Initial attempts to sign up for ObamaCare go about as well as expected [Archive] - Page 4

boutons_deux

12-10-2013, 11:42 AM

Health Care Exchange Is Vastly Improved, Users Say

After two months of false starts, error messages and pleas for patience from the once-hobbled federal online health care exchange, Karen Egozi, the chief executive of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, watched on Monday as counselors navigated the website’s pages with relative ease.

Click. Next page. Click. Next page. The website, HealthCare.gov, was working so well that Ms. Egozi, who oversees the 45 navigators in eight locations who help consumers enroll in health plans, said her team gave the system an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, meaning that most people got as far as selecting a plan or taking home information to select a plan. It felt like a champagne moment.

“I’m 80 percent satisfied,” Ms. Egozi said. “I think it will be great when it’s 100 percent.”

A little over a week after the deadline that President Obama gave for fixing the federal health care exchange, the system is definitely working better, according to consumers and navigators interviewed in several states. The technical errors that had bedeviled visitors to the site for weeks seemed to have been tamed by the patchwork of hardware and software fixes ordered by the administration, and applicants were finally selecting health care plans under the president’s new law, the Affordable Care Act. By last week, the number of applicants who dropped a plan into their virtual grocery carts was climbing at a rapid clip.

Still, the interviews indicated, some technical obstacles persist. After shoppers clicked all the way to the plans, for example, the system was not letting some people actually choose one. In other cases, people were asked to try again later.

Improved entry into the online marketplace has also exposed a new layer of problems and confusion for applicants who are suddenly finding their efforts to buy insurance delayed by requirements that they provide proof of identity or citizenship or that they wait for determinations on Medicaid eligibility.

For the most part, though, the news for the beleaguered online exchange, which serves 36 states, is improving. Since early December, the federal exchange website has run without crashing, officials said. In the first week of December, about 112,000 people selected plans — compared with about 100,000 in all of November and only 27,000 in October. Last week, more than half a million people created accounts on the federal website, according to people familiar with the health care project.

Technical experts involved with the exchange said they are now preparing for a surge of applications before Dec. 23, the enrollment deadline to receive coverage by the first of the year. Although those preparations will require some significant changes to the system, the work will be easier now that the site seems stable during heavy use, the experts said.

In offices spread across the country, from Florida and Pennsylvania to Wyoming and Wisconsin, all of them states that rely on the federal government’s insurance exchange, navigators and applicants reported far fewer problems.

“I was hearing so much about the glitches in the system that I was worried that it wouldn’t work,” said Caroline Moseley, 54, who lost her job as a housing program analyst for the City of Philadelphia. After asking a navigator from the nonprofit Resources for Human Development for help in finding a plan, Ms. Moseley chose one that costs $27 a month with a $6,000 deductible. “It was a great experience,” she said. “The site was running very smoothly. It took about 30 minutes tops.”

Stephanie Lincoln, 60, of Lansdowne, Pa., also had quick success with the exchange — after a frustrating experience trying to submit an application online in October and November. With the help of a navigator, Caroline Picher, working at the local library, Ms. Lincoln signed up in just one hour on Friday for a policy that will cost $113 a month, with no deductible.

“I am one of the people whose plans were canceled,” Ms. Lincoln said. “It was just the easiest thing in the world.”

But the smoother functioning of the website has also brought to light new kinds of delays that are creating anxieties for some of the people rushing to buy insurance by the December 23 deadline.

At Wyoming Senior Citizens in Riverton, Wyo., four people walked in on Thursday and Friday and completed their applications with the help of counselors. After they successfully entered their personal information, the system displayed a message saying they needed to check if they qualified for Medicaid, said Karla Borders, a navigator at the center.

Ms. Borders said the clients already knew that they did not qualify because they had applied before and been denied. But the website would not allow them to proceed with their enrollment, informing them that they would be notified if they were indeed eligible for Medicaid, which can take a week. “Now they’re basically being put back in the system,” Ms. Borders said. “It just kind of puts them in limbo until they get another denial letter.”

In general, health policy experts said, people must be checked for eligibility for Medicaid before they can get tax credits to help pay premiums for health insurance purchased on an exchange. Under the 2010 health care law, people generally cannot receive tax credits if they are eligible for “minimum essential coverage” from other sources like Medicaid and Medicare.

Asked about the problems reported by consumers and insurance counselors, Aaron Albright, a spokesman at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said:

“HealthCare.gov is working smoothly for the vast majority of users. We’ve acknowledged that there are some consumers who may be better served through in-person assistance or call centers. There will be some people who have technical difficulties or complicated family or tax situations that will be better served through other pathways.”

In West Palm Beach, Fla., John Foley, a lawyer and certified counselor for the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, said now that applicants are moving beyond the initial application stages, he and others in Florida have hit upon another problem that could delay enrollment for some: Naturalized citizens are being asked by the system for a citizenship number that appears on their naturalization documents.

United States passports, which require proof of citizenship, are not allowed as substitutes. Mr. Foley said some of his clients, particularly those who were naturalized long ago, have misplaced that document or don’t know where it is. A copy costs more than $300, a prohibitive amount for some people.

“Some people go home and they hunt and it takes them a week to find the document,” Mr. Foley said. Despite such problems, many enrollment counselors said, they have been deluged with phone calls and walk-ins.

Linda Lott at the Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami said her office was feeling more confident that appointments with clients might actually yield enrollment these days. And while some people remain puzzled about the process, wondering why, for instance, they must wait to be billed by insurers instead of being able to pay for their insurance online à la Amazon, things were significantly better.

“I’m feeling very good about it,” Ms. Lott said. “We’re enrolling people.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/us/health-care-exchange-is-vastly-improved-participants-say.html?from=homepage

Repugs planning to run against Dems in 2014 by trashing ACA, are going to get trashed by Dems, esp in red states, for blocking people's access to insurance and medical care.

TX Repugs, with high bureaucratic obstacles like all red states, won't even let the navigators work until 1 Jan, too late to for 2014 coverage.

boutons_deux

12-10-2013, 01:11 PM

Repug blond Confederate bimbo! :lol

“If you want to talk about a ‘war on women,’ look no further than this healthcare law,” Ellmers countered in the weekly address.

“After all, it’s often women who make the healthcare decisions for our families.

We put a lot of time and thought into these choices and how they’ll affect our budgets. So by canceling your insurance—despite a promise to let you keep your plan—the Obama administration is essentially saying it knows what’s best for you and your family.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/09/1261387/-The-most-pathetic-effort-to-turn-the-table-on-the-War-on-Women-ever?detail=email

Winehole23

12-10-2013, 02:10 PM

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/Issue-Briefs/2013/Dec/Federal-Funds-Medicaid-Expansion.aspx

boutons_deux

12-11-2013, 12:15 PM

Obamacare Enrollments Surpass 1 Million

More than two months after Obamacare's ugly debut, the number of Americans using the system is starting to grow: Nearly 1.2 million people are on track to have health coverage in place next year from the law's health insurance exchanges, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday (http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2013pres/12/20131211a.html).

From Oct. 1 through Nov. 30, almost 365,000 people enrolled into private health insurance via the federal and state marketplaces and more than 803,000 were deemed eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to the department.

The federally run exchanges in more than 30 states accounted for 137,000 of the enrollments in private coverage, and the remaining states signed up 227,000. About 1.9 million more people had been determined eligible for coverage through the marketplaces, but hadn't yet chosen a health plan. The new data don't include an apparent flurry of enrollments in the early days of December.

HealthCare.gov (https://www.healthcare.gov/), the federal portal to health coverage in more than 30 states, still has problems, but appears to doing what it's supposed to do: enabling consumers to do shop and sign up for health benefits for next year.

Eric Rawlings, 42, of Decatur, Ga., breezed through HealthCare.gov in about 10 minutes to enroll in a private health plan for himself and his infant daughter in late November, he told The Huffington Post.

"Everybody talks about how horrible this website is and all the glitches and stuff, but I tell you, it was the best experience I ever had shopping for insurance," said Rawlings, who owns an architectural design firm. Rawlings chose the highest level of coverage, a Platinum plan that includes dental benefits, for $550 a month, or about $50 more than he pays for a medical-only policy for just himself this year. He earns too much to qualify for tax credits to reduce his premiums.

Rawlings has been buying his own health insurance since starting his own business more than a decade ago and didn't miss having to disclose his medical history and wait weeks for an approval -- or rejection. Nor did he yearn for paying higher rates because of a pre-existing condition he has, he said. "I have just been waiting for the Affordable Care Act to kick in," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/11/obamacare-enrollment_n_4421797.html?ir=Politics&utm_campaign=121113&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-politics&utm_content=Title

Even with the screwed up healthcare.gov, the enrollment numbers are looking great, esp if the enrollment curve for Romneycare is followed:

http://www.newrepublic.com/sites/default/files/u18524/mass_enrollment_blue.jpg

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2013/10/Screen_Shot_2013_10_24_at_2.10.34_PM/545d01a9f.png

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2013/10/Screen_Shot_2013_10_24_at_2.10.46_PM/16e8395ef.png

and the surge expected in the next two weeks should help a lot.

Regugs and tea baggers will be fucked if they make a hugely successful Obamacare the core of their attacks in 2014 and 2016.

TSA

12-11-2013, 05:40 PM

All of these articles you are posting about Obamacare's success are pointless until we see how many Millenials are signing up. Without them this whole thing fails miserably.

boutons_deux

12-11-2013, 05:56 PM

All of these articles you are posting about Obamacare's success are pointless until we see how many Millenials are signing up. Without them this whole thing fails miserably.

you're pointless.

ACA will succeed in so many ways for so many millions of people, except where you red state assholes and your Repug politicians are blocking red state signups.

TSA

12-11-2013, 06:17 PM

you're pointless.

ACA will succeed in so many ways for so many millions of people, except where you red state assholes and your Repug politicians are blocking red state signups.

Without the Millenials, it will not succeed, at least not in the sense of being affordable. Explain to me how it will succeed without the enrollment of the young and healthy.

boutons_deux

12-12-2013, 10:27 AM

Without the Millenials, it will not succeed, at least not in the sense of being affordable. Explain to me how it will succeed without the enrollment of the young and healthy.

If young and healthy don't sign up (and they pay less than older people, just older people less for auto insurance than car-accident prone drunk young people), I say raise the obviously too-low penalty by a 3x or 4x.

And young people at home are covered to age 26 under their parents plan, and due to the your Banksters Great Depression, more and more young people are stuck at home.

btw, young people with jobs and employer insurance pay the same insurance rate and get the same covereage as older people.

TSA

12-12-2013, 01:00 PM

If young and healthy don't sign up (and they pay less than older people, just older people less for auto insurance than car-accident prone drunk young people), I say raise the obviously too-low penalty by a 3x or 4x.

And young people at home are covered to age 26 under their parents plan, and due to the your Banksters Great Depression, more and more young people are stuck at home.

btw, young people with jobs and employer insurance pay the same insurance rate and get the same covereage as older people.

What's the backup plan if the young and healthy don't sign up as planned?

boutons_deux

12-12-2013, 01:11 PM

What's the backup plan if the young and healthy don't sign up as planned?

I don't know, but I appreciate you're unbridled desire to see ACA to fail.

Th'Pusher

12-12-2013, 01:53 PM

What's the backup plan if the young and healthy don't sign up as planned?

I don't have the specifics at hand, but there are safeguards built into the law that guarantee insurance provider margins even if the sacred young don't sign up. Obviously that cost burden gets shifted to the taxpayer but timately negates the so called death spiral. So instead of rooting for the law's failure, like you do, we really should all be doing our best to ensure the law works, and actively fixing problems as they're identified.

TSA

12-12-2013, 02:17 PM

I don't have the specifics at hand, but there are safeguards built into the law that guarantee insurance provider margins even if the sacred young don't sign up. Obviously that cost burden gets shifted to the taxpayer but timately negates the so called death spiral. So instead of rooting for the law's failure, like you do, we really should all be doing our best to ensure the law works, and actively fixing problems as they're identified.

And with that it becomes less and less affordable. I'm not rooting for it to fail, I just think it's a piece of shit and poorly designed. And what should "we" be doing to ensure the law works?

boutons_deux

12-12-2013, 03:27 PM

In the infinite scam kludgeocracy of for-profit US healthcare swamp that ACA must work in, there will be numerous adjustments, rule changes, etc to ACA in the coming years.

Only a naive jerk of a right winger, ALWAYS in bad faith, would trash ACA for not being perfect, for having problems, at rollout.

USA, true to its self-proclaimed, chauvinistic EXCEPTIONALISM, is decades behind adult social democracies with universal health care.

boutons_deux

12-12-2013, 03:42 PM

27,000 Will Die Because Republican States Refuse To Expand Medicaid

The 25 GOP-led states that are refusing to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act are not just turning down an estimated $42.6 billion in 2014 alone, they’re also missing a chance to save 27,000 lives — according to a new study from the pro-expansion group Health Care for America Now (http://healthcareforamericanow.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Medicaid10.pdf) (HCAN).

HCAN’s projection is based on a Harvard School of Public Health study (http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMsa1202099) published in 2012 in the New England Journal of Medicine that compared states that had expanded Medicaid to childless adults to those who hadn’t:

The mortality rate in expansion states was 6.1 percent lower than in the neighboring expansion states. For every 500,000 adults gaining Medicaid benefits, 2,840 deaths would be prevented each year, the researchers found. Put another way, for every 176 people added to the Medicaid rolls, one life would be saved.

An estimated five million residents of states that haven’t expanded the program will find themselves in a “coverage gap,” where they will neither qualify for Medicaid nor be able to afford a policy in the insurance exchanges. Applying that 1-in-176 formula to five million uninsured, HCAN comes up with the 27,000 lives that may be lost.

The report also estimates how many jobs would be created by the expansion, which is entirely funded by the federal government for three years, tapering down to 90 percent by the end of the decade. In Texas, where 1 in 4 residents are uninsured, not only could nearly 6,000 lives be saved by expansion, but 300,000 jobs could be created by adding $67.9 billion a year in economic activity.

Instead of accepting new economic growth, states are putting their most vulnerable hospitals at risk of closing.

Expansion was designed to make up for the reduced fees for care mandated by the Affordable Care Act, which was written with the assumption that states would only be able to opt out of expansion if they rejected Medicaid funding entirely. The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states could reject the expansion without any consequence. They can also opt in and out of the program as they choose to.

The federal government has been lenient with Republican states that decide to expand Medicaid. Arkansas is implementing a “private option” for the program that may be duplicated by Iowa (http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2013/12/11/feds-approve-iowas-version-of-private-option-for-medicaid-expansion).

“In Florida, [Latinos] make up 27 percent, and in Texas they make up 47 percent. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the country. The majority of people there who are going to miss out on care – over 60 percent – are black and Latino,” The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/health-care-and-social-justice/276281/).

Noting the disproportionate effect on minorities, the report finishes with a rhetorical explosion that conjures memories of the battle to end segregation and connects it to the widespread right-wing lie that the Affordable Care Act includes “death panels.”

“Now in 2013, it turns out that the only real death panels consist of governors and lawmakers standing in the doorway of state Medicaid expansion, blocking access to health care for nearly 5 million Americans.”

Click ahead to see how many lives could be saved in each state.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/report-27000-will-die-because-republican-states-refuse-to-expand-medicaid/

boutons_deux

12-12-2013, 05:35 PM

Kentucky Doctor Reason For Closing -- Because Of Bush Initiative, NOT Obamacare. The Real Story (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/11/1262030/-Kentucky-Doctor-Reason-For-Closing-Because-Of-Bush-Initiative-NOT-Obamacare-The-Real-Story)

Yesterday the right wing social media was buzzing about the story of the Kentucky doctor who put an ad in his local paper declaring that due to Obamacare, he was closing his office. I claimed that nothing in the ACA could in any way force a doctor to close his office, or create so much regulation that it would be too expensive to continue.

But the real fun fact in this whole story is this, the push toward universal Electronic Health Records, is NOT part of Obamacare, and was not an initiative of President Obama.

The goal of near universal use of Electronic Health Records was championed and made official by Executive Orders signed by George W. Bush in 2004.
At the time President Bush said, “Within ten years, every American must have a personal electronic medical record...”(1) So the push toward electronic records was made not by Obamacare, not by President Obama, but by the Bush administration. President Bush even touted his efforts on Electronic Medical Records in his 2004 State of the Union speech.

Let’s see if the good Dr. Kiteck will try a bit of honesty and admit this fact.

President Obama only continued the Bush initiative, and did more to provide support and funding to make the conversion smooth and less costly to medical providers as part of the stimulus bill.

So the idea that this doctor’s office was in any way forced to close due to “Obamacare policies,” is, as I stated yesterday, wholly dishonest.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/11/1262030/-Kentucky-Doctor-Reason-For-Closing-Because-Of-Bush-Initiative-NOT-Obamacare-The-Real-Story?detail=email

angrydude

12-12-2013, 06:09 PM

Hey, we all know that its those damn states who hate obama and want him to fail that are the reason Obamacare is having so much trouble.

Except when it isn't, like in Maryland.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/director-of-md-health-insurance-board-resigns/2013/12/06/68bf9c30-5ee5-11e3-8d24-31c016b976b2_story.html

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia told the federal government they could run their own health insurance exchanges, but three people leading their states’ exchanges have now left following problem-plagued rollouts of the online marketplaces.

The executive director of Maryland’s exchange, Rebecca Pearce, was the latest to go, resigning late Friday. The head of Hawaii’s health insurance marketplace announced her resignation in November after delays in getting the exchange running and low signups in the first month. And the head of Oregon’s health exchange took a medical leave earlier in December as state officials were reviewing his job performance. The state’s online enrollment system wasn’t ready to launch on schedule and has had technical problems.

Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant, said Americans may be more familiar with the problems of the federal health insurance website, HealthCare.gov, but state exchanges are “startlingly short of their expectations” for enrolling people and “no one is doing really well.”

Laszewski said he and others believed that Maryland was going to be an example of a well-run exchange because it had a supportive state government that started early. The state was also transparent about the setup process and was reporting doing testing during the summer, he said.

“And then they launched and fell flat on their face,” he said of the website’s October rollout.

...

TSA

12-12-2013, 06:12 PM

http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/09/south-carolina-voting-on-bill-to-end-obamacare-in-state/#!

A bill set for fast-track passage in the South Carolina Senate in January aims to eliminate Obamacare in the state. The law could become a model for other states fed up with the federal health-care law.

House Bill 3101, titled the “South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act,” passed the state House of Representatives last April by a 65-34 vote. The bill now heads to the GOP-controlled Senate with special-order priority, setting up the likelihood that South Carolina will become the first state to exempt citizens and businesses from all participation in the Affordable Care Act.

State Sen. Tom Davis, the bill’s sponsor who recently wrapped up study committee hearings for H3101 in Columbia, Charleston and other cities, says that the proposed legislation renders the Affordable Care Act void or inoperable through a handful of provisions.

“It will essentially have five components to it, all of which in my judgment are legal, effective, and within the state’s power to do,” Davis, a Republican from Beaufort, said in an interview.

The bill’s main component prohibits agencies, officers and employees of the state of South Carolina from implementing any provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving implementation of the national health-care law entirely in the hands of a federal government that lacks the resources or personnel to carry out the programs it mandates.

This provision, according to Davis, comes from the anti-commandeering doctrine established in case law that says feds can’t compel states to enforce federal laws.

“What the Supreme Court said in Printz v. United States is that states are not merely political subdivisions of the federal government to carry out what the federal government does; they are sovereign entities,” Davis said. “Congress can pass laws, but it cannot compel the states to utilize either their treasury or personnel to implement those federal laws.”

Additional provisions of H3101 further neuter the Affordable Care Act by outlawing state exchanges, issuing tax deductions to individuals equal to the tax penalties levied by the federal government, and directing the state attorney general to sue over whimsical enforcement of the law. Taken together, the provisions effectively repeal the federal law for the people of South Carolina.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/09/south-carolina-voting-on-bill-to-end-obamacare-in-state/#ixzz2nIyvl6v3

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/09/south-carolina-voting-on-bill-to-end-obamacare-in-state/#ixzz2nIyqbiVt

Th'Pusher

12-12-2013, 06:57 PM

And with that it becomes less and less affordable. I'm not rooting for it to fail, I just think it's a piece of shit and poorly designed. And what should "we" be doing to ensure the law works?

Valium for Obamacare WorriersSuppose that healthcare.gov isn’t fixed by the end of next month. How bad is it for Obamacare? Would the program be doomed?
No, says Jonathan Cohn (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115384/obamacare-delays-healthcaregov-problems-shouldnt-cripple-program?b&utm_campaign=tnr-daily-newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10722948), because there are two layers of protection against poor signup. First, there is a system of cross-subsidies to insurance companies that was intended to prevent companies from surreptitiously gaining an advantage by only signing up healthy people (hey, our policy is available to anyone — but you have to sign up in our sixth-floor walkup office.) As it turns out, this system would end up compensating insurance companies in general if the risk pool is worse than expected. Second, the subsidies to individuals are designed to hold health costs down to 8 percent of income, which means that they will rise if costs are higher than expected.
Neither of these would be a good thing, since they would increase the budget cost, but they do mean that Obamacare’s survival probably isn’t on the line.
Actually, the biggest reason Obama and co. should be anxious to fix these things now, I’d argue, isn’t the fate of the program itself, which can survive even large early wobbles, but the midterm elections. If Obamacare is fixed, Republicans will be in the position of attacking a program that is benefiting millions of Americans; if it isn’t, they can still run against the legend, not the fact.
So a lot is riding on fixing the technological botch — but not in quite the way people imagine.

FuzzyLumpkins

12-12-2013, 06:59 PM

TSA

12-12-2013, 08:00 PM

Th'Pusher

12-12-2013, 09:01 PM

Interesting.

"Section 12-6-3579. A South Carolina resident taxpayer who is subjected to a tax by the Internal Revenue Code under 26 U.S.C. Section 5000A of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act shall receive a tax deduction in the exact amount of the taxes or penalty paid the federal government pursuant to 26 U.S.C. Section 5000A. The tax deduction allowed by this section must be used in the year the federal tax or penalty is paid."

Interesting :lol You morons just keep clinging to any straw of hope you can find. The law is with us. You had your opportunity in 2012 to elect a republican president and republican majority in the senate to repeal the law You failed. Miserably. It's time to deal with reality and try to make the best of a relatively shitty law. Join us in reality TSA.

AntiChrist

12-12-2013, 11:29 PM

lol, make the best of a shitty law

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 09:22 AM

And with that it becomes less and less affordable. I'm not rooting for it to fail, I just think it's a piece of shit and poorly designed. And what should "we" be doing to ensure the law works?

from your perspective as health care/policy expert, what is your great (re)design for US health care system, and of course, starting from the ripoff kludgeocracy we have now?

Winehole23

12-13-2013, 09:30 AM

lol, make the best of a shitty lawshort of repeal, what's the alternative?

Winehole23

12-13-2013, 10:16 AM

http://www.ketknbc.com/news/texas-leads-nation-in-obamacare-enrollments

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 10:26 AM

http://www.ketknbc.com/news/texas-leads-nation-in-obamacare-enrollments

amazing, considering how TX Repug sociopaths have erected very high and long bureaucratic obstacles, eg, TX navigators, especially useful to poor and Hispanics, can't even work until 1 Jan 14, AFTER the 2014 coverage has started.

AntiChrist

12-13-2013, 10:52 AM

Obama wins the coveted boutons award for 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/politifact-lie-of-the-year-2013-obama-health-care_n_4435389.html

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 11:05 AM

Obama wins the coveted boutons award for 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/politifact-lie-of-the-year-2013-obama-health-care_n_4435389.html

Politifact is bullshit. Maddow had a segment on it where she thoroughly trashed it, showing its politi "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.

AntiChrist

12-13-2013, 11:09 AM

Must....defend....dear leader....

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 11:52 AM

not defending Obama, but noting, as does the huffpo article, that politifact is known bullshit

Repug/tea bagger talking point "Obama Lied" ain't gonna kill Obamacare, but it will probably keep Fox watchers, right wing assholes, other bubbas/rednecks from getting Medicaid and health insurance.

SnakeBoy

12-13-2013, 12:27 PM

Politifact is bullshit. Maddow had a segment on it where she thoroughly trashed it, showing its politi "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.

Maddow is bullshit. Hannity had a segment on her where he thoroughly trashed her, showing her "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.

Th'Pusher

12-13-2013, 12:52 PM

Maddow is bullshit. Hannity had a segment on her where he thoroughly trashed her, showing her "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.
Does your wife let you watch Hannity on her tv?

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 01:00 PM

Maddow is bullshit. Hannity had a segment on her where he thoroughly trashed her, showing her "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.

link?

Hannity? :lol is why you are so horribly misinformed

boutons_deux

12-13-2013, 02:25 PM

Turning the Corner? In California, At Least, Obamacare Signups ZoomThe statistics released yesterday from Covered California (http://coveredcanews.blogspot.com/2013/12/covered-california-and-california.html) could bode well for health insurance exchanges that have their act together.

Although the California exchange enrolled 109,000 in October and November combined, the tally from the first seven days in December — 49,708 — is nearly three times the pace from a month earlier. Even more people completed applications, the step prior to choosing a plan.

“This has been a phenomenal experience as Californians have expressed in words and action their desire for affordable and quality health insurance coverage,” Covered California executive director Peter V. Lee said in a news release. “Enrollments and applications are surging, and we at Covered California — and our partners — are stepping up our game to meet the demand.”

I talked to Lee (http://www.propublica.org/article/qa-how-californias-insurance-enrollments-beat-healthcare.gov) last month after California outpaced enrollments on HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace for 36 states, during the month of October. (To be sure, the current signups are still well below the exchange’s goals for 2014 (https://www.coveredca.com/news/PDFs/CoveredCA-Enrollment_Projections-9-30-13.pdf).)

The news also has been positive out of New York. The New York State of Health exchange announced that, as of Monday, more than 69,500 people had signed up for private health plans through the state’s marketplace, according to Capital New York (http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2013/12/8537190/private-insurance-surging-past-medicaid). That’s a big increase from a week earlier. As of Nov. 30, 45,000 people had selected a plan through the state’s exchange, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported this week (http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2013/MarketPlaceEnrollment/Dec2013/ib_2013dec_enrollment.pdf) in its state-by-state tally.

Donna Frescatore, executive director of New York State of Health, said in a statement (http://www.healthbenefitexchange.ny.gov/news/press-release-more-100000-new-yorkers-have-enrolled-health-insurance-plans-through-ny-state): “We are very pleased to see these results, which show that tens of thousands of individuals and across the state are turning to nystateofhealth.ny.gov to access low-cost health insurance.”

Even HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace handling enrollment for 36 states, is seeing a surge. In three days last week, after the beleaguered website was fixed, enrollment topped 56,000,

http://www.nationalmemo.com/turning-the-corner-in-california-at-least-obamacare-signups-zoom/

SnakeBoy

12-13-2013, 03:29 PM

George Gervin's Afro

12-13-2013, 03:35 PM

Maddow is bullshit. Hannity had a segment on her where he thoroughly trashed her, showing her "facts" and then destroying everyone of them.

hannity and facts don't belong on the same page

George Gervin's Afro

12-13-2013, 03:35 PM

hannity and facts don't belong on the same page

first hannity..now beck? what does rush say ? lol

Th'Pusher

12-13-2013, 04:37 PM

first hannity..now beck? what does rush say ? lol

He's butthurt because buttons called politifact garbage and referenced Rachael Maddow. Instead of addressing the point, he starts flailing around throwing out made up bullshit from political hacks like Hannity and beck. Btw - both men's highest level of education is highschool whereas Maddow went to Stanford and was a Rhodes scholar.

Bravo snakeboy. I'm surprised your wife lets you play on her computer.

SnakeBoy

12-13-2013, 10:15 PM

He's butthurt because buttons called politifact garbage and referenced Rachael Maddow. Instead of addressing the point, he starts flailing around throwing out made up bullshit from political hacks like Hannity and beck. Btw - both men's highest level of education is highschool whereas Maddow went to Stanford and was a Rhodes scholar.

Bravo snakeboy. I'm surprised your wife lets you play on her computer.

:lol:lol Rushing in to defend the damsel Maddow :lol. Very noble but seriously you should pick better damsels.

This thread is full of flailing but it's not coming from me. The next year is gonna be very entertaining lol.

angrydude

12-13-2013, 10:28 PM

He's butthurt because buttons called politifact garbage and referenced Rachael Maddow. Instead of addressing the point, he starts flailing around throwing out made up bullshit from political hacks like Hannity and beck. Btw - both men's highest level of education is highschool whereas Maddow went to Stanford and was a Rhodes scholar.

Bravo snakeboy. I'm surprised your wife lets you play on her computer.

The logical fallacy aside, seeing as both Hannity and Beck are a million more times successful (and rich) than Madcow, that's not saying much for the value of a Ivy League education.

All 3 of them are trolls but 2 of them are much better at it.

Th'Pusher

12-14-2013, 12:59 AM

:lol:lol Rushing in to defend the damsel Maddow :lol. Very noble but seriously you should pick better damsels.

This thread is full of flailing but it's not coming from me. The next year is gonna be very entertaining lol.

I'm not defending maddow as much as I am pointing out her intellectual chops as compared to the high-school educated rabble rousers with which you seem to want to equate her. And what's going to be so entertaining about next year? Please provide your sound Fox News driven analysis. This coming from the guy who thought Reid's nuclear detonation was intended to shift the focus away from ACA failures as opposed to filling the empty seats on the dc 9th circuit...

Th'Pusher

12-14-2013, 01:04 AM

The logical fallacy aside, seeing as both Hannity and Beck are a million more times successful (and rich) than Madcow, that's not saying much for the value of a Ivy League education.

All 3 of them are trolls but 2 of them are much better at it.

Because there is a large market of morons that lap up beck and hannity says absolutely nothing about the accuracy anything. Speak to facts mr logical fallacy.

boutons_deux

12-14-2013, 09:33 AM

The logical fallacy aside, seeing as both Hannity and Beck are a million more times successful (and rich) than Madcow, that's not saying much for the value of a Ivy League education.

All 3 of them are trolls but 2 of them are much better at it.

False equivalence, but such fantasies are how you right-wingers roll.

Fox, Limbaugh, and Beck know their job is above inflaming the willingly ignorant white/"Christian" simplistic bubbas of the Repug/tea bagger/gun-fellatin base with lies, propaganda.

Financial success, audience rating are no measure of truth. They are measures of financial success, audience rating, period.

That's like saying the financial success of misogynistic, gangsta rap drivel and black bitches twerking proves the drivel and twerking is music and dancing.

SnakeBoy

12-14-2013, 12:38 PM

And what's going to be so entertaining about next year?

Democrats will get back to their roots and lynch the black man. Should be quite funny to watch.

boutons_deux

12-16-2013, 07:33 AM

Rick Santorum: Government-Provided Health Care Is A Plot To Kill People Who Don’t Vote The Right Way (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/14/3066251/rick-santorum-government-provided-health-care-plot-kill-people-vote/)

Speaking at a Young Americans for Freedom event on Friday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) offered an unusual assessment of what happens when “the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country.” “It’s actually a pretty clever system,” the former presidential candidate explained, “Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can’t vote against you.”

Yet Santorum’s own example refutes his claim that national health care allows an elected leader to essentially entrench themself by selectively murdering their opposition’s voters. Santorum presents no evidence that Thatcher — or for that matter, any other British Prime Minister — used her country’s National Health Service (NHS) to effectively euthanize people who could vote her out of office.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/14/3066251/rick-santorum-government-provided-health-care-plot-kill-people-vote/

boutons_deux

12-16-2013, 09:34 AM

Solving the Shortage in Primary Care Doctors

But why, exactly, are doctors in such short supply?

It turns out that the real bottleneck is at the post-med-school step: residencies, those supervised, intensive, hazing-like, on-the-job training programs that doctors are required to go through before they can practice on their own.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/12/15/business/15-VIEW/15-VIEW-articleInline.jpg
(http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002601832/2013/12/15/business/solving-the-shortage-in-primary-care-doctors.html?from=mostemailed)
(http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002601832/2013/12/15/business/solving-the-shortage-in-primary-care-doctors.html?from=mostemailed)
(http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002601832/2013/12/15/business/solving-the-shortage-in-primary-care-doctors.html?from=mostemailed)There has been little growth in residency slots; they totaled 113,000 in 2011-12, from 96,000 a decade earlier. Exactly why residencies have not increased faster is a subject of great debate in the health care industry.

Hospitals, doctors and med students usually give the same explanation: Congress is too stingy.

After all Congress, through Medicare, subsidizes the vast majority of residency slots, at $10.1 billion annually, or an average of $112,642 per resident (http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/11/1914.abstract) per year. Congress froze the number of subsidized positions in 1997, and hospitals argue that the best way to train more doctors is for Congress to open the spigot and fund more jobs.

Obviously Washington is not keen on doling out more money for anything right now, especially not for Medicare. But there’s a bigger problem with that argument: It’s not clear that hospitals actually need taxpayer money to pay for more residents, because those residents might actually be turning a profit for those hospitals right now. It’s hard to know, though, because hospital accounting is so opaque.

Residents definitely impose a lot of costs, besides the salaries they earn. Those salaries are fairly low — about $50,000 to $65,000 a year (https://www.aamc.org/download/359792/data/2013stipendsurveyreportfinal.pdf), just slightly more than hospital janitors (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes372011.htm) on an hourly basis. The enormous number of hours they work — about 80 hours a week — is crucial in these calculations.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/business/solving-the-shortage-in-primary-care-doctors.html?from=mostemailed

boutons_deux

12-17-2013, 02:52 PM

The Real Reason Healthcare Insurance Companies Are Now Encouraging Obamacare Enrollment: Fear of a pro-public-option or pro-single-payer political juggernaut

I’ve expected this for some time, and here it is: The Wall Street Journal reports that insurance companies are set to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to entice potential customers on to the exchanges created by Obamacare. As the Journal puts it: Insurers … are capitalizing on an unprecedented opportunity in a shifting health-care market. Some seven million Americans are expected to buy health coverage on the new consumer exchanges, where people can compare insurance plans side by side. -

I expect that the experience with Obamacare as sabotaged by Republican state legislators and governors and unremitting campaigns of disinformation, and by shortsighted insurance carriers engaged in their own campaign of deception and trickery toward their current premium holders, will make possible (in fact, likely) what was not possible when Obamacare was being drafted and negotiated.

Employers would benefit from single-payer, if not from a public option, so they’re concerted scapegoating of Obamacare might serve their interest. But the insurance companies are drastically overplaying their hand.

Once this epiphany occurs to the insurance industry, they might start reining in their members in order to give Obamacare some chance to succeed. By then, though, it may well be too late, and the previously impossible will be on its way to fruition. -

http://angrybearblog.com/2013/12/the-real-reason-healthcare-insurance-companies-are-now-encouraging-obamacare-enrollment-fear-of-a-pro-public-option-or-pro-single-payer-political-juggernaut.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Hzoh+%28angrybearblog.com%29

Nbadan

12-18-2013, 12:03 AM

Once this epiphany occurs to the insurance industry, they might start reining in their members in order to give Obamacare some chance to succeed. By then, though, it may well be too late, and the previously impossible will be on its way to fruition

The ACA is a pathway to single-payer...been saying that from the start..

SnakeBoy

12-18-2013, 12:13 AM

The ACA is a pathway to single-payer...been saying that from the start..

So what was the plan? Pass the ACA lose the house, enact the ACA lose the senate, then pass a single-payer system?

Nbadan

12-18-2013, 12:19 AM

So what was the plan? Pass the ACA lose the house, enact the ACA lose the senate, then pass a single-payer system?

No, defeat the conservative propaganda machine with logic and a working system that insures the previously un-insurable and keeps families from declaring bankruptcy if they get sick...you know...the usual plan since 2008

AntiChrist

12-18-2013, 05:38 PM

boutons_deux

12-18-2013, 05:41 PM

The ACA is a pathway to single-payer...been saying that from the start..

ACA actually permits (encourages?) public option, which is what VT is doing.

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/11-1

TSA

12-18-2013, 06:23 PM

Obama now appealing to one of the core demographics of his base: Beta males wearing onesie pajamas

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/413079861922508800/photo/1

:lmao

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbuN8iJCMAA34dL.png

Some good ones in here.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/17/dozen-funniest-variations-obamas-pajama-boy-propaganda/

SnakeBoy

12-18-2013, 06:38 PM

No, defeat the conservative propaganda machine with logic and a working system that insures the previously un-insurable and keeps families from declaring bankruptcy if they get sick...you know...the usual plan since 2008

lol...30 million uninsured 10 years from now...great plan.

Can you address the issue? How exactly do you expect this obamacare pathway to single payer to play out?

AntiChrist

12-19-2013, 11:13 AM

Some good ones in here.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/17/dozen-funniest-variations-obamas-pajama-boy-propaganda/

:lmao

http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/pajama-boy-selfie.jpg?w=771&h=420

boutons_deux

12-19-2013, 12:23 PM

Repug/Fox/VRWC campaign of lying about ACA going very well, as is the American Myth that Every Man is Rugged Individual Island with no civic responsbility to anyone or anything.

Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll

Fifty-three percent of the uninsured disapprove of the law, the poll found, compared with 51 percent of those who have health coverage. A third of the uninsured say the law will help them personally, but about the same number think it will hurt them, with cost a leading concern.

There are several reasons the uninsured appear to be as wary of the law as the insured, including opposition to the requirement that most people have insurance. Still, nearly six in 10 uninsured said having insurance would make their own health better. And 56 percent said they were more likely than not to get insurance by March 31, the deadline to enroll in coverage or face a tax penalty under the law. Thirty-five percent said they were more likely to pay the penalty.

uninsured Americans — precisely those it was meant to help — remain confused about it and fearful that it will increase their health care costs. And nearly six in 10 said they had not researched insurance on the online marketplace, even though, based on the demographics of the sample, many probably qualify for free or subsidized coverage.

the uninsured reported starkly different experiences with the health care system. Their responses suggested they were far more likely than the insured to have trouble paying for medical care, to rely more on emergency rooms and community clinics, and to forgo treatment.

Of the uninsured who said they were not likely to sign up by the deadline, fully half said it was because of the high cost. Twenty-nine percent said they planned to go without coverage because they object to the government’s requiring it, and 11 percent said they did not need health insurance.

uninsured respondents were generally younger, poorer and less educated than the respondents in the general population. Three-quarters of the uninsured were between 18 and 44, and about one in eight had college degrees. Slightly more than half said they earned less than $30,000 a year.

28 percent of uninsured respondents who said that they planned to sign up for coverage cited the mandate as the main reason. Thirty-eight percent said that they would enroll because having health insurance is good, while 10 percent said that they expected insurance to become more affordable under the law.

most respondents — both insured and uninsured — said that it hurts the country when individuals do not have health insurance, even as most voiced opposition to the mandate. In addition, 64 percent of the uninsured and 54 percent of the general public said they thought providing access to affordable health care coverage for all Americans was the responsibility of the federal government.

Republicans in Congress were judged more harshly, with 73 percent of the general public and 70 percent of the uninsured disapproving of their handling of health care.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/us/uninsured-americans-are-about-as-skeptical-of-health-care-law-as-the-insured-poll-finds.html?from=homepage

boutons_deux

12-19-2013, 12:42 PM

Yes, Sean Hannity, Most of Obamacare IS 'Wildly Popular' -- Among Republicans

To answer his question directly, yes. You can silence your audience all you want, Sean, but you can't escape the reality that most of the Affordable Care Act is wildly popular...

...Among Republicans.

Let's do this again.

--80 percent (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/06/26/poll-republicans-hate-obamacare-but-like-most-of-what-it-does/) of Republicans -- yes, Republicans -- like the idea of health insurance marketplaces, also known as "exchanges." I think we can safely say that 80 percent approval constitutes "wildly popular."

--Likewise, 57 percent of Republicans like the idea of the government helping to pay the cost of premiums via insurance subsidies.

--54 percent of Republicans like the employer mandate -- the same mandate which the congressional Republicans almost universally oppose, including and partly because of Sean Hannity.

--78 percent of Republicans support the ban on denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions.

--This one is an eye-opener. 29 percent of Republicans think Obamacare "doesn't go far enough."

While we're here, it's worth noting:

--According to a recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll (http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/10/20903624-nbcwsj-poll-shutdown-debate-damages-gop?lite), the tea party had an approval rating of 26 percent. The congressional Republicans didn't fare much better with an approval of 32 percent.

--In the same poll, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the foolish, ill-conceived effort to de-fund the law, has an approval rating of 14 percent. Speaker Boehner's approval is slightly better at 17 percent.

--Comparatively, the dreaded ACA enjoyed approval rating of 46 percent in two different polls (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/22/wonkbook-two-new-polls-have-good-news-for-obamacare/) taken at the lowest point in the roll-out fiasco. In other words, Obamacare is significantly more popular than the Speaker of the House, the congressional Republicans, Ted Cruz and Cruz's tea party caucus.

The only aspect of the ACA that Republican voters dislike is the individual mandate. But I'm sure they'd feel differently if they were informed that Republicans invented the mandate (http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/hannity-health-care-law_b_4468038.html

TSA

12-19-2013, 12:47 PM

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-shotgun-wedding-marry-lose-091500078.html

The problem with solutions is that few of them tend to be perfect, even if they act in a mostly benign manner. Actions produce reactions, a principle as true in politics as it is in physics, and those tend to multiply when solutions increase in complexity.

The nature of these unintended consequences changes dramatically when complex “solutions” turn out to be poorly designed and incompetently administered.

The rollout of the Affordable Care Act has provided many real-world examples of this, but perhaps none so “unintended” as the consequences discovered by the Seattle Times this weekend. Carol Ostrom, The Times’ health reporter, told the story of 62-year-old newlyweds Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn, who weren’t exactly the models of wild, starry-eyed romantics.

Their nuptials were motivated by a stronger desire to keep their house out of the hands of the federal government, thanks to a little-known key provision of Obamacare. Their meager incomes made them eligible for a federally subsidized health plan, and their assets would be protected.

Does Obamacare actually allow the federal government to seize homes and other assets? Before answering that question, let’s go back to what supposedly motivated the Obama administration and Democrats to pass the ACA in the first place.

For years, Democrats had demanded federal action to address the problem of Americans without health insurance coverage. Estimates of this population went from 14 million to 40 million during the debate in 2009-10 over the scope of the crisis and potential solutions for it.

While those numbers sound large, a Gallup poll in late 2009 put them in better perspective, noting that 85 percent of American adults had health insurance, 87 percent of whom were satisfied with their coverage, and 61 percent satisfied with the costs. Even among the uninsured, half were satisfied with their situation, although only 27 percent expressed satisfaction about their costs for health care.

Instead of designing a solution that focused on the half of the 15 percent who needed better options and leaving everyone else alone, Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill insisted on imposing an overhaul of the entire health-insurance industry. This includes, crucially, an unprecedented individual mandate to carry health-insurance coverage. The ACA contains a highly-complex series of subsidies that help working-class Americans pay the now-skyrocketing premiums caused by coverage mandates on insurers, but only down to a certain income level.

Below that point, Americans who do not have employer-based coverage have to accept Medicaid coverage in order to comply with the Obamacare individual mandate, or pay full price for the skyrocketing premiums from private-sector insurers.

People often confuse Medicaid with Medicare, but there is a critical difference between the two programs. Medicare eligibility derives from Social Security contributions, and is a true “entitlement” program. Theoretically, coverage comes as part of the funds paid into the system, although in reality the federal government has to borrow billions of dollars to cover the costs.

Medicaid, on the other hand, is a state-based and federally-subsidized welfare program, one that employs means-testing – which includes ownership of assets as well as income levels. Medicaid programs include conditions that put recipients’ assets remaining after death at risk for seizure to reimburse taxpayers who footed the bill for the recipient’s health care during his/her lifetime.

This was done to prevent fraud, to ensure that limited resources went to the truly needy, and to recapture resources to cover future costs. Until now, though, Medicaid was a voluntary program, and the vast majority of people who entered into it had few assets to risk by signing up.

Here’s where the law of unintended consequences comes into Obamacare. Thanks to the exchange programming, consumers are getting enrolled in Medicaid whether they understand what that means or not, and in much greater numbers than before. (In the first month, nearly 90 percent of all the enrollees in the federal and state exchanges were Medicaid applicants.)

Unless they look at the fine print in the paperwork in Washington and other states with similar asset-forfeiture regulations, any assets they own will not pass to their heirs but to the state instead.

Prins and Balhorn are hardly alone in Washington. Adults between the ages of 50-64 account for 18 percent of the enrollments in the state’s Apple Health Medicaid program, and the seizure regulations apply in their cases for those 55 and older. The state exchange uses only income levels to means-test Washington applicants for the program, which means most of them will have no idea that their assets are at risk until it’s too late.

“People will think this is wonderful, this is free insurance,” Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said in an interview. “They don’t realize it’s really a loan, and is secured by any property they have.”

That’s one of the problems of Obamacare itself – the perception that it’s a free lunch. Even those who do qualify for subsidies get that only through the collection of a myriad of taxes imposed by Obamacare. Those taxes apply to employers, insurers, and medical-device manufacturers, which drive up the costs for consumers and workers in indirect ways. It’s a shell game--not a reform that actually drives costs down. Instead Obamacare only masks price increases through dishonest opacity.

The problem here is the arrogance of the solution itself. Had the Obama administration focused on just those who could not get coverage because of income or pre-existing conditions, they could have expanded Medicaid in an intelligent manner while protecting existing assets, without disrupting the rest of the market.

That might still have been controversial and would not have been cost-free by any means, but it would not have fatally undermined a system that worked for 85 percent of Americans and misled many of the rest into risking their estates without any warning that government would strip their heirs of family homes.

Targeted and modest solutions minimize unintended consequences, and allow for more speed and efficiency when they do arise. Obamacare will serve for decades as the cautionary tale when arrogance rules over modesty and common sense.

boutons_deux

12-19-2013, 01:03 PM

If TAXPAYERS pays $10Ks or $100Ks for health costs of necessarily poor people (aka, "redistribution of wealth"), then why shouldn't TAXPAYERS be reimbursed by seizing the dead poor person's definitely meager estate?

Does this anti-govt propagandist provide any numbers of how many Medicaid dead people's estates were seized and how much the $$ were?

btw, Medicaid (taxpayers) already does "estate recovery" to obtain reimbursement when Medicaid (taxpayers) has paid long-term nursing home costs (often paid in exorbitant prices to hedge fund/financial outfits that buy nursing homes fore the (Medicaid) guaranteed cash flow)

boutons_deux

12-19-2013, 05:41 PM

What's the backup plan if the young and healthy don't sign up as planned?

Sounds like there is no need for a backup plan :)

Why Obamacare’s Insurance Marketplaces Won’t Implode Next Year (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/19/3087891/worry-death-spiral/)

Worried that Healthcare.gov’s botched rollout — and ongoing problems (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/18/3083571/ahip-extends-obamacare-premium-payment-deadline/) with some states’ Obamacare web portals — could wreak havoc on enrollment efforts and create an unsustainable insurance marketplace that has too few young, healthy enrollees? Don’t (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) be (http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2013/rwjf409664).

Two new reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) (KFF) and the Urban Institute/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2013/rwjf409664) (RWJF) find that Obamacare can survive lower-than-expected enrollment numbers in its first year, and that premiums won’t necessarily skyrocket even if just a small number of young and healthy Americans get coverage this year.

Insurers in the pre-Obamacare market regularly charged sick people more for their coverage. That practice of medical “underwriting” is prohibited under the Affordable Care Act, which allows insurance companies to base their premiums on just three variables — a consumer’s geographic location, age, and whether or not they smoke. Age is largely used as a stand-in for health status, since younger people are also generally healthier. And in order to keep marketplace premiums in check and stop insurers from cherry-picking their customers, the health law only allows companies to charge older people up to three times the amount they charge younger people.

That’s why the White House and KFF has projected (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) that, in order to keep the marketplaces stable, about 40 percent of the expected seven million people who will enroll in private Obamacare coverage in 2014 must be relatively young and healthy. Otherwise, the insurance pools might be filled with a disproportionate number of sicker and older people — known as “adverse selection” — who are in greater need of health coverage but more expensive for insurers to cover, forcing companies to aggressively hike premiums across the board. That would then further discourage younger people from enrolling in coverage and lead to a vicious cycle that policy experts refer to as the insurance “death spiral.”

However, “because premiums are still allowed to vary substantially based on age, the financial consequences of lower enrollment among young adults are not as great as conventional wisdom might suggest,” explain (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) the authors of KFF’s new report.

KFF found (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) that if just one-third of a marketplace’s enrollees are between the ages of 18 and 34, insurers’ total costs “would be about 1.1% higher than premium revenues.” Strikingly, even a 50 percent lower-than-expected enrollment rate among young people — considered a worst-case scenario — would result in costs just 2.4 percent higher than revenues.

“[E]ven in the worst case, insurers would still be expected to earn profits, and would then likely raise premiums in 2015 to make up the shortfall,” concluded (http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-numbers-behind-young-invincibles-and-the-affordable-care-act/) the authors. But the required premium increase would likely be limited to one or two percent, “well below the level that would trigger a ‘death spiral.’”

RWJF’s new study (http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2013/rwjf409664) points to several other reasons that insurers are unlikely to hike rates even if enrollment skews toward sicker and older Americans. For instance, “risk corridors” — an Obamacare mechanism meant to limit how much insurers can profit or lose (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-19/a-guide-to-obamacares-backstop-for-anxious-insurance-companies) in the marketplaces — lets the government take money from insurance companies that set their 2014 premiums too high and use it to stem losses for companies that ended up setting their rates too low. Several other provisions will also limit insurer losses and consequently reduce the need for higher premiums.

The study authors also say that young people will be encouraged to sign up — if not in 2014, then during the next enrollment period — because of the way that Obamacare’s subsidies are structured. Since younger people tend to make less money, they’ll have access to more robust financial assistance under the health law. In fact, between 65 and 70 percent of 18 to 35-year-olds are expected to qualify (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/14/2465831/almost-half-americans-obamacare-subsidies/) for Obamacare subsidies. The youngest Obamacare enrollees are also far more likely to fall in an income bracket (less than 1.5 times the poverty level) where their out-of-pocket expenses are further limited under the law.

Thus, neither low enrollment numbers nor potentially sicker and costlier risk pools “is likely to affect the long term viability of the reforms or to substantially affect the nongroup premiums faced by consumers in future years,” concluded (http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2013/rwjf409664) the researchers.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/19/3087891/worry-death-spiral/#

SnakeBoy

12-19-2013, 05:49 PM

Strikingly, even a 50 percent lower-than-expected enrollment rate among young people — considered a worst-case scenario — would result in costs just 2.4 percent higher than revenues

So under that scenario when I lose my individual policy next year instead of a 283% increase, I'll be looking at a 285% increase in my premium. And you think that's good news :rolleyes

TSA

12-19-2013, 07:25 PM

boutons_deux

12-19-2013, 08:27 PM

So under that scenario when I lose my individual policy next year instead of a 283% increase, I'll be looking at a 285% increase in my premium. And you think that's good news :rolleyes

You Lie

Th'Pusher

12-19-2013, 08:43 PM

SnakeBoy

12-19-2013, 11:51 PM

Wifey will just have to work a little bit harder to keep the family insured, huh?

I'll make sure she does :hat

Nbadan

12-20-2013, 01:28 AM

33% of the Texas population has no healthcare...

That’s approximately is 4.8 million people who can not see a DR. unless its at an emergency room.
Tonight on Rachael, she discussed Issa’s trip last night to hold hearings on “Obamacare”.. There was one point when Issa amazingly dressed down the head of Medicaid in Texas by showing him a clip of Fox News
and then stating to him, “that he should watch more Fox News”...No need to even begin to comment..

My point is that out of fucking 4.8 million, could not anyone in that state start advocating for the uninsured by perhaps getting them into the street to peacefully to protest the fact that the State is purposely trying to keep them from receiving healthcare for political purposes? ...

I realize that poor people are so distressed that they feel almost impotent to do anything at all which might enable them to get themselves out of this horrid condition..

But out of 4.8 million one just has to think that Texas Democrats could organize a small protest demonstration every day in front of Perry”s office. I’m talking 2 or 3 hundred on a continuous basis.

Christ... are you telling me that Texas Democrats are that weak that they can not get this horrible issue out front for all the nation to see.....Or are you rather telling me that the Uninsured in Texas are so deep in the dark, and that they hate Obama so much that they would rather die in order to destroy his presidency?
In the meantime, a summary of the crap Rachael carried today..

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/12/17/issa-tells-texas-health-official-you-need-watch-more-fox

Th'Pusher

12-20-2013, 11:11 AM

I'll make sure she does :hat
Just like Barry knew you would. Let's give it up for snakeboy's wife paying her fair share to prevent the death spiral.

boutons_deux

12-20-2013, 11:22 AM

So under that scenario when I lose my individual policy next year instead of a 283% increase, I'll be looking at a 285% increase in my premium. And you think that's good news :rolleyes

ah, lying again, snakeboy

ACA didn't cancel your policy. The insurance company did.

When did you buy it? I bet the insurance company sold you a shitty junk policy AFTER ACA was passed, knowing it would have to cancel it since it was garbage.

ACA didn't increase your premium. The insurance company, always ready to screw its customers (under false pretense of ACA), increased your premium.

List the deductible, premium, coverages of you old shitty junk policy and your new ACA-compatible policy.

boutons_deux

12-20-2013, 12:09 PM

So under that scenario when I lose my individual policy next year instead of a 283% increase, I'll be looking at a 285% increase in my premium. And you think that's good news :rolleyes

Obama has announced that the appx 500K people like yourself can now go buy shitty, junk policies again. Good luck in finding an insurance company that will sell you a shitty, junk policy at your previous price.

SnakeBoy

12-20-2013, 01:48 PM

Obama has announced that the appx 500K people like yourself can now go buy shitty, junk policies again. Good luck in finding an insurance company that will sell you a shitty, junk policy at your previous price.

My "shitty junk" policy - 100% preventative care, $2500 individual deductible, $5 million individual lifetime max for $315/month

Obamacare Gold Policy - 100% preventative care, $3000 individual deductible, No individual lifetime max for $892/month...oh but I get free birth control pills and shmashmortions.

Keep on trying to polish that turd boutons.

TSA

12-20-2013, 01:52 PM

Or are you rather telling me that the Uninsured in Texas are so deep in the dark, and that they hate Obama so much that they would rather die in order to destroy his presidency?I wasn't aware that being uninsured in Texas caused death.

boutons_deux

12-20-2013, 01:58 PM

I wasn't aware that being uninsured in Texas caused death.

not having access to health care causes the poor to die earlier than than those with access to health care

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSTRE58G6W520090917

then there's about the same number/year of deaths WITH HEALTH CARE due to avoidable medical errors.

boutons_deux

12-21-2013, 04:25 PM

shitbag TX Repugs, elected by shitbag Repug voters, screwing TX citizens even more. No navigators can work before 1 Jan, AFTER 2014 signup closed, and now the shitbags are piling on more navigator restrictions, even using dirty trickster fraud shitbag O'Keefe:

Proposed Regulation of Navigators Criticized at Hearing

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act and its so-called navigators, who are charged with helping uninsured Texans sign up for health insurance coverage, on Friday criticized proposals for additional regulations of navigators during a Texas Department of Insurance hearing.

Political pressure from state leaders, costly additional training and the broad definition of navigators by the state were among the top concerns raised by lawmakers,representatives of health service providers and community organizations that represent navigators working in Texas. TDI proposed (http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/03/insurance-commission-proposes-rules-health-navigat/)the new rules earlier this month. Aimed at addressing concerns from state leaders, the rules would require navigators to undergo criminal background checks, comply with additional privacy and Texas Medicaid training, and would prohibit conflicts of interest.

“These rules, for the most part, do not appear they are aimed at protecting consumers,” said state Rep. Chris Turner (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/chris-turner/), D-Grand Prairie. “Rather, they seem clearly intended to make a political statement.”

Turner said that navigators had become an “easy target in an all-out assault” on the federal health reform law.

The federal government awarded almost $11 million to local organizations in Texas charged with hiring and training navigators to help individuals sign up for health insurance, as required by the Affordable Care Act, through a federal health insurance marketplace. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services already requires navigators to complete 20 to 30 hours of training and to pass a certification test, among other requirements.

Gov. Rick Perry (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/rick-perry/), who staunchly opposes the federal health reform law, first requested the additional rules in September, citing consumer privacy concerns. Other Republican state political leaders, including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/david-dewhurst/) and Attorney General Greg Abbott (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/greg-abbott/), who are both currently campaigning for office, also called for additional regulation of navigators and have called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

State Sen. Kirk Watson (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/kirk-watson/), D-Austin, who authored the bill that required TDI to make a “good-faith effort” to comply with HHS rules before implementing additional state rules, said many of TDI’s proposed rules are already included in his bill, adding that implementing the new rules would present “challenges and reduction of access” for the uninsured.
“You need to demonstrate that the obstacle you’ve created is truly and meaningfully about consumer protection,” Watson told Insurance Commissioner Julia Rathgeber. “These rules must not be seen as the products of raw political pressure to impose needless, expensive, burdensome, bureaucratic regulations that would deny reliable health care to Texans who need it.”

The additional rules also explicitly prohibit navigators from charging individuals for their services, selling or soliciting health insurance, recommending specific health plans, providing guidance on comparing the benefits of specific plans, and engaging in certain political activities, such as campaigning or promoting a political party or candidate.
At the hearing, representatives of organizations that hire and train navigators said that privacy concerns raised by political leaders were unwarranted because of the experience and training navigators already have.

Tim McKinney, CEO of United Way of Tarrant County, asked TDI to provide evidence of incidents that would demonstrate the need for “such stringent standards.”
United Way of Tarrant County is the lead organization of the Consumer Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment Services Consortium, which was awarded a $5.9 million grant to hire and train navigators in Texas. The consortium is made up of 16 organizations that currently employ a combined 158 navigators.

McKinney said that the costly additional 20 to 40 hours of training TDI would impose under the new rules are excessive and that using existing, free web-based training is sufficient for navigators to help consumers understand their options.

The estimated cost of additional training — about $800 per navigator — would be detrimental to the uninsured, McKinney said.

“The people who will be hurt by the proposed cost increased are the people we are supposed to be serving — those who are uninsured,” McKinney said.

At least two organizations that received navigator grants in Texas have backed out of the program in response to the state’s political pressure.

Representatives for the Texas Hospital Association and the Teaching Hospitals of Texas organization said they were concerned that the proposed TDI rules contain a definition of a navigator that is too broad and could affect hospital staff who help patients register for health insurance.

Allison Brim, organizing director for the Texas Organizing Project, said many of its staffers would be unable to provide members across Texas with guidance about signing up for insurance if the current language of the proposed rules was kept.

Members of the Texas Organizaing Project made up a large portion of the modest audience at the hearing, which more than 100 people attended.

TDI’s Friday hearing comes on the heels of a congressional field hearing (http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/17/oversight-hearing-highlights-aca-navigator-shortco/) Monday in Richardson during which members of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee intended to address allegations that some navigators have broken program rules and encouraged tax fraud.

Navigators have recently come under scrutiny after Project Veritas, a group led by conservative activist James O’Keefe, released videos that show navigators in Dallas suggesting to applicants that they should lie to increase the subsidies they could receive under the federal health reform.

Republican lawmakers, including state Rep. Kenneth Sheets (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/kenneth-sheets/) of Dallas and state Sen. Donna Campbell (http://www.texastribune.org/directory/donna-campbell/) of San Marcos, cited the videos in their testimony.

The videos revealed the “intrinsic flaws” of the “ill-defined” navigator program, Campbell said.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/20/proposed-regulation-navigators-criticized-hearing/

Repugs sabotaging what they can't repeal, no matter how many TX citizens get screwed.

boutons_deux

12-26-2013, 04:38 PM

As Health Law Cements Its Place, G.O.P. Ponders How to Attack

With the first enrollment deadline now passed, Republicans who have made the repeal of President Obama’s health care law their central aim are confronting a new reality: More than two million Americans are expected to be getting their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act come Jan. 1.

The enrollment figures may be well short of what the Obama administration had hoped for. But the fact that a significant number of Americans are now benefiting from the program is resulting in a subtle shift among Republicans.

“It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and a Tea Party favorite. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”

And that underscores a central fact of American politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act during the Depression: Once a benefit has been bestowed, it is nearly impossible to take it away.

Republicans are considering several ideas for how to proceed. Mr. Johnson argued that Congress should do away with the mandate that most people obtain insurance, but not the online exchanges at the heart of the law. Instead, he said, the options in the marketplaces should be augmented by other choices that fall short of the law’s coverage standards, such as catastrophic health plans. (Many policy analysts and insurance companies say such a move would not work, because the mandates are essential to delivering a diverse pool of uninsured people.)

( hey Johnson, $5K deductible ACA plans are already "catastrophe" plans :lol )

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that health care strategy was the hottest topic of debate in closed-door political sessions.

“The hardest problem for us is what to do next,” Mr. Graham said. “Should we just get out of the way and point out horror stories? Should we come up with a mini Contract With America on health care, or just say generally if you give us the Congress, the House and the Senate in 2014, here’s what we will do for you on multiple issues including health care? You become a more effective critic when you say, ‘Here’s what I’m for,’ and we’re not there yet. So there’s our struggle.”

( Hey Lindsay, you old lesbian, Repugs are FOR screwing the 99% and enriching/protecting the 1% )

Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, said she was teaming up with Democrats on a host of incremental changes to the law, such as expanding health savings accounts and repealing a tax on medical devices. And other Republicans are wondering aloud how long they can keep up the single-minded tactic of highlighting what is wrong with the law without saying what they would do about the problems it was supposed to address.

Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, a physician and a prominent conservative voice on health care, is pushing what he calls the Empowering Patients First Act, which would repeal the health care law but keep its prohibition on exclusions for pre-existing conditions in private health insurance.

The bill would allow for insurance to be sold across state lines, push small businesses to pool together to buy insurance for their employees, expand tax-free health savings accounts, cap malpractice lawsuits, and offer tax credits of $2,163 for individuals and $5,799 for families to buy health plans.

The American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group run by Douglas Holtz Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, analyzed the Price plan this month. The group concluded that it would lower insurance premiums by as much as 19 percent by 2023, while leaving the ranks of the uninsured about 5 percentage points higher than the Affordable Care Act would by then.

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012 and a possible 2016 presidential hopeful, is preparing his own health insurance plan for release early next year.

Mr. Ryan’s plan will build on one that he and Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, introduced in 2009, according to aides familiar with it. The proposal, called the Patients’ Choice Act, would have eliminated the tax break for employer-provided health care to finance a tax credit of about $5,700 for families and $2,300 for individuals. States would have been asked to create insurance marketplaces like the ones many have created under the Affordable Care Act.

As with the Obama health care law, the Ryan proposal demanded that insurers meet minimum standards of coverage and be prevented from excluding the sick. But instead of mandating penalties for failing to buy insurance, the approach would have automatically enrolled people unless they opted out.

Mr. Price said on Thursday that he was “cautiously optimistic” that he, other lawmakers and House Republican leaders could meld the different approaches into one alternative health plan to take to voters — and possibly the House floor — in the 2014 election season.

“It’s the minority’s responsibility to provide a contrast,” he said. “It’s important that we put forward an upbeat, positive proposal, so the American people know there is an alternative.”

Whether voices like Ms. Ayotte’s or Mr. Johnson’s will ultimately prevail is unclear, given the deep opposition among rank-and-file Republicans. Mr. Graham said that Republicans would probably get away with denouncing the Affordable Care Act through the midterm elections, but that by 2016 they would need to have a fully formed alternative.

White House officials acknowledge that the administration needs to focus on making sure all those who enrolled in health plans actually have coverage on Jan. 1. HealthCare.gov received two million site visits on Monday, the official deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1, and the insurance call center took more than 250,000 calls, said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 129,000 people left emails on Monday after finding the website jammed with traffic, and activity remained brisk on Tuesday for those taking advantage of a 24-hour extension.

“Millions of people visited the state and federal marketplaces this week to purchase private health plans,” said a White House spokeswoman, Tara McGuinness. “The final tallies are being rounded up, but we believe the deadline encouraged decision-making for hundreds of thousands of families who will have access to care in the new year.”

State-run exchanges had a similar crush. Almost 26,000 people signed up in New York State on the last enrollment day. California enrolled 27,000, and Washington State 20,000. Connecticut beat its expectations with 6,700 new sign-ups.

Some of those rushing to enroll are bound to find problems in January as private insurers struggle to line up federal and state website enrollment with actual policies, a White House official said. And attitudes toward the law are not going to change overnight.

But if Mr. Obama’s approval rating on health care is tepid, Congress’s is abysmal. Just 19 percent of Americans approve of the way congressional Republicans are handling health care. Still, a New York Times/CBS News poll (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/us/uninsured-americans-are-about-as-skeptical-of-health-care-law-as-the-insured-poll-finds.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1388089000-ijC95OjVBzfukVFDxmlKGg) this month showed that nearly two-thirds of Republican respondents wanted to have the Affordable Care Act repealed, and most Republican lawmakers are appealing to those constituents.

“A few million people are buying a product that has features they don’t want, paying more for it than they should have to pay for it because they had to buy it through this government-mandated mechanism,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. “I don’t think that changes anything fundamentally at all.” :lol

Asked what should be done with the millions of people getting health care through the law, Senator Dan Coats, Republican of Indiana, said, “Call the White House and ask them.” :lol

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/27/us/politics/as-health-law-cements-its-place-gop-ponders-how-to-attack.html?from=homepage

Repugs are so fucked but in their echo chamber, they don't realize it.

As with the Obama stimulus that the Repugs voted against but then claimed credit for when the checks hit their states and districts and job rolls, the Repugs should also now help Obamacare and then take full, and naturally dishonest, hypocritical credit for it. :lol

SnakeBoy

12-26-2013, 09:59 PM

Nbadan

12-26-2013, 10:54 PM

Just got my notice today that my premium has increased from $315 to $409/month. And a notice that providers that may have been covered under my plan may no longer be. I guess that wipes out the grandfathered status so they can try to force me onto an ACA plan next year.

That's your private insurance raising your rates to meet the minimum daily requirements under the ACA.....it may be cheaper for you to go into the exchange and shop around...

SnakeBoy

12-26-2013, 11:25 PM

That's your private insurance raising your rates to meet the minimum daily requirements under the ACA.....

I don't know what you mean by minimum daily requirements. I know starting January 1st they have to start using the federal rating standard which doesn't allow as much variation based on health status and experience rating. In other words, we don't get to benefit for staying healthy for the 11 years we've had this policy and we now get to chip in more for all the fat asses in Texas.

...it may be cheaper for you to go into the exchange and shop around...

$392 for a bronze plan with a $6000 deductible...not a better deal.

boutons_deux

12-27-2013, 08:23 AM

$392 for a bronze plan with a $6000 deductible...not a better deal.

The vast majority of drivers never have a wreck or make a claim, but they pay auto insurance to cover all the drunk drivers[ wrecks/manslaughter, stolen cars disappearing into MX, TEEN drivers, etc, etc.

btw, FOR-PROFIT health insurance is expensive because doctors and hospitals charge EXORBITANT prices and health insurers have to pay investors and execs, aka, wealth redistribution upwards.

All that for-profit rip-off, inefficient, corrupt, kludgeocracy ain't ACA's fault.

Health care is $3T/year wealth-sucking kludgeocracy that owns assholes like Baucus and other Congressman, has captured regulators and rulemakers like FDA.

Fuckus Baucus, who is Senate Finance chairman and who hired a health insurance exec/lobbyist to write ACA, has received $Ms contributions from the health care sector.

Bill_Brasky

12-27-2013, 10:21 AM

boutons_deux

12-27-2013, 10:34 AM

This shit is so retarded. Certain faggots have been actively trying to sabotage this thing since it was introduced. And now that its not working the way its
supposed to the same faggots are complaining that it didn't work. No shit.....

It's working pretty damn well.

ankle-biting Repugs are bitching that changing rules and moving deadlines are unConstitutional, ILLEGAL, impeach Obama!
Repugs HATE that govt would actually try, bend over backwards, to help Human-Americans rather than fuck them over.

Because big for-profit private contractors can't code a big system for shit, including mighty Oracle just trying to write the exchange for one state, tiny Oregon, ain't ACA's fault.

Oregon fiasco: Online health exchange yet to launch

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022505737_oregonhealthcarexml.html

TSA

12-27-2013, 01:55 PM

It's working pretty damn well.

ankle-biting Repugs are bitching that changing rules and moving deadlines are unConstitutional, ILLEGAL, impeach Obama!
Repugs HATE that govt would actually try, bend over backwards, to help Human-Americans rather than fuck them over.

Because big for-profit private contractors can't code a big system for shit, including mighty Oracle just trying to write the exchange for one state, tiny Oregon, ain't ACA's fault.

Oregon fiasco: Online health exchange yet to launch

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022505737_oregonhealthcarexml.html

Are you claiming these were not unconstitutional?

Wild Cobra

12-27-2013, 01:58 PM

Are you claiming these were not unconstitutional?
He claims what ever he thinks looks bad on repugs.

boutons_deux

12-27-2013, 01:59 PM

Are you claiming these were not unconstitutional?

where does the Constitution say anything about ACA rule making or rule changing?

I suppose that the Repugs could and would always sue ACA in a federal court packed with extremist Repug judge(s).

TSA

12-27-2013, 02:53 PM

where does the Constitution say anything about ACA rule making or rule changing?

I suppose that the Repugs could and would always sue ACA in a federal court packed with extremist Repug judge(s).
How are laws changed?

TSA

12-27-2013, 04:42 PM

That is what I thought.

Lincoln

12-27-2013, 05:13 PM

That is what I thought.

damn you sound like a whiny faggot ass bitch. did you get fucked too hard up the ass last night? calm down

TSA

12-27-2013, 05:55 PM

damn you sound like a whiny faggot ass bitch. did you get fucked too hard up the ass last night? calm down

Thank you lincoln for your contribution to the political forum! Now run along back to the club and ask others how to get a girl's phone number while working behind a cash register.

boutons_deux

12-27-2013, 06:06 PM

How are laws changed?

The ACA law isn't in question.

It's the rules implementing the law that are being, rules modified to help govt help Human-Americans, for a change.

writing, modifying the rules implementing a law don't need Congressional approval. Just like the BigFinance lobbyists gutting the rules, adding 100s of huge loopholes of the CFPB law.

go suck a big, black, hard one, don't worry it's not loaded.

TSA

12-27-2013, 06:48 PM

The ACA law isn't in question.

It's the rules implementing the law that are being, rules modified to help govt help Human-Americans, for a change.

writing, modifying the rules implementing a law don't need Congressional approval. Just like the BigFinance lobbyists gutting the rules, adding 100s of huge loopholes of the CFPB law.

go suck a big, black, hard one, don't worry it's not loaded.

As a responsible gun owner I treat every gun as if it is loaded.

Obama is not faithfully executing the law as written. Maybe he should have read these things over and understood them better before signing it into law. These aren't the first unconstitutional things he's done and I'm sure there will be many more.

1. Delay of Obamacare’s out-of-pocket caps. The Labor Department announced in February that it was delaying for a year the part of the healthcare law that limits how much people have to spend on their own insurance. This may have been sensible—insurers and employers need time to comply with rapidly changing regulations—but changing the law requires actual legislation.

2. Delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate. The administration announced via blogpost on the eve of the July 4 holiday that it was delaying the requirement that employers of at least 50 people provide complying insurance or pay a fine. This time it did cite statutory authority, but the cited provisions allow the delay of certain reporting requirements, not of the mandate itself.

3. Delay of Obamacare’s insurance requirements. The famous pledge that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” backfired when insurance companies started cancelling millions of plans that didn’t comply with Obamacare’s requirements. President Obama called a press conference last month to proclaim that people could continue buying non-complying plans in 2014—despite Obamacare’s explicit language to the contrary. He then refused to consider a House-passed bill that would’ve made this action legal.

4. Exemption of Congress from Obamacare. A little-known part of Obamacare requires Congressmen and their staff to get insurance through the new healthcare exchanges, rather than a taxpayer-funded program. In the quiet of August, President Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management to interpret the law to maintain the generous congressional benefits.

5. Expansion of the employer mandate penalty through IRS regulation. Obamacare grants tax credits to people whose employers don’t provide coverage if they buy a plan “through an Exchange established by the State”—and then fines employers for each employee receiving such a subsidy. No tax credits are authorized for residents of states where the exchanges are established by the federal government, as an incentive for states to create exchanges themselves. Because so few (16) states did, however, the IRS issued a rule ignoring that plain text and allowed subsidies (and commensurate fines) for plans coming from “a State Exchange, regional Exchange, subsidiary Exchange, and federally-facilitated Exchange.”

TSA

12-27-2013, 06:52 PM

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-fix-is-illegal-100254.html

One week later, states are still wrestling with whether to implement Barack Obama’s answer to the wave of dropped plans that greeted the launch of his signature health care initiative. The president’s “fix,” announced last Thursday in a somber news conference, allows insurance companies to renew policies that do not meet the minimum care standards of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which go into effect on Jan. 1.
So far, only 13 states have said they will cooperate with the administration’s initiative, however, and some have refused. The debate has turned mostly on questions of actuarial policy. But the bigger problem states must consider is that the fix itself is unconstitutional. And even if the president did have the authority to take such action, state compliance with it would still break the law.

First, the fix exceeds the president’s discretion in implementing the law and amounts to legislation from the White House. The president has no constitutional authority to rewrite or unbundle statutes, especially in ways that impose new obligations on people, as the fix does.

But the Obama administration claims an “inherent authority to exercise discretion” in enforcing laws by not enforcing key parts of the ACA at all for one year. And how does argument that hold up? Not very well. Certainly, the chief executive has some discretion to decide how strongly to apply a law, and the timing of enforcement. However, complete non-enforcement of multiple statutes without any argument that they are unconstitutional certainly tests the limits of that discretion.

The difference between executive discretion and rewriting a law can be blurry, but the latter can generally be characterized as involving broad policy, while the former involves particular circumstances that arise in the administration of a law. (To put it differently, enforcement discretion goes to how a law is implemented, not if.)

It is hard to think of anything more like broad policy than the central provisions of what has been called the most significant piece of legislation in a generation. Moreover, Congress is actively working on similar measures, but with differences the president considers objectionable. This further demonstrates the primarily legislative nature of the fix.

Indeed, far from mere “non-enforcement,” the fix imposes entirely novel requirements on insurers. Insurers have to make a variety of disclaimers and statements against interest to benefit from the non-enforcement. This is not a requirement found in the Affordable Care Act or its attendant regulations. The new requirements for insurers are highly detailed, showing this is thus not simply a delay, but substantive new regulation, adopted by dictate.

The second constitutional infirmity relates not to Congress, but the states. Unlike prior exercises of presidential enforcement discretion, the fix depends on states violating federal law. That is because it does not change the law on the books. Rather, the feds are simply signaling that they will not enforce certain provisions for some time.
But many parts of Obamacare do have to be applied by states, the traditional front lines of insurance regulation. States, however, lack “enforcement discretion” when it comes to ignoring federal law, even when the president thinks it would be a good idea. As the president has often reminded us, the ACA is “the law of the land,” and remains so after the fix.
The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause makes federal law—not presidential policies— binding on the states. So what’s a state insurance commissioner to do? Federal law requires health plans to have a mandatory level of “minimum coverage.” Thus it is not clear how a state insurance commissioner can authorize a plan that violates federal law. Such action would create a direct conflict between state action and federal law—and the latter automatically wins (even without the broad view of preemption of state laws that the administration has championed in immigration cases).
And the fix might violate state laws as well. Most states have passed “conforming legislation” that imports the ACA regulations into state law, so they can be enforced by state officials. But again, state governors—let alone state insurance commissioners—do not necessarily have the broad “enforcement discretion” over state law that Obama claims over federal law. Such sweeping non-enforcement might even be illegal under some
states’ constitutional and administrative principles.

The incorporation of the ACA into state law also opens more possibilities for judicial challenge. While the Constitution limits standing to challenge non-enforcement in federal courts, state courts do not operate under these limits, and can potentially hear cases that would not make it into federal court.

President Obama’s fix, of course, only “encourages” states to go along with his plan, as the letter to state insurance commissioners puts it. The administration is only “encouraging” states to disobey federal law, in other words. This is something new. Even the radical and discredited states rights’ “doctrine of nullification” only allows states to ignore federal laws that they consider unconstitutional, not simply politically inconvenient.
Eugene Kontorovich is professor at Northwestern University School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-fix-is-illegal-100254.html#ixzz2oiqxTgyc

Th'Pusher

12-27-2013, 07:49 PM

As a responsible gun owner I treat every gun as if it is loaded.

Obama is not faithfully executing the law as written. Maybe he should have read these things over and understood them better before signing it into law. These aren't the first unconstitutional things he's done and I'm sure there will be many more.

1. Delay of Obamacare’s out-of-pocket caps. The Labor Department announced in February that it was delaying for a year the part of the healthcare law that limits how much people have to spend on their own insurance. This may have been sensible—insurers and employers need time to comply with rapidly changing regulations—but changing the law requires actual legislation.

2. Delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate. The administration announced via blogpost on the eve of the July 4 holiday that it was delaying the requirement that employers of at least 50 people provide complying insurance or pay a fine. This time it did cite statutory authority, but the cited provisions allow the delay of certain reporting requirements, not of the mandate itself.

3. Delay of Obamacare’s insurance requirements. The famous pledge that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” backfired when insurance companies started cancelling millions of plans that didn’t comply with Obamacare’s requirements. President Obama called a press conference last month to proclaim that people could continue buying non-complying plans in 2014—despite Obamacare’s explicit language to the contrary. He then refused to consider a House-passed bill that would’ve made this action legal.

4. Exemption of Congress from Obamacare. A little-known part of Obamacare requires Congressmen and their staff to get insurance through the new healthcare exchanges, rather than a taxpayer-funded program. In the quiet of August, President Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management to interpret the law to maintain the generous congressional benefits.

5. Expansion of the employer mandate penalty through IRS regulation. Obamacare grants tax credits to people whose employers don’t provide coverage if they buy a plan “through an Exchange established by the State”—and then fines employers for each employee receiving such a subsidy. No tax credits are authorized for residents of states where the exchanges are established by the federal government, as an incentive for states to create exchanges themselves. Because so few (16) states did, however, the IRS issued a rule ignoring that plain text and allowed subsidies (and commensurate fines) for plans coming from “a State Exchange, regional Exchange, subsidiary Exchange, and federally-facilitated Exchange.”

:lol fundamentalrefounding.com

I love it when TSA is too embarrassed to link his bullshit. Why hasn't the house impeached Barry yet if the case is as open and shut as our conservative blogger friend with 5 readers seems to believe?

TSA

12-27-2013, 08:45 PM

:lol fundamentalrefounding.com

I love it when TSA is too embarrassed to link his bullshit. Why hasn't the house impeached Barry yet if the case is as open and shut as our conservative blogger friend with 5 readers seems to believe?

:lol fundamentalrefounding.com

Try
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/12/23/president-obamas-top-10-constitutional-violations-of-2013/

Seems to me the author is a bit more than just some blogger you found on that website. Google failed you.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/advisor to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule of law issues and practiced international, political, commercial, and antitrust litigation at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Shapiro has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, L.A. Times, USA Today, National Law Journal, Weekly Standard, New York Times Online, and National Review Online. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, including CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision and Telemundo, The Colbert Report, NPR, and American Public Media’s Marketplace. Shapiro has provided testimony to Congress and state legislatures and, as coordinator of Cato’s amicus brief program, filed more than 100 “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society and other groups, is a member of the Legal Studies Institute’s board of visitors at The Fund for American Studies, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School. Before entering private practice, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, while living in Mississippi and traveling around the Deep South. He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (where he became a Tony Patiño Fellow). Shapiro is a member of the bars of New York, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a native speaker of English and Russian, is fluent in Spanish and French, and is proficient in Italian and Portuguese.

Th'Pusher

12-27-2013, 08:52 PM

:lol fundamentalrefounding.com

Try
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/12/23/president-obamas-top-10-constitutional-violations-of-2013/

Seems to me the author is a bit more than just some blogger you found on that website. Google failed you.

It did. Maybe you can link your shit articles in the future instead of putting the onus on the reader to look it up...

btw, CATO via Forbes. Nice combo. So why no impeachment from the house? Not conservative enough?

TSA

12-27-2013, 08:56 PM

http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/how-obamacare-threatens-to-shred-constitution/

As President Obama’s signature legislation is rolled out nationwide, a recently released book raises serious questions about the constitutionality of Obamacare.

In “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office,” New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott make the case Obamacare not only is unconstitutional, it illegally bypasses Congress, infringes on states’ rights and marks an unprecedented and unauthorized expansion of Internal Revenue Service power.

Klein and Elliott quote scholars and legal organizations contending Obamacare constitutes a clear case of “taxation without representation.”

“Impeachable Offenses” shows Obamacare may violate multiple sections of the Constitution, as WND reported.

While the Obama administration may argue the health-care legislation was upheld by the Supreme Court, “Impeachable Offenses” reports the White House has been hard at work changing the implementation of key sections of Obamacare without congressional oversight.

Taxation without representation

One part of the Constitution that may be violated is Article 1, Section 9, which stipulates: “No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

The section is clarified in the 16th Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

The Supreme Court ruled the health-care mandate under the legislation is a tax. However, according to experts cited in “Impeachable Offenses,” this tax does not satisfy the requirements of any of the three types of valid constitutional taxes – income, excise or direct.

Write Klein and Elliott: “Because the penalty is not assessed on income, it is not a valid income tax. Because the penalty is not assessed uniformly or proportionately, and is triggered by economic inactivity, it is not a valid excise tax. Finally, because Obamacare fails to apportion the tax among the states by population, it is not a valid direct tax.”

Despite Obama’s public statements that the individual mandate was not a tax, the Supreme Court ruled June 28, 2012, in a 5 to 4 vote, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the majority, that the requirement that the majority of Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty was constitutional, authorized by Congress’s power to levy taxes.

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”

In a second 5-4 vote, again with Justice Roberts joining the majority, the court rejected the administration’s most vigorous argument in support of the law, that Congress held the power to regulate interstate commerce.

The Commerce Clause, the Court ruled, did not apply.

However, Klein and Elliott document the White House has been changing the law without involving Congress since the Supreme Court ruling, and multiple sections of the implementation of Obamacare are unconstitutional.

Bribing states?

“Impeachable Offenses” cites Jonathan H. Adler of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute.

The duo found: “The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. … Obamacare authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges (Section 1311) but not federal ones (Section 1321).

“In other words, states that refuse to create an exchange can block much of Obamacare’s spending and practically force Congress to reopen the law for revisions.”

The Obama administration, however, was furiously at work in an attempt to avoid a legislative debacle. The administration proposed an IRS rule to “offer premium assistance in all exchanges ‘whether established under section 1311 or 1321,’” Adler and Cannon said.

The Treasury Department, they continued, was “confident” that the IRS had the authority to offer premium assistance where Congress had not authorized it and that this overreach was “consistent with the intent of the law and [its] ability to interpret and implement it.”

“Such confidence is misplaced,” Adler and Cannon asserted. “The text of the law is perfectly clear. And without congressional authorization, the IRS lacks the power to dispense tax credits or spend money.”

In May 2012 the IRS released its final regulations that would “provide guidance to individuals who enroll in qualified health plans through Affordable Insurance Exchanges and claim the premium tax credit, and to exchanges that make qualified health plans available to individuals and employers.”

Free-market advocate Phil Kerpen, cited in “Impeachable Offenses,” called the regulations an “outrageous edict that attempts to up-end the ability of states to opt out of [Obama’s] health care law’s new entitlement.”

Kerpen called the Obama administration out for what he said was an obvious attempt to “bribe states to participate by manipulating language in the law that is meant to authorize start-up grants to instead fund years of operating expenses.”

Indeed, a July 2012 announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services offered states six full years of funding.

Was the maneuver constitutional? Article I, Section 1, states: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

Congress does not vest the power to write and rewrite laws in HHS and IRS; nor can unelected bureaucrats impose taxes on states that legitimately opted out of a federal program, Kerpen continued.

“Impeachable Offenses” further cites Adler and Cannon on how the IRS went ahead in May 2012 and finalized “a rule that will issue tax credits – and therefore will trigger cost-sharing subsidies and employer-mandate penalties – through federal exchanges.”

They contended that the rule is not only illegal, but it also lacks any statutory authority.

‘State’s rights violated’

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Tenth Amendment Center, which was among the plaintiffs that took Obamacare to the Supreme Court, clarifies that the amendment was “written to emphasize the limited nature of the powers delegated to the federal government.”

“In delegating just specific powers to the federal government, the states and the people, with some small exceptions, were free to continue exercising their sovereign powers.”

As of February 2013, only 17 states and the District of Columbia planned to run their own exchanges, while another seven opted for state-federal exchanges. The 26 states that have chosen to opt out entirely challenged the law in the Supreme Court

In January 2010, Ken Klukowski explained that the 10th Amendment does not apply here in the way many people have thought – although it does apply in a more serious manner, “Impeachable Offenses” relates. Klukowski co-authored with former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell the 2010 book “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.”

Citing two cases from the 1990s, Klukowski wrote that the Supreme Court “shocked the legal world” by striking down the cases for violating the 10th Amendment.

The first case was in 1992, New York v. United States, in which the Court “struck down a federal law requiring states to pass state laws for the disposal of radioactive waste, and to issue regulations for implementing those laws.”

In the second case, Printz v. United States in 1997, the Court “struck down a provision of the Brady Act – a federal gun-control law – that required state and local law enforcement to run background checks on handgun purchasers.”

From these two cases, Klukowski explained, “emerged the anti-commandeering principle, holding that the 10th Amendment forbids the federal government from commandeering – or ordering – any branch of state government to do anything.”

“The states are sovereign and answer only to their voters, not to Washington, D.C.,” he said.

The commandeering principle is the real problem for Obamacare, write Klein and Elliott, since the law requires each states to set up insurance exchanges.

“It then requires the states to pass regulations for implementing those laws. And it further requires the states to dedicate staff and spend state money to administer those programs,” said Klukowski.

In his opinion, Obamacare is a “straight-out repeat of those 1992 and 1997 cases.”

“The main difference is that Obamacare violates the anti-commandeering principle in a far more severe and egregious way than those previous laws ever did,” Klukowski concluded.

Originated in Senate?

“Impeachable Offenses” cites Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution, which states: “All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”

The Sacramento, Calif.-based Pacific Legal Foundation filed a challenge to Obamacare that contends it is unconstitutional, because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House.

The foundation claims that under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, “all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.”

The tip to follow this course of action came from the Supreme Court itself. In his June 28, 2012, ruling, it was noted that Chief Justice Roberts took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a mandate.

The Justice Department claimed that the bill did not originate as a spending bill and therefore does not violate the Origination Clause.

The bill, which began life as House Resolution 3590, then called the Service Members Home Ownership Act, was stripped of its contents after it passed in the House in a process known as “gut and amend.” The legislation was replaced entirely with the thousands of pages of what eventually became Obamacare and given a new name.

The Obama government’s position is that while using the resolution as a “‘shell bill’ may be inelegant … it’s not unconstitutional.”

The foundation’s response, as documented in “Impeachable Offenses,” was that “it is undisputed that H.R. 3590 was not originally a bill for raising revenue.”

“Unlike in the prior cases [cited by the Justice Department], the Senate’s gut-and-amend procedure made H.R. 3590 for the first time into a bill for raising revenue. The precedents the government cites are therefore inapplicable.”

While the Justice Department contended that raising revenue was incidental to Obamacare’s “central purpose” – to improve the nation’s health care system – the foundation’s attorney, Timothy Sandefur, disagreed.

“What kinds of taxes are not for raising revenue?” he asked.

Creating commerce

The Commerce Clause, as stated in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, grants Congress the rights to regulate interstate commerce, not intrastate commerce, Klein and Elliott note.

Since the 1930s, Supreme Court decisions have interpreted the Commerce Clause broadly,” relates Ilya Somin, an associate professor of law at George Mason University School of Law and co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review.

“But every previous case expanding the commerce power involved some sort of ‘economic activity,’ such as operating a business or consuming a product. Failure to purchase health insurance is neither commerce nor an interstate activity. Indeed, it is the absence of commerce,” Somin added.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Randy Barnett, a former student of Harvard Law School professors Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe, “both of whom argued for the constitutionality of the [economic] mandate,” writes Klein and Elliott, has been referred to as “the ‘mastermind’ of the legal challenge” against Obamacare.

Barnett opined in a March 2011 debate with his former teachers: “Though Congress can compel people to be drafted into the military or sit on a jury, those activities relate to, as the Supreme Court put it, the ‘supreme and noble duty’ of citizenship . … There is no supreme and noble duty of citizens to enter into contracts with private companies.” Barnett added that “the mandate would result in a ‘fundamental alteration in the status of American citizens.’”

Even the Congressional Budget Office weighed in, stating in January 2010: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

Illegal penalty?

Obamacare affixes a financial penalty on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance to regulate behavior – regulatory powers not granted in the Constitution, documents “Impeachable Offenses.”

Scott P. Richert commented after the Supreme Court ruling: “Congress has been given the green light to do something that even the most imaginative interpretation of the Commerce Clause would not allow: to compel the supposedly free citizens of the United States to purchase anything that Congress deems in those citizens’ best interest – or to compel them to purchase one thing rather than another.”

Richert, executive editor of Chronicles, the monthly magazine published by the conservative think tank the Rockford Institute, continued: “All Congress has to do is to pass legislation levying a tax on those who, say, fail to purchase smoke detectors for their homes, or who insist on purchasing a car that runs on gasoline over one that runs on electricity.”

Cronyism, corruption, cover-ups

The Daily Mail of London has called the “Impeachable Offenses” “explosive,” reporting the book contains a “systematic connect-the-dots exercise that the president’s defenders will find troublesome.”

“Consider this work to be the articles of impeachment against Barack Obama,” stated Klein.

“Every American, whether conservative or liberal, Democrat, Republican or independent, should be concerned about the nearly limitless seizure of power, the abuses of authority, the cronyism, corruption, lies and cover-ups documented in this news-making book,” Klein said.

The authors stress the book is not a collection of generalized gripes concerning Obama and his administration. Rather, it is a well-documented indictment based on major alleged violations.

Among the alleged offenses enumerated in the book:

Obamacare not only is unconstitutional but illegally bypasses Congress, infringes on states’ rights and marking an unprecedented and unauthorized expansion of IRS power.
Sidestepping Congress, Obama already has granted largely unreported de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens using illicit interagency directives and executive orders.
The Obama administration recklessly endangered the public by releasing from prison criminal illegal aliens at a rate far beyond what is publicly known.
The president’s personal role in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, with new evidence regarding what was transpiring at the U.S. mission prior to the assault – arguably impeachable activities in and of themselves.
Illicit edicts on gun control in addition to the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation intended, the book shows, to collect fraudulent gun data.
From “fusion centers” to data mining to drones to alarming Department of Homeland Security power grabs, how U.S. citizens are fast arriving at the stage of living under a virtual surveillance regime.
New evidence of rank corruption, cronyism and impeachable offenses related to Obama’s first-term “green” funding adventures.
The illegality of leading a U.S.-NATO military campaign without congressional approval.
Obama has weakened America both domestically and abroad by emboldening enemies, tacitly supporting a Muslim Brotherhood revolution, spurning allies and minimizing the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/how-obamacare-threatens-to-shred-constitution/#IhLx5FjISwwDZHdA.99

Th'Pusher

12-27-2013, 08:59 PM

Tldr. And :lol wnd

TSA

12-27-2013, 09:01 PM

It did. Maybe you can link your shit articles in the future instead of putting the onus on the reader to look it up...

btw, CATO via Forbes. Nice combo. So why no impeachment from the house? Not conservative enough?

He doesn't speak of impeachment in his article, why should we? Care to discuss how what Obama has done is not unconstitutional?

TSA

12-27-2013, 09:03 PM

Tldr. And :lol wnd

Again, care to discuss this or we just going to post smilies?

TSA

12-27-2013, 09:09 PM

http://www.pacificlegal.org/document.doc?id=1038

boutons_deux

12-31-2013, 10:03 AM

After two months of barely functioning, the federal online health care exchanges delivered, racking up 975,000 enrollments in the month of December (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/30/obamacare-just-might-net-its-7-million-sign-ups/).

That brings the total number of people who have picked a plan through an exchange since October 1 to about two million.

The administration reached about two-thirds of its goal of enrolling 3.3 million by the end of 2013 after being fully operational one-third of the time.

And it turns out most of the enrollments came during the one-week extension the White House gave itself (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-deadline-delay-enrollment) after the initial problems with the site became apparent.

Four million people have qualified for Medicaid, according to ACASignups.net (http://acasignups.net/).

Another 3.1 million young adults are covered by their parents’ health insurance (http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/19/pf/health-care-young-adults/), thanks to a provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

This means over nine million people have gained coverage through the ACA since it first became law.

That number could easily shrink or grow as insurers report on how many people purchased ACA-compliant policies directly through them. It’s also unclear how many canceled policies were replaced by plans purchased through the exchanges.

Looking at the rate of enrollments for Medicare Part D, president of health research firm Avalere Health Dan Mendelson believes that the administration can hit its goal of seven million enrollments by the close of open enrollment on March 31.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/call-it-a-comeback-more-than-9-million-americans-have-health-insurance-through-obamacare/

The Party of Stupid and its equally stupid ST supporters, voters can eat shit. :lol

boutons_deux

12-31-2013, 05:43 PM

Top Obamacare Surprises in 2013, Starting With Health Sector’s Greed

Beyond the GOP’s efforts to overturn or cripple Obamacare, the wobbly rollout of the largest new government safety net in decades has led to some surprising revelations about healthcare in America in 2013.

Most surprising is how many stubbornly greedy players there are in the medical-industrial complex.

The foremost example is how the middlemen—insurers—have seized every opportunity to gouge the public before and after insurance-buying exchanges opened this past October 1.

Not only did premiums jump by double-digit amounts from coast (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/24/with-health-law-looming-one-large-insurer-wants-a-25-percent-premium-hike/) [3] to coast (http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/anthem-blue-cross-imposes-another-unreasonable-rate-hike-time-7000-small-businesses-cali) [4] for many policyholders after the law’s passage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act) [5] in 2009, but this fall the industry doubled down and jacked up (http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/26/business/la-fi-health-sticker-shock-20131027) [6] prices or canceled (http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2013/october/21/cancellation-notices-health-insurance.aspx) [7] policies for hundreds of thousands of people. That’s quite a way to say thank-you to the federal government for sending them millions of new customers.

But insurers are not the only greedy sector. Hospitals—many of which are chartered as non-profits (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/us/benefits-questioned-in-tax-breaks-for-nonprofit-hospitals.html) [8] and get tax breaks—have been unmasked by astute reporters for shamelessly overcharging for just about anything that can be put in a bill. TheNew York Times reported that after a backyard fall, a leading San Francisco hospital charged $2,930 and $1,696, respectively, for three stitches and a dab of skin glue. The Times' detailed piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html?_r=0) [9] said, “There is little science to how hospitals determine the prices they print on hospital bills.”

The same point can be made about the prescription drug industry and pharmacy chains, where the retail price (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html) [10] on labels is off the charts and bears no relation to co-pays.

And there’s also the not-exactly-compassionate decision by hospitals (http://washingtonexaminer.com/survey-finds-doctors-rebelling-against-obamacare-famous-hospitals-declining-to-join/article/2539830?goback=.gde_63904_member_58116058474191585 29#!) [11] and doctors (http://washingtonexaminer.com/doctors-boycotting-californias-obamacare-exchange/article/2540272) [12] to reject patients under Obamacare via the new state or federal exchanges. That echoes physicians refusing to take Medicaid patients, saying government reimbursements are insufficient.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/top-obamacare-surprises-2013-starting-health-sectors-greed?akid=11347.187590.QSY4Ty&rd=1&src=newsletter941851&t=12

boutons_deux

01-01-2014, 06:25 PM

Millions More Denied Coverage By GOP Refusal To Expand Medicaid Than Obamacare Cancelations

Republicans purposely neglected to differentiate between the number of Americans whose plans were being canceled and those whose entire coverage was lost.

Now it turns out that the millions of notices that were sent out will result in just thousands of Americans losing access to affordable insurance.

A new report (http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ACA-Coverage-Statistics-2013-12-31.pdf), however, from the minority staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce shows that only 0.2 percent of the approximately five million cancelations – the number often referenced by the Republican Party – will lose coverage because of Obamacare, and be unable to regain it.

In other words, only 10,000 people will lose complete coverage.

The report assumes that 4.7 million people will receive cancelation letters about their current plans. It then finds that half of that number will have the option to renew their 2013 plans, due to an administrative fix to the health law. Of the remaining 2.35 million Americans, 1.4 million would be eligible for tax credits through the ACA exchanges or Medicaid coverage, and out of the 950,000 individuals left, according to the report, “fewer than 10,000” people would lack access to an “affordable catastrophic plan.”

Ironically, as Republicans fret over the approximate 10,000 people who will lose coverage in 2014, they are to blame for the nearly five million Americans who will not have any health insurance this year because of the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid (http://http//www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/12/31/the-wingnut-hole-measured-5-million-without-insurance-thanks-to-gop-medicaid-refusal/) in various states across the country.

Though the Affordable Care Act provides complete funding through 2016 for Medicaid expansion in all states – and 90 percent funding in the following years – 25 Republican-controlled states have still refused to expand the program that offers coverage to the poor.

As a result, approximately 4.8 million people will find themselves inside the so-called “coverage gap,” which one report suggests could cost 27,000 Americans their lives in 2014 (http://www.nationalmemo.com/report-27000-will-die-because-republican-states-refuse-to-expand-medicaid/).

http://www.nationalmemo.com/millions-more-denied-coverage-by-gop-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-than-obamacare-cancelations/

SnakeBoy

01-01-2014, 10:26 PM

Another happy obamacare enrollee...

An Open Letter to the Obama Administration and American Citizens:

My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.

On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?

Throughout the month of October we read everything we could on what our plan would cover, and tried to get the information we needed about the ACA. I was also blown away when I realized that my son’s medical care, he has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), would cost us so much more out of pocket than it was currently costing us. My son has to go to his doctor every other month for his care. If we need to see a therapist we do that monthly, so you see on top of the premiums there are other out of pocket cost we have to factor in. He is also on medication that he takes daily. His medicine is a life saver for him and helps him function like a normal seven year old, without it he can’t focus, his grades slip and his mind literally goes back to the mind of a three or four year old. When he was first put on his medicine his reading went up 20 points and he went from writing one to two sentences to paragraphs, all in the course of a week. He is a straight A student and very bright, but without the proper medical care that could slip away from him. Under our new plan for 2014 we would need to pay a $55.00 co-pay, and then it would be covered at 80 percent once we reached his deductible, which would be $2,000 individual $4,000 family. Out of pocket max numbers are $6,350 individual and $12,700 family. All of this is enough to make anyone’s head spin. We were then forced to look at other options as none of this was affordable for our family.

I started to dig deeper into healthcare.gov. I was hearing all the horror stories through the news about the subpar website. I was reading right off their healthcare.gov Facebook page about other people’s terrible experiences trying to get coverage. Then the government announces that they are going to be working on the site and making it a better experience as well as making it more secure. They had already had three years to make this happen but they said would need the month of November to get it running right. So I waited patiently for them to get the site running so I could see if we would qualify for the subsidy and continue our health insurance through that route.

December 6, 2013 I went to healthcare.gov and started our application. The process took me over two hours to complete. Once it was completed it came back with our results. The results were that my husband and I qualified. That my three year old qualified for All Kids and that my seven year old did not qualify for anything through the exchange (ACA). I was so confused, how could a seven year old not qualify for a subsidy? I was also confused on why they wanted me to enroll one of my children in All Kids? So, I called the number they provided to speak to a representative. I was on hold for 20 minutes when a woman answered and offered to help me with the results. She told me that it is coming back that my seven year old son did not qualify and the only thing I could do was to file an appeal. I asked her a few more questions about how this could have happened, and I was told “she does not know and that all I can do is file an appeal”. She was reading her responses to me right off of a chart that I am sure they are given. So, I ended my conversation with her and proceeded to try to wrap my head around what was happening.

I decided to call back, this time I waited 15 minutes and spoke to a very nice gentleman who seemed to have an understanding for how the system was working. He looked up the results and said “this can’t be right, let’s start over and do an application over the phone”. So again I went through the application process. The results came back the exact same, we all qualified for something except my seven year old son. The gentleman could not understand how this could be happening and assured me it had to be a “glitch” in the system. He placed me on hold so he could speak with his supervisor on how to fix this error. I waited several minutes and when he came back he said “there was nothing more they could do tonight”. He said “we are sending your application to two different departments and that one of the departments would get back to me through a phone call with a fix to this problem”. He also told me “it could take 2-5 days but that I would receive a phone call when they had closed my case”.

So I waited until Tuesday December 10, 2013, which was day four and called them back. I was then told it would be 2-5 business days and if I had not heard from them at that time to call back. So that is what I did, I waited till 9:00 pm on that Friday December 13, 2013 with no phone call. I called Sunday December 15th, 2013 and spoke with my 3rd supervisor who told me “they were very sorry that I had not received a phone call and they were messaging the two departments to give me a call the following day”. He also said to go ahead and file with All Kids in my state because even though they send that information to them, they have no idea when they will receive it. So Monday I went and applied for All Kids for my children, it was a similar application to the healthcare.gov site. I called them to verify that they received my application and was told they cannot access it till sometime in January. They said once they could access it that they would be in touch and if the kids qualified the coverage would retro act to January 1, 2014. So that was a little bit of good news.

So here we are December 22, 2013, the day before the December 23rd deadline to sign up through the Health Insurance Marketplace’s Exchange. I decide I will call one last time to see what they can tell me about coverage, since I never received a phone call after my last conversation with a supervisor. I waited on hold for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I asked to speak with a supervisor and I was transferred. The supervisor pulled my file and was talking to me when she must have accidentally pressed a button and we got disconnected. I thought for sure she would call me back. That is one of the first things they ask for is your phone number. I did not receive a call back, so I call back and have to be placed on hold again to speak to someone. I waited another hour and a half before I get connected with a supervisor. She pulls up my file and tells me “there is nothing they can do and I have to wait the 90 days they have to contact me through the appeals process”. The supervisor tells me “that this whole time I have been told wrong by numerous people and that I should have been called back but that the two departments could do nothing for me”. I just have to wait the 90 days. I asked her, “so yet again an error, due to no fault of my own, has occurred all these times I have been calling and speaking with people and no one can really do anything”? She said “yes that is correct, I am sorry you have been told something different but that is all I can tell you”.

I have never been treated so poorly by any insurance company in my whole life. I have never experienced such terrible customer service in all my years on this earth. I can’t imagine how long a company would last in this country if they followed the same protocol as the ACA/Health Insurance Marketplace does. Most companies can fix a glitch in their systems pretty easily, or can connect you to someone who can. Not the ACA/ Health Insurance Marketplace, you spend all that time on hold to just be told, so sorry but you have to wait for someone to get back to you in a 90 day time span.

What is the most sickening thing to me is that we have been forced into the Health Insurance Marketplace’s Exchange. We wanted to continue our coverage through BSBC and pay as we always had been. But, we found out that option would not be affordable under the new Act, which is how we were forced into the Exchange. Furthermore, not only were we forced into the Exchange, but then forced again to submit an application to ALL Kids for our children. I just don’t understand how we go from being hard working middle class family who provides everything for our family to where we are today. I feel like everything that my husband and I have worked hard for is for nothing. I pray each night that we will get something resolved with our “glitch” in the system so our children will have health insurance coverage in January and by the time I have to purchase my son’s $400 a month ADHD medicine.

I really don’t know how our government can allow this to be taking place. What if something happens and one of my boys breaks an arm, or God forbid something worse? They don’t have insurance, so I guess we will then be paying the hospital monthly if that happens. We are almost completely debt free currently and now all I see is very large medical bills in our future until the government can fix the issues with the ACA/Exchange. I would really like them to rename the Affordable Care Act, because from where I am sitting it is anything but affordable or caring for my family.

Sincerely,
Karri Kinder

boutons_deux

01-01-2014, 10:43 PM

Another happy obamacare enrollee...

so she and her family, uselessly anecdotal and probably written by Repug lobbyist, are getting screwed by an insurance company.

How is this news when millions have been screwed by insurance companies for decades, and how is ACA involved in the screwing?

boutons_deux

01-02-2014, 04:33 PM

Here's How Obamacare Makes Americans More Free

Few values matter more to Americans than freedom. And now, as key provisions of the Affordable Care Act take effect, America is becoming a freer country.

In fact, though, Obamacare is a big step forward for freedom by helping people like Norvell do as they please. While the earlier landmark programs of Social Security and Medicare freed seniors from poverty, dependency on their children, or charity and gave Americans more life choices in old age, Obamacare will expand the personal horizons of every adult in their prime years.

Freedom is hard to achieve or experience if your life choices are curtailed by large forces outside your control. And that's been true for millions of people who are hindered from doing what they want because of health insurance choices. It's not just people like Norvell with pre-existing conditions. Ask anyone who is thinking of quitting a secure job to start their own business to name their top concerns and ensuring health coverage will be on their list.

America is supposed to be an entrepreneurial place where people can chart their own destiny via the free enterprise system. But our lousy health insurance system had deeply corroded that ideal. And even after Obamacare, it still does thanks to sky high prices for medical care that every other advanced country avoids by empowering government to dominate the healthcare marketplace.

Mythology aside, a higher percentage of Europeans are self employed than Americans. In a place like Denmark you can strike out to work for yourself without risking financial devastation due to health issues.

As I have often pointed out, nearly all the countries that are ranked as the most economically free by the Heritage Foundation or CATO have national health insurance systems.

Freedom should be front and center of the narrative over health reform as progressives gear up for the next big fight on this front: Which is imposing more government control over the pricing and delivery of medical care. In effect, state power needs to be used to sharply curtail the ability of doctors, drugmakers, hospitals, and other players to charge Americans whatever they want. And that won't happen without a massive political brawl in which reforms that make ordinary people more free are again depicted as a socialist plot to make them less free.

http://www.demos.org/blog/1/2/14/heres-how-obamacare-makes-americans-more-free

boutons_deux

01-04-2014, 09:39 AM

5 Reasons The GOP’s Obamacare Sabotage Will Have To Get Even More Desperate

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obamacarehighwaytohell.jpg

House Republicans are prepared to confront the very serious issue of data breaches to HeathCare.gov — breaches that have never occurred.

Why would Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) be hyping a problem that doesn’t exist? He could be trying to sow fear in the public in an effort to drive down enrollments in health insurance, as MSNBC’s Steve Benen has posited.

Or it could be simply that this is the best they’ve got to continue their never-ending siege on the effort to reform the United States’ broken, costly and cruel health care system.

the public never supported repealing the law when presented with an opportunity to fix it.

A majority of Americans has consistently been in favor of the law — or something more liberal.

1. They Focused On Problems That Have Mostly Gone Away

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Healthcare.gov_.jpg

2. Repeal Isn’t An Option

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/hands-off-medicare.jpg

3. Repeal Is The Only Option

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bc-hRpmCMAAhbjp.jpg

4. Rejecting Medicaid Expansion Could Turn Red States Purple

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Rick-Perry.jpg

5. They Have To Pretend That Obamacare Isn’t Helping Anyone

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tedcruzsmiles.jpg

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-reasons-the-gops-obamacare-sabotage-will-have-to-get-even-more-desperate/

boutons_deux

01-10-2014, 11:57 AM

Rand Paul is fucking stupid, as is his son, and they use their exmplerary red-state stupidity to trash healthcare.gov and KyNect

How did Rand Paul’s son end up on Medicaid?

1. Kentucky, unlike some states that expanded Medicaid, decided not to allow automatic enrollment into Medicaid, according to Gwenda Bond, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Instead, you must fill out income and family information, and then the system will decide whether or not you can purchase a health plan but qualify for a subsidy, or whether you qualify for Medicaid.

“No one is automatically enrolled in Medicaid unless they apply for it,” she said, adding that she could not comment specifically on individual applications.

At the beginning of the process, Bond says, there is an option to go directly to a qualified health plan — that’s apparently the QHP that Paul mentioned — if you think you don’t qualify for subsidies.

But as for Paul’s description, “that doesn’t seem like a screen that I am familiar with,” she said.

2. Kynect’s paper application for financial assistance specifically tells the applicant to stop if you are claimed as a dependent. (See question 27. (https://kyenroll.ky.gov/Anonymous/OpenFile?option=E))

“Senator Paul and his son were attempting to enroll in a non-Medicaid plan through the exchange Web site,” said Paul spokesman Brian Darling. “They did not fill out this form, nor were they asked to provide household income information online or otherwise.”

But Bond says this is impossible, unless a mistake was made: “An application for coverage would need to be completed and submitted before an individual would receive Medicaid coverage.”

3. There is another wrinkle. As a full-time student, Paul’s son is eligible to get insurance through the University of Kentucky, which has an excellent medical center. UK students already pay a mandatory health fee (http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/open.aspx?id=4045) that covers most university services, but the university recommends insurance for procedures not covered by the fee. UnitedHealth Plan charges about $1,900 for an annual plan (http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/open.aspx?id=4045), or about $150 a month. So why didn’t Paul’s son take that route?

“Senator Paul was attempting to use the Kentucky health insurance exchange Web site to explore plan options for his family when his son was automatically enrolled in Medicaid,” Darling said. “He has not made a final determination about health insurance coverage at this time and continues to explore possible options for purchasing coverage.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/10/how-did-rand-pauls-son-end-up-on-medicaid/?tid=hpModule_f8335a3c-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z9 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/10/how-did-rand-pauls-son-end-up-on-medicaid/?tid=hpModule_f8335a3c-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z9)

ideology, eg libertarianism, makes you as stupid as Bible-literalist religion does

boutons_deux

01-10-2014, 12:49 PM

Insurers under fire as Obamacare kicks in

Consumers are easing up on criticism of government exchanges and turning their frustration and fury toward some of the nation's biggest health insurers. All too often, new policyholders say, the companies can't confirm coverage, won't answer basic questions, and haven't issued identification numbers needed to fill prescriptions or get medical care.

Day after day, people say, they contact insurance company call centers waiting hours at a time with no response. Meantime, insurers have already taken many customers' payments for coverage intended to take effect Jan. 1.
But without proof of insurance, patients are having to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for medications and doctor visits, if they can afford it. Insurance agents say dismal service has become commonplace across many companies.

"There's equal opportunity for incompetence by the public and private sector in administering such a large new program," he said. "People are deservedly angry and resentful."

But some consumers think big insurers had plenty of opportunity to get ready.

"Insurance companies of this size should have been far better prepared. They knew it was coming,"

"The company is not set up to handle the volume coming through,"

Blue Shield of California apologized to customers for its "unacceptable" performance on its Facebook page this week.

"While we anticipated and planned for increased traffic, the sheer volume of enrollments has swamped all major health plans,"

WellPoint, the nation's second-largest health insurer and parent of Anthem Blue Cross, has drawn the ire of many customers in California and 13 other states where it's selling policies on and off government exchanges.

The company said it responded to more than 1 million customer calls over two days last week, equal to the amount it typically receives over an entire month. It said it has more than 1,000 employees answering calls.

Even insurance agents say they can't get through to the companies to assist their clients.

"This whole law is a gift to insurance companies," said Helena Ruffin, a health insurance agent in Venice. "They owe us good customer service."

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-78839911/

yes another irrefutable argument for a hard-core public health insurance program, Medicare for All, from birth. And for govt owned and operated non-profit hospitals, clinics, and govt doctors and medical staff on govt pay scale.

boutons_deux

01-10-2014, 04:45 PM

from an email for the WH

yeah, just anecdotes, but anyway

JoAnn S., Florida

"I haven't had insurance in years and my husband had a shared insurance junk-type policy. The day I signed up on Dec 10, I actually cried when the application went through. I got my first premium notice in the mail yesterday and was never so happy to see a bill before."

Gayla W., New Hampshire

"I lost my job last April. My partner and I both have pre-existing conditions so our only option was to COBRA my employer-provided plan -- at a cost of $1,676 a month. It was a good plan, but now we have a comparable plan through the ACA for $87 a month. I can't describe just how life changing this is for us. We can afford to live again."

Stella R., California

"For me this makes all the difference between having good health or not. I recently had a CAT scan (which I had to pay out of pocket for) because I was losing a lot of weight. It turns out that something was found and now I will need to see specialists and have further procedures done to make sure it is not cancer. My first appointment is on January 6 with a specialist. If I did not have health insurance, I would not be able to see a specialist. It would wipe out any savings I have and leave me medically at high risk."

Brian F., Florida

"I have not had Insurance for over 10 years. I had a pre-existing condition that made me uninsurable -- even though I was perfectly healthy. The last quote I got was in 2008: It was $1,750 a month with a $10,000 deductible. There was no way to ever afford that. …This insurance changes everything for me. I do not have to worry anymore when I get a sore throat or an infected cut that I will have to go to the emergency room -- run up thousands in bills and then have to file bankruptcy. This is a great day. Thank you for the ACA. It is a life changer."

Elina K., Colorado

"My mom, who is 61 and works as a freelance Russian interpreter, went to the ER in November. She, her partner and myself are uninsured. Tests confirmed she had a major blockage and would need surgery. The mass appears to be cancerous and is pushing down on her internal organs. She has been in severe pain for weeks. … Last night, around 3 a.m., she was admitted to the hospital and will be having surgery which she had to put off until her ACA policy kicked in at midnight. She now has expert care in a facility that in less than 24 hours changed her medication and treated her symptoms with noticeable results. When my stepdad came home tonight, exhausted after spending all day at the hospital, all he could say was 'thank god for Obamacare' …It may well end up saving her life."

Kendra S., Oklahoma

"Just this past October, my husband was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. This devastating news was compounded by the fact we were not insured, my husband could no longer work, and the rapid medical procedures that occurred quickly ran up thousands of dollars that we don't have the money to pay. We quickly began researching the ACA, made an appointment with a local Community Care office and after many hours of research, to determine the coverage that we could afford. We are so grateful for the ACA. With the incredibly terrible stress that has befallen upon our family, at least now we know his medical expenses are covered."

Rachelle L., Florida

"My 28-year-old daughter was able to get healthcare coverage on her own for the first time through the ACA. She has a pre-existing condition, a genetic kidney disease that prevented her from getting coverage in 2009 at the age of 24 when she had to come off of our policy due to the age requirement. Her Cobra payments were $650 a month because she could not get more reasonable private coverage due to her pre-existing condition. In 2010, she was able to come back on our BCBS plan because of the ACA and was able to remain there until she finished school. We signed her up through the website and paid for her plan directly through Cigna on December 2: $298/month for a silver plan with a $0 deductible! She received her new insurance card on December 27th for coverage starting Jan 1! We now have peace of mind that all of her medical needs will be covered at a reasonable cost."

Curtis D., Washington

"Our new coverage has begun. I am 62, and my wife is 55. We are both self employed and neither of us have had coverage for the past seven years. Thankfully we are both pretty healthy, but it feels good to know we can schedule a checkup and take care of any lingering issues we've been putting off. Thank you for making improvements to the health care of the country."

Kelly M., Maryland

"I have a new plan. I haven't had insurance for years. When I applied for insurance before, I was denied for pre-existing conditions, even for plans with huge deductibles. I signed up on the Maryland Healthcare Exchange back in October, and by January 1st, I was holding an insurance card from Carefirst Blueshield and have already had my first doctor's appointment. It works. I am proof. And I'm so grateful that I can take care of myself with dignity without having to go to the ER whenever I'm sick or have to spend half of my paycheck at an urgent care center. I can do all of the preventative measures that I have been putting off, and get back on the road to health. It's a good feeling."

Kate S., Connecticut

"This healthcare reform is a life-changing event for my family. My husband and I have had to carry our own insurance for the past 25 years and, with the family insurance we had, we were paying $2,500.00 a MONTH for coverage, which we could not afford. Once the children graduated from high school, we had to take them off our policy because we could not afford it anymore. … We have never been high wage earners and the costs of our insurance have for years been an impossible burden. Now that the system is fair and goes by our income, we finally may be able to set money aside and save for our future."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/americans-are-covered?utm_expid=24505866-11.EGp48axPQTuh8Y1gjMKLEQ.0

Dems causing PROGRESS in USA, progress that the sociopathic, retrograde Repugs/tea baggers/VRWC/ALEC continue to try to kill.

TSA

01-10-2014, 05:59 PM

And for govt owned and operated non-profit hospitals, clinics, and govt doctors and medical staff on govt pay scale.

I'm sure those would be ultra efficient.

boutons_deux

01-10-2014, 08:59 PM

I'm sure those would be ultra efficient.

More efficient than the for-profit disaster we have now.

Of course, you have no suggestions.

Nbadan

01-14-2014, 01:11 AM

http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/d/C/6/Republican-Cones.jpg

Nbadan

01-14-2014, 07:54 PM

Obamacare Enrollment Exploded In December To 2.2 Million
Source: TPM

The December enrollment surge for the Affordable Care Act that the Obama administration long predicted -- and desperately needed -- has come to fruition.

As of Dec. 28, 2.2 million Americans have enrolled in private health coverage, according to new data released Monday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More than 1.8 million of them signed up in December alone, a huge spike that has gotten the law closer to its original goals than most would have thought possible after HealthCare.gov's disastrous rollout in October.

The administration's original projection was 3.3 million enrollments in private health insurance by the end of 2013, so Obamacare isn't quite back on track yet. But considering the combined total in October and November was less than the administration had targeted for just the month of October, it's much closer to the mark.

Administration officials have said since before the enrollment period launched in October that they expected sign-ups to surge around the law's deadlines, including the late December deadline to enroll in coverage that started on Jan. 1. But that effectively became an imperative after the federal website's problems left enrollment straggling far behind what the administration had originally expected.Young adults make up one-fourth of Obamacare enrollees

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/obamacare-young-adults-enrollees-102115.html#ixzz2qJd8gk6N

boutons_deux

01-14-2014, 08:59 PM

5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About Obamacare

HealthCare.gov Is A Non-Issue

How do you know that the Obama administration has achieved its goal of the site working for most people? Republicans have stopped complaining about it.

Signups Resemble Massachusetts Rollout

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obamacare-youth-2-638x478.png

People Are Picking Higher-Benefit Plans
http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/slide1_0.jpg

If The Law Continues To Control Costs As It Has, Our Long-Term Debt Crisis Fades Away

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/orszag-health-graph.jpg

Millions of Americans Now Have Health Insurance

The HealthCare.gov crisis and constant Republican attempts to derail the law obscure the historic nature of what’s occurring in America right now.

For the first time ever, sick people cannot be denied coverage. Insurance companies have to meet minimum standards and spend at least 80 percent of their premiums on actual care. The federal government is actively trying to enroll millions of Americans in health insurance using exchanges that will be the foundation for increased competition and innovation. And all Americans who earn up to 400 percent of the poverty level — except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid — are being offered financial help paid for by new taxes on the rich and corporations to get insurance they can afford.

Though holes remain in our health care system, which simultaneously has the highest costs in the industrialized world along with the highest rate of uninsured citizens, this is the first effort to make health insurance a basic expectation for all Americans.

Millions of Americans have gotten covered through the Affordable Care Act. Freelance journalist Anna Clark described her experience (http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/opinions/2014/1/finding-safer-groundthroughtheaffordablecareact.html) signing up for the exchange and the unexpected emotion she felt:

Two days before the enrollment deadline, I finally logged on to HealthCare.gov for the first time. Item by item, I typed in my information.

An hour later — with no delays or glitches — I had health insurance.

With some modest budget adjustments, I can afford it too: It is about $232 a month for the Humana Connect Platinum 1000/1500 Plan. An HMO with a $1,000 deductible, it costs $25 for primary-care visits and $35 for specialists. My medical out-of-pocket maximum (including drugs) is $1,500.

This stunned me. For many long moments that snowy morning, I sat still. My coffee cooled beside me, and my skin bristled. With a shock, I felt, for the first time, how unsafe I had been over the years. Before, there was no use noticing this fear.

But with the email confirming my enrollment blinking before me, I suddenly had permission to recognize the fear and relief that welled up in me, and it took my breath away.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-obamacare/

boutons_deux

01-15-2014, 02:08 PM

Judge Rejects Lawsuit Aimed At Blowing Up Obamacare

A legal challenge (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/top-five-conservative-lawsuits-obamacare) seeking to cripple Obamacare suffered a huge setback Wednesday as it was defeated in federal court.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the challengers, who argued that that the text of Obamacare did not allow the law's premium tax credits to be offered on federal insurance exchanges -- that they must only be available through state-based exchanges.

Judge Paul L. Friedman called that argument "unpersuasive," saying it didn't pass legal muster and ran counter to the central purpose of the Affordable Care Act.

"Plaintiffs' proposed construction in this case – that tax credits are available only for those purchasing insurance from state-run Exchanges – runs counter to this central purpose of the ACA: to provide affordable health care to virtually all Americans," Friedman wrote in a 39-page decision. "Such an interpretation would violate the basic rule of statutory construction that a court must interpret a statute in light of its history and purpose."

His reasoning? The federal exchanges -- which the Obama administration is constructing for 34 states that declined to build their own -- "would have no customers, and no purpose" if the challengers' logic were adopted.

"In other words, even where a state does not actually establish an Exchange, the federal government can create 'an Exchange established by the State under [42 U.S.C. § 18031]' on behalf of that state,"

The challenge was seen as a longshot from the start given the fact that government agencies generally have broad discretion to interpret ambiguities in the law, and the I.R.S. has ruled that federal Obamacare exchanges may provide subsidies. The other problem was the lack of evidence that the law's architects sought to limit the premium tax credits in this manner.

"This argument made no sense from the beginning," ( :lol since when did sense ever apply to bad-faith/screw-the-citizens Repug/tea bagger politicking? :lol )

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-lawsuit-dc-judge-friedman-halbig-sebelius?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

Nbadan

01-16-2014, 03:18 AM

According to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Darrell Issa has jeopardized the security of the ACA website by leaking sensitive Obamacare documents to unauthorized consultants.

Cummings wrote,

On several occasions since November, I have written to you to request that we meet to discuss the adoption of a bipartisan protocol to safeguard sensitive documents obtained during this investigation and to develop a responsible approach to making information public that the Committee determines is important to its investigation.

I also remain concerned with the unilateral release by your office of partial transcripts and select document excerpts to promote partisan narratives that often turn out to be inaccurate, particularly when these releases are not part of any official report, correspondence, or other Committee action. Not only is this a disservice to the American people and the goals we share, but it undermines the credibility and integrity of the Committee.

Another concern is the security of documents in the custody of the Committee. Currently, the Committee has no procedure governing the storage and handling of these sensitive documents. As a result, there have been two separate occasions last week when sensitive documents were left unattended in unlocked rooms accessible by the public. Although I understand that your office believes these documents are not sensitive, one was produced to the Committee in encrypted, password-protected format, and both were marked as sensitive documents that require special handling.

A third concern relates to providing access to sensitive information to individuals outside the Committee. In December, you stated that you intended to “consult carefully with non-conflicted experts to ensure no information is released that could further jeopardize the website’s security.” Several days later, you wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that you had already begun this process, stating that you would “continue” consulting with outside security experts.

Based on your statements, it is unclear who these outside experts are, who they work for, and who they may be affiliated with, raising concerns about what they may do with the information. If they do not work for the government or any of its contractors, it is unclear what contractual or other restrictions they are under not to disclose this sensitive information further. There have been multiple reports about organizations and individuals who are deliberately targeting the Healthcare.gov website for malicious purposes. The risk that this information could get into the wrong hands increases dramatically as more individuals gain access to it, particularly when these individuals are under no obligation to safeguard it.

Darrell Issa is leaking sensitive Obamacare documents to consultants that he refuses to name. Even more troubling is the fact that he will not disclose what the individuals intend to do with this information. Rep. Issa is clearly not securing important documents, and making those documents available to parties that he refuses to identify. Given his partisan bent, it is a safe guess that this is all part of an attempt to destroy Obamacare.

Twice last week someone left sensitive documents unattended in an unlocked room that is accessible to the public. Why do you think someone would do that? Carelessness perhaps, but a more likely answer is that someone wanted those documents available to people who aren’t authorized to view them.
(more)

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/15/darrell-issa-commits-treasonous-high-crime-leaking-sensitive-obamacare-documents.html

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 06:53 AM

I posted an article a couple months back about govt depts that were point-blank refusing 0.1%er Issa's requests for sensitive docs because he had been leaking damn near everything. I wonder how those refusals would stand up in court?

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 02:35 PM

Confederates continue to sabotage ACA
Nightmare Tennessee bill could force hospitals to ban only Obamacare website usersTennessee lawmakers who are doing their best to stop President Barack Obama’s health care law have introduced a bill that could have the unintended consequence of forcing hospitals to verify and ban patients if they purchased insurance through the Healthcare.gov website.

At a press conference on Wednesday, state Sen. Mae Beavers (R) and state Rep. Mark Pody (R) announced legislation (http://timesfreepress.com/news/2014/jan/15/bill-seeks-ban-federal-health-care-law-tennessee/) that would prevent any state agency from cooperating in any way with the Affordable Care Act.

“The federal government does not have constitutional authority to commandeer state and local governments to enforce or implement these federal health care mandates,” Beavers explained. “This legislation takes a very strong stand to resist this federal overreach of power.”

Beavers said that it was not immediately clear how the law would affect the more than 36,000 Tennesseans who had already purchased insurance through the federal health care exchanges. And would also cause problems (http://www.tennessean.com/article/20140116/NEWS0201/301160051/Tennessee-lawmakers-file-bill-block-Affordable-Care-Act) for Tennessee’s Medicaid program, TennCare, which uses the HealthCare.gov website.

The bill would make it illegal for state and local officials to “assist in implementing” anything to do with the federal law. Employees and contractors in local, state and education institutions would be forbid from using the health care exchanges.

But the Nashville Scene‘s Betsy Phillips pointed out (http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2014/01/16/if-beavers-and-pody-have-their-way-can-a-person-use-obamacare-at-the-university-of-tennessee-medical-center) that the wording of the legislation could also put university hospitals in the difficult position of having to verify how a person purchased coverage because the same plans are often available through the Healthcare.gov website and directly through insurance companies.

“The real question, and one that Beavers and Pody haven’t addressed is what ‘no powers, assets, employees, agents or contractors of the state or its local government subdivisions, including higher education institutions, can be used to implement or administer the federal health care program’ means, specifically, what ‘implement or administer’ in this context means,” Phillips wrote.
“So, say this law passes and I bought my insurance through the Obamacare website. Now, say I show up at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (a higher education institution) with my Obamacare-procured insurance and an emergency,” she continued. “Could the hospital take my insurance or would that be aiding in the implementation (since I don’t really, practically, have insurance unless a hospital will take it) or administering (since the hospital’s billing department will have to work with my Obamacare-procured insurance company in order to get paid) of the Affordable Care Act?”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/16/nightmare-tennessee-bill-could-force-hospitals-to-ban-only-obamacare-website-users/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 03:44 PM

One target for ACA or any health care reform is the huge variation in prices for some work

California hospitals charge $3,000 to $37,000 for childbirth

Amid growing scrutiny of hospital billing, a new study finds that California hospitals charged mothers $3,296 to $37,227 for a routine delivery.

For women having a cesarean section, the UC San Francisco study found patients were billed $8,312 to nearly $71,000. Few of the patients in the study released Thursday had serious health issues, and most were discharged within six days of admission.

"Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization, and even for an uncomplicated childbirth, we see a staggering difference in what hospitals charge," said lead author Renee Y. Hsia, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UC San Francisco.

Hospitals say these average charges are irrelevant because they have little or no bearing on what they actually get paid by the government, insurers or patients.

On average, this study said, the discounted prices paid by insurers amounted to 37% of the original hospital bill. The researchers said the hospitals in the study billed $1.3 billion in excess charges beyond what they received in reimbursement.

Hsia said these billed amounts can influence what insurers and patients ultimately pay.

"These charges affect not only the uninsured, but also the fee-for-service reimbursements by some private insurers, which can translate to out-of-pocket costs for patients," she said.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/5/article/p2p-78921225/

iow, America has a really fucked up kludgeocracy of a health care system, and its major players fight extremely hard to keep it that way.

AntiChrist

01-16-2014, 04:48 PM

0sT7uHI-FUQ

:lmao

boutons_deux

01-19-2014, 08:12 AM

here's what driving health care costs. providers charge what they simply because they can, like telco, cable, financial, etc corporations fucking us because they can.

and they do, relentlessly

how much for removing a tiny non-threathening skin cancer tumor? $25K

Patients’ Costs Skyrocket; Specialists’ Incomes Soar

Kim Little had not thought much about the tiny white spot on the side of her cheek until a physician’s assistant at her dermatologist’s office warned that it might be cancerous. He took a biopsy, returning 15 minutes later to confirm the diagnosis and schedule her for an outpatient procedure at the Arkansas Skin Cancer Center in Little Rock, 30 miles away.
That was the prelude to a daylong medical odyssey several weeks later, through different private offices on the manicured campus at the Baptist Health Medical Center that involved a dermatologist, an anesthesiologist and an ophthalmologist who practices plastic surgery. It generated bills of more than $25,000.

“I felt like I was a hostage,” said Ms. Little, a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, who had been told beforehand that she would need just a couple of stitches. “I didn’t have any clue how much they were going to bill. I had no idea it would be so much.”

Ms. Little’s seemingly minor medical problem — she had the least dangerous form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinomas — racked up big bills because it involved three doctors from specialties that are among the highest compensated in medicine, and it was done on the grounds of a hospital. Many specialists have become particularly adept at the business of medicine by becoming more entrepreneurial, protecting their turf through aggressive lobbying by their medical societies, and most of all, increasing revenues by offering new procedures — or doing more of lucrative ones.

Kyle Snow Schwartz was billed $500 for the five-minute removal of a wart at New York University Medical Center.

(http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002655052/2014/01/19/health/patients-costs-skyrocket-specialists-incomes-soar.html?from=homepage)It does not matter if the procedure is big or small, learned in a decade of training or a weeklong course. In fact, minor procedures typically offer the best return on investment: A cardiac surgeon can perform only a couple of bypass operations a day, but other specialists can perform a dozen procedures in that time span.

That math explains why the incomes of dermatologists, gastroenterologists and oncologists rose 50 percent or more between 1995 and 2012, even when adjusted for inflation, while those for primary care physicians rose only 10 percent and lag far behind, since insurers pay far less for traditional doctoring tasks like listening for a heart murmur or prescribing the right antibiotic.

By 2012, dermatologists — whose incomes were more or less on par with internists in 1985 — had become the fourth-highest earners in American medicine in some surveys (http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2013/06/12/doctor-pay-rises-to-221k-for-primary-care-396k-for-specialists/), bringing in an average of $471,555, according to the Medical Group Management Association, which tracks doctors’ income, though their workload is one of the lightest.

In addition, salary figures often understate physician earning power since they often do not include revenue from business activities: fees for blood or pathology tests at a lab that the doctor owns or “facility” charges at an ambulatory surgery center where the physician is an investor, for example.

“The high earning in many fields relates mostly to how well they’ve managed to monetize treatment — if you freeze off 18 lesions and bill separately for surgery for each, it can be very lucrative,”

Doctors’ charges — and the incentives they reflect — are a major factor in thenation’s $2.7 trillion medical bill. Payments to doctors in the United States, who make far more than their counterparts in other developed countries, account for 20 percent of American health care expenses (http://www.aetna.com/health-reform-connection/aetnas-vision/facts-about-costs.html), second only to hospital costs.

Only an estimated 25 percent of new physicians end up in primary care, at the very time that health policy experts say front-line doctors are badly needed, according to Dr. Christine Sinsky, an Iowa internist who studies physician satisfaction. In fact, many pediatricians and general doctors in private practice say they are struggling to survive.

Studies show that more specialists mean more tests and more expensive care. “It may be better to wait and see, but waiting doesn’t make you money,”

“It’s ‘Let me do a little snip of tissue’ and then they get professional, lab and facility fees. Each patient is like an ATM machine.”

Hospitals seeking to hire a staff dermatologist for Mohs surgery had to offer an average of $586,083 in 2010, even more than for a cardiac surgeon,

Patient Given No Choice

she asked Dr. Randall Breau, the dermatologist, why the tiny growth needed the specialized surgery, as she had asked the physician’s assistant earlier. They both answered that it was because it was on her eyelid, a delicate area where Mohs surgery is always required; she repeatedly insisted that it was on her cheekbone below her eye.

After the 30-minute removal, the dermatologist told her that she would have to go across the street to the Arkansas Center for Oculoplastic Surgery, another private doctors’ office on the hospital’s campus, to have the wound closed by a plastic surgeon with “a couple of stitches.”

When Ms. Little protested that she did not want a plastic surgeon and did not care about having a tiny scar, the doctor told her she had no choice, she said. The vast majority of Mohs procedures are sewed up by the dermatologist or just bandaged and left to heal. Yet when Ms. Little arrived at the second practice, nurses took her clothes, put in an IV, and introduced her to an anesthesiologist who would sedate her in an operating room.

Her bills included $1,833 for the Mohs surgery, $14,407 for the plastic surgeon, $1,000 for the anesthesiologist, and $8,774 for the hospital charges.

“When I make decisions concerning patient care, I have only the patient’s best interests in mind.” :lol ( "patient's best interests" is a synonym for "my wealth" )

that many urologists make 50 percent of their income from dealing with patients and the rest from investing in the machines that deliver radiation for prostate cancer or to treat kidney stones. In 2012, urologists had an average income of $416,322, according to Medical Group Management Association data, which often does not include the investment income.

Oncologists benefit from the ability to mark up (and profit from) each dose of chemotherapy they administer in private offices, a practice increased dramatically in the late 1990s. The median compensation for oncologists nearly doubled from 1995 to 2004, to $350,000,

(btw, chemo works so well there are 600K USA cancer deaths/year)

attributed 65 percent of the revenue in a typical oncology practice to such payments.

When policy makers reduce one type of payment, some specialists find another.

American physicians may feel entitled to high fees, especially because they face costs that their European counterparts do not: Medical school is expensive and new doctors graduate with an average of about $150,000 in debt. Likewise, some specialists face malpractice premiums of over $100,000 a year.

( iow, EVERYBODY is greedy, on the make, in on the scam, extracting wealth from the consumer as endpoint of their predatory greed )

The Medical Lobby

More than 750 lobbyists represent groups of health professionals in Washington, pushing back on any effort to limit their incomes. The biggest spenders on lobbying — $80 million annually by health professionals — closely align with the highest-paid specialties (http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&indexType=i).

renegotiating payments involves a highly contentious process that plays out behind closed doors at the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee, which consists of doctors representing 26 medical disciplines who advise Medicare. In dermatology trade journals, Dr. Coldiron, who has served on the committee, describes it like this: “Everybody sits around a table and tries to strip money away from another specialty.” It’s like “26 sharks in a tank with nothing to eat but each other.”

“That committee keeps the perverse incentives in place,”

Critics say the robust revenues from doing procedures has led to overuse — colonoscopies by gastroenterologists, steroid injections by pain specialists and M.R.I. scans by orthopedists

insurers pay so little for time with patients. Dr. Stephen Asher, a neurologist in Boise, Idaho, said his 50 to 60 hours a week seeing patients accounts for only about 10 percent of his income. To cover office expenses he relies on revenue from performing a few procedures — Botox injections for eye movement disorders and muscle conduction studies — as well as from an M.R.I. scanner that he co-owns with a group of orthopedists and neurologists.

Outrage at Charges

left Baptist Health Medical Center with a tiny skin flap and more than two dozen stitches. For five days she said she was “hung over” from the IV sedation that she had not wanted — a problem because she drives 60 miles on rural Arkansas roads to her university each day.

She spent months arguing down her bills, which were finally reduced: About $1,400 for the Mohs surgeon, $765 for the anesthesiologist, $1,375 for the ophthalmological plastic surgeon, plus $1,050 in operating-room charges from the hospital.

For her follow-up, she refused to return to Baptist Health and went instead to the University of Arkansas Medical Center, where a dermatologist told her she likely had not needed such an extensive procedure. But that was hard to judge, since the records forwarded from Baptist did not include the photo that was taken of the initial lesion.

( :lol multiple $Ks but nobody took a set of "free" digital pics as part of the treatment file?? :lol )

outraged as she wrote checks for the nearly $3,000 she owed to the doctors under the terms of her insurance. “It was like, ‘Take out your purse, we’re robbing you,' ”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/health/patients-costs-skyrocket-specialists-incomes-soar.html?from=homepage

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 06:14 AM

Medical Price Gouging and Waste Are Skyrocketing

The latest in this medical cost saga comes from new data released last week (http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/new-data-some-hospitals-set-charges-at-10-times-their-costs/) by National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest nurse's organization. In a news release, NNU revealed that fourteen hospitals in the United States are charging more than ten times their costs for treatment. Specifically, for every $100 one of these hospitals spends, the charge on the corresponding bill is nearly $1,200.

According to NNU's data, thetop 10 Most Expensive Hospitals in the U.S. listed according to the huge percentage of their charges relative to their costs are:

1. Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center, Secaucus, NJ - 1192%

2. Paul B. Hall Regional Medical Center, Painsville, KY - 1186%

3. Orange Park Medical Center, Orange Park, FL - 1139%

4. North Okaloosa Medical Center, Crestview, FL - 1137%

5. Gadsden Regional Medical Center, Gadsden, AL - 1128%

6. Bayonne Medical Center, Bayonne, NJ - 1084%

7. Brooksville Regional Hospital, Brooksville, FL - 1083%

8. Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center, Davenport, FL - 1058%

9. Chestnut Hill Hospital, Philadelphia, PA - 1058%

10. Oak Hill Hospital, Spring Hill, FL - 1052%

Enacting a single payer, full Medicare-for-all system is the only chance the United States has of unwinding itself from the spider web of waste, harm, and bloat that currently comprise its highly flawed health insurance and health care systems. It's time to cut out the corporate profiteers and purveyors of waste and fraud and introduce a system that works for everybody.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/272-39/21585-medical-price-gouging-and-waste-are-skyrocketing

THANKS, OBAMA! :lol

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 10:11 AM

How Ted Cruz Helped Fund Obamacare

Without any fanfare, 166 House Republicans voted to fund Obamacare on Wednesday.

The next day, 17 Republican senators did the same thing.

By the end of the shutdown, Republicans had reached new levels of unpopularity and briefly seemed in danger of losing their gift-wrapped-by-gerrymandering House majority. Luckily for the GOP, the briefly disastrous rollout of the Obamacare online exchanges wiped the shutdown’s hangover from the news. However, the unpopularity lingered (http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/republican-party-favorable-rating), putting the party in a fundraising slump it still hasn’t broken out of (http://atr.rollcall.com/gop-frets-year-end-fundraising-thanks-to-shutdown/).

when it came time to vote on a two-year budget agreement negotiated by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Ted Cruz and the outside groups that champion him warned Republicans that they’d better not vote for it or they’re gonna get it, somehow, some way. You just watch!

The budget passed easily, but before it came time to fill in the actual numbers and fund that budget, Cruz demanded a vote to defund Obamacare. The senator’s spokesTwitterer summed up what happened:

Cruz asked for a vote to defund Obamacare and fund military pensions. Denied. Couldn't even get a VOTE on it.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/how-ted-cruz-helped-fund-obamacare/

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 10:21 AM

Michigan Repugs cave on expanding ACA Medicaid, although killing ACA is the Repug's main strategy in 2014 elections.

In Michigan, Businessmen And Politicians Agree On Medicaid

Republican party leaders say opposition to Obamacare is their No. 1 campaign issue for the midterm election.
Yet at the same time, a growing number of Republican states are now embracing a major provision of the law — expanding Medicaid, government funded health benefits for the poor. The Supreme Court made doing that optional for states in 2012 and most Republican-led states said no. But now, some states like Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan are trying to forge compromises with the White House to accept the large amount of federal money that comes with Medicaid expansion, since the federal government covers nearly all of the costs.

Snyder argued that if the state didn't expand, the millions of dollars in Affordable Care Act taxes and fees Michigan would be paying would just go to other states, and not come back home as new payments to hospitals and doctors.
Plus, when Pscholka says he took a hard look at Medicaid, he didn't find the broken, bloated government program he was expecting.

Medicaid is a government-funded program, but Michigan has long contracted with private sector HMOs (http://www.ncqa.org/Portals/0/Report%20Cards/Rankings/hpr2012medicaidsum.pdf) to administer it. The idea was to use private market incentives to increase efficiency.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/01/20/263467886/in-michigan-businessmen-and-politicians-agree-on-medicaid

:lol for-profit HMOs will suck out $10Ms in fees meant to pay for poor people's care, so the Repug strategy of screwing poor people, while shoveling taxpayer dollars to private sector, remains in tact

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 02:19 PM

A duped-by-Repug-propaganda Ohio Obama-hater's story:
(http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270505/-From-I-don-t-want-any-part-of-Obamacare-to-It-s-a-godsend)
From 'I don't want any part of Obamacare' to 'It's a godsend' (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270505/-From-I-don-t-want-any-part-of-Obamacare-to-It-s-a-godsend)

Last year, TIME published a massive special report (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136864,00.html), "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," detailing just about everything that is wrong with the nation's health care system. Central to that story were Stephanie and Sean Recchi, an Ohio couple with two kids who had just started up a new business, and who had just been struck by Sean's aggressive and expensive cancer. The author of that story, Steven Brill, has a an update to their story (http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2162940,00.html) in the current issue of TIME. Sean Recchi's now in remission, but only after the underinsured family (their $469/month policy was worthless at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston) borrowed from family and maxed out their credit cards. Here's Stephanie Ricci last October:

I don't think Obamacare will help us. I don't want anything to do with it," Stephanie Recchi told me a week after the launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1. "I hear a lot of bad things about it—that it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions and it's too expensive," she added, referring to what she said were "television ads and some politicians talking on the news. Just a lot of talk that this is a bad law."

Did I mention she's an Obama hater? Nonetheless, she tried and tried again to navigate HealthCare.gov, to no avail. That made her hate the whole idea of Obamacare even more, but she needed health insurance, and so went to her insurance agent.

"When they came to my office, Stephanie told me right up front, 'I don't want any part of Obamacare,' " recalls health-insurance agent Barry Cohen. "These were clearly people who don't like the President. So I kind of let that slide and just asked them for basic information and told them we would go on the Ohio exchange"—which is actually the Ohio section of the federal Obamacare exchange—"and show them what's available."

The upshot? Because they're still in basically start-up mode in their business, their income for the family of four qualifies them for expanded Medicaid. If a big contract they are anticipating comes through for them this year, they'll be bumped off Medicaid, but will still qualify for a subsidy that will put their monthly premiums at $566.

What Stephanie soon discovered, she told me in mid-November, "was a godsend." [...]"Here I get full protection for $566, compared to no protection for almost $500," Stephanie says, referring to her old plan that had cost $469 monthly and that MD Anderson had scoffed at. "This is wonderful. [...] No, we don't get MD Anderson, but we do get the Cleveland Clinic and lots of other good care," Stephanie says. "We understand that." Amid the likely attacks from his opponents that he's taking away patients' favorite doctors and hospitals, Obama has to hope that others come to share her attitude.

As Brill points out, if the Recchis had been living in Texas, where Sean got cancer treatment, or in any of the other states that refused Medicaid expansion, they'd still be screwed. They'd be in the Medicaid gap that millions of Americans, many with health issues as critical as Sean Recchi's, have fallen into. That's the kind of situation that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to end for everyone.Thanks to the Supreme Court and an intractable Republican party that has invested more into fighting Obama than into fighting for their constituents, being able to access and afford health care is still a matter of luck.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270505/-From-I-don-t-want-any-part-of-Obamacare-to-It-s-a-godsend?detail=email

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 03:55 PM

Peace of Mind Is First Benefit for Many Now Getting Medicaid

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/01/21/science/earth/21wva1_cnd/21wva1_cnd-articleLarge.jpg

“I got to the point when I decided I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” she said.

Ms. Mills said she felt as if she could breathe again for the first time in years. “The heavy thing that was pressing on me is gone,” she said.

As health care coverage under the new law sputters to life, it is already having a profound effect on the lives of poor Americans. Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states (http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2013/12/03/october-medicaid-applications-far-outpace-enrollment-through-exchanges/). Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid.

While many people who have signed up so far for private insurance through the new insurance exchanges had some kind of health care coverage before, recent studies have found, most of the people getting coverage under the Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured. In West Virginia, where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the number of uninsured people in the state has been reduced by about a third.

America ranks near the bottom of developed countries in health and longevity, and many public health experts believe that improving that ranking will be impossible without paying more attention to poor Americans. It is still an open question whether access to health insurance will improve the health of the disadvantaged in the long run, experts say, but the men and women getting the coverage here say the mere fact of having it has dramatically improved their mental health.

Waitresses, fast food workers, security guards and cleaners described feeling intense relief that they are now protected from the punishing medical bills that have punched holes in their family budgets. They spoke in interviews of reclaiming the dignity they had lost over years of being turned away from doctors’ offices because they did not have insurance.
“You see it in their faces,” said Janie Hovatter, a patient advocate at Cabin Creek Health Systems (http://www.cabincreekhealth.com/), a health clinic in southern West Virginia. “They just kind of relax.”

Chad Webb, a shy 30-year-old who is enrolling people in Mingo County, said a woman at a recent event used biblical terms to disparage Mr. Obama as an existential threat to the nation. Mr. Webb said he thought to himself, “This man is not the anti-Christ. He just wants you to have health insurance.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/health/peace-of-mind-is-first-benefit-for-many-now-getting-medicaid.html?from=homepage

SnakeBoy

01-20-2014, 04:10 PM

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 04:26 PM

Breaking News...people of all political persuasions like free stuff.

especially the $100Bs of free stuff (tax expenditures, loopholes, subsidies) taxpayers spend on businesses, where even many large businesses game the system so much IRS sends them cash, negative tax rate.

boutons_deux

01-23-2014, 04:14 PM

Another deep red state caves :lol

Utah Will Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare

Utah will expand Medicaid under Obamacare, its Republican governor said Thursday.
"Doing nothing ... I’ve taken off the table. Doing nothing is not an option," Gov. Gary Herbert said at his monthly news conference, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57438301-78/medicaid-expansion-health-federal.html.csp)

The state legislature has endorsed two plans for expanding Medicaid through private coverage, as Arkansas has already done. Under one plan, Medicaid dollars would pay for people up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level to purchase private insurance on HealthCare.gov. The alternative plan would use Medicaid dollars for people up to the poverty level to buy private coverage on HealthCare.gov; those above the poverty level would receive federal tax subsidies to help purchase insurance through the federal website.

It's not clear which strategy the state will adopt, and Herbert didn't express a preference. Medicaid expansion would cover 60,000 Utahans, according to the Tribune. Utah would be the 26th state, along with Washington, D.C., to accept expansion.

A privatized Medicaid expansion plan would require approval from the Obama administration, but federal officials have already signed of (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hhs-signs-off-on-arkansas-s-unique-medicaid-expansion-plan)f on a similar plan in Arkansas.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/utah-medicaid-expansion?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

but of course, the Repugs just have to enrich, privatize/waste taxpayers funds to their for-profit corporate buddies, campaign contributors, pure graft.

boutons_deux

01-24-2014, 08:17 AM

Here's yet another upstanding Corporate-American, cheating taxpayers out of $Ms.

Hospital Chain Said to Scheme to Inflate Bills

Every day the scorecards went up, where they could be seen by all of the hospital’s emergency room doctors.

Physicians hitting the target to admit at least half of the patients over 65 years old who entered the emergency department were color-coded green. The names of doctors who were close were yellow. Failing physicians were red.

The scorecards, according to one whistle-blower lawsuit, were just one of the many ways that Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain based in Naples, Fla., kept tabs on an internal strategy that regulators and others say was intended to increase admissions, regardless of whether a patient needed hospital care, and pressure the doctors who worked at the hospital.

This month, the Justice Department said it had joined eight separate whistle-blower lawsuits against H.M.A. in six states. The lawsuits describe a wide-ranging strategy that is said to have relied on a mix of sophisticated software systems, financial incentives and threats in an attempt to inflate the company’s payments from Medicare and Medicaid by admitting patients like an infant whose temperature was a normal 98.7 degrees for a “fever.”

The accusations reach all the way to the former chief executive’s office, whom many of the whistle-blowers point to as driving the strategy.

For H.M.A., the timing could not be worse. Shareholders recently approved the planned $7.6 billion acquisition of the company by Community Health Systems, which will create the nation’s second-largest for-profit hospital chain by revenue, with more than 200 facilities. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

While the lawsuits against H.M.A. provide a stark look at the pressure being put on doctors and hospital executives to emphasize profits over their patients, similar accusations are being raised at other hospital and medical groups as health care in the United States undergoes sweeping changes.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/business/hospital-chain-said-to-scheme-to-inflate-bills.html?from=homepage

naturally, Fox/Beck/Limbaugh/Repugs will say nothing, not be outraged, and/or lie that HMA is only a bad apple in The Greatest, Bestest Health Care System In The Universe.

boutons_deux

01-24-2014, 10:12 AM

And Another Anti-Obamacare Talking Point Is Destroyed

A new survey from Gallup shows that the percentage of uninsured Americans dropped to 16.1 percent as Obamacare first took effect, down 1.2 percent from the month before. Among the unemployed, the drop was most significant — 6.7 percent.

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/uninsured.png

http://www.nationalmemo.com/and-another-anti-obamacare-talking-point-is-destroyed/

TDMVPDPOY

01-24-2014, 11:14 AM

1st world countries with 3rd world problems

high prices for medical have push locals to go overseas to get shit done even if its the difference between life and death, while you have people from 3rd world countries who dont believe in their own system willing to travel to get shit done in a 1st world country...

SnakeBoy

01-24-2014, 03:09 PM

boutons_deux

01-24-2014, 03:16 PM

Great News! At this rate maybe we can get back to George Bush levels before Obama leaves office.

yep, the Ms of jobs lost to the Banksters Great Depression caused a lot of people to lose health insurance.

That's not Barry's problem or cause, but he certainly has provided the solution.

boutons_deux

01-24-2014, 04:33 PM

PA Man Confronts Governor For Refusing To Expand Medicaid: ‘How Many People Have To Die?’

Outside a $1,000 a plate luncheon, Governor Corbett faced a man whose fiancee died at 41 because she had no health insurance.

This week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) had a run-in with one of his constituents (http://www.seiu.org/2014/01/grieving-fiance-asks-governor-corbett-how-many-mor.php)as he was leaving a fundraising event. Scot Rosenzweig — who identified himself as a fellow Republican — showed Corbett a large photograph of his fiancee, Dina Nelson, who died at the age of 41 because she was uninsured and couldn’t afford a liver transplant. “I think maybe we should consider accepting the Medicaid expansion,” Rosenzweig told his governor, explaining that people like Nelson need access to lifesaving health treatment.
“I can’t do that,” Corbett responded.

Corbett is trying to win federal approval for an alternate plan (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/25/240762178/pennsylvania-governor-talks-up-plan-to-expand-medicaid-his-way), called “Healthy Pennsylvania,” that would give low-income people subsidies to buy private coverage. But Corbett’s plan has been sharply criticized (http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-pennsylvania-20131213,0,51848.story#axzz2rFIIxbyt)by anti-poverty advocates, who say it could actually reduce benefits for the state’s neediest constituents.

Corbett reiterated his desire to implement “Healthy Pennsylvania,” which he hopes to put in place by 2015. He said he can’t both accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and fix the existing problems he sees with the Medicaid program. But that didn’t satisfy Rosenzweig.
“How many people have to die while we work on the problems?” he asked Corbett.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/pa-man-confronts-governor-refusing-expand-medicaid-how-many-people-have-die?akid=11438.187590.nf_SAR&rd=1&src=newsletter951142&t=13

Will many Repugs say "you denied me and my family Medicaid, but I will still and always vote you."

boutons_deux

01-25-2014, 12:37 PM

A blue state trying to make progress against hospital/doctor scammers

Hospitals and Doctors Make More Money When More People Are Sick: Maryland Wants to Stop That

The current US medical system financially rewards hospitals and doctors (particularly highly compensated specialists) for performing more procedures and treating more diseased people, not for prevention (although the Affordable Care Act makes some progress in that direction). It is perverse: The aging of the US population aside, the healthcare system becomes more profitable institutionally and personally (for medical providers) as the number of diseased patients rise and hi-tech tests and operations are performed.

Furthermore, a recent New York Times article documented that it is not uncommon for multiple specialists to bill for even standard diagnostic procedures, even if their role was minimal or unnecessary.

The net result is that the US healthcare system does not generally look at improving community health; it looks at marketing services to treat disease. The more disease, the greater the revenue.

In a bold move, the US government has just given (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/10/%253Fp%253D74854/) the state of Maryland (which has had a federal waiver to impose a uniform pricing system on medical charges) the opportunity to experiment with placing global reimbursement caps on hospitals.

How could this improve the overall medical well-being of individuals and neighborhoods?

As an article in Bloomberg Businessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-13/maryland-will-limit-hospital-charges-statewide) notes: "The state will also transform how hospitals get paid, from billing for each service provided—an incentive for doctors to order more tests and treatments—to getting paid for keeping people well."

That is how healthcare is offered in most developed nations, but in the US the current incentives are for waiting for disease to develop and then billing for long-term treatment of the disease -- as well as the latest costly technological testing and medication.

Furthermore, one of the larger causes of death in the United States is the number of people who acquire incurable infections due to hospital borne pathogens. In short, many hospitals are not aggressively attempting to limit the transfer of disease while someone is in a hospital for the treament of another illness!

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18438-hospitals-and-doctors-make-more-money-when-more-people-are-sick-maryland-wants-to-stop-that

boutons_deux

01-27-2014, 12:36 PM

Texas Sets Up Roadblock For Health Care Navigators

a federal judge put a strict Missouri law on hold, saying the state didn't have the right to regulate the work of navigators. But in Texas, state officials did just that this week.

This week, he learned he'll have to take 20 more hours of state-mandated training on top of roughly 25 hours he's already completed for the federal government. The new rules also mean he'll have to register with the state, undergo a background check and get fingerprinted. Anthony worries the extra steps will distract navigators at a crucial time. As in other states, enrollment on HealthCare.gov has been slower than expected. This year's deadline is March 31st.

It's a federal program. The state has no right to interfere with burdensome regulations. It's almost similar to blocking someone from the right to vote because of the color of their skin. Now, you're blocking a sick person or a person that is uninsured from getting access to the information.

In the next open enrollment period, which starts October 15th (2014), we're going to get swarmed by people. So it's the first taste, it's not the last taste. And it's going to be successful. In the long run, people are going to remember who was against this and they're going to remember who was for this.

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/24/265762411/texas-sets-up-roadblock-for-health-care-navigators

boutons_deux

01-28-2014, 01:53 PM

U.S. Cracked Down On A Record Number Of Medicare Fraudsters In 2013 (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/28/3214371/medicare-fraud-task-force-record-year/)

A special task force that targets doctors, providers, and individuals who defraud Medicare had a record year of prosecutions in 2013, according to the Department of Justice (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/January/14-crm-082.html).
Since its inception in 2007, the so-called Medicare Fraud Strike Force has prosecuted 1,700 defendants who bilked the public entitlement for seniors of more than $5.5 billion.

Medicare fraud usually comes in the form of unscrupulous doctors and medical providers who take advantage of sick seniors and over-bill them for their treatments.

In 2012, the strike force pulled off one of the biggest fraud busts in American history, arresting 91 people across seven cities (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/05/966831/massive-430-million-medicare-fraud-bust/) for perpetrating $230 million in home care billing fraud and $100 million in mental health care billing fraud.

According to new figures released on Monday, the agency continued that trend in 2013, filing 137 cases against 345 individuals. That ultimately led to 234 guilty pleas and 46 jury convictions.

“The Medicare Fraud Strike Force is one of this country’s most productive investments,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the DOJ’s Criminal Division in a statement. “We are not only putting hundreds of criminals who steal from Medicare in prison, but also stopping their theft in its tracks, recovering millions of dollars for taxpayers, and deterring potential criminals who ultimately decide the crime isn’t worth it.”

A 2013 report (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/11/1572201/justice-department-fraud-investigation/) by the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General found that the federal government receives and eight-fold return on every dollar spent by the strike force, lending credence to Raman’s claims about deterrence.

The 2009 stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act are both likely contributors to the uptick in Medicare fraud busts. For instance, Obamacare allows HHS and the DOJ to coordinate their efforts and encourages new fraud analysis methods (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/02/2246381/federal-budget-cuts-fraud/) that can identify suspicious medical claims, typically in regions with a history of abuse such as Houston, Texas and Tampa, Florida.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/28/3214371/medicare-fraud-task-force-record-year/

boutons_deux

01-28-2014, 02:14 PM

the greedy, predatory health care industry is one of the prime sinks of Americans' wealth

One In Four U.S. Families Struggles To Pay Their Medical Bills (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/28/3213161/families-struggle-medical-bills/)

About one quarter of American families are struggling under the weight of health care costs, according to new government data (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db142.pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC, it’s important to consider family units when studying medical debt because one family member’s bills can negatively impact everyone in the household.

The report, which drew from a large national survey of more than 43,000 families in the United States, found that over 16 percent of families had problems paying their medical bills in 2012. And nine percent reported they had bills that they weren’t able to pay at all:

The issue isn’t limited to American families who lack health insurance, either. About the same number of Americans who have private insurance or public insurance, roughly 21 percent of each group, reported that health care represented a financial burden in 2012. That number rises to about 40 percent for uninsured families — but the families with a mix of insured and non-insured members actually struggled the most, with 46 percent of that group struggling to afford their medical bills:

The rising cost of health care has been squeezing American families (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/12/1322681/study-workers-health-care-costs/) for years. The annual medical expenses for a family of four now exceed the cost of groceries (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/22/2048481/health-care-grocery-costs/) to feed them for an entire year. The average ER trip costs 40 percent more (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/01/1659021/average-er-trip/) than the typical American spends on rent, and even routine procedures in hospitals are often billed at rates far beyond (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/07/3130091/hospital-prices-nurses-union/) what the services are actually worth.

This has contributed to a society where health costs top Americans’ list of financial concerns (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/06/1967011/americans-worry-health-costs-retire/), and one in three people skip out on the medical care they need (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/10/3041821/americans-skip-health-care-2013/) in order to save money. After suffering from a catastrophic event (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/01/2401341/bipartisan-crowd-funding-hospital-costs/), some desperate Americans now turn to the Internet (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/26/1099221/crowd-source-medical-bills/) to attempt to crowdfund the money they need to pay off their large medical bills.

Obamacare will take some steps to address this issue, both by increasing insurance coverage (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/23/3195691/survey-uninsurance-rate-unemployed-drops-significantly/) among Americans who previously couldn’t afford it and strengthening consumer protections (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/09/3037601/critics-obamacare-shocked-wont-solve-problem-health-care/) to ensure that insurance companies aren’t charging exorbitant out-of-pocket costs. But putting an end to medical bankruptcies (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/26/will-obamacare-end-medical-bankruptcies-probably-not/) — by some estimates, health costs are the most common reason (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148) that Americans go bankrupt — will require additional efforts to attack poverty and income inequality (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/28/3201741/income-inequality/).

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/28/3213161/families-struggle-medical-bills/

tlongII

01-28-2014, 05:31 PM

Coburn says ObamaCare cost him coverage for cancer doctor

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn revealed Tuesday that his ObamaCare insurance plan does not cover his cancer specialist, forcing him to pay out of pocket -- in the latest reminder of complications with the health law as President Obama prepares to address the nation.

The Oklahoma senator, who has been suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer and plans to retire at the end of the current session, briefly discussed his personal situation in an interview Tuesday morning.

"I'm doing well from a health standpoint, got great docs and fortunately, even though my new coverage won't cover my specialists, I'm going to have great care and I have a great prognosis," he said.

Politico reported that Coburn's office confirmed his coverage was cut and he lost coverage for his oncologist. However, Coburn reportedly will pay out of pocket in order to keep seeing the specialist. Coburn spoke earlier on MSNBC.

Like other congressional lawmakers, Coburn, 65, was required to go on the ObamaCare exchanges. Coburn's case is one of many that will hang over the president as he delivers the State of the Union address Tuesday evening. While Obama plans to focus on economic issues -- and especially agenda items like the minimum wage -- lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are not letting him forget about the widespread and bipartisan concerns with the health care law.

Coburn was one of three GOP lawmakers who on Monday unveiled a sweeping alternative proposal to the Affordable Care Act which would gut the law's mandates and taxes while preserving some consumer protections.

"Americans deserve a real alternative, and a way out," Coburn said.

Others are also drawing attention to how the health care law has impacted coverage. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a staunch ObamaCare critic, plans to bring as her guest to the State of the Union a woman with lupus whose plan was canceled due to ObamaCare.

The woman, Emilie, says in a new ad (aired by the conservative Americans for Prosperity) that she lost her prior coverage and now faces her costs rising by more than $6,000 a year.

"I'm worried about losing access to the doctors who have cared for me. President Obama, you broke your promise, and people like me got hurt," she said in the ad.

Obama late last year tried to assuage the concerns of those losing coverage by allowing insurance companies to re-offer canceled plans. Not all states and companies got on board.

And while the administration has worked to address widespread technical problems that impeded the launch of health care exchanges in October, lawmakers are still voicing concerns about the financial stability of the system.

One such lawmaker, retiring Democratic Rep. Jim Moran, told WAMU that he's "afraid that the millenials ... are less likely to sign up."

Insurance companies are depending on such young and healthy customers to buy health insurance, to offset the cost of taking on older and sicker customers -- as required under the law.

Obama is likely to defend the law in his State of the Union address, arguing as he has before that it provides vital consumer protections -- like barring insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. The administration notes that enrollment has improved dramatically through the exchanges since the October launch.

But the president's address appears geared more toward economic and income issues.

He announced Tuesday morning that he's signing an executive order raising the minimum wage for new federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25. He plans to pursue more go-it-alone approaches in the year ahead, though will need congressional support to achieve the broader goal of raising the federal minimum wage for all workers and other initiatives.

boutons_deux

01-28-2014, 05:39 PM

boutons_deux

01-29-2014, 02:23 PM

Republican Alternative To Obamacare: Pay More, Get Less, Put The Insurance Companies Back In Charge

Boy, can Democrats have fun with the new Republican alternative to Obamacare. It puts the health insurance companies back in charge and raises costs for almost all Americans. In particular, it substantially raises costs and threatens to cut coverage for the half of all Americans who get health insurance at work. Seniors, the group that Republicans have scared witless about Obamacare, would lose the real benefits they receive under Obamacare. The proposal from three Republican senators (http://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/bf0c9823-29c7-4078-b8af-aa9a12213eca/The%20Patient%20CARE%20Act%20-%20LEGISLATIVE%20PROPOSAL.pdf) is a golden opportunity for Democrats to contrast the specific benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with what a repeal-and-replace agenda would really mean for Americans’ lives and health.

People who get health insurance at work – bottom line: pay more for worse coverage.

Almost half of all Americans (48 percent) (http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/), or 148 million people, obtain health insurance at work. The Republican plan would tax 35 percent of the average cost of health insurance benefits at work. This is a big tax increase on working people and is extraordinarily unpopular, as the Obama campaign used to devastating impact on John McCain. And while people would pay more, they would get less coverage, as the GOP plan would allow insurance companies to once again limit the amount of benefits they will pay out in one year and return to the day when employers could offer bare-bones plans.

While taxing health benefits would apply to all employer-provided coverage, the Republicans would give the 30 percent of people who work for businesses who employ fewer than 100 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-134.pdf) workers a tax credit. That might balance out the increased taxes for some people. However, doing so would create a huge set of economic distortions, as employers might seek to keep firm size under the 100-employee threshold.

Individuals who buy coverage on their own or who are uninsured – bottom line: insurance companies could again deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and offer bare-bones coverage, while the cost of decent coverage would go up for most people.

This is the group that the ACA is most aimed at helping, including the 5 percent of Americans who buy private health insurance and the 15 percent who are uninsured, totaling 64 million people. The ACA offers income-based subsidies to these people when they earn between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) and enrolls people under 133 percent of FPL in Medicaid, when states agree.

The Republican plan is toughest, in comparison with the ACA, on the lowest-income people and on the higher-income middle class, compared with Obamacare. But many families in between will do worse too.

The Republican plan would wipe out the expansion of Medicaid to people earning less than 133 percent of FPL, a provision the Supreme Court has made optional. It would cut back on Medicaid, ending the federal government’s offer to pay 90 percent of the cost of expanded coverage and replacing that with the federal government paying what it has paid historically, which is between half and three-quarters of the cost of Medicaid, with poorer states getting a bigger share. Crucially, the funding would only be for pregnant women, children and parents with dependent children who earn under the poverty level, as opposed to the ACA’s funding of all adults up to 133 percent of FPL. That means many fewer people covered and states getting less Medicaid money. Republican governors may not complain, but you can bet hospitals will. Adults without dependent children would not be covered by federal Medicaid, which means millions will stay uninsured or lose coverage they now have, unless states pay for coverage without federal support.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/republican-alternative-obamacare-pay-get-less-put-insurance-companies-back-charge/

boutons_deux

01-29-2014, 03:18 PM

Insurance giant WellPoint enrolls 500,000 in Obamacare coverage

Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. has signed up 500,000 people for Obamacare policies across the country, and it struck an upbeat tone Wednesday about early enrollment trends under the healthcare law.

WellPoint, which runs Anthem Blue Cross plans in California and 13 other states, said new enrollees tend to be older than current customers but that enrollment is in line with its projections and pricing for the new policies.

"We do feel good about what we’ve seen in the exchanges so far," WellPoint Chief Executive Joseph Swedish said during an earnings conference call with analysts and investors.

"The changes that are facing our industry are admittedly very substantial, and it still remains very early in the year," Swedish added.

In California's exchange, Anthem has staked an early lead through Dec. 31, 2013, with 155,146 enrollees, or a 31% share of the market. The Indianapolis-based company said that figure was a "reasonable proxy" for its performance in other states where it sells exchange policies.

WellPoint said it didn't know yet how many of its enrollees were previously uninsured. The company did say that about 80% of those customers were new to WellPoint.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-79087581/

boutons_deux

01-30-2014, 12:26 PM

Gohmert, Bachmann, and King tell Hannity they’ll ride Obamacare ‘repeal train’ to bitter end

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/30/gohmert-bachmann-and-king-tell-hannity-theyll-ride-obamacare-repeal-train-to-bitter-end/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

01-31-2014, 01:24 PM

Obamacare’s Benefits Are Its Least Known Features

This may help explain why Obamacare remains unpopular even after HealthCare.gov has been fixed.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that the uninsured are less informed about the law than the insured. But the biggest problem for supporters of health care reform is that the part of the law that is most unpopular — the individual mandate — is the best known. Meanwhile, far fewer people know about the benefits of the law — the ban on pre-existing conditions, tax credits and Medicaid expansion.

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-30-at-4.41.36-PM.png

Misinformation continues to be rampant, with delays of parts of the law compounded by negative and confusing press coverage. People reported seeing more coverage of stories where someone was harmed by the law than helped.

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-30-at-5.16.28-PM.png
http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamacare-benefits-least-known/

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” ― Mark Twain (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1244.Mark_Twain)

boutons_deux

01-31-2014, 01:26 PM

U.S. says results encouraging for healthcare delivery reformsThe Obama administration on Thursday reported what it called encouraging results from efforts to reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of care for more than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries under Obamacare

As part of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, the efforts center around more than 360 accountable care organizations (ACOs), which are networks of doctors, hospitals and other providers specially organized to help move Medicare away from traditional fee-for-service medicine.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said preliminary data show that the ACOs produced $380 million in savings vis-a-vis traditional Medicare in 2012 by giving doctors and other healthcare providers the incentive to focus on improved outcomes for patients instead of fees from tests and services.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/30/us-usa-healthcare-delivery-idUSBREA0T1SE20140130?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

SnakeBoy

01-31-2014, 03:46 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuA2_P-m4Sk#t=226

Winehole23

02-02-2014, 12:06 PM

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/the-real-challenge-for-reform-conservatism/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1

boutons_deux

02-02-2014, 01:03 PM

What G.O.P.-Style Reform Looks Like

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

February 1, 2014

Three Republican senators — Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina — have issued (http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=bd2f1e3a-3c25-4ea2-80a0-25b0753bcc6a&ContentType_id=d741b7a7-7863-4223-9904-8cb9378aa03a&Group_id=7a55cb96-4639-4dac-8c0c-99a4a227bd3a) an alternative to the health care reforms that they deride as Obamacare. Conservative analysts have hailed their proposals as “an important milestone in the health care debate (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/burr-coburn-hatch-proposal_775467.html)” and a “reform that has enormous promise. (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/369549/obamacare-replacement-senate-yuval-levin)” But the plan, which is hard to parse because it has not been put into precise legislative language, looks inferior in most respects to the existing law.

The plan would

repeal the Affordable Care Act and

substitute an alternative that would

likely cover fewer uninsured people,

raise premiums for many older adults,

shrink Medicaid,

cut back on subsidies for middle class Americans,

scale back protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and

allow private insurers to escape many of the consumer-friendly requirements now imposed on them.

It is a blueprint for what the Republicans hope to do if they capture the White House in 2016. They say they are relying on market competition to keep costs down; empowering consumers to choose plans they want, not plans whose benefits are set by the federal government; emphasizing private insurance, not government programs; and giving states the primary role in managing the reform effort. :lol

All of these ideas have been debated for decades, and the most important have been incorporated into the existing reforms, which also rely on market competition and give consumers tools to choose among private insurance plans. In fact, the Republican plan keeps some parts of Obamacare that the public has embraced — like guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions in some circumstances, allowing children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26, and barring insurers from imposing lifetime benefit caps. But simply grafting those popular elements onto a package that reduces coverage will not mask the defects in the Republican plan.

The plan claims to guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, but there is a big catch. It is only guaranteed if they maintain “continuous coverage.” If they lose a job and the insurance that went with it, they must enroll in another plan promptly or they could be locked out of insurance or charged unaffordable rates if they have pre-existing conditions. :lol

Although the Republicans would retain the most popular provisions of the reform law, they would drop consumer protections like

a ban on annual benefit limits,

free preventive services,

equal premiums for men and women, and

comprehensive benefits designed to make sure all plans are adequate.

Federal tax credit subsidies would be limited to those earning up to three times the federal poverty level, not four times as under the existing law. How those subsidies would be paid for is not clear.

The expansion of Medicaid in 25 states and the District of Columbia, which was intended to enroll millions of uninsured Americans, would be repealed,

and the amount of federal money provided for Medicaid would be capped, endangering coverage for tens of millions of Americans enrolled in Medicaid.

The plan does away with the mandate that virtually all Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.

The mandate is a critically important element of reform because it drives young and healthy people into the insurance pools, making it possible to reduce the cost of premiums for the old and the ill. The Republicans, in eliminating the mandate, are simply hoping that insurers will offer up a batch of low-cost policies that don’t provide comprehensive benefits and will attract young and healthy consumers who don’t expect to need much medical care.

The exchanges on which consumers currently shop for private insurance would be eliminated,

and no federal funds could be used to establish alternative websites;

people would have to rely on brokers and private-sector websites unless a state funded its own website.

One way the Republicans plan to reduce the number of uninsured people is by allowing states to enroll those who receive federal tax credits in a randomly chosen plan with a premium exactly equal to the tax credit. While this means there would be no cost to the individual in terms of premium payments, the insurance might not be worth much. Insurers could raise the deductibles and co-payments to very high levels, leaving consumers with bare-bones catastrophic coverage that might not prove adequate in a medical or financial crisis.

The Republican plan would be costly and disruptive — to millions of Americans who have already signed up for private plans or Medicaid or will do so in the next few years; to insurance companies; and to state insurance commissioners who have based plans on the existing law and spent substantial money carrying them out.

Instead of trying to replace the health reform law with an inferior version, the Republicans should work to make the current law better, perhaps by encouraging more states to expand their Medicaid programs and intensify their outreach to the uninsured.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/what-gop-style-reform-looks-like.html

aka, incurable, hopelss insanity from the Repug Klown Kar! :lol

boutons_deux

02-05-2014, 07:03 AM

Arkansas Repugs WANT TO CANCEL COVERAGE that ARKIES now have

Wasn't losing your insurance because of ACA a BAD THING, according to Repugs?

"more than 85,000 Arkansans who have signed up for coverage through the Medicaid expansion would presumably have that coverage stopped in 2015."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/arkansas-medicaid-expansion-republicans-2014

boutons_deux

02-07-2014, 03:39 PM

You Got Sick! AOL Slashes 401K Benefits And Blames Two Women Who Gave Birth To Sick Babies

AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong blamed (http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/02/8539961/armstrong-distressed-babies-figured-401k-roll-back) the babies of two employees for increasing the company’s benefit costs on Thursday, explaining in a conference call (http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/02/8539961/armstrong-distressed-babies-figured-401k-roll-back)that AOL had to pay millions out in medical bills and alter its entire benefits package. The remarks came just hours after the company announced changes to its 401(k) plans (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/06/3253541/corporate-trick-retirement-401k/)and complained that Obamacare has increased costs by $7.1 million (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101393490).

“We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general,” Armstrong said on a conference call first reported by Capital New York (http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/02/8539961/armstrong-distressed-babies-figured-401k-roll-back). “And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.” Under the new program, AOL employees will not be able (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/06/3253541/corporate-trick-retirement-401k/)to collect any matching funds toward their retirement savings from the company for any given year if they leave before Dec. 31 of that year.

But health care experts ThinkProgress contacted questioned why a large self-insured company with more than 5,000 employees (http://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/AOL--Number_of_Employees)could not absorb the additional health care costs associated with the pregnancies. Large employers typically purchase reinsurance, which could cover a substantial share of big claims and ensure stability in cases of larger-than expected medical payouts.

“The Affordable Care Act is simply a convenient whipping boy for any decision an employer makes to cut benefits,” Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee, said. “

Assuming AOL had reasonably generous coverage like most large employers, it should not have experienced any significant changes in its benefit structure for 2014. Perhaps it had to pick up a few more employees that had not been covered before or reduce premiums for a few employees, but it is hard to see $7.1 million here.”

Meanwhile, the company is also hurting from poor business decisions. As the Washington Post reports, its quarterly earnings “were hurt (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/06/aol-chief-cuts-401k-benefits-blames-obamacare/) by $13.2 million in costs associated with layoffs, including at Patch, the struggling local news venture recently sold to investment firm Hale Global. The Patch unit, championed by Armstrong, has lost an estimated $200 million.”

AOL’s total revenue beat expectations and increased $679 million in the fourth quarter. In 2012, Armstrong earned 12.1 million (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324103504578372342066362234).

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/you-got-sick-aol-slashes-401k-benefits-and-blames-two-women?akid=11484.187590.-BqhBT&rd=1&src=newsletter955955&t=11

Capt Bringdown

02-09-2014, 08:39 AM

ObamaCare Part Of 'Unprecedented' Bounty For Insurers, So Far

“The revenue growth opportunities in front of us may be unprecedented in the history of managed care and we believe our diversified portfolio positions us to capture our fair share and grow operating revenues at double-digit rates,” Mark Bertolini, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Aetna said earlier this week as the company reported fourth-quarter profits nearly double the year earlier period.
-- more --> (http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2014/02/08/obamacare-part-of-unprecedented-bounty-for-insurers-so-far/)

boutons_deux

02-09-2014, 10:51 AM

"ObamaCare Part Of 'Unprecedented' Bounty For Insurers, So Far"

That was inevitable since without the for-profit insurers getting paid off, they would have Harry-and-Louise'd ACA.

It's one of the strongest arguments for a no-profit govt health insurance and no-profit govt health care (govt hospitals, clinics, docs, nurses, etc as govt employees).

Anybody could still PAY FOR for-profit insurance and for-profit care FREEDOM!, but they'd get screwed like they do now, but more importantly a govt health insurance/care system would thoroughly screw the for-profit health care system BACK for screwing Americans for decades. No tears, no sympathy, the for-profit health ins/care assholes deserve payback.

TSA

02-10-2014, 05:39 PM

What a joke. WH delays health insurance mandate, again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-delays-health-insurance-mandate-for-medium-sized-employers-until-2016/2014/02/10/ade6b344-9279-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 05:43 PM

What a joke.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-delays-health-insurance-mandate-for-medium-sized-employers-until-2016/2014/02/10/ade6b344-9279-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

why is it funny?

Just being friendly to corporations. Why would you right-wingers object?

TSA

02-10-2014, 05:50 PM

How are laws changed, or is the ACA not a law?

why is it funny?

Just being friendly to corporations. Why would you right-wingers object?

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 05:53 PM

How are laws changed, or is the ACA not a law?

ah, the "lawless President" schtick!

a law is not the same thing as rules implementing a law.

TSA

02-10-2014, 05:54 PM

ah, the "lawless President" schtick!

a law is not the same thing as rules implementing a law.
:lmao

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 05:56 PM

it's just like CFPB "law", almost totally gutted by financial lobbyists at the rule making stage, and they are still at it.

angrydude

02-10-2014, 07:01 PM

ah, the "lawless President" schtick!

a law is not the same thing as rules implementing a law.

you realize this is the definition of political corruption right? Criminalize everything, use discretion to let your friends off the hook, then hide behind the "law"

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 08:38 PM

you realize this is the definition of political corruption right? Criminalize everything, use discretion to let your friends off the hook, then hide behind the "law"

You have a fucked up concept of political corruption, and you were of course silent as the financial lobbyists gutted CFPB rules and House Repugs defunded it, the SEC, and the IRS to let their wealthy friends, benefactors, finance sector off the hook.

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 08:49 PM

GOP senator to Fox News: Providing access to health care just makes people lazy

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama’s health care law would make some people so lazy that they didn’t want to work at all.

providing health care “can’t be a good idea” if it allowed people who were only working for health insurance benefits to leave the workforce.
“I think any law you pass that discourages people from working can’t be a good idea,” the Missouri Republican asserted.

“Why would we wanna do that? Why would we think that’s a good thing? How does that allow people to prepare for the time when they don’t work?”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/09/gop-senator-to-fox-news-providing-access-to-health-care-just-makes-people-lazy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

From a red-state asshole Senator who works in the Senate less the 100 days/year, while Real Americans in the Real Economy works 200 or more.

angrydude

02-11-2014, 12:19 AM

You have a fucked up concept of political corruption, and you were of course silent as the financial lobbyists gutted CFPB rules and House Repugs defunded it, the SEC, and the IRS to let their wealthy friends, benefactors, finance sector off the hook.

Why do you think people have to bribe officials in third world countries dumbass?

You know Chinese officials believe they have freedom of religion in their country. It's in their constitution. Freedom for all. ****It's just governed by "appropriate rules and regulations"******

angrydude

02-11-2014, 12:29 AM

BTW I'm glad Obama now agrees with Ted Cruz as far as postponing the employer mandate. I'm sure the apology will be coming any second now.

lol defenders of this dumbass president

ElNono

02-11-2014, 02:38 AM

BTW I'm glad Obama now agrees with Ted Cruz as far as postponing the employer mandate. I'm sure the apology will be coming any second now.

lol defenders of this dumbass president

Hopefully it's enough for the GOP to win back Congress and turn him into a lame duck... but you just can't take this stuff for granted anymore...

boutons_deux

02-11-2014, 06:09 AM

Why do you think people have to bribe officials in third world countries dumbass?

So the the 10Ks of companies that benefit from this delay are FOB, Friends of Barry? They bribed him? :lol

Bribers in USA, and there are Ms of them, bribe for exactly the same reasons bribers bribe anywhere.

Y'all got NOTHING but typical right-wing assholes' FALSE outrage over a fabricated issue. Fox will run with this one, and all their other OBAMAMCARE DISASTER! through Nov 2016.

Since the Repugs don't have a single Pres candidate with ANY CHANCE, they run with OBAMAMCARE DISASTER. :lol

boutons_deux

02-11-2014, 06:11 AM

BTW I'm glad Obama now agrees with Ted Cruz as far as postponing the employer mandate. I'm sure the apology will be coming any second now.

lol defenders of this dumbass president

Krazy Kruz wants ACA totally repealed, not delayed.

"I'm shocked, shocked by my own FALSE OUTRAGE!" :lol

boutons_deux

02-19-2014, 11:39 AM

How the Confederacy rolls

96,000 People Are About To Lose Their Health Care Because Arkansas Has A Terrible Constitution

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/faded-Arkansas-e1392821753922.jpg

Giving money to people who took up arms in a treasonous war to preserve slavery requires a simple majority vote in the Arkansas state legislature. But preventing tens of thousands of Arkansas from losing health coverage they already have requires a massive supermajority.

This matters because yesterday, 70 of the Arkansas House’s 100 members voted to appropriate the money required to continue Arkansas’ compromise plan to expand Medicaid. Currently, approximately 96,000 people are covered through this expansion, and close to a quarter million are eligible. If this appropriation does not pass, the nearly 100,000 men and women current insured through this program will lose their coverage on July 1.

But when 7 out of 10 lawmakers support a bill, that’s means it’s probably going to become law, right? Well, not in Arkansas:

Excepting monies raised or collected for educational purposes, highway purposes, to pay Confederate pensions and the just debts of the State, the General Assembly is hereby prohibited from appropriating or expending more than the sum of Two and One-Half Million Dollars for all purposes, for any biennial period; provided the limit herein fixed may be exceeded by the votes of three-fourths of the members elected to each House of the General Assembly.

That’s the 1934 amendment to the Arkansas Constitution which requires a 3/4s supermajority in order to spend money for nearly any purpose. If the Arkansas legislature wanted to pay off unreconstructed Confederates who took up arms against their fellow countrymen, a 7/10ths supermajority would be more than enough to move forward. But since these lawmakers want to keep providing health care to the less fortunate, the state constitution says they are out of luck unless they can chase down more votes.

To put this 3/4s majority requirement in perspective, that’s less than the United States Constitution requires to expel a Member of Congress, to ratify a treaty, or to remove the President of the United States from office. Earlier this month, neither the U.S. House nor the U.S. Senate was able to muster anywhere close to a 3/4s majority in order to pass a bill that would have done nothing more than preventing the United States from destroying its own credit rating. Indeed, when you consider how dysfunctional Congress has become, despite having much lower thresholds to pass legislation even if you accept the legitimacy of the filibuster, it’s a miracle Arkansas is able to function at all.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/19/3306631/100000-people-lose-health-care-arkansas-terrible-constitution/

boutons_deux

02-26-2014, 07:01 AM

Why Republicans Will Never Stop Lying About Obamacare

Politically speaking, here’s the thing about those melodramatic ads attacking the Affordable Care Act currently running on TV: In terms of actual policy, they’re as futile as the 40-odd votes to repeal the law that House Republicans have already cast.

GOP hardliners are like a drunk in a bar fight threatening to whip somebody twice his size if only his friends would let go of his arms.

It’s all over but the shouting.

Even if Republicans make big gains in the 2014 congressional elections, they can’t possibly win enough votes to overcome a presidential veto. What’s more, chances of capturing the White House in 2016 on a platform of canceling millions of Americans’ health insurance benefits appear so remote as to be downright delusional. Like it or not, the ACA is here to stay.

the Washington Post reported last month that “the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that if the market’s age distribution freezes at its current level—an extremely unlikely scenario—‘overall costs in individual market plans would be about 2.4 percent higher than premium revenues.’”

That’s a minor problem, but nothing like a “death spiral.”

In terms of affecting health care policy, then, the TV ads are largely symbolic — scripted melodramas calculated to arouse the partisan passions of the GOP “base” in states where control of the U.S. Senate could be determined this fall. Financed by Americans for Prosperity, the Scrooge McDuck-style front group controlled by the Koch brothers and fellow anti-government tycoons, they’re aimed less at killing the Affordable Care Act than convincing voters that Democrats are their enemies.

AFP has run a commercial featuring a group of actors pretending to be ordinary Louisiana citizens whose health insurance was canceled due to “Obamacare.” But it’s make-believe; a scripted TV drama as fictive as a Viagra advertisment.

In Michigan, 49-year-old leukemia patient Julie Boonstra earnestly explained to viewers that her existing health care policy had been canceled due to the Affordable Care Act, implying that she’d also lost her doctor and been broadsided by ruinous costs.

Fact checks by the Washington Post and Detroit News, however, determined that Boonstra hadn’t lost her doctor at all. What’s more, her monthly premiums under the Affordable Care Act cost roughly half what she’d been paying ($571, from $1,100). Her out-of-pocket expenses almost precisely matched those savings — overall, a wash.

A determined opponent of the law, apart from her understandable anxiety about changing insurance carriers while fighting cancer, Boonstra turned out to have suffered no real losses. Not to mention that she now has a policy that can’t be rescinded due to a “previously existing condition.”

And so it goes. Los Angeles Times economics columnist Michael Hiltzik has made a minor specialty out of fact checking these successive tales of woe. It’s left him wondering if there are really any “Obamacare” victims at all.

“What a lot of these stories have in common,” he writes “are, first of all, a subject largely unaware of his or her options under the ACA or unwilling to determine them; and, second, shockingly uninformed and incurious news reporters, including some big names in the business, who don’t bother to look into the facts of the cases they’re offering for public consumption.”

Politically, however, printed facts rarely prevail against televised fictions. Anyway, repealing the Affordable Care Act isn’t the point. It’s inflaming the GOP base and defeating Democrats.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/republicans-will-never-stop-lying-obamacare/

boutons_deux

02-26-2014, 07:08 AM

GOP’s Own Health Care Bill Will Lead 1 Million To Lose Employer-Sponsored Insurance (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/02/25/3331421/awkward-gops-health-care-lead-1-milliton-lose-employer-sponsored-insurance/)

A new report (http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/hr2575.pdf) finds that health care reform would reduce the number of people receiving employer-based coverage, increase dependence on government-sponsored health care, and raise the national deficit. But the analysis, released on Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, isn’t an examination of President Obama’s signature health care law. It details the consequences of one of the GOP’s bills to amend it.

The proposal, which Republicans voted for in the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this month, would alter the definition of full time employment under the Affordable Care Act from 30 hours a week to 40 hours a week and exempt more businesses from penalties for not offering employer-based insurance or lower the overall penalty burden. Under existing law, employers with more than 50 workers pay a penalty if their full-time employees (defined as working an average of 30 hours a week) receive subsidized coverage in the law’s health care exchanges.

CBO concluded that the GOP proposal would lead to the very same problems Republicans have identified in Obamacare. H.R.2575 would reduce the number of people receiving employment-based coverage by 1 million, increase “the number of people obtaining coverage through Medicaid” or the health care exchanges by between 500,000 and 1 million, and raise the budget deficits by $73.7 billion. The ranks of the uninsured would also grow by “less than 500,000 people.”

Enacting the proposal “would probably provide an incentive for some employers to redefine work hours so that more employees would be categorized as part-time,” the report continues. “Because many more workers work 40 hours per week (or slightly more) than work 30 hours per week (or slightly more), the changes made by H.R.2575 could affect many more workers than are affected under current law.”

The bill, which has attracted 208 sponsors (including 8 Democrats), could come to a vote in the House “as early as next week (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/todd-young-obamacare-bill-cbo-report).”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/02/25/3331421/awkward-gops-health-care-lead-1-milliton-lose-employer-sponsored-insurance/

boutons_deux

02-26-2014, 04:16 PM

How One Governor Is Trying To Avoid Responsibility For Denying Health Care To 600,000 Poor People

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has the power to follow several other GOP governors’ lead and negotiate an alternative to the Affordable Care Act’s optional Medicaid expansion — a provision that would extend basic health benefits to more than 600,000 of the poorest Georgians — with the Obama administration. Instead, Deal’s administration is pushing a GOP-sponsored state bill that would take the matter out of the executive branch’s hands and require lawmakers to give legislative approval to any Medicaid expansion plan.

...

Since the health law originally intended every state to expand Medicaid, it includes funding cuts to hospitals that serve large numbers of poor and uninsured patients who often can’t pay their medical bills — cuts that were meant to be mitigated by an influx of newly-insured poor people under the Medicaid expansion. But when the Supreme Court ruled the expansion optional for states in 2012, rural hospitals in anti-Obamacare states found themselves in a precarious position. Four rural Georgia hospitals have closed their doors in the last two years over excessive uncompensated care costs — a trend that’s expected to continue in states refusing the expansion.

A study by the Commonwealth Fund found that Georgia taxpayers will be forced to shell out $3 billion through 2022 to help fund other states’ Medicaid expansions, even though state residents won’t enjoy any of the benefits of the health law provision themselves. :lol

Deal has previously come under fire for accepting more than $550,000 from health care lobbied interests — including more than $100,000 from private insurance companies opposed to the ACA — while refusing the generous federal funds to extend health benefits to more than half a million poor Georgians.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/02/24/3322621/nathan-deal-medicaid-expansion/

CosmicCowboy

02-26-2014, 04:24 PM

boutons_deux

03-04-2014, 01:08 PM

Another advantage of ACA

As Full Disclosure Nears, Doctors’ Pay for Drug Talks PlummetsAs transparency increases and blockbuster drugs lose patent protection, drug companies have dramatically scaled back payments to doctors for promotional talks. This fall, all drug and medical device companies will be required to report payments to doctors.

http://www.propublica.org/article/as-full-disclosure-nears-doctors-pay-for-drug-talks-plummets?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

boutons_deux

03-04-2014, 01:13 PM

The ACA is fucked. I just renewed my employees and their families for another year with private insurance. I don't care if it did cost me a shitload of money, I just couldn't justify throwing them into that mess.

It's a mess in TX, thanks to your Repug politicians and their bureaucratic sabotaging of ACA, navigators, and very probably your own blatant bias against anything Dem and all government.

And for-profit-health-insurance-executive-written ACA is a "mess" because it is forced to co-exist with the totally fucked up mess of US health insurance, which you seem to be quite successful to suck your wealth from.

spurraider21

03-04-2014, 04:49 PM

boutons_deux

03-04-2014, 10:44 PM

obamacare deadline being pushed back a year so Dem's wont be held accountable for it during midterm elections :lol

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-04/white-house-set-extend-obamacare-deadline-1-year

poor voters in red states will hold Repugs accountable for denying them Medicaid expansion and insurance.

spurraider21

03-04-2014, 10:51 PM

poor voters in general won't vote republican, so its moot

Nbadan

03-05-2014, 01:29 AM

poor voters in general won't vote republican, so its moot

...the times are a changin....once TX turns blue, and it is when, not if, it's over for the GOP nationally....they can't win by the numbers..

spurraider21

03-05-2014, 01:31 AM

...the times are a changin....once TX turns blue, and it is when, not if, it's over for the GOP nationally....they can't win by the numbers..
good. the GOP sucks too. i just think the alternative isn't much better. the last few elections have basically come down to who is the shiniest of two turds

Nbadan

03-05-2014, 01:34 AM

good. the GOP sucks too. i just think the alternative isn't much better. the last few elections have basically come down to who is the shiniest of two turds

True dat.........some Democrats are just as bad as all Republicans...

spurraider21

03-05-2014, 01:37 AM

True dat.........some Democrats are just as bad as all Republicans...
ha. ha.

word it however you want to make yourself feel better about whichever party you feel inclined to semen shield for. party platforms have become too rigid, so any candidate that shows up from either side will be a virtual carbon copy of the last. anybody that tries to break the mold gets chastised by the party, rendering them weak.

Nbadan

03-05-2014, 01:41 AM

There hasn't been a good GOP candidate from TX in a long time...in a way what is happening in TX today is a indicator of what is happening to the GOP nationally and what will happen to the GOP in TX in the future if they don't adapt.......GOP candidates in TX know that they can win on stupid red-neck rhetoric and not on successful leadership and policy...so you get some shitty ass candidates like Rick Perry...who has to be the worst TX Governor in a long, long, time...

Jacob1983

03-05-2014, 01:44 AM

The GOP is fucked. Got to give out free shit to minorities and stop relying on Bible thumpers.

Nbadan

03-05-2014, 01:48 AM

The GOP is fucked. Got to give out free shit to minorities and stop relying on Bible thumpers.

In true politik..you don't win elections by catering to only your base...and as the GOP reaches further and further to the right, it isolates itself from the US soft-coshy middle base that wins elections...this GOP suicide is baffling.

boutons_deux

03-05-2014, 06:32 AM

a good GOP candidate from TX in a long time

oxymoron

(rural) TX is so backward, retrograde, that a "good Repug candidate" is one carrying a gun, a Bible, and wearing a cowboy hat.

Winehole23

03-05-2014, 11:52 AM

Arkansas's version of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act is weakened, but safe ... for now.

After several weeks of uncertainty, the Arkansas House and Senate each approved funding for the state's "private option," (http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/it-s-the-moment-of-truth-for-one-state-s-grand-obamacare-bargain-20140218) which takes federal dollars for Medicaid expansion and uses them to buy private insurance plans for low-income individuals on the exchange.

The Senate approved the legislation first on a 27-8 vote Feb. 20. After four failed votes, the House passed the bill Tuesday on a 76-24 vote.

However, the action renews the program for only a year, and opponents remain committed to continuing the fight.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/arkansas-just-funded-its-medicaid-expansion-but-the-fight-isn-t-over-20140304

boutons_deux

03-05-2014, 12:01 PM

Obamacare Is Already Helping Boost Americans’ Personal Incomes (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/05/3363141/obamacare-americans-household-incomes/)

According to a new report (http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm) from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the health reform law is having a positive effect on personal incomes and spending. According to the BEA, Obamacare accounted for about three quarters (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/03/obamacare-effects-account-for-most-of-income-spending-increases/) of the overall rise in Americans’ incomes in January.

Personal incomes rose by 0.3 percent during the first month of the year — and the BEA explains that’s partly because of the impact of the health law’s consumer benefits. Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion increased public health insurance benefits by about $19.2 billion. And the new refundable tax credits under health reform, like the subsidies available to help American purchase new plans in Obamacare’s marketplaces, totaled about $14.7 billion.

“Personal income in January was boosted by several provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which affected government social benefit payments to persons,” the BEA concluded (http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm).

The financial impacts of health reform are most evident among the sectors of the population that are struggling to stay out of poverty. A recent study by the Brookings Institute found that Obamacare has the potential to boost the incomes of the poorest Americans by anywhere from five to seven percent (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/27/3207651/obamacare-raises-income-5-percent/).

In order to arrive at that figure, researchers took out-of-pocket medical expenses into account, which can be prohibitively expensive. The rising cost (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/22/2048481/health-care-grocery-costs/) of health care has been squeezing (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/12/1322681/study-workers-health-care-costs/) Americans for years, and one in four U.S. families say they struggle to pay their medical bills (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/28/3213161/families-struggle-medical-bills/).

Some researchers are optimistic that Obamacare will eventually be able to protect Americans at all income levels from “financial distress,” and lower the rate of people who end up going bankrupt after one catastrophic medical event (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/01/2401341/bipartisan-crowd-funding-hospital-costs/). At least one study (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/02/06/3258561/obamacare-massachusetts-bankrupt/) into the health reform law in Massachusetts, which served as the model for Obamacare in many ways, concluded that reform can reduce people’s debt and improve their credit scores.

But, although Obamacare takes some steps forward in this area, it won’t solve these issues altogether (http://www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/JGIM%20editorial.pdf). Researchers who study medical bankruptcies believe they’re ultimately a result of tying health insurance to market concerns, and point out that countries with universal health care systems (http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/june/medical-debt-a-curable-affliction-health-reform-won%E2%80%99t-fix) are the ones that have made the most progress toward eliminating them.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/05/3363141/obamacare-americans-household-incomes/#

Winehole23

03-05-2014, 12:03 PM

"Arkansas Repugs fund ACA related Medicaid expansion"

boutons_deux

03-06-2014, 06:43 AM

How a CBS Video About a Cancer Victim Misled Millions About Obamacare

"Woman Battling Kidney Cancer Losing Company Health Plan Due To Obamacare." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpnn4npwyKc)

That was the headline on a story that CBS' Washington Bureau sent to its affiliates last fall.

CBS correspondent Susan McGinnis narrates the piece: "During the 10 years that Debra Fishericks has worked at Atkinson Realty, the company has provided group health insurance with manageable premiums," McGinnis explains –"until owner Betsy Atkinson learned the policy would be terminated because it doesn't meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

"Debra has scoured the website looking for a new policy," McGinnis adds, referring to healthcare.gov, but "so far, she cannot afford the premiums."

"They just keep going up higher and higher when there is a pre-existing condition," says Fishericks.

McGinnis wraps up the story: "Debra hopes that eventually she will find a plan that fits her budget so that she can still makes trips to Indiana –to visit her grandson."

The camera then turns to Fishericks, sitting at her desk, looking at a photo of her grandson. "If I can't go to see him—that's the worst," she says. And she begins to cry.

I was astonished: I thought most people understood that, under the Affordable Care Act, insurers can no longer charge a customer more because she suffers from a pre-existing condition.

Later, when I interviewed Fishericks, I realized that she honestly believed she was going to have to pay more for coverage because she had been diagnosed with cancer. Like a great many Americans, she didn't understand how the ACA would protect her. Given how hard Obamacare's opponents have worked to obscure the law's benefits, I probably shouldn't have been surprised.

But what shocked me is that no one at CBS's Washington Bureau seemed to realize that what Fishericks had said just wasn't true: not the correspondent who narrated the story, not the reporter who went down to Virginia Beach and interviewed Fishericks, not the person who edited the video.

Fifty-eight CBS stations aired the piece. Newspapers and bloggers ran with it. Nationwide, millions of Americans were left with the impression that under Obamacare, cancer patients may not be able to afford insurance.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22265-how-a-cbs-video-about-an-obamacare-victim-misled-millions

boutons_deux

03-06-2014, 07:03 AM

Coal Bear CRUSHES the VRWC/Repug Obamacare LIES with his own "Obamacare Horror Story"

MUST-SEE: Stephen Colbert debunks Obamacare horror stories with special guest (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/04/1281964/-MUST-SEE-Stephen-Colbert-debunks-Obamacare-horror-stories-with-special-guest)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/04/1281964/-MUST-SEE-Stephen-Colbert-debunks-Obamacare-horror-stories-with-special-guest?detail=email

boutons_deux

03-06-2014, 07:56 PM

Missouri lawmakers renew cynical efforts to derail Obamacare navigators

To discourage folks from signing up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges, Republican lawmakers in several states have pushed through bills making it difficult for people to get free help from specially trained “navigators” authorized by the Affordable Care Act.

At the top of the list of special interest groups supporting such legislation: groups representing insurance agents and brokers, who, of course, charge for their services. They view the navigators as a threat to their income.

Nowhere have the agents and brokers found more friends than in the Missouri legislature, which last summer passed a bill making it unlawful for anyone other than a licensed agent or broker to give advice to any state resident about choosing a health plan.

In a big win for consumers in Missouri and elsewhere, a federal court in Kansas City late last month blocked the GOP-sponsored law, ruling that it was indeed a violation of federal law.

While the ruling was specific to Missouri, it is expected to have ramifications in states that passed similar laws. And don’t expect Missouri to challenge Judge Smith: both Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster are Democrats. The only comment Missouri Insurance Commissioner John M. Huff , a Nixon appointee, has made is that his department is reviewing the ruling.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/02/17/14249/missouri-lawmakers-renew-cynical-efforts-derail-obamacare-navigators

boutons_deux

03-07-2014, 07:00 AM

Conservative Leaders Don’t Want You To Even Look At Healthcare.gov

Despite the fact that conservatives often fancy themselves the kind of people who define political self-interest as strictly a cold, financial matter, the reality is that they’re far better than liberals at exploiting things like social stigma, bigotry, taboo and other “irrational” emotions to point people in the direction they want them to go. You’re really beginning to see that with the rollout of the ACA. While the ostensible arguments against it being levied by conservatives are financial, the emotional underpinnings are pure stigmatization. I was all about Brian Beutler’s piece at Salon yesterday about “waiver mania”, and I particularly liked this insight: (http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/white_americas_waiver_mania_the_rights_plot_to_min imize_its_culture_war_defeat/)

You can see traces of the same Galtist tendencies among conservatives in states that are resisting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not just that Republican governors are denying their poorest constituents a paid-for Medicaid expansion, though that will certainly contribute to a tiering in American health care that will insulate the right from the left. It’s also that Affordable Care Act private health plan enrollment in conservative states is in general lagging far, far behind (http://acasignups.net/14/01/14/state-level-enrollments-percent-uninsured-total-population) enrollment in liberal states.

This isn’t just a Healthcare.gov vs non-Healthcare.gov state issue. It’s also true among states with federally facilitated exchanges. And there are political and cultural forces behind the trend. Enrollment isn’t just discouraged in conservative parts of the country, it’s stigmatized. Remember Bette, from the GOP’s official State of the Union response (http://www.salon.com/2014/01/31/gops_obamacare_fiction_series_latest_horror_story_ a_creation_from_start_to_finish/)? Her problem stems from the fact that she “wouldn’t go on that Obama website at all” — and she’s from relatively liberal Washington state!

That’s what’s going on, I think, in the disconnect between the “horror stories” that conservatives are trotting about about insurance companies canceling plans and selling their customers more expensive plans and the inevitable fact-checking that comes later, when mainstream media points out that if the person in question just bought through the health care exchange, they would actually save money. The latest version is this woman in a Koch brothers-paid ad in Michigan that is wildly dishonest. Her claim:

I was diagnosed with leukemia. I found out I only have a 20 percent chance of surviving. I found this wonderful doctor and a great health care plan. I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia, and then I received a letter. My insurance was canceled because of Obamacare. Now, the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I will die. I believed the president. I believed I could keep my health insurance plan. I feel lied to. It’s heartbreaking for me. Congressman Peters, your decision to vote Obamacare jeopardized my health.

That’s terrible! Except it’s bullshit. Obamacare actually lowers her health care costs, as the Washington Post reports. Not only was there a plan in the exchange that included her current doctor, it was a plan that limited her out-of-pocket costs:

The claim that the costs are now “unaffordable” appeared odd because, under Obamacare, there is an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350 for covered expenses under an individual plan, after which the insurance plan pays 100 percent of covered benefits. The Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Michigan that appear to match Boonstra’s plan, as described in local news reports, all have that limit.

Meanwhile, Boonstra told the Detroit News that her monthly premiums were cut in half, from $1,100 a month to $571. That’s a savings of $529 a month. Over the course of a year, the premium savings amounts to $6,348—just two dollars shy of the out-of-pocket maximum.

We were unable to reach Boonstra, but on the fact of it, the premium savings appear to match whatever out-of-pocket costs she now faces.

So, either way, she actually made out okay. As Kevin Drum explains:

So here’s my question: if this is the best AFP can do, does that mean that no one is truly being harmed by Obamacare? Hell, I’m a diehard defender of Obamacare, and even I concede that there ought to be at least hundreds of thousands of people who are truly worse off than they were with their old plans. But if that’s the case, why is it that every single hard luck story like this falls apart under the barest scrutiny? Why can’t AFP find someone whose premiums really have doubled and who really did lose her doctor and who really is having a hard time getting the care she used to get?

If this is happening to a lot of people, finding a dozen or so of them shouldn’t be hard. But apparently it is. So maybe it’s not actually happening to very many people at all?

But here’s the thing: It doesn’t really matter that no one is actually harmed by enrolling in an insurance plan at healthcare.gov. The point of these ads is not to make the argument that people lost money, since that argument will get fact-checked pretty quickly. The point is to send the message that, if you go onto the website, bears will eat your face and dragons will set fire to your ass and you will be a sad person who is never the same again. A sad person with a little more money in your pocket, but so what? THERE BE DRAGONS AT HEALTHCARE.GOV. It’ a purely emotional pitch, and the facts are just noise to fill up airtime to convey the actual message, which is this poor person went to that dangerous website and now look how sad they are.

Fact-checking, of course, is very important, but what we need to understand is that deluding people on the facts is the least of the anti-ACA forces’ concerns right now. After all, if people go to healthcare.gov, they basically fact-check themselves by finding much better plans than they thought they would.

So the key, for anti-ACA forces, is to keep people from ever going to the site in the first place.

These ads are supposed to stigmatize—don’t go to healthcare.gov or you’ll be like this lady, and you don’t want to be this lady!—more than argue a point.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/26/conservative-leaders-dont-want-you-to-even-look-at-healthcare-gov/

Repug anti-Obamacare strategy is faith-based (believe us! Obamacare is horrible), totally FACT-FREE. Repugs are LYING to their base, as always, counting on their base to believe rather than to know, just like the ignorant Bible-thumpers. Belief trumps facts and reasoning.

boutons_deux

03-07-2014, 01:23 PM

Louisiana Threatens To Sue MoveOn Over Billboard (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/07/1282814/-Louisianna-Threatens-To-Sue-MoveOn-Over-Billboard)

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/72003/large/LouisianaBillboard.png?1394174613

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/07/1282814/-Louisianna-Threatens-To-Sue-MoveOn-Over-Billboard?detail=email

you rednecks LOVE your own Constitutional right to free (political) speech, but not for others

boutons_deux

03-09-2014, 09:50 PM

Obamacare Rate Shock Probably Affects Less Than 1 Percent of the Country

The best estimate we have is that about 14 million people had individual policies last year, which means that 2.6 million people faced cancellation: (http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/03/03/how-many-nongroup-policies-were-canceled-estimates-from-december-2013/)

Many whose non-group policy was cancelled appear to be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid....While our sample size of those with non-group health insurance who report that their plan was cancelled due to ACA compliance is small (N=123), we estimate that over half of this population is likely to be eligible for coverage assistance, mostly through Marketplace subsidies. Consistent with these findings, other work by Urban Institute researchers estimated that slightly more than half of adults with pre-reform nongroup coverage would be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid.

So that means about 1.3 million people had their policies canceled and had to pay full freight for a new policy. Since the error bars on this estimate are fairly large, that comes out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 million people. In other words, less than 1 percent of the country, mostly made up of people with incomes that are higher than average.

You can decide for yourself if this is a lot or a little. My own take is that it's pretty modest given that Obamacare probably benefits about 20-30 million people.

Any big new piece of policy is going to have winners and losers, and a ratio of 20:1 or so is about as good as it gets in the real world.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/03/obamacare-rate-shock-probably-affects-about-1-percent-country

boutons_deux

03-09-2014, 09:54 PM

Affordable Care Act Isn't Perfect, But It's A 'Pretty Good Structure'

For the Affordable Care Act to be considered a success years down the road, Ezekiel Emanuel believes that all Americans must have access to health coverage, and it must be better quality and lower cost. "And I think it's well within our grasp," he says.

A special adviser to the Obama White House in medical reform, Emanuel was instrumental in advising the health care overhaul. He's just published a new book called Reinventing American Healthcare: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System.

"Is the Affordable Care Act perfect? No, but it's a pretty good structure to go forward," he tells NPR's Scott Simon. "Let's fix the problems that it has and move onto other improvements we can now recognize."

Interview Highlights

On the impact of the Affordable Care Act so far

It is complex, but the health care system is complex. And I do think it actually has improved the system. ... It's gotten a lot of people insurance that didn't have it — people under 26 on their parents' plan. It's gotten 4 million — probably in the end it'll be 6 million people this year — on insurance, and it's created a structure for getting insurance to everyone. It's reduced a lot of infections already, it's reduced hospital errors, reduced re-admission, so it's had an improvement in quality. And actually, for the last few years, costs have been under control. Not all of that is the Affordable Care Act, but certainly some of it is.

On how the insurance industry will change

Health systems are going to begin offering coverage, and so you'll buy your coverage from the same organization that delivers the care, kind of like more Kaisers in this world. Similarly, health insurance plans are going to begin employing doctors, hospitals, and organizing them to deliver the best kind of care.

So I think insurance companies are going to get into providing health care as well as insuring, and hospitals are going to begin providing insurance as well as providing the care. You're going to see these, what I call "integrated delivery systems" that's going to be the dominant mode. So you're going to buy your insurance from maybe Cleveland Clinic, maybe Mayo, maybe Johns Hopkins, instead of from an insurance company.

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287242707/affordable-care-act-isnt-perfect-but-its-a-pretty-good-structure?sc=17&f=1128

boutons_deux

03-09-2014, 10:00 PM

Opponents Float Another 'Replacement,' but Most Americans Want to Keep, Fix ACA

The latest polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation (http://kff.org/report-section/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-february-2014/) shows that 56 percent of Americans want to keep the ACA and/or work to improve it (up from 47 percent in October, when insurance exchanges opened for business). Only 4 percent of Democrats, 11 percent of independents and 29 percent of Republicans want to repeal the law and replace it with a "Republican-sponsored alternative."

... and blah about PCA.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-semro/opponents-float-another-r_b_4922117.html

If Repugs don't block it, ACA will be fixed, improved, tweaked as any forcibly complex plan that has to co-exist the USA's for-profit ripoff health care disaster.

Winehole23

03-10-2014, 01:53 AM

"Arkansas Repugs fund ACA related Medicaid expansion"doesn't fit in your script, does it, boutons?

boutons_deux

03-10-2014, 06:15 AM

doesn't fit in your script, does it, boutons?

They supported it, then didn't, then struggled to find a constipating, obstructive 75% of legislature vote to support it. Blind squirrel finds nut. Arkansas is red now, but Slick Willy was their governor.

boutons_deux

03-10-2014, 06:20 AM

doesn't fit in your script, does it, boutons?

KY with their own, well-functioning KYnect insurance exchange (they fool the rednecks and inbreds by not calling it obamacare), a Dem governor and two Repug Senators is even more of a red-state outlier.

boutons_deux

03-10-2014, 06:31 AM

My script? :lol It's the Repug's script.

It's the script of the Repug sociopaths preferring to screw their red-state citizens rather than allow Dems/Obama a (humanitarian) victory.

All Repug Politics, All The Time (fuck everybody and everything, except the corps, VRWC, 1%)

boutons_deux

03-10-2014, 10:21 AM

Uninsurance Rate Falls As Millions Sign Up For Obamacare, Survey Finds (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/10/3381991/uninsurance-hits-another-five-year-low/)
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gallup-uninsurance-2014-Q1.png

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/10/3381991/uninsurance-hits-another-five-year-low/

Imagine how many more Ms would now have insurance AND access to health care if sociopathic Repugs/tea baggers/ALEC/Fox/VRWC would have been supporting rather than scorched-earth sabotaging ACA.

iow, how America would be a much better country WITHOUT (you) right-wing assholes.

boutons_deux

03-10-2014, 04:20 PM

GOP Threatens 24% Pay Cut For Medicare Doctors Unless Democrats Delay Key Obamacare Provision (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/10/3384431/gop-doc-fix-individual-mandate/)

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives will vote this week (http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/gop-tries-new-tactic-in-attack-on-obamacare-s-mandate-20140310) to tie bipartisan legislation that would prevent an average 24 percent pay cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients to a multi-year delay of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. Even a one-year delay of the mandate is expected to (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4012) reduce the number of Americans signing up for ACA plans and raise Obamacare premiums by more than 10 percent next year.

In 1997, Congress passed a law establishing the so-called “Sustainable Growth Rate” (SGR) formula to determine federal reimbursement rates for Medicare doctors. The adopted formula proved to be far too draconian, as it would institute steep cuts to doctors’ payment rates, raising concerns that fewer physicians would accept Medicare patients. Congress has consequently voted to delay the cuts every year since they were adopted — but has yet to establish a permanent “doc fix” for the underlying formula.

Failing to pass a doc fix at all — temporary or otherwise — could be disastrous for seniors on Medicare, who could face a landscape where fewer numbers of doctors are willing to treat them.That’s why Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) have stated (http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=news/bleak-diagnosis-for-america-s-physicians-and-medicare-patients-under-the-republican-budget) that “[We must] fix the Medicare physician payment formula for the next ten years so that Medicare beneficiaries continue to have access to health care.”

Initial reports suggested that a bipartisan group of lawmakers were on the cusp of actually agreeing on a permanent, $138 billion fix this year. But Congress remained stalled on a how to pay for the legislation.

That’s where the GOP’s newest proposal comes into play. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that a one-year delay in the individual mandate would yield about $9 billion in savings (http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/gop-tries-new-tactic-in-attack-on-obamacare-s-mandate-20140310) for the federal government, and that delaying it for longer would save even more money.

However, the move would also increase Obamacare premiums and discourage people from buying insurance. That could lead to less efficient and diversified risk pools in the Obamacare marketplaces and stymie reform during the health law’s nascent years — and physicians’ groups agree that it’s the wrong approach to paying for the doc fix, especially considering this is the first time in years that Congress has agreed on the broad strokes for permanent reform.

“The only way this is going to get done if it’s done in a bipartisan fashion,” said (http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medicare/200256-obamacare-bill-gets-chilly-reception) Christian Shalgian, director of advocacy and health policy for the American College of Surgeons, in an interview with The Hill. “I don’t think this pay-for was developed in a bipartisan fashion.”

“We cannot support linking SGR repeal to changes in current law that will result in fewer people getting health insurance coverage,” added Molly Cooke, president of the American College of Physicians, in a statement (http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medicare/200256-obamacare-bill-gets-chilly-reception) last week. “We call on House and Senate leadership to immediately engage in a bipartisan process to reach bipartisan agreement on a budgetary solution that can pass both the House and the Senate.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/10/3384431/gop-doc-fix-individual-mandate/

Winehole23

03-11-2014, 02:27 AM

Winehole23

03-11-2014, 02:28 AM

Texas so far refuses to fund the expansion. isn't there an essential difference there?

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 05:11 AM

how does Arkansas and KY expanding Medicaid screw red-state citizens?

For those two states, a tiny minority of red states refusing Medicaid, the Repugs, counter to THEIR script, give their poor a break, but I've already seen some Repug ideas that you don't get Medicaid if you can't prove you're looking for a job (not sure how that proof works or exists)

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 05:16 AM

Texas so far refuses to fund the expansion. isn't there an essential difference there?

AR, barely accepting Medicaid expansion, and KY are exceptions, not the rule, esp KY. KY's exchange apparently works better than several blue states that really screwed up their exchanges and are now being pilloried by the Repugs, now the the healthcare.gov is passable. Incompetent states and incompetent contractors. But the overwhelming obstacle is the mind-boggling kludge of for-profit insurers.

CosmicCowboy

03-11-2014, 07:28 AM

I seriously looked into putting my employees into Obamacare and it was still so fucked up I reupped for private insurance at $100,000 a year. I just couldn't do that to my employees.

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 08:50 AM

I seriously looked into putting my employees into Obamacare and it was still so fucked up I reupped for private insurance at $100,000 a year. I just couldn't do that to my employees.

what specific disasters would have hit your employees in healthcare.gov?

CosmicCowboy

03-11-2014, 10:16 AM

what specific disasters would have hit your employees in healthcare.gov?

live under a rock?

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 10:20 AM

live under a rock?

Ms have signed up, are your employees particularly stupid?

CosmicCowboy

03-11-2014, 10:52 AM

Ms have signed up, are your employees particularly stupid?

No but you are.

Price wasn't competitive, networks were very limited, no network information security, etc.

Take your blue tinted glasses off. Maybe next year but they aren't ready for prime time now.

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 11:08 AM

Koch brothers' Obamacare 'victim' will save $1,200 a year but insists that 'can't be true' (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/11/1283809/-Koch-Obamacare-victim-debunked-nbsp-again)

Here's one more, from The Detroit News (http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140310/LIFESTYLE03/303100100), and it turns out she's saving even more money than previous debunkings revealed.

Boonstra said Monday her new plan she dislikes is the Blue Cross Premier Gold health care plan—which caps patient responsibility for out-of-pocket costs at $5,100 a year, lower than the federal law’s maximum of $6,350 a year. It means the new plan will save her at least $1,200 compared with her former insurance plan she preferred that was ended under Obamacare’s coverage requirements.Boonstra’s old plan cost $1,100 a month in premiums or $13,200 a year, she previously told The Detroit News. It didn’t include money she spent on co-pays, prescription drugs and other out-of-pocket expenses

By contrast, the Blues’ plan premium costs $571 a month or $6,852 for the year. Since out-of-pocket costs are capped at $5,100, including deductibles, the maximum Boonstra would pay for all of her cancer treatment is $11,952 for the year.

When advised of the details of her Blues’ plan, Boonstra said the idea that it would be cheaper “can’t be true.”

“I personally do not believe that,” Boonstra said.

How very Republican of her??, refusing to acknowledge the facts because they disprove her beliefs. Because she doesn't personally believe she'll actually be helped by Obamacare, she refuses to recognize the fact that it's true. Speaking of Republicans, remember how the Kochs have used Republican activists (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/25/1280254/-Koch-brothers-use-Republican-activists-in-latest-anti-Obamacare-nbsp-ads) in their ads in New Hampshire?

Boonstra is the ex-wife of Mark Boonstra, the former Washtenaw County GOP chairman whom Gov. Rick Snyder appointed to the Michigan Court of Appeals in 2012. Julie Boonstra said she’s never been a political person beyond advocating for lower-cost oral chemotherapy treatment in Washington.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/11/1283809/-Koch-Obamacare-victim-debunked-nbsp-again?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

boutons_deux

03-11-2014, 04:18 PM

Repug base is reliable

Opposition to Obamacare Remains Under 40 Percent, the Same as Always

http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_cnn_obamacare_support_february_2014.jpg

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/03/opposition-obamacare-remains-under-40-percent-same-always

And the Repugs think campaigning on sabotaging/repealing Obamacare is winning election strategy.

Krazy Kruz has already forced Repugs into a "nothing-but-repeal" strategy.

boutons_deux

03-12-2014, 07:19 PM

HealthCare.gov Traffic Up 40 Percent After Obama's FunnyOrDie Interview
http://a5.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/c_fill,fl_keep_iptc,g_faces,h_365,w_652/axr6htfh7djqfsu0pgpe.png

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/healthcare-gov-traffic-ferns-interview

boutons_deux

03-12-2014, 07:22 PM

You Might Pay A Lot More Than $95 For Skipping Health Insurance

"So if it's a two-adult household and both are uninsured, it's twice $95 — $190," he says. "Then if there are any children in the family that are uninsured, the penalty for each of them is half of the $95."

This year's top penalty could be about $3,600 for an individual, and $11,000 for a family of four.

There are also lots of exemptions from the penalty itself, Blumberg points out, even for people who remain uninsured. The biggest is for having income below the .

This year that's roughly $10,000 for a single person and $13,000 for a head of household. If you don't have to file income taxes, you won't have to pay a penalty. You also can get an exemption if the cheapest available insurance would cost more than 8 percent of your income, if you have unpaid medical debt, or for any of several other listed on the website.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/12/288712831/you-might-pay-a-lot-more-than-95-for-skipping-health-insurance?sc=17&f=1128

Jacob1983

03-12-2014, 08:36 PM

Bush never did a funny or die skit.

boutons_deux

03-12-2014, 08:49 PM

Bush never did a funny or die skit.

dubya was klutzy white guy, Barry a cool mofo

Jacob1983

03-13-2014, 03:40 AM

Both are murderers and could be tried for war crimes. Evil is evil.

boutons_deux

03-13-2014, 08:58 PM

There Are Co-Op Options for Health Care, but Major Insurers Don't Want You To Know

One of the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act was to make health insurance more affordable for the millions of Americans who had to get insurance on the individual market. The changes in the new law required plans to have better coverage and by requiring everyone to have insurance, spread the risk across a broader spectrum of people to help lower costs. While these changes would help more people be able to get health insurance, the architects of the bill knew that competition within the industry would be a necessary component to help ensure affordability.

During the contentious debate during the creation of the law, there was a big push to include a public option. The most popular idea was to have a "Medicaid for all" type of program which would be one of the choices on the insurance exchange along with other private health insurance plans. In between the shouts of death panels and anti-government sentiment, there was little support for such a plan. Still, the Senate tried to create some form of competition and was able to come up with a compromise option.

A Consumer Oriented and Operated Plan (http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/features/insuring-your-health/2013/101513-michelle-andrews-insurance-co-ops-in-the-health-law.aspx), or Co-Op, is a non-profit health insurer designed to offer individuals and small businesses more affordable, consumer-friendly and high quality health insurance options. They are run by boards that are voted on by their members – the consumers. They are licensed by the state(s) in which they operate, and may operate locally, statewide, or in more than one state. Created specifically for the purpose of enhancing competition, they can offer insurance to individuals and small businesses. Beginning with the launch of open enrollment in October 2013, plans offered by co-ops were available as an often less expensive option for consumers in 23 states.

Often focused on smaller groups of people, co-ops can take many different forms. They can consist of farmers, freelancers or started by hospitals and healthcare providers. The provider networks are smaller, and in some cases the providers are salaried, helping to keep costs lowers. Co-ops also try different cost sharing plans, such as eliminating co-pays for doctor visits and rewarding providers that focus on preventative health.

However, many consumers still aren't aware of them.

Co-ops are offered both on and off the insurance exchanges, but their entrance into the market has been very difficult. Based on the input of commissioned insurance agents and actuarial experts, early drafts of the law included $10 billion dollars in grants (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/health-co-ops-created-to-foster-competition-and-lower-insurance-costs-are-facing-danger/2013/10/22/e1c961fe-3809-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html). This would help fund startup costs, such as setting up administrative and provider networks, as well as ensure that the co-ops had the necessary solvency funding to handle claims as they built their membership networks. By the time the time open enrollment began, cuts in funding and rigid rules of operation severely reduced the number of co-ops originally planned.

All of which was orchestrated by the for-profit health insurance industry.

As word of the provision (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-12-13/pdf/2011-31864.pdf)spread, the health insurance lobby worked overtime to water it down. Claiming it was unfair competition, they convinced Congress to convert the federal grants to loans and reduced them from the originally recommended amount. The loans are structured so that they must begin paying the startup loans within five years and the solvency loans within fifteen. The tight repayment schedule saddles them with a high burden to overcome in a market where they are already the underdog. Furthermore, the original $10 billion dollars recommended had been reduced to $2 billion by January 2013, making it impossible to fund all of the 40 planned co-ops.

Already hampered by the financial constraints at the national level, many had to face hurdles at the state level. With funding in place with federal loans, they still had to get additional funding from private sources prior to accepting members. As these were a new kind of insurer, state licensing requirements had to be created and were more stringent. Before open enrollment even came around, two co-ops had folded due to being unable to get state approval.

Nevertheless, 23 co-ops (http://kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/co-op-loans/) have been able to make it onto the market and are selling plans. The bumpy rollout of the Healthcare.gov website rollout slowed enrollment for them, which has hurt the bottom line. Provisions in the law prevents them from using federal loan money for marketing, nor are they allowed to participate in the large employer market.

In other words, they can't spend money to let consumers know they exist, or participate in the most lucrative insurance market.

As we enter into the final two weeks of open enrollment, co-ops are looking for innovative ways to get the word out about their existence. Some are going door to door, resorting to old fashioned street marketing. Some have gotten private funding for marketing costs. The federal agency in charge of overseeing the co-ops, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has relaxed some regulations in order to help. They can use some of the federal money to educate consumer about their companies, but cannot highlight specific plans. They are also allowed to have one-third of their policies in the large employer market.

Due to these obstacles, co-ops are still a long shot at being a true competitive force in the health insurance market. A recent report shows that at least nine are at risk of financial trouble. Still, preliminary evidence shows that when they are allowed to operate as they should, they can make a difference. In states where successful co-ops are running, costs of policies are averaging about 9 percent lower (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/health-co-ops-created-to-foster-competition-and-lower-insurance-costs-are-facing-danger/2013/10/22/e1c961fe-3809-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html) than states without. They are often the lower priced options on the exchange and have had a comparable share of policies as the other major insurers.

Sometimes the free market does work — which is exactly what for-profit health insurers are trying to stop.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22441-there-are-co-op-options-for-healthcare-but-major-insurers-dont-want-you-to-know

boutons_deux

03-13-2014, 09:04 PM

Rachel Maddow showed Ike, Tricky Dick, St Ronnie, all doing comedy skits on TV.

boutons_deux

03-13-2014, 09:04 PM

Bush never did a funny or die skit.

dubya WAS a funny skit.

Jacob1983

03-14-2014, 01:27 AM

Boutons, put down the koolaid.

boutons_deux

03-14-2014, 08:59 AM

Jon Stewart and his killer hit man Aasif Mandvi crush yet again

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-15-magically-awkward-seconds-roll-by-while-a-man-panics-after-accidentally-insulting-america?c=upw1

boutons_deux

03-14-2014, 10:20 AM

As pundits continue to shout to the heavens (http://www.nationalmemo.com/keep-calm-carry-jollys-win-presage-republican-wave/) that Obamacare is a political disaster, a new poll is telling a very different story.

According to a Bloomberg News poll (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/americans-stick-with-obamacare-as-opposition-burns-bright.html) released Tuesday, 64 percent of Americans support keeping the Affordable Care Act in place. Of that group, 13 percent would keep the law completely intact, while 52 percent would keep it with “small modifications.” Just 36 percent want to repeal the law.

The results represent the highest level of acceptance of the law that a Bloomberg poll has ever found.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-big-majority-wants-keep-obamacare/

boutons_deux

03-14-2014, 11:16 AM

Rachel Maddow showed Ike, Tricky Dick, St Ronnie, all doing comedy skits on TV.

video:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/14/maddow-to-obama-ferns-critics-lots-of-presidents-have-done-comedy-so-lighten-up/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

03-14-2014, 12:57 PM

Coal Bear

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/72907/large/ObamacareFerns-meme.jpg

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/13/1284347/-Stephen-Colbert-mocks-Fox-News-meltdown-over-Obama-s-Zach-Galifianakis-video?detail=email

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 09:56 AM

more red states, following economic rationality, are set to expand Medicare: http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/states-holding-out-on-medicaid-expansion-are-beginning-to-crack-20140321

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 10:04 AM

more red states, following economic rationality, are set to expand Medicare: http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/states-holding-out-on-medicaid-expansion-are-beginning-to-crack-20140321

not Medicare, but Medicaid.

Canadian female doc DESTROYS US macho, supercilious, asshole male politician:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYOf6hXGx6M

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 10:06 AM

that is correct.

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 02:37 PM

maybe Obama should have called it Nixon-Care: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2009/september/03/nixon-proposal.aspx

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 02:39 PM

maybe Obama should have called it Nixon-Care: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2009/september/03/nixon-proposal.aspx

individual mandate was originally proposed by Repugs in the HillaryCare era, by the Heritage stink tank, IIRC.

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 02:41 PM

yep. similarities with the Nixon proposal are striking too.

angrydude

03-21-2014, 04:06 PM

Young insuranceless adults love Obamacare so much they aren't signing up for it!

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 04:12 PM

Young insuranceless adults love Obamacare so much they aren't signing up for it!

they will as the penalty increases

no rush, the word will get around.

In spite of your lying and red states screwing their poor out of Medicaid and blocking navigators (to the advantage of for-profit insurance agents), Obamacare is doing fine. GFY

DarrinS

03-21-2014, 04:34 PM

Young insuranceless adults love Obamacare so much they aren't signing up for it!

they will as the penalty increases

no rush, the word will get around.

Wow, that's an awesome selling point, botox.

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 04:44 PM

Wow, that's an awesome selling point, botox.

penalties are great, the penalties pay for the insured, without having to deliver medical care.

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 04:52 PM

Younger Americans Warm Somewhat To Obamacare, Poll Shows

As the deadline approaches for enrolling in Obamacare health coverage this year, younger Americans have warmed somewhat to the president’s health care law, but Latinos remain closely split over it.

Those findings from a large-scale Pew Research Center survey provide a glimpse at two groups that are major targets of the Obama administration’s push to get people to sign up before the March 31 deadline.

The administration had originally hoped to get about 7 million people to sign up for coverage in the first year but lowered its expectations after the disastrous rollout last fall of the HealthCare.gov website. Enrollments now appear to be on track to end up somewhat more than 6 million.

Opinion about the Affordable Care Act soured among Latinos during the fall and has not recovered, the new Pew poll found. Latinos in the current survey were evenly divided, with 47 percent approving of the law and 47 percent disapproving.

By contrast, Americans younger than 30, who also grew more negative during the fall, now appear to have grown somewhat more accepting of the law. Among Americans ages 18 through 29, 50 percent say they approve of it and 47 percent oppose.

By contrast, among all Americans, disapproval still prevails, with 41 percent favoring the law and 53 percent opposed.

Overall feelings toward the law have not changed in many months, but the public’s sense of what political figures should do about it have shifted. Now that the law has taken effect, a majority of those who dislike it want to see public officials do what they can to make it work.

Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans say they want public officials to try to make the law fail — down from about 1 in 4 in September.

The exception is among Republicans who identify with the tea party. Among that group, 60 percent want elected officials to try to make the law fail. By contrast, among

Republicans who do not identify with the tea party, most say they want politicians to figure out how to make the law work as well as possible. Only about one-quarter want officials to try to make it fail.

:lol Repug/VRWC/ALEX LYING propaganda failed

That sharp divide among Republicans has been a major complication for GOP elected officials for most of the last year. The party remains united so long as debate focuses on Obamacare, which the vast majority of Republicans oppose. But that unity dissolves when discussions move toward what to do about it.

Although the country leans against the Affordable Care Act, more support exists for the general principle that government should guarantee that all Americans have health coverage. On that question, the public divides almost equally, with 50 percent saying no and 47 percent yes, the poll found.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/younger-americans-warm-somewhat-obamacare-poll-shows/

As always, among the 53% opposed, it's because they want it improved or replaced with public option, NOT repealed.

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 09:35 PM

Most Of The Americans Who Oppose Obamacare Still Want To Figure Out How To Make It Work (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/21/3417559/obamacare-opponents-reform-work/)http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pew-obamacare.png

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/21/3417559/obamacare-opponents-reform-work/

boutons_deux

03-23-2014, 12:11 AM

Americans struggling to afford food are also skipping medications

A new study in The American Journal of Medicine investigates to what extent chronically ill adults who are struggling financially are taking less medication than they are prescribed or no medication at all.

The study acknowledges that there is renewed optimism in the economy at present, but it finds that many Americans are still having trouble meeting basic needs. In a 2012 survey, 1 in 5 reported that they were struggling to pay for basic necessities, while 1 in 6 admitted they had no form of health insurance (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/health-insurance/).

"For the chronically ill," The American Journal of Medicine says in a related news release, "the difference between paying rent or putting food on the table may be the cost of their medication."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274347.php

boutons_deux

03-23-2014, 09:29 PM

GOP State Rep Smacks Down Scott Brown for Calling Obamacare a Monstrosity

Former Massachusetts Senator and NH Senate hopeful Scott Brown called Obamacare a “monstrosity” (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-brown-republican-obamacare-benefits) while visiting the home of NH State Representative Herb Richardson. Bashing Obamacare is pretty standard Boilerplate GOP campaign strategy, but poor Scott Brown made his argument in the wrong home. Richardson and his wife had to correct Scott Brown, because under the new health care exchanges made available because of Obamacare the Republican couple is paying a staggering 88 percent less (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-brown-republican-obamacare-benefits) for health insurance costs.

Richardson’s wife exclaimed “thank God for Obamacare” as she and her husband described how Herb had been injured on the job and forced to live off of workman’s compensation. The couple had to pay over half of their income (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-brown-republican-obamacare-benefits), 1100 dollars a month, out of pocket to maintain their health insurance under the old federal COBRA law. Obamacare enabled them to qualify for a healthcare subsidy which lowered their costs (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-brown-republican-obamacare-benefits) almost a thousand dollars a month to an affordable 136 dollars a month instead. The Richardsons have reason to be grateful for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/20/gop-state-rep-smacks-scott-brown-calling-obamacare-monstrosity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29

a repeat, but worth repeating

boutons_deux

03-23-2014, 09:30 PM

Obamacare Momentum Spreads as Even a Georgia Republican Argues For Medicaid Expansion

Georgia state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler has broken with his party by admitting the truth. The Republican refusal to expand Medicaid in places like Georgia is hurting their states.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/21/obamacare-momentum-spreads-georgia-republican-argues-medicaid-expansion.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29

boutons_deux

03-24-2014, 05:39 AM

With health law, workers ponder the I-Quit option"It definitely freed up my thinking when I thought, 'Do I want to give this a go?'"

The average annual premium paid by an employee is $999, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. In the new markets, the average annual premium is $5,558 for a 50-year-old and $8,435 for a 60-year-old, according to an analysis run for The Associated Press by HealthPocket.
But some employers are cutting back on their contributions, narrowing the gap.
At this point, Americans over age 50 are most likely to take advantage of the new freedom, Garthwaite said. They're ready for a career change and may have enough savings to take a risk.
http://news.yahoo.com/health-law-workers-ponder-quit-option-060047469.html

Freedom!

boutons_deux

03-24-2014, 05:46 AM

and, no change, the health care well-sucking will continue, simply because they can and they will

Insurers see double-digit Obamacare price rises in many states next year

U.S. consumers eligible for Obamacare health plans could see double-digit price hikes next year in states that fail to draw large numbers of enrollees for 2014, including some states that have been hostile to the healthcare law, according to insurance industry officials and analysts.

The early estimates come as insurance companies set out to design plans they intend to sell in 2015 through the state-based health insurance marketplaces that are a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement that is widely referred to as Obamacare.

WellPoint Inc, which sells plans on 14 Obamacare exchanges, expects health insurance rates nationwide to be higher. Increases for the Obamacare market that has signed up about 5 million people to date is expected to outpace those in the employer-sponsored market, which serves about 170 million people.

"Looking at the rate increases on a year-over-year basis on our exchanges, and it will vary by carrier, but all of them will probably be in double digit plus," Ken Goulet, president of WellPoint's commercial business, told investors in New York on Friday.

The cost of health insurance is already a political hot potato in this year's election campaign for control of Congress, with Republicans warning of the potential for sky-rocketing rates in their attempt to turn the ballot into a referendum on Obamacare.

http://news.yahoo.com/health-law-workers-ponder-quit-option-060047469.html

it's why the health insurers paid Baucus and his health-insurance executive/lobbyist to kill the public option.

99% America is FUCKED in every orifice by multiple fuckers and is UNFUCKABLE.

boutons_deux

03-24-2014, 12:48 PM

Kock puppet/Kock sucker news:
(http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/24/3418004/scott-walker-obamacare-signups/)
Anti-Obamacare Governor Now Encouraging Residents To Enroll Under Health Law (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/24/3418004/scott-walker-obamacare-signups/)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), an ardent Affordable Care Act critic, is now encouraging residents to transition into new health plans under the very reform law that he once refused to help implement.

Walker told (http://washingtonexaminer.com/exclusive-interview-gov.-scott-walkers-limited-government-pragmatism/article/2546143) the Washington Examiner’s Philip A. Klein that he has instructed state agencies to work with individuals who are transitioning into plans offered on Wisconsin’s Obamacare marketplace. That includes both the previously uninsured and poor residents just above the poverty level who are being siphoned out of the state’s Medicaid program, BadgerCare, and into private ACA plans under Walker’s conservative alternative to Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/07/3375721/fast-fairness-scott-walker-medicaid-protest/).

Just two years ago, Walker was singing a very different tune. He had refused to create a statewide ACA marketplace — thereby also forgoing significant federal funding for Obamacare outreach efforts — and said he wouldn’t lift a finger to help implement the law until the Supreme Court decided the law’s fate. In fact,

Wisconsin’s spending on ACA outreach is the lowest in the nation at just 46 cents per capita (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/obamacare-marketing-campaign_n_3644961.html). :lol

Walker eventually went even further than that. He said that he wouldn’t do anything about the health law at all until after the 2012 November elections (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/23/3417482/gop-opposition/), in the hopes that Mitt Romney would win and repeal the law, making implementation efforts moot.

But now that Obama has been re-elected and the ACA is actually going into effect, Walker is admitting that it could provide a boost for many Wisconsinites. “I don’t want people to fall between the cracks,” said (http://washingtonexaminer.com/exclusive-interview-gov.-scott-walkers-limited-government-pragmatism/article/2546143) Walker in his Examiner interview. “[U]ntil we can change and come up with something better to replace the law, we still care about our constituents, we still want people to do well.”

It’s a tacit acknowledgment that Obamacare is actually a good deal for the more than half million uninsured (http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/publications/P0/P00406/p00406-2013.pdf) state residents. Some of the poorer Wisconsin localities, such as Racine County (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/07/3375721/fast-fairness-scott-walker-medicaid-protest/), suffer from disproportionate numbers of early deaths and STDs and have higher rates of infant mortality.

“A lot of people think that Republicans like me would want to sabotage the law by making it hard or difficult for people to sign up,” said (http://washingtonexaminer.com/exclusive-interview-gov.-scott-walkers-limited-government-pragmatism/article/2546143) Walker. “I think that’s somewhat shortsighted by our critics, because what we care about more than anything are the people we represent.”

More than 71,000 Wisconsinites signed up for private plans through the state marketplace between October 1 and March 1, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/24/3418004/scott-walker-obamacare-signups/

this bullshit, with one week left to sign up.