Reply With Quote
Again, lol simpleton.
Of course there's no comparison, SIMPLETON, because the Repug red states sabotaged it, requiring healthcare.gov to interface with about 30 different states.
If all the Repug states had run their own exchanges, they'd be having the same success as CA, KY, etc, risible SIMPLETON.
Big difference was the MA Repugs helped their cons uents, while red-state Repugs are sabotaging ACA, lying to their states, ing over the poor, disabled, etc.
And I was talking about the SUCCESS of Romneycare showing the eventual success of ACA in those states that implement it.
Again, lol simpleton.
iow, "dammit, The Great Boutons has slapped me again. I'll call him simpleton, that'll show 'im"
lol delusions of grandeur. lol slap from a .
And your conversion to SA210 is complete.
Pity poor TB
his ego after The Great Boutons Slapping must feel like this:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...50#post6879850
that's what slapping looks like. Feel free to runaway again.
Health Law Is Dividing Republican Governors
COTTSDALE, Ariz. — Republicans are planning to use the troubled health law against Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, but the Affordable Care Act is increasingly dividing their party, too.
At the annual meeting here of the nation’s Republican governors, the ones who are eyeing presidential runs in 2016 say they oppose the health care law. But there is sharp disagreement among those who have helped carry out the law and those who remain entrenched in their opposition.
These early divisions reveal not only the difficult calculations of ambitious Republican politicians as they look to the next presidential campaign, but also the complexities of being a governor rather than a lawmaker at a time when the party’s base is hostile to those who cooperate with Democrats.
The governors who refused the Medicaid expansion money that is part of the health care law — believing they had found a wedge issue — are already boasting about it.
“I said no,” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said, “because if I took the Medicaid expansion I’d be dependent on the same federal government that can’t get a basic website up and going even after two and a half years to come through with payments for Medicaid in the future when they start weaning off paying for 100 percent of coverage.”
Under the new law, the federal government pays the entire cost of Medicaid expansion for three years and 90 percent after that.
Mr. Walker, who is seen as a candidate who can potentially bridge the differences between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment, said conservatives would have long memories on how the law was carried out.
“I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker, but I think it’s pretty high on the importance list for a lot of voters out there,” he said.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who also turned down the Medicaid money and is thought to be considering a second presidential run, used even more vivid language. “It’s like putting 1,000 more people on the anic when you knew what was going to happen,” he said.
He also said in an interview between sessions of the Republican Governors Association meeting that it would matter in a political context.
“I think it’s a factor; I think it’s a philosophical position,” Mr. Perry said of Medicaid expansion, noting that even President Obama had called Medicaid — which is financed by both the states and federal government — part of “a broken system.”
“Whether somebody took it or didn’t, I’ll leave it up to them to justify to their cons uents why,” he said of the federal money.
That is not to say that Mr. Perry would not use the issue to his advantage in a presidential primary race. It is not difficult to project how it could play out in the 2016 campaign, said Republican strategists, noting that the governors who accepted the Medicaid expansion could easily be pegged in television ads and mailers as having effectively approved the president’s health care law.
Mr. Walker and Mr. Perry are not the only ambitious Republicans to sound a “Where were you on Obamacare?” line of attack. Senator Rand Paul said this week that Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, perhaps the leading 2016 contender among establishment Republicans, would have to answer for his decision to take the Medicaid money.
“On the case of the New Jersey governor, I think embracing Obamacare, expanding Medicaid in his state is very expensive and not fiscally conservative,” Mr. Paul said.
He added, “Many Republican governors I would say are conservative did resist expanding and accepting Obamacare in their states.”
Mr. Paul’s criticism underlines one of the challenges governors face as they contemplate presidential campaigns. House members and senators do not face the same dilemma: While members of Congress vote on legislation, bills can be passed without their support. But governors face decisions that affect the residents of their states.
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio expressed this political fact of life, becoming animated as he was questioned at a meeting with reporters here about his decision to expand Medicaid.
“I always try to put myself in the shoes of somebody else to say: ‘How would I feel if I didn’t have health insurance? Are you kidding me?’ ” said Mr. Kasich, who has been mentioned as a 2016 hopeful, his voice rising. In defending Medicaid, he spoke at length about the scourge of drug addiction and challenges faced by those with mental illnesses.
“It’s going to save lives,” he said. “It’s going to help people, and you tell me what’s more important than that.”
The issue is a particularly delicate one among Republican governors, not only because they have disagreed on whether to take the Medicaid money, but because Mr. Christie, already a leading figure in the party, formally took over the Scottsdale meeting as the association’s chairman.
Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina has made much of her decision to turn down the Medicaid expansion, frequently boasting that “we didn’t just say no, we said never.” But she took a more restrained position here when sitting next to Mr. Christie at a news conference.
“I don’t think that the people of South Carolina will make a decision on one issue,” said Ms. Haley, whose state holds the South’s first presidential primary.
But when asked if she was suggesting that the health law would not be a factor in 2016, Ms. Haley clarified “it is going to be an issue, certainly,” but would not be “the sole issue.”
Some of the Republican governors are still determining how to handle Medicaid expansion. They include Mike Pence of Indiana, who said he would like to take a middle course on the issue, using the new federal money to cover more low-income Indiana residents but do so through a state-run program.
“I believe it could be a pilot program for the kind of health care reform that is grounded in the principles of consumer-driven health care,” Mr. Pence said.
As to whether he would be vulnerable in a presidential primary because he accepted money provided through the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Pence demurred. “The cir stances of each state with regard to Medicaid are different,” he said.
Former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi made same argument in discussing why conservatives ultimately would not punish governors who took the Medicaid money. “Some people may try to make it an issue, but I think they’re going to find out it’s not the kind of issue they expect it to be,” he said.
Mr. Kasich, asked if taking the funding could hamper his own presidential prospects, shot back, “Is that how you’re going to make a decision?”
But then he offered a prediction that might have been rooted in his hopes: “I think all things kind of fade over time.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/22...?from=homepage
Not that Fox/Repugs GAF about truth
Three Obamacare Truths That the Republicans Ignore
The wreck of private insurance.
Ours has been the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. For-profit insurers have spent billions finding and marketing their policies to healthy people - young adults, people at low risk of expensive diseases, groups of professionals - while rejecting people with preexisting conditions, otherwise debilitated, or at high risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. And have routinely dropped coverage of policy holders who become seriously sick or disabled. What else would you expect from corporations seeking to maximize profits?
The Affordable Care Act is a modest solution.
It still relies on private insurers - merely setting minimum standards and "exchanges" where customers can compare policies, requiring insurers to take people with preexisting conditions and not abandon those who get seriously sick, and helping low-income people afford coverage.
A single-payer system would have been preferable. Most other rich countries do it this way. It could have been grafted on to Social Security and Medicare, paid for through payroll taxes, expanded to lower-income families through Medicaid. It would have been simple and efficient. (It's no coincidence that the Act's Medicaid expansion has been easy and rapid in states that chose to accept it.)
The moral imperative.
Even a clunky compromise like the ACA between a national system of health insurance and a for-profit insurance market depends, fundamentally, on a social compact in which those who are healthier and richer are willing to help those who are sicker and poorer. Such a social compact defines a society.
The other day I heard a young man say he'd rather pay a penalty than buy health insurance under the Act because, in his words, "why should I pay for the sick and the old?" The answer is he has a responsibility to do so, as a member the same society they inhabit.
http://robertreich.org/post/67778425081
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-24-2013 at 08:56 AM.
Repugs and Fox whining about people being fined for not buying health insurance? GMAFB
Take a look at REPUGS' Medicare Advantage operation, aka Repugs' corporate welfare, fining people if they don't sign up to buy prescription drugs (what about generics?)
Healthcare Is So Horrible Here that Thousands Rely on Free Clinics—And You're Fined if You Don't Use Prescription Drugs
In the process of enrolling in the Medicare Advantage plan, we were told that we would have to pay a penalty because we hadn't joined a Medicare (or any other “creditable”) prescription drug coverage. We were never informed about that requirement, which began in 2006.
Since we’ve always avoided taking prescription drugs, we never felt the need for it. I called the Health Insurance Counseling Advocacy Program and learned that the penalty would be $32 for each of us. That means $64 every month for the rest of our lives. It seems somewhat absurd and unfair that we could be penalized for nottaking any prescription drugs.
Ironically, “This penalty is required by law is designed to encourage people to enroll in a Medicare Drug Plan when they are first eligible,” yet we had no way ofknowing there was such an option to consider. Another irony is that Medicare doesn’t cover any dental procedures, even though rotten teeth and gums can cause internal illness that Medicare does cover.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-hea...age=1#bookmark
Defend fraud Obama? Don't be silly
the forced hilarity, mangled syntax and Olympian hauteur, you two share in common.
Obamacare horror story debunked by Seattle Times columnist
A Seattle Times columnist took a closer look at a conservative headline-making health care reform case Friday and discovered that the Rush Limbaugh narrative doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
In Danny Westneat’s piece “Debunking Obamacare sob story,” the writer checked on the reversal of fortune claimed by Jessica Sanford, a Washington parent of an ADHD-diagnosed child, who had been touted by President Obama last month as an example of the success of the Affordable Care Act because she could obtain insurance for the first time in 15 years.
When Sanford said on a Facebook post that the state had miscalculated her eligibility for a subsidy based on her income and that she was “screwed,” the media pounced, particularly conservative outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
However, Westneat’s examination revealed that Sanford’s son qualified for Medicaid coverage at $30 a month, which would have not been available before the ACA. “He has ADHD and, according to Sanford, it costs them $250 a month for prescription drugs alone. Which will now all be covered,” Westneat wrote. While Sanford had originally been quoted for coverage at $169 a month, a bronze-level policy for a 48-year-old woman making $49,000 costs $237 a month, while a silver-level policy costs $313, Westneat added.
“So here’s a family that was totally uninsured for 15 years because it had always cost at least $500 to $600 a month for skimpy policies to cover them both. And what they can get now is full coverage for $30 a month for the son and scantier coverage in the $250 to $300 a month range for the mom. How is that a horror story?”
The decline in cost for Sanford appears to mirror the experiences of the uninsured in rural Kentucky, which like Washington state have set up state-level insurance exchanges and avoided the problems associated with the federal exchange. In a Washington Post profile of Breathitt County in rural Kentucky, writer Stephanie McCrummen noted that enrollment in areas like the poor, coal mining “Coronary Valley” are driving the state’s relatively high enrollment figures.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/2...mes-columnist/
my literary bs beats your so called facts every day, 'ese.
I see that bothered you all day long since you first read it. Nice.lol
what you see wouldn't fit in a thimble.
and I heard on TPR this morning, some guy, almost certainly a Repug or Repug appointee (RickyBobby has tainted the entire TX govt with Repug political hacks), saying he wants ALL Texans, even those 100s of miles from the coast, to pay insurance to help reduce the cost of coastal insurance as Feds reduce their coverage and/or hike their rates.
But of course Repugs, for strictly and dishonestly bad-faith political reasons, whine about young people being fined for not contributing to the health insurance pool.
I see that you're so angry you had to say something about me when I didn't address you, then you got angrier when called an old tired boring unimpressive psuedo intellectual
Now you will show more anger by responding to me with lies and spin, instead of talking about "sickcare"
Carry on..
John Boehner Successfully Enrolls In Obamacare 45 Minutes After He Blogs About 'Frustrating' Experience
Being speaker of the House doesn't make it any easier to sign up for health care coverage using the troubled federal website. Just ask John Boehner.
The Ohio Republican says he had to re-start the process several times while spending four hours trying to sign up at HealthCare.gov.
At one point Thursday, Boehner tweeted his frustration — "Guess I'll just have to keep trying" — along with photos of himself at a computer and the error message he says he received. The House speaker has 583,000 followers on Twitter.
Nearly an hour after his tweet, Boehner received an email confirming he was signed up, his spokesman said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4319933.html
"maybe the transaction would have proceeded faster if Mr. Boehner’s office hadn’t, according to the D.C. exchange, put its agent — who was calling to help finish the enrollment — on hold for 35 minutes, listening to “lots of patriotic hold music.” "
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/op...gewanted=print
Boner trying to sabotage healthcare.gov and failed, failure being his greatest accomplishment as Speaker.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-25-2013 at 01:23 PM.
Obama just launched single-payer in America
Did you notice? Did you see what happened when everyone was complaining about a website? Single-payer got started in America.
Vermont is using authority granted under the Affordable Care Act to start a single-payer system. Most Americans still don't know what the phrase "single-payer" even means. It had little support in Congress in 2009 and Senate "Democrats" like Nelson and Lieberman even killedthe public option. But, ACA had this sweet little provision that allowed states to set up a single-payer system and now people will see it in action. You know what that means.
As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opines, "The quickest route toward a national health care program will be when individual states go forward and demonstrate that universal and non-profit health care works, and that it is the cost-effective and moral thing to do.”
Oh I know this is hard to swallow. Obama is third-way! He's dismantling the safetynet! A corporatist! He killed the public option!Whatever else he is, Obama is a President who acts in a thoughtful, deliberate way that the chicken little headlines of the day often miss. As many predicted, ACA is already leading to the kind of transformative progressive change Obama promised. The progressive movement will be responsible for showing the nation how well single-payer works after the Vermont system goes into effect. When public and non-profit insurance becomes the national norm, we'll know where it began.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1...a?detail=email
red states will of course stay self- ed-up, ing over their citizens, but I bet CA, OR, WA could have referendums to go single-payer like VT.
Gradually, we need to screw the for-profit insurers, their capitalist investors, and greedy overpaid execs out of the mass market.
As glitches fade, Obamacare approval will rise
The latest polls on Obamacare are bleak. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that almost half of those questioned last week had an unfavorable opinion of the law. Just a third had a favorable opinion, even less than the 40 percent support for the law in the Nov. 14 Gallup poll.
But those poll numbers will change as more people like Bob Freukes of St. Louis and Donna Smith of Denver are finally able to shop for coverage on the new health insurance websites — and find coverage that is surprisingly affordable.
Considering all the negative stories about the malfunctioning HealthCare.gov website and policy cancellations folks have been receiving, the steep decline in support for Obamacare shouldn’t surprise anyone.
But in the very week that poll numbers reached an all-time low, people who had tried for more than a month to enroll online in a health plan were finally able to do so.
Just minutes after the administration’s tech surge team said 90 percent of applicants were now able to enroll online, I started getting emails from people eager to share their success stories.
“My wife and I are both self-employed small sole proprietors,” wrote Freukes, a photographer. “This will be the first time in our married lives we will have health insurance.”
Freukes said that over the course of the past year, he and his wife — married 30 years and are now in their fifties — rarely went to the doctor because of the expense.
“We paid for doctor visits, prescriptions, eye glasses and everything else out of [our] own pockets, always knowing we were one major illness away from bankruptcy.
“We tried to find an affordable policy, but the going rate for my wife and me was roughly $900-$1,400 dollars a month with deductibles in the $5,000 range.” Considering that their combined annual income is often no more than $25,000, health insurance was out of the question.
Not only will they finally have coverage starting January 1, it will cost the Freukes less than they had expected because of the federal tax credits available to low- and middle-income individuals who buy coverage on the state exchanges. In fact, with the tax credits, the Freukes will not have to pay monthly premiums at all.
“I sat rubbing my eyes in amazement as the website did the math. Our portion of the premium for both plans was ZERO. No cost to us at all. I was stunned.”
Donna Smith wasn’t that fortunate, but she at long last will be able to get a comprehensive policy that she can afford.
Like Bob Freukes, it took Smith weeks of effort before she was finally able to enroll in a plan. Her delay, though, was caused by a different, though no less frustrating quirk in the system. Colorado is one of 13 states and the District of Columbia operating their ownexchanges, which generally have experienced fewer problems than the federal website, where residents of most states have been sent. Several thousand people were able to begin the application process in Colorado but they had to wait — and wait and wait — while state officials checked to see if the applicants were eligible for Medicaid.
Smith knew her income was too high to qualify for Medicaid, but she nevertheless had to fill out an extensive questionnaire and was put in what she described as a “bureaucratic black hole” for 37 days. It was an agonizing wait for Smith, a cancer survivor who — along with husband Larry — had to file for bankruptcy several years ago because of medical debt. If her name sounds familiar, by the way, it might be because you’ve seen her in the movies. When she wrote filmmaker Michael Moore about her plight, he included her in the 2007 do entary, SiCKO. Since then she has been an active supporter of health care reform.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/...=publici-email
KY poor will realize, if not already, that McConnell and all their Repug politicians have been outright lying to them about the trainwreck of ACA.
Word will get around, and the Feds will start pushing hard in red states to promote healthcare.gov and red-state exchanghes as they get debugged and navigators, etc get better at their jobs.
3 Ways Obamacare Is Changing How A Hospital Cares For Patients
"Everybody in the health care system gets rewarded for doing more, rather than rewarded for doing the right thing," he says.
Starting on Jan. 1, the federal government, the hospital and some of the doctors there will try a new approach.
Rather than paying for that bypass operation and then paying again for bleeding, Medicare will pay one lump sum upfront to cover the surgery and any complications that occur after surgery. One payment for one operation, plus follow-up; that's it.
If the patient doesn't have problems within 30 days of being discharged from the hospital, the doctors could make even more money than they do today. But if there are lots of problems after surgery, they could lose money.
This shift in how medical providers get paid is changing how things are done at Summa Akron City Hospital in three important ways.
1. Checklists
Surgeons and nurses at the hospital now carry around a sheet of paper listing every simple step they're supposed to perform.
Did the patient get her antibiotics on time? Check.
Did the catheter come out on time? Check.
Research has long shown that do enting simple steps can significantly reduce medical error. Yet hospitals have a hard time implementing checklists, because doctors don't really like them.
"When we came up with this, I kind of felt a little silly for the first few weeks following a sort of checklist or menu," surgeon Eric Espinal says.
But, he concedes, pilots and NASCAR drivers use checklists because they reduce complications. So checklists could be better for patients — and, in the new system, the hospital's bottom line.
2. A Team Mentality
Traditionally, Medicare paid hospitals separately from doctors. But in the experiment at the Akron hospital, Medicare will pay the entire team together, so everyone will share in the savings or costs of each surgery. It's meant to foster a culture of collaboration.
Berkovitz, the cardiologist, says this change hasn't been easy.
"Physicians are a dedicated, strong-willed independent lot, and many of them went into the practice of medicine because traditionally you've been able to be the captain of your ship, and that's not always equated to good care," he says.
3. Helping Patients After They Go Home
Before the ACA, doctors didn't have a financial incentive to prevent patients from being readmitted to the hospital.
Now, once doctors discharge someone, it's in their financial interest to make sure their patients stay healthy even when they're at home. In some cases, that means sending nurses from the hospital to check up on patients once they've gone home.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/...s-for-patients
These Californians Greeted Canceled Health Plans With Smiles
Barbara Neff of Santa Monica is one of the roughly 1 million Californians who recently got word that their health insurance coverage would be expiring soon.
The canceled plans as people realized President Obama's promise — "If you like your plan, you can keep it" — didn't apply to everyone.
But Neff, a 46-year-old self-employed writer, isn't outraged. She's relieved. Even though she makes too much money to receive a subsidy to buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the policy cancellation was good news for her.
She's not the only one. Other Californians are also finding that having their plans canceled allows them to sign up for better coverage.
Neff says she has been stuck in a bad plan because treatment for a back problem years ago red-flagged her with a .
"The deductible has ranged anywhere from $3,000 to as high as $5,000, which means I have to spend that much each year before the insurance even kicks in," she says. "I was rejected [from a more affordable policy] because I'd had a bout of sciatica five years previously that has never returned."
Starting Jan. 1, the federal health law will prohibit insurers from denying coverage or charging more for such pre-existing problems. That has opened an array of options for Neff, who has enrolled in a new plan through California's state-run insurance marketplace, . On Thursday, the state health exchange board voted unanimously that it canceled policies, rejecting the president's for the problem.
Neff's new policy has a $2,000 deductible, and her premium will go up by $24 a month. Under the federal law, she'll no longer have to pay for preventive care, and she figures that alone will more than make up for the additional premium costs.
"I've been paying for my mammograms out of pocket, and that's $400 to $450 per year," Neff says. "That type of care is 100 percent covered under this new policy."
Tim Wilsbach
Huge deductibles have been the norm for Tim Wilsbach, a 40-year-old TV editor who lives in Culver City with his family. Like Neff, Wilsbach makes too much to qualify for federal subsidies, so when he received his cancellation notice a few weeks ago, he was worried that his premium would go up.
Wilsbach has two plans for his family. The one being canceled is a bare-bones policy with an $11,000 deductible that he has for himself and his 4-year-old son.
"It was not a great policy," he says, "which is essentially why we had a second plan for my wife, which we paid a little more for."
Wilsbach and his wife are planning to have a second baby, so they bought a policy for her with better coverage and a $5,000 deductible.
After getting the cancellation notice, Wilsbach checked out plans on the Covered California website, and he was pleasantly surprised. He found a plan for the whole family that offers broader coverage, a $4,000 deductible and a more affordable monthly premium.
"Our premium went down not quite 100 bucks, and just looking through what the plan covers versus what used to be covered, yeah, I'm quite happy about it," Wilsbach says.
Jane Bradford
Jane Bradford, 52, is a stay-at-home mom in Pasadena. She's losing the HMO insurance she has for herself and her three kids, who are 16, 21 and 23. Her policy offers low copays for doctor visits and a relatively low $3,000 family deductible, but she'll shed no tears to see it go. Bradford says that's because she has found several plans that will cost hundreds less in monthly premiums — even though her husband's income is too high for the family to qualify for a federal subsidy.
"Saving possibly $400 or more a month is awesome, so I'm not sad at all," Bradford says.
None of this comes as a surprise to , a senior researcher at the Bay Area Council Economic Ins ute in San Francisco. "A lot of the anecdotes about people having policies canceled and gigantic increases are real — but not representative of what's happening more broadly in the marketplace," he says.
Weinberg predicts many people who are losing their policies will come out ahead — even if their premiums go up — because of lower deductibles, full coverage of preventive care and no penalties for pre-existing conditions. What's more, he says, health insurance will almost certainly be cheaper for those who qualify for subsidies. In California, that's an estimated 2.5 million people.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013...ns-with-smiles
The good stories will vastly outweigh the bad.
red-states are looking like ty places to live and be poor and/or self-insured.
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