Stories Causing Atlas to Shrug, March 21, 2014 Edition | Insurance Ghettos, Botched Subsidies & Lesser Known Ultra-Confusing Subsidies

A Glitch In Obamacare Marketplace No One Noticed: Incorrect poverty-level guidelines are automatically telling what could be tens of thousands of eligible people they do not qualify for subsidized insurance raising the price of their insurance by thousands of dollars.

Half of callers to California's health insurance exchange in February and March couldn't get through and hung up without getting help, state figures show.

Republicans Considering Proposing High-Risk Pools––Health Insurance Ghettos.

Did you know that there are actually two different taxpayer subsidies for individuals in Obamacare?  In addition to the premium tax credit subsidies, cost-sharing subsidies will be available to individuals and families with incomes up to 250% of the federal poverty level. The cost-sharing subsidies reduce deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments for covered services such that those with the lowest incomes would pay only 6% of covered health care costs, scaling up to 27% for those at 250% of FPL.

  And nobody has any real clue as to how this is going to work:  

• [A]n enrollee with an income of 400 percent of the FPL will have a $2,000 deductible and be charged a $45 co-pay for each doctor visit, while an enrollee at 100 percent of the FPL will have no deductible and be charged only $3 for each doctor visit—even though both enrollees bought the same plan.

• [W]hen the government pays insurers to lower cost sharing to the point that some patients are charged less than the price of a sandwich for a visit to the doctor, and calling an ambulance could be cheaper than calling a taxi, insurers know that their only recourse is to limit their plans to covering a smaller group of low-cost providers.