The O’Care debacle has the fat cats in the insurance industry with their collective backs to the wall. In reality, all that lies ahead for this greedy and miscalculating crowd is the firing squad. Here at National Review Jonah Goldberg lays out the plight of America’s insurers. It is hard for me to conclude that a full-scale revolt is not at hand. And the fault rests largely with O’Care itself, not that the insurance moguls were not licking their chops awaiting some form of O’Care bonanza.

When will the insurers revolt?

It’s a question that’s popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We’re talking about pinstriped insurance-company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary zeal, actuaries rank slightly behind embalmers.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder how much more these people are willing to take. Even an obedient dog will bite if you kick it enough. Since Obamacare’s passage, the administration has constantly moved the goalposts on the industry. For instance, when the small-business mandate proved problematic in an election year, the administration delayed it, putting its partisan political needs ahead of its own policy and the needs of the industry.

But the insurers kept their eyes on the prize: huge guaranteed profits stemming from the diktat of the health-insurance mandate. When asked how he silenced opponents in the health industry during his successful effort to socialize medicine, Aneurin Bevan, creator of the British National Health Service, responded, “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”

Read more here.

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Indeed Obamacare could bankrupt federal and state governments. So far only 1.6 million Americans have signed up for O’Care. How many have paid is quite another matter.  Of the 1.6 million signups, an unimaginable 1.46 million have signed up for Medicaid. I don’t know about where you live, but where I live doctors will not take Medicaid patients. The doctors are not being unfair. Rather, the federal government simply does not compensate Medicaid doctors adequately to allow the registering of Medicaid patients. It’s because of this roadblock that Medicaid patients end up in hospital emergency rooms.

A number of years ago I had to wait many hours in an emergency room before I could get a doctor to look at my then two-year-old grandson who could not see and was in pain. I learned my lesson and today would call a private ambulance for the trip to the hospital. Ambulance patients, I have learned, go to the head of the line. And yes, an ambulance is one expensive ride, which has to be paid out of pocket. Debbie and I, for an annual upfront fee, have joined an excellent concierge medical group. Concierge medicine is the new wave. No way we would be without our fine coverage.

Here Cato Institute scholar Michael Tanner brings you all the details on the Obamacare Medicaid debacle. Next fall, the O’Care voting politicians up for re-election will be called on the carpet for what must be their government service execution.

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Here it comes, and I cannot believe the Obama team did not expect the meltdown. There is going to be a dramatic pick up in policy cancellations as premiums for “scrap metal” grade, qualified O’Care policies come with strato costs. Healthy young people will stay away in droves, while the sick , the lame and the money-less pour in. Sound like good math to you if you are an insurance company? As small businesses renew policies like Blue Cross, they are going to get crucified in 2014. It’s all baked into the O’Care rancid cake. The insurance companies, of course, know all this and are in a terrific bind. And the Obama crowd knows the O’Care ship is taking on a lot of water. Ships taking on water sink unless the tide is turned. This tide will not turn and the problems will magnify fast as the new year gets under way. Want all the details from a guy who is most often right on the money? Read Michael Boskin’s analysis with care and then ask your Democrat senator what in the world he or she was thinking ramming this beast down the throat of constituents.

The White House is claiming that the Healthcare.gov website is mostly fixed, that the millions of Americans whose health plans were canceled thanks to government rules may be able to keep them for another year, and that in any event these people will get better plans through ObamaCare exchanges. Whatever the truth of these assertions, those who expect better days ahead for the Affordable Care Act are in for a rude awakening. The shocks—economic and political—will get much worse next year and beyond. Here’s why:

The “sticker shock” that many buyers of new, ACA-compliant health plans have experienced—with premiums 30% higher, or more, than their previous coverage—has only begun. The costs borne by individuals will be even more obvious next year as more people start having to pay higher deductibles and copays.

If, as many predict, too few healthy young people sign up for insurance that is overpriced in order to subsidize older, sicker people, the insurance market will unravel in a “death spiral” of ever-higher premiums and fewer signups. The government, through taxpayer-funded “risk corridors,” is on the hook for billions of dollars of potential insurance-company losses. This will be about as politically popular as bank bailouts.

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Bitcoin is a speculative corner of the market. To get a better understanding of it read this article by Brian Wesbury in the WSJ:

Right now, total cash and deposits in the U.S. banking system (the M2 money supply), is roughly $11 trillion. Assuming 21 million Bitcoins are mined and they become an accepted currency, each one could be worth as much as $524,000. This is a massive potential appreciation from their current level.

However, the list of companies that accept Bitcoin as payment for actual transactions make up what I estimate to be less than one-hundredth of a percent of all spending, or GDP. Since money gets its value from the goods, services and assets that it can purchase, a Bitcoin is currently worth only 0.01% of its true potential, or about $52.40.

Bitcoins require storage space (in a computer), power to run the computer (electricity), security (from hacking), and computational power (serious encryption) on both sides of a transaction. There are firms that act as middlemen in Bitcoin transactions, and firms that make a market in Bitcoins, but they are new and have no serious financial track record. Many Bitcoin transactions facilitate illegal commerce. The Bitcoin world is not friction-free, or clean.

And is it really true that no more than 21 million Bitcoins can be produced? Hackers keep getting better, and the temptation to expand the supply of money has been powerful (and profitable, for the issuer) since the time of the Romans. These costs and questions all impact the value of a Bitcoin substantially.

To become a real alternative currency, Bitcoins must be recognized by a majority of businesses and consumers. They must be as safe, or safer, than currency issued by a central bank. And they must be transportable. Currently, the Bitcoin does not meet any of these requirements, and this is why it is trading for much less than its actual convertible U.S. dollar value.

If you believe Bitcoin in time will become an alternative to the world’s currencies, there are huge potential profits as the value of a Bitcoin rises to $524,000—or higher if drug dealers and other nefarious users are willing to pay a premium for anonymity.

But to be truly successful, Bitcoins have to win the battle of money on all levels of competition and that is a very high hurdle to clear.

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Republicans in the House are supposed to control the big spenders in the Senate and the White House. But by agreeing to the Ryan-Murray budget, they've destroyed the savings won through the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA). If House Republicans did nothing, the BCA capped discretionary spending at $967 billion in 2014. The Ryan-Murray deal increases it to $1.012 trillion-a $45 billion increase in 2014. And that’s only the beginning as Cato expert Chris Edwards explains here:

On paper, the new budget deal only lifts current spending caps for 2014 and 2015, and the caps in later years remain in place. The problem is that appropriators of both parties never sleep; they are not going to go into hibernation for the next decade contented with current spending limits.

Instead, it’s a sporting challenge for appropriators to try and raise spending every single year. The ten-year numbers mean nothing to them — especially now that they know Republican leaders will probably cave in easily next time. That’s why Rep. Paul Ryan’s comment yesterday that the new deal “reduces the deficit” is meaningless.

The deal does not reduce the deficit this year — it hikes it $45 billion, give or take some change in the unlikely event first-year savings do materialize.

If this deal is enacted, a precedent will have been set, and the big spenders in both parties will sadly gain even more clout going into future budget negotiations. Blowing through existing budget caps by $45 billion this year could set the stage for spending hundreds of billions of dollars more over the coming decade.

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I’ll be posting my rebuttal to this video next week. — Dick 

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