New ObamaCare Enrollment Report Shows Death Spiral Is Likely
...Why does this matter for the death spiral? Because so many enrollees choosing silver plans suggests that the risk pool may be sicker than is optimal. For enrollees at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level, silver plans tend to offer the most coverage for the lowest price. For persons under 250 percent FPL, ObamaCare offers help with copays and deductibles, but only if the consumer chooses a silver plan. The actuarial value for a silver plan is 70 percent (that is, a silver plan must, on average, cover 70 percent of a policyholder’s medical claims), but when the subsidies for cost-sharing are included, the actuarial value rises to between 73 and 94 percent. As one writer notes, “Why would someone opt for a silver-level plan over a cheaper bronze or catastrophic-level plan? The most plausible explanation is that the enrollee anticipates incurring significant medical expenses over the coming year, which is to say that he’s not healthy.” ...

Under Obamacare, People Must Be Broken of Their Preference for Choice
We have a new contender for most-telling-ever Obamacare quote this morning: “We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has.” That’s Marcus Merz, head of Minnesota health insurer PreferredOne, in a New York Times report on the increasing prevalence of narrow network health plans.

Merz is basically stating openly what the Obama administration won’t, which is that Obamacare is intentionally designed to narrow consumer choice and plan design within the health insurance market. The Obama administration doesn't want to say this because it is bad politics generally, and also because President Obama specifically and repeatedly promised that, under the law, people would be able to keep their choice of health plans and doctors, not that they would be broken of their preference for medical choice. But the law’s authors and administrators have a pretty good idea of what kind of health insurance they want you to have, and that’s the kind of insurance that you’re going to get....

2.45 Million Obamacare Enrollees Paid Their Premiums by April 15. Yay?
...Just 67 percent of Americans who purchased insurance through federal-facility ObamaCare exchanges have paid their premiums, according to information insurers participating in the program gave to Congress....

Big Increases in Obamacare Premiums and Deductibles Coming in November
...When Obamacare first rolled out last fall, the failure of the federal and state exchanges were only the first signs of disaster. Premiums spiked upward in both the individual and group markets, and insurers raised deductibles and narrowed provider networks to save themselves money. Millions of people lost their existing insurance plans in the individual market, and many ended up in plans that either didn’t fit or cost far more than they spent in the past....

The Challenge of Measuring Obamacare's Results
...The problem is that in addition to expanding health coverage, Obamacare also modified a variety of existing federal programs, and it was through those modifications that it achieved much of its deficit reduction. But those changes have not all been implemented as originally planned, and now the agency says it can no longer judge the complete fiscal effects. "Isolating the incremental effects of those provisions on previously existing programs and revenues four years after enactment of the Affordable Care Act is not possible," a budget office report said in April....

...But in April, The New York Times reported that the Census Bureau would be changing the way it asked about insurance status in what the Bureau describes as a "total revision to health insurance questions."

Researchers say that the old methodology significantly overstated the number of uninsured; the new questions will produce a lower number. That's convenient for Obamacare. But what it means is that it won't be possible to determine how much of the reduction is caused by the change in questions rather than by policy changes or other factors....

However Bad You Think the VA Scandal Is, It’s Worse. Much Worse.
...The problems at Veterans Affairs extend well beyond long wait lists, with a report Tuesday showing the department is plagued with poor care that has cost up to 1,000 veterans their lives and left taxpayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in malpractice settlements since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the problems detailed in the report by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are downright ghoulish. They include the case of a former security chief at a New York Veterans Affairs medical center whom the FBI arrested on charges of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder women and children....

• Female patients received unnecessary pelvic and breast exams from a sex offender....