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boutons doesn't "buy" it, -for-brains, because The Great Boutons knows most of the work is yet to come. The future rests with the insurance companies, not the govt.
We needed 7 million to sign up, and what do you know we got 7.1 million!
I can't believe anyone besides boutons buys this .
boutons doesn't "buy" it, -for-brains, because The Great Boutons knows most of the work is yet to come. The future rests with the insurance companies, not the govt.
You've made your feelings pretty well known here about insurance companies so looks like you are actually on my side in thinking it will fail.
if there's money for the insurance companies in making ACA fail, they will make it fail, knowing full well they have the power to kill any talk of the real solution, a public option/govt insurance.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230751
Steam piping out of your ears as you bang away at your keyboard composing the OP. You even devolved into SA210 meme boy there for a minute. And let's not overlook the new avi.
Solid work! I'm sure you were emotionally drained.
If that is what you call uncontrollable rage than my assessment of you being a meek little pussy boy was spot on.
I'm digging the new avi and I hope it puts a smile on your face every time you see me post.
you wished the "democratic piece of " death by black , not because he's a hypocrite, but because he was hypocritical while supporting gun control.
You just don't have the ability to think rationally when it comes to your precious little guns and the people who you perceive are trying to take them away. That's a simple observation.
No. ing. . Sherlock.
This is getting off topic. I bumped the Yee thread, try and spin it some more, you're doing so well.
Newly Enrolled, but Not Counted by Insurance Exchanges
Millions of newly insured people are hiding in plain sight.
They are the people who have bought new health insurance since the start of this year but have chosen for one reason or another to bypass the state and federal exchanges that opened last year under the Affordable Care Act. While the exact number is unknown, some health care experts estimate that it may be in the millions.
Aaron Billger, a spokesman for Highmark, an insurer that offers plans in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, said about 30 percent of the approximately 133,000 members that Highmark had enrolled as of mid-March had signed up outside the marketplaces.
The large insurer WellPoint, which has said it expects to enroll about one million customers nationwide in new plans, has reported that about 20 percent of its sign-ups have occurred off the exchanges.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/02...s.html?from=us
After 7 Million Americans Sign Up For Obamacare, Fox News Insists ‘No One’ Opposed Some Of Its Provisions
Moments after President Obama announced that 7.1 million Americans have signed up for coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s health care exchanges and criticized Republicans for seeking to repeal the law, Fox News host Neil Cavuto jumped in to defend the party — and the most popular parts of Obamacare.
“It’s easy to vilify each side here,” Cavuto said shortly after Obama concluded his remarks. “The fact of the matter is, no one is against trying to cover people with preexisting conditions, no one is against removing lifetime caps on medical coverage. The dirty detail is having to pay for that, and that is what still embroils and ensnares the law in controversy.”
In fact, multiple Republicans have come out against prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — and most GOP health care replacements would allow insurers to cherry pick the healthiest enrollees and shift sicker people into state-based high risk insurance pools.
During his 2012 presidential run, Rick Santorum was perhaps the most direct about the GOP’s support for permitting insurers to discriminate against Americans. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure.
In July of 2012, now-retired Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) said that insurance companies should be allowed to discriminate against people with brain tumors. “I don’t that think someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars in health care provided,” he said.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...871/obama-fox/
"The dirty detail is having to pay for that"
Repugs/Fox says health care for everyone too expensive? then you into bankruptcy and death, sick, poor Americans.
How about some background as to why American for-profit health care that doesn't reach 10Ms of Americans is by far the most expensive rip-off in any industrial country?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-02-2014 at 05:52 AM.
http://www.samefacts.com/2014/03/hea...-doctor-is-in/The answer to Megan McArdle’s and Ross Douthat’s question whether ACA is now beyond repeal is yes. One reason is the demographic argument of Kevin Drum: in 2017[the soonest possible date of repeal] there will be, according to the CBO, 36 million Americans newly covered by ACA through exchange policies or Medicaid. That’s a huge number of voters.
http://www.bloombergview.com/article...concede-defeatThe likelihood of replacement would be higher if there was an alternative that didn't take away people's insurance -- one that promised to cover roughly as many people as Obamacare does, or even more. Letting people on Medicaid buy into the market by converting much of the program into tax credits, for example, would be more viable than just kicking its new beneficiaries off the rolls.
Opponents of Obamacare should always have been thinking along these lines. Now they have less and less choice.
forerunners of the eventual no-profit public option:
Small Health Insurance Co-Ops Seeing Early Success
Many of us know the names of some of the big U.S. health insurance companies — like Blue Cross, Aetna, and Wellpoint. But what about CoOportunity Health, or Health Republic Insurance of New York? These are among 23 new companies under The Affordable Care Act. They're all non-profit, member-owned insurance cooperatives that were begun, in part, to create more compe ion and drive prices down.
The co-ops' rollout was funded almost entirely by federal government loans. Initial enrollment numbers for many look pretty good — but that may not be enough to make co-ops successful.
Karl Sutton, for one, says he's stoked about being able to buy health insurance through a co-op. Sutton lives in a scenic region of Montana just south of Glacier National Park, where tall, dark forests and taller mountains are blanketed white in early March.
Inside the wamth of his mobile greenhouse near Glacier National Park, Karl Sutton's spinach plants thrive despite the lingering winter chill.
During my visit, there's about two feet of snow on the ground, and it's zero degrees Farenheit outside. But it's warm inside Sutton's mobile greenhouse, and green plants are emerging from the dark earth. He grows vegetables to sell at nearby markets in Missoula and Kalispell.
"This is just spinach we, he says pointing to a row of small, leafy plants. "We're just eating it ourselves."
Sutton understands co-ops because he works in one: a 10-year-old , with revenue of more than a million dollars a year. It's run by and for its members.
Sutton says he wants that model for his health insurance company, too.
"When you buy into a co-op, that en les you to one vote in the decision making, and I think it's the one business model that actually aligns with our democracy," he says. Sutton was eager to join the new . He thinks if members own the company, they're less likely to overuse health care – and that saves everyone money.
He knows the insurance startup is new, and still unproven.
"There's a degree of concern," he says, "but ... we might as well try, because if we don't have the membership, then the health care co-op isn't going to succeed. So we have to start somewhere, and I'm willing to take that risk."
A couple hundred miles and several mountain ranges away, John Morrison has a comfortable law office in Last Chance Gulch, the downtown historic district of Montana's capital, Helena. Morrison was the first president of the .
“ When you buy into a co-op, that en les you to one vote in the decision making, and I think it's the one business model that actually aligns with our democracy.
"In some states co-ops are dominating the marketplace," Morrison says, "with 80 percent of the enrollees going to the co-op."
That's in Maine. Morrison says most co-ops are very happy with their enrollment numbers. Their rates are often the lowest that are available through an exchange.
"The co-op states have 8.4 percent lower premiums, on average, than [other states] across the marketplace," says Morrison. "So co-ops are creating that compe ion. They're keeping rates down in the states they're operating in."
But not everybody thinks those lower premiums in some states are directly tied to whether the states have a co-op option. , an insurance industry consultant, says low prices in a company's first year don't mean much.
"We haven't seen any claims yet," Laszewski says. "Getting the premium in the health insurance business is the first part of the business; having [a big] enough premium to pay the claims over time is the real test."
The co-ops do have a financial cushion: federal startup loans of about $100 million each. That gives them several years to readjust prices to cover all the health care their members will need. It's likely that many of their customers are people insurance companies avoided in the past — patients who either couldn't afford insurance before the new health law's subsidies, or who were previously turned down because they were sick, says Laszewski.
"These co-ops have to make it in this most problematic niche of all," says Laszewski. "In particular they're not in the large employer market, which is the bread and butter for these guys. They're not in the Medicare Advantage business; they're not in the Medigap business; they're not in the Medicare part D business. Those are the profitable businesses in the industry."
Jerry Dworak, head of Montana's co-op, says there is enough of a margin in the new exchange market for his company to survive. He says he's especially happy with the number of customers he's been able to get in spite of Healthcare.gov simply not working for the first two months it was open.
"Never in my wildest imagination, with the political capital that was involved in this thing did I think you'd hit Healthcare.gov and it [would be] blank!" Dworak laments. "I never thought that was going to happen!"
But Montana's co-op still has managed to win about 40 percent of the new exchange market. Co-ops now have 50 percent of the new market in Nebraska and Iowa, and 60 percent in Kentucky. Dworak attributes Montana's early success, in part, to tirelessly beating the bushes for customers.
"It's grassroots," he says. "One thing about Montana: What really plays is what one Montanan says to another one in a coffee shop."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/02/293327561/small-health-insurance-co-ops-seeing-early-success
Next step, esp if some state co-ops don't have a big enough pool to pay claims, is for the Feds to allow all the state coops to coalesce into a national coop and its much larger pool.
On last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert attacked conservatives for their conviction that enrollment in the Affordable Care Act would never reach its stated goal of seven million.
“They were never supposed to make it to seven million,” he said, before cutting to a montage of Fox News personalities insisting that they’d never make it. “The likelihood of them getting to that place,” one said, “is highly unlikely.”
Sean Hannity concurred, saying “We like to call this ‘Mission Impossible.’”
“There’s no way they’re going to get anywhere close,” said Karl Rove. “It just ain’t gonna happen.”
“It was only logical,” Colbert replied, “that if no one had signed up, no one would sign up. As everyone knows, past performance always indicates future results. That’s why I always play yesterday’s winning lotto numbers. And — may I point out — I have never lost yesterday’s lotto.”
Colbert then explained the enrollment surge, saying it “was all thanks to young adults signing up at higher rates. No one could have foreseen that college kids would put something off until the last minute.”
He acknowledged that the administration met their enrollment goal, then cut to another montage of Fox News personalities finding “a way to say they didn’t.”
“How many are young?” Colbert asked, repeating the Fox News spin. “How many have paid? What if their check doesn’t clear? What are numbers anyway but artificial constructs? And did you know that these are Arabic numerals? I mean, the ’3′ is just two Islamic crescent moons stacked on top of each other.”
“The terrorists have won,” he concluded.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/0...e+Raw+Story%29
http://www.bloombergview.com/article...-don-t-tell-usBut if the federal government's current strategy of exemptions and semantic dodges proves unequal to the task of gaining Obamacare purchase in states such as Texas or North Carolina, its architects will need to look for an alternative. Spending $1.3 trillion in health-care subsidies for the middle class while leaving many poorer Americans with no options threatens the moral basis for the whole undertaking.
"leaving many poorer Americans with no options threatens the moral basis for the whole undertaking."
bull
ACA is the option for poorer Americans, available to TX and NC
Bloomberg, what's the "moral basis" of TX and NC trashing ACA, not setting up their own exchanges, blocking ACA navigators, and refusing to expand Medicaid for their "poorer Americans"?
a pretty good takedown of the intelligence contained in Repugs' anti-ACA slandering and lying
PRESIDENT’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF HEALTH-CARE NUMBERS ANGERS OPPONENTS OF MATH
Tuesday’s announcement by President Obama that 7.1 million people have signed up for Obamacare set off a firestorm of controversy among opponents of math in the U.S. Congress.
Representative Michele Bachmann, a leading member of the anti-math caucus, told reporters, “Throughout the debate on Obamacare, there has been a tacit agreement to leave math out of it. Today, President Obama broke that agreement.”
Senator John Barrasso, an anti-math Republican from Wyoming, agreed. “It’s very disappointing to see the President use arithmetic for political purposes,” he said.
Bachmann said that she believed the American people “would see through President Obama’s desperate use of numbers.” She added, “Whenever this President gets in trouble, he hides behind data.”
The Minnesota Republican said that many others in Congress agreed with her, but she declined to count them.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/04/presidents-announcement-of-health-care-numbers-angers-opponents-of-math.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_camp aign=borowitz&mbid=nl_Borowitz%20(55)
It's only a registration card, but still....
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/ca...as-democratic/
A couple in La Mesa, California received a voter registration card from California’s Obamacare exchange already pre-marked for the Democratic Party.
The couple did not want their iden ies revealed but told local station 10 News that they received an envelope addressed from Covered California, the state’s exchange, with a letter and registration card from the health care marketplace. They’ve always been registered to vote Republican.
“I’m an old guy and I never would have noticed it, except I have an accountant that notices every dot and dash on a piece of paper as a wife,” the man who received the card said
Covered California is in the midst of sending out voter registration cards to all of its sign-ups, due to pressure from left-wing groups threatening legal action if they don’t compl
Between private coverage and Medicaid sign ups, nearly four million Californians will receive voter registration cards.
With at least one couple’s Obamacare voter registration card illegally pre-marked as Democratic, worries over tying voter registration to the Democratic health care program could gain momentum.
Sending out the voter registration cards to everyone, even those who were already registered like the couple in question, is likely to swell the ranks of Democratic voters, the Washington Post warned. Those with lower incomes who have received benefits from the health care law will be more likely to vote for their benefactors in the Democratic Party.
“It’s a waste of money because there’s an awful lot of people who are going to get this that are already registered and they don’t need to. I can see that, but I can’t see putting ‘X’ on the form before it’s given to me in a little bitty box that nobody’s really going to notice,” the man who received the incorrectly marked card said.
Covered California denied responsibility for the violation.
“We are mailing voter registration material. However, the application forms come directly from the Secretary of State’s office, with no fields pre-marked,” spokeswoman Anne Gonzales told 10 News. “The individual should contact the Secretary of State, which takes these violations of election law extremely seriously
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/ca...#ixzz2xkqnQZbC
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) unveiled a new health care plan on Wednesday, promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act and offer real conservative alternatives to President Obama’s health care proposal. But the initiative, which borrows heavily from GOP plans introduced over the last 20 years, would cause millions of Americans to lose their existing health care plans, exposing Jindal to the very same criticism he has deployed against Obama
But Jindal’s “Freedom and Empowerment Plan” could prove just as frustrating, leading millions of Americans to lose their existing coverage in at least two ways: 1) by repealing the Affordable Care Act, and 2) treating employer-sponsored coverage and nongroup insurance equally in the tax code. The first would dramatically upend the health care market and cause at least 10 million people — signed up for insurance through the new marketplaces, Medicaid expansion, and the remaining individual market — to lose insurance. The second would likely lead many businesses to stop offering coverage altogether.
Currently, the 149 million nonelderly people who obtain coverage through their jobs don’t pay taxes on their benefits.
Not only would he kick people off their existing health care plans, but the plan could severely disadvantage lower-income Americans trying to buy coverage.
The “proposal” calls for eliminating the tax-exempt status of employer-sponsored plans — thus treating employer-sponsored benefits as taxable income — and replacing it with “a standard deduction for all forms of health insurance.”
Estimates suggest that coverage loses under Jindal’s proposal would be far higher. Analysis conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) of a very similar proposal offered by the Republican Study Committee in 2013 found that replacing the tax exclusion with a deduction “would likely cause employer-based health coverage to seriously erode by encouraging employers to discontinue their coverage.” Though estimates remain scarce, Health Affairs concluded that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign health care proposal — which would have similarly swapped the tax exclusion for a refundable tax credit — could have caused “twenty million Americans to lose such coverage.”
the proposal doesn’t specify the size of the proposed new deduction, the provision would primarily benefit people in higher tax brackets and be worth little (or nothing) to the vast majority of uninsured. Lower-income Americans would only see a modest benefit, while people who don’t owe taxes to begin with or have very low incomes will see almost no benefit at all. The vast majority of uninsured are in the 15 percent tax bracket or less and would reap few, if any, rewards from Jindal’s proposal.
The plan also cuts billions from Medicaid by block granting the program, allows insurers to cir vent state insurance regulations by allowing companies to sell plans nationwide and includes $100 billion over 10 years to encourage states to develop their own health care solutions (mostly by establishing or expanding high-risk insurance pools).
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...surance-plans/
Repugs keep up this hopeless, desperate rather than governing.
There's going to be a similar surge of tax filings on Apr. 15. This will be a clear sign of success for our tax system.
Even in the Randian, savage social/economic Darwinism of USA, humanitarian health is possible and doable. It's done in Hawaii.
In Hawaii, a healthcare system apart
Today, the people who walk under these trees are some of the healthiest in America.
Hawaiians live longer than their counterparts on the mainland. They die less frequently from common diseases, such as breast and colon cancers, even though these cancers occur more often here than in most other states. They also pay less for their care; the state's healthcare costs are among the lowest in the country.
Hawaii's success owes much to the state's trailblazing health system and its long history of near-universal health insurance.
Forty years ago, the state became the first to require employers to provide health benefits, codifying a tradition that grew out of Hawaii's agrarian past, when sugar and pineapple plantations employed doctors to care for their workers.
That system has led to some of the highest rates of coverage and best access to medical care in the country.
"There has always been a mentality here that if you are sick, you go to the doctor. It's just part of the culture," said Myra Williams, 64, who has lived in Hawaii for 35 years and was recently treated successfully for early-stage breast cancer.
Nearly 99% of the patients at the cancer center at Queen's have health coverage, a level unheard of at most urban medical centers on the mainland.
Healthcare in America is a tale of two countries.
Residents of the healthiest communities live as much as 14 years longer on average than those in unhealthy places. They are a third less likely to die from treatable illnesses such as breast cancer, childhood measles and diabetes, according to data from the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation dedicated to improving the healthcare system.
Big variations in poverty, education and diet may explain part of this divide. In Hawaii, the large share of residents of East Asian descent, who have lower mortality rates for many diseases, may also have an impact.
But differences in local health systems nationwide — including disparities in insurance coverage — also likely play an important role, according to an analysis of local and national healthcare data, a review of academic studies, interviews with scores of experts, and visits to communities across the country.
Nearly everyone is covered in the nation's healthiest places, including Hawaii, Massachusetts and parts of the Upper Midwest.
By contrast, fewer than 7 in 10 working-age adults have health insurance in parts of Texas, Florida and the Deep South — areas with some of the highest rates of death from preventable illnesses.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...#axzz2y1sKGUgO
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-05-2014 at 01:29 PM.
it's amazing how Repugs can over their states, thanks to SCOTUS, by denying Medicaid expansion, causing the unnecesary disease and sickness in their state to continue.
lol...go borrow a sense of humor, bot.
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