their employer. "

For private exchanges to become major players, private businesses, Taft-Hartley plans, and other group insurance sponsors would have to transfer their benefits administrative duties to the private exchanges.  Based on reports so far, it appears a safe bet that many, if not most would be willing to do just that.  I think it's likely that the private exchanges will become major players.  

So it seems to me the game may already be in the late innings while most people are still milling around buying their popcorn and scorecards, and looking for their seats. 

Yet Another Obamacare Fine

Just when you thought you had heard it all, another Obamacare fine comes along. This one

impacts employers with only 1 employee.

If you own a business, including self employed, and have annual revenues of $500,000 or more, you have to tell your employee(s), in writing, about Obamacare exchanges.

Beginning Oct. 1, any business with at least one employee and $500,000 in annual revenue must notify all employees by letter about the Affordable Care Act’s health-care exchanges, or face up to a $100-per-day fine. The requirement applies to any business regulated under the Fair Labor Standards Act, regardless of size. Going forward, letters are to be distributed to any new hires within 14 days of their starting date, according to the Department of Labor.

Fox Business

Obamacare fine. $100 per day.

Ouch.

“It’s a steep fine—when you start tallying up all of the costs, businesses need to start figuring out ‘am I better off just not offering coverage and paying the penalty?’” 

Another unintended consequence of Obamacare?

If you are the only employee in your company, send yourself a letter notifying you of your right to buy a health insurance policy on the exchange or be prepared to pay an Obamacare fine.

Kiddie Dent

One of the ObamaTax core benefits is pediatric dental care. As we've pointed out, at least some of that care is ripe for abuse, but at least some carriers are looking for ways to minimize the damage.

Superior Dental Care is a regional dental carrier with whom we have a few cases; they've just announced their new "kids' plans" which are designed to "help clients that are domiciled in Ohio fulfill Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirements by covering the dental Essential Health Benefits (EHB's)."

These plans, available for covered "children" through age 18, are available for small groups (under 50 lives) that have opted to carve out the pediatric dental requirement from their group medical plan.

It's nice to see carriers "thinking outside the bun" on these types of benefits. Whether or not these plans will be of value remains to be seen (they're still in development, but expected to be on the street by October 1st), but at least we're seeing some positive reactions to the train wreck.

The Peach State Sabotages Obamacare

According to local Socialist Jay Bookman, the REPUBLICAN's in Georgia are doing their best

to sabotage Obamacare.

How dastardly.

Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgeons recently bragged about "doing everything in our power to be an obstructionist" in the implementation of Obamacrap.

Hudgens went on to give an example of that obstructionist behavior, this one involving so-called “navigators” who are being hired to guide customers through the process of buying health insurance on marketplaces, or exchanges, set up under the federal program.

“We have passed a law that says that a navigator, which is a position in that exchange, has to be licensed by our Department of Insurance,” Hudgens said. “The ObamaCare law says that we cannot require them to be an insurance agent, so we said fine, we’ll just require them to be a licensed navigator. So we’re going to make up the test, and basically you take the insurance agent test, you erase the name, you write ‘navigator test’ on it.”

AJC

Think about this for a moment.

Navigators will have minimal training (40 hours in the class room) and following that will be required to take a proficiency exam.

Navigators are charged with collecting Social Security numbers, personal information,  income and tax information as part of the financial colonoscopy to determine if you qualify for a taxpayer funded subsidy. That process is estimated to take up to 45 minutes and can involved a 26 page application.

Next the navigators are expected to explain your health insurance options, including drug formulary's and PPO networks.

With that kind of responsibility, I would hope they would have more knowledge about the process than someone in the Hi-Fi department at WalMart.

 why would you take pride in making it harder for Georgians with pre-existing conditions to get the insurance coverage that had previously been denied to them, and that might save them from potential bankruptcy or even death? Why would you block the federal government from offering Medicaid coverage to more than 600,000 lower-income Georgia citizens, coverage that would allow them to compensate hospitals and doctors now forced to treat them for free? Why refuse to educate uninsured Georgians on the fact that they will soon be eligible for subsidies to help them pay for health insurance, as other states are doing?

That's a lot of "why's" Bookman.

Let's take this one at a time. I will go slowly and maybe you can follow.

MOST people had access to health insurance before Obamacrap. They could obtain coverage through their job, COBRA and the state assignment system after COBRA expired.

And almost everyone could qualify for individual health insurance unless they waited until their health changed and tried to buy it.

As for your Medicaid expansion argument, in case you have not noticed, we are in a recession. Not a recovery, a recession that has gone on longer than it should have if Washington hadn't bungled everything.

Medicaid expansion in Georgia would have cost the state an estimated $4 billion over the next 10 years. That's $4 billion the state does not have and unlike DC, we can't print money or borrow from the Chinese.

Your last observation is pure lunacy.

The state is not refusing to educate people on Obamacrap. Rather, the insurance commissioner is trying to make sure the navigators have at least minimal proficiency in this 2300 page train wreck.

When you consider the folks who work at H & R Block have 2 months of training and 85% of the returns they prepare are less than 4 pages I think expecting a navigator to have 40 hours of classroom instruction and passing a proficiency exam isn't too much to ask.

Blue Grass Blues

Our friend David Adams reports that Kentucky's Insurance Department has approved Humana's 80% rate hike on individual plans. Of that, 60% is directly related to the ObamaTax Guaranteed Issue requirement.

But remember, rates will decrease by 3000%.

Bay State Irony

From the home of RomneyCare (which begat the ObamaTax), we see the effects of the train wreck:

"New ACA Medicare Payroll Tax Hits Massachusetts, $1.7 Billion Over 10 Years"

According to a new report from the folks at the Pioneer Institute, some Bay Staters will see their annual Medicare payroll tax burden jump over 60%. They've even figured out how the new taxes will affect famous (and not-so-famous) Massachusetts sports figures. For example, Tom Brady will pay an additional half-a-million dollars in new taxes, while David Ortiz can anticipate an increase of almost $130,000.

Talk about a foul ball.

Oh, the folks at the PIU also point out that, starting this year, "the federal government will require all employers to withhold an additional 0.9 percent in Medicare payroll tax (increasing the tax rate from the current 1.45 percent to a permanent 2.35 percent). Unlike "basic" Medicare taxes, this additional tax is paid solely by the employee."

But I'm sure we'll get our money's worth, right?

Right?!

Exchange Subsidy: Feature or Bug?

FoIB Brian D offers this poser:

Many "mature" workers have resisted early retirement because it's been so difficult to find health insurance due to age and/or pre-existing health issues. 

Given that the ObamaTax premiums are required to be lower for older workers (and higher for young'uns), and since ObamaTax-compliant plans are guaranteed issue, how many folks in their early 60's will now feel comfortable bailing out of the workforce, taking their experience and institutional memory with them?

A Half-Finding about Physician Incomes

Bloomberg News carried this fascinating article on September 2:

  

“Female physicians in the U.S. continue to earn less than their male counterparts, with the pay gap widening during the past two decades to more than $50,000 annually in 2010, researchers said.”

The article suggests that because of limitations in the source data the researchers “couldn’t adjust for a physician’s specialty or practice type.”   Thus the study would seem fatally flawed.

 But then the researchers go on to conjecture:

". . .  or do female physicians have less opportunity to enter higher paying specialties despite having similar preferences as male physicians?”

I think that's a reasonable conjecture, yet I wonder.  For one thing, what incentives are there for hospitals and group practices to hire male physicians at substantially higher compensation than equally-qualified female physicians?  For another, doesn't managed care in fact provide pretty much the opposite incentive?

I also wonder because worry has been expressed for years about a growing shortage of physicians in the U.S.    This shortage will become much worse if predictions turn out to be true that the ACA substantially increases the number of patients (by increasing the number of insured people) while the number of physicians increases only nominally.   This implies a lot more physicians will be needed than are likely to be in practice over the next few years, so demand for physicians would soar.  Don’t these circumstances actually increase women physicians’ bargaining power?

So I wonder - what's the mechanism, exactly, under which equally-qualified female physicians are being denied opportunities that exist, and that the female physicians seek?  

As it stands, the article reports only a half-finding: it's certainly true that there's an overall gap in median incomes.  But the research does not explain why this might be so.  Clearly more research is needed.

Keep in mind that statistically, it’s treacherous to rely on an overall result, be it median or average.  My favorite example is that, on average, Americans have one testicle and one ovary.  While that's certainly true, don’t expect to meet any such American right soon.   

Rosh Hahannah 5774

Tonight marks the beginning of the 10 Days of Awe, as we welcome the New Year. Although this is a very serious time,  it's also an opportunity to celebrate and have a little fun.

One enduring tradition is dipping apples in honey; the apple represents the world, the honey represents sweetness. Typically, apple slices and a bowl of honey are passed around; everyone takes a slice, takes a dunk, recites a prayer and takes a bite.

And then there's this:

Cavalcade of Risk #191: Death by Shower edition

Julie Ferguson hosts this week's clean - but potentially deadly - roundup of risk-related bloggetry.

Bring a fresh towel.

NB: We've still got some Fall hosting slots available - just email us to claim yours!

Obamacare - Sitting on the Sidelines

HHS is spending $700 million of YOUR money to teach you something your parents did not. In

an effort to save Obamacare the government is hoping to convince young invincible's it is time to grow up, act like an adult and assume responsibility for your actions.

people like Kay Lamberti, age 29, a former nursing assistant now working a temp job in Providence, R.I., aren't cheering for the health exchanges just yet. Ms. Lamberti has gone for five years without health insurance and doesn't plan on getting it until she gets a higher paying job.

"It's not in the budget," says Lamberti. "I'm pretty healthy at the moment and I know things could happen, having had worked in the healthcare field, but I can't afford it based on that chance."

Christian Science Monitor

Rational decision (in her mind). Why buy something you don't need? Health insurance isn't sexy like the iPhone 5.

"The fear in the Obama administration is you're going to get the sick people signing up and the nonsick not signing up and that would be a disaster. The insurance pools won't work," 

A failure in the making?

You mean like PCIP?

Officials expect that if 7 million uninsured enroll in the marketplaces this year, 2 million to 2.5 million of those need to be young adults in order to make the insurance rates work.

Roughly 30% of Obamacare enrollee's need to be young, healthy people.

Even if they hit those numbers, I doubt that will be enough to make it work.

Health insurance carriers know that 20% of insureds generate about 80% of large claims. If Obamacare is to work they probably need something like 5 million healthy people to sign up if they truly do get 7 million enrolled overall.

Yeah, this is going to be interesting.

The Promise of Obamacare

About that Union label...

Back in the Spring, we noted that "some unions leaders have grown frustrated and angry about what they say are unexpected consequences of the [ObamaTax]."

Unexpected. Heh.

Fast forward a few months, and we learn that this anger and frustration has brought forth this result:

"[T]he 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation's largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen cited Obamacare" as one of the two primary rationales (the other being immigration "reform" which, perhaps not coincidentally, will heavily impact the train-wreck, as well).

Never say die, though, exclaims HHS Secretary Shecantbeserious, and out come the big guns:

"[A]ccording to a report from InsideHealthPolicy, the Obama administration is considering offering insurance subsidies—intended for the uninsured—to labor union members who already have employer-sponsored coverage."

As the indispensable Avik Roy points out, folks covered under their employer's group plan aren't eligible for subsidies (although I would add that, technically, no one in states with Federally-run Exchanges are, either, but that hasn't stopped Ms Kathleen from handing them out willy-nilly).

The upshot is that funds that were earmarked for those previously unemployed will now be diverted to the more favored constituency (union members). Seems fair, no?

And it what is certainly "coincidental," grocery behemoth Krogers is following the UPS route [ed: very funny] and cutting off health bennies to its employees' spouses. But remember, "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan."

Or not.

HHS wants you to meet Lupita

 
 [In case you missed it, HHS also wants you to meet Howard]

Lupita and her nine year old daughter are uninsured. She works at a dental office as a dental assistant. She scrapes by every month trying to earn a few extra dollars by staying late just to make sure she and her daughter "have enough" at the end of the month. According to her story over at hhs.gov, she is really looking forward to the value Obamacare will bring to she and her daughter.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average income for a dental assistant is $33,470. Assuming she is making this amount, the cost for her to purchase insurance through the marketplace Exchange would equate to 5.41% of her income or $2,294 per year. While that will clearly be less than the full premium, for Lupita to make up the $191 of monthly income she will have to pick up an additional 140+ hours of work per year just to come close to breakeven.

There is an alternative: continue to go bare and only have to pay a tax; I mean "shared responsibility payment" of roughly $240.

Interesting Life Underwriting news

Little did I realize when I recently posted about a client that I was on the bleeding edge of a potential revolution in life insurance underwriting. But that seems to be the case, as "new research by Timetric [shows that] three key technological developments have had a substantial impact on life insurance underwriting: automation, social media and big data."

[ed: gotta love "Big Data." Brent Spiner must be jealous]

Two items caught my eye:

First, that social media seems to be playing a larger role in detecting insurance fraud (we tend to see this more in the disability and workers comp fields, of course). But it strikes me as a little creepy that underwriters access FaceBook, Twitter and the like as part of their process. On the one hand, this makes sense: you checked "non-smoker," but there you are, tagged at a party, with a joint or a Marlboro. On the other hand, it seems to me that this comes awfully close to cyber-stalking. One supposes that the message is to be careful regarding your on-line presence.

The second is the idea of "Big Data." As we've seen from the recent NSA scandal(s), the idea that you have any real data privacy is quaint. Unlike Facebook posts, though, there's little you can do to control what's in your "file." And of course, to the extent that the privacy notice you signed allows, most of that info is legally accessible by the folks who are, after all, potentially on the hook for major dollars.

Brave new world, indeed.