Coyote Blog

A while back, I pointed out this poll from some group called the Commonwealth Fund.  In mid-October, on average about 15-18 days into the exchange process, they polled a group of non-corporate-insured adults (e.g. individual market or uninsured) about whether they had visited an exchange and what had been their experience.

The finding that stood out to me was that 21% of the people they interviewed that said they had visited an exchange reported that they had signed up for a policy (from the wording of the question, this probably includes both private policies and Medicaid signups).

I thought this seemed crazy-high.  And now new data from the Administration is confirming it.   The Administration is reporting about 106,000 "selected a plan" in October -- a very generous definition since it includes people who put a plan in their shopping cart but did not purchase it.  Not a definition of a sale that Amazon.com would ever use.    Further, another 400,000 or so were "found eligible" for Medicaid, whatever that means though it sounds well short of "enrolled."  So call it generously 500,000 people by the end of October.  The other key bit we need is that the Administration is reporting about 27 million unique visitors to these sites.  So at best we are looking at 1.9% of exchange visitors kind-of-sort-of-maybe having done something that approaches being enrolled.

This puts the Commonwealth Fund polling an entire order of magnitude off, at 21% vs. 1.9%.  And remember their survey occurred in the middle of the month, when the web site was not even working, and one can assume that successful enrollments were back-end loaded in the month.  The CF was nice enough to respond to my emails but were unable to explain the discrepancy, other than the sample size was low making the results unreliable.  So why the hell do it, and then put out a press release?

One explanation for part of the discrepancy may be in those who have created user accounts (normally a trivial task on a private site but a Herculean accomplishment on Healthcare.gov) but have not actually purchased a plan.  The Obama Administration says that there are about a million of these, so in addition to the 1.9% that put a plan in their shopping cart, there are another 3.7% that created a user account and gave the Feds enough info to assess subsidy eligibility, but who have not selected a plan.  Remember, that this was the minimum hurdle the Obama Administration originally set even to see insurance plan prices, and is still the minimum hurdle to get a subsidy quote.  It will be interesting to see the conversion rate of people once they find they are not getting free stuff from Uncle Sugar.

Even so, this only adds up to 5.6% of people who visited the exchange and had any sort of success (in most cases far short of enrollment) at all.  Way short of 21%.  Remember that we you see "studies" like this in the future.

I sometimes here supporters of a certain regulation say "even big company X supports this regulation, so it must be a good idea."  But this is based on a faulty assumption, similar to that made by people who equate being pro-business in politics with being pro-free markets.  They are not the same thing.  As was said at the Cato blog:

Representatives of the business community frequently are the worst
enemies of freedom. They often seek special subsidies and handouts, and
commonly conspire with politicians to thwart competition (conveniently,
they want competition among their suppliers, just not for their own
products). Fortunately, most business organizations still tend to be -
on balance - supporters of limited government. But as the Wall Street Journal notes, some state and local chambers of commerce have become relentless enemies of good policy.

Incumbents of major industries very often shape regulation to their advantage, and to the disadvantage of consumers and smaller or new competitors.  For example, as one of the larger companies in my business, many of the regulations and restrictions I rail against in this blog actually help my business.  Licensing requirements, bonding requirements, insurance requirements, regulatory and reporting requirements, etc.  all tend to make it nearly impossible for new companies to enter the business to compete against me, and give a distinct advantage to the larger incumbent players.   I still vehemently oppose all that garbage, but I do so as a defender of capitalism and against what are probably the best interests of my company.

So when large companies like GE say that they are now on the global warming bandwagon and support government intervention in CO2 emissions and such, it is not an indicator that CO2 science is any good; it just means GE has decided that likely CO2 legislation will help its bottom line.  While GE is portrayed as someone who will get hurt by CO2 regulation but is reluctantly coming around to the science anyway, what it in fact really means is that GE has decided that global warming regulation can be shaped to its advantage, particularly if it can use its size and political muscle molding the details of that regulation.  Here is a great example, via Tom Nelson (the Instapundit of global warming skepticism)

But there is sure to be strong opposition to the bill, including from General Electric Co.

The
light bulb maker is developing a new generation of efficient
incandescent bulbs, said Kim Freeman, a GE spokeswoman in Louisville,
Ky.

By 2012, she said, GE will have an incandescent bulb that uses as little energy as the compact fluorescent bulbs sold today.

"We
would oppose any legislation that would ban a particular technology,"
she said. "Giving consumers more choices is the appropriate approach."

The
company supports the standards passed by Congress in December,
according to Freeman. That law requires bulbs to be 25 percent to 30
percent more efficient starting in 2012.

Read between the lines, and you see GE attempting to steer global warming legislation to its advantage.   The last paragraph goes a long way to explaining GE's support of the last energy bill (with substantial light bulb legislation), which GE might have been expected to oppose.  Because now we see that GE has a product sitting on the shelf ready for release that fits perfectly with the new mandate.  Assuming competitors don't have such a technology yet, the energy bill is then NOT a regulation of GE's product that they reluctantly bow to, but a mandate that allows GE to keep doing business but trashes their competition.  It is a market share acquisition law for GE.  On the other hand, GE says a total ban would be bad, because it would force CF bulbs to the forefront, where GE trails its competitors.  This is the cynical calculus of rent-seeking through regulation.  And it is all worthless, because high efficiency bulbs are one of the things that so clearly pay for themselves that consumers will make the switch for themselves without government mandates.

If you want to have mood lighting in your house that dims and doesn't turn everything a weird color, then go out and stock up on light bulbs today because the new energy bill just passed**.  I have already blogged plenty about the stupid stuff in this bill, but apparently Kevin Drum thinks its a good step.  I don't see how anyone of any political stripe can see this as a good bill.  Its just stupid in so many ways.  Yes, I understand as a libertarian, my energy bill would look like:

1. get out of the way

But I can for a moment place myself in a position where I would imagine being worried about CO2 and dependence on fossil fuels.  For someone who really cares about these things, here is what a rational energy plan would look like:

1. large federal carbon tax, offset by reduction in income and/or payroll taxes
2. streamlined program for licensing new nuclear reactors
3. get out of the way

** I personally have replaced most of the bulbs in my house, out of rational economic self-interest, with CF bulbs.  However, there are about 6 where CF's just won't do the job I need and about 6 more (3 above my shower and 3 outside) where current CF bulbs do not hold up to the moisture.   The desire by government to micro-manage me into using an inferior solution for these 12 locations is the same compulsion that has led to my not having a single toilet in my house that works  (the shower also sucked too until I figured out how to remove the government-mandated flow restricter from the shower head).