DEATH BY NUMBERS: Bad News After Bad News on Obamacare Buries Udall

Remember that iconic scene in “Cool Hand Luke” when Paul Newman has to dig a ditch in the prison yard just to fill it back in? Just a complete exercise in futility.  We’re guessing Senator Mark Udall and President Obama have, and that it tickled them so much they decided to model their trillion-dollar Obamacare after it.

In a new Forbes article this week it was revealed a full 89% of enrollees in the Obamacare exchanges had been previously insured.  A law meant to expand insurance is really a funhouse of mirrors, where Udall and Obama cut 335,000 Coloradans’ health insurance, and then declare the law a success when those same people turn around and sign up for more costly health plans on the Obamacare exchanges.

In further humiliating news, it was revealed yesterday during House testimony that legislative analysts are expecting more people in Colorado to pay a health care fine then have to sign-up for the can’t-keep-my-doctor plans of Obamacare:

The legislative analysis guessed that about 254,700 adults in Colorado would pay federal fines next year for not getting coverage. That’s more than the 249,000 Coloradans projected to enroll in either Medicaid or a private health insurance plan. [the Peak emphasis]

Let’s keep the numbers rolling.  Ed Sealover over at the Denver Business Journal reports even though over a 100,000 people have been added to Medicaid doesn’t mean they’ll get to see a doctor anytime soon.

Adams, Denver and Arapahoe counties have the third-, fourth- and fifth-worst ratios of Medicaid enrollees to doctors who accept the lower-reimbursement insurance, all with less than one primary-care physician taking the insurance for every 2,400 enrollees.

And those numbers are likely to be exacerbated further as more people sign up for Medicaid. [the Peak emphasis]

The problem with Medicaid is the reimbursement rate is so low that most doctors usually lose money on each Medicaid patient they see.   When Medicaid patients don’t have access to doctors they end up going to ERs, increasing the number of people who use an ER by almost 40%!  Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to do away with the traffic jam that happens in ERs?

Meanwhile only 23% of the young healthy ones needed to sign up to keep premiums from rising have signed up.  #ThanksSenUdall