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the debacle continues to unfold
"bail out" what?
the debacle continues to unfold
what debacle?
New Poll Looks at Winners and Losers on the ACA Exchanges
The Kaiser Family Foundation poll has provided one of the first comprehensive looks at the new enrollees in the individual market.
One of the biggest findings of the poll is that a majority (57 percent) of people getting coverage on the exchanges say they were previously uninsured. As intended, the law resulted in more people buying coverage.
The poll also found that that a narrow plurality of people in the non-group market who were forced to switch from non-compliant plans to new ACA-approved plans actually ended up paying less for premiums, likely because of the new tax credits. Among this group 46 percent said their premiums went down while 39 percent said their premiums went up:
Of course premiums aren’t the only metric by which to judge a plan. For some the new plans meant narrower networks. Among this group 33 percent said they have fewer choices in primary care doctors, only 10 percent say they have more options, and 55 percent claim the networks are about the same.
In general this poll confirms the basic impression derived from other sources. A majority of people in the individual market arguably benefited from the law or were not impacted much — mainly those who received subsidies or had health problems. Yet there is a segment of people who can legitimately feel they were made worse for some reason, like healthy people who had insurance and now are paying higher premiums.
In fact that is roughly what we seen when people in the non-group market were directly asked if the law was a net positive or negative for them, although there is a good chance that this and all of the other answers to the survey are being skewed by partisan allegiances. Among non-group enrollees 29 percent believe the were negatively affected:
Democrats can make the argument that this is an acceptable set of trade offs for a net benefit, but the political problem is that the law wasn’t sold as a set of trade-offs for people in the non-group market. The law was cynically sold as a way to help some people while leaving absolutely everyone with insurance they liked completely unaffected.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/201...aca-exchanges/
"leaving absolutely everyone with insurance they liked completely unaffected"
but a lot of non-group insurance people 1) were/are healthy (no claims) and 2) had cheapo catastrophe insurance, which was outlawed.
Virginia Governor Moves Forward on Medicaid Expansion Without Legislature
After months of debate over whether or not the state would expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said Friday that he would move forward unilaterally without legislative action.
During a press conference, McAuliffe announced vetoes of portions of the state budget, and laid out his plan for addressing Medicaid expansion.
There has been much speculation about whether McAuliffe would or couldbypass the legislature to expand Medicaid.
The Republican-controlled legislature passed a budget earlier this month that did not include a plan to expand Medicaid, which is expected to provide health insurance to 400,000 low-income residents in the state.
During his remarks, McAuliffe said he would veto the Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission (MIRC), calling it a “sham to pretend that the legislature is serious about Medicaid reform and expansion.” The governor noted that even former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelliraised questions about MIRC’s cons utionality.
McAuliffe said he has instructed William Hazel, the secretary of health and human resources, and Ric Brown, his secretary of finance, and their respective staffers to no longer attend or assist with any “meaningless” MIRC meetings. The governor also vetoed an amendment that banned the state from expanding Medicaid pursuant to the Affordable Care Act.
“I am moving forward,” said McAuliffe. “There are several options available to me.”
McAuliffe said Hazel has been directed to work with federal partners in Washington, D.C., the insurance industry, health-care providers, university medical centers, nonprofit organizations, local health departments, and the hospital industry, and to deliver a plan no later than September 1.
“We can move Virginia health care forward even in the face of the demagoguery, lies, fear and cowardice that have gripped this debate for too long,” said McAuliffe.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/20...ality+Check%29
Blind squirrel news:
After Arizona Expanded Medicaid, Hospitals Started Saving Money
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) fought hard to convince the GOP lawmakers in her state to accept Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. Now, she’s seeing some of the fruits of her labor. According to a new report from the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, hospitals in the state are saving money by providing less uncompensated care.
Uncompensated care is driven by low-income and uninsured people who can’t pay their hospital bills. After Arizona removed childless adults from its Medicaid program back in 2011, uncompensated care skyrocketed throughout the state. But now that Arizona has expanded Medicaid under the health reform law, a move that allowed childless adults to enroll in the public health program again, that trend is being reversed.
In the first four months of this year, according to the new report, the uncompensated care at Arizona hospitals dropped by 31 percent compared to the same period in 2013. That helped the average operating margin of Arizona hospitals to rise from 4 percent to 5.2 percent over the last year.
“We were hoping people would take advantage of the Medicaid and federal healthcare.gov opportunity, that they would sign up,” Judy Rich, the chair of the Board of Directors for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, told the Arizona Daily Star, adding that she’s “guardedly optimistic” that those enrollment efforts were successful.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), Arizona’s decision to expand Medicaid will eventually cut the state’s uninsurance rate by nearly a third.
The editorial board of the Arizona Republic is praising Brewer for her role in helping coverage go up and costs go down. “This happened because of Brewer’s tenacity,” they write. “Our Republican governor fought a pitched battle with members of her own party to win approval to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act… Medicaid expansion is paying off in Arizona.”
A similar dynamic is playing out in other states across the country as Obamacare’s coverage expansion has begun to take effect. Safety net hospitals that serve a disproportionate number of poor and uninsured people report that more of their patients now have insurance. Emergency rooms have also started to notice a drop in the number of uninsured patients seeking care. And public hospitals say that an influx of newly insured Medicaid patients is helping their bottom lines.
However, a starkly different story is unfolding in the areas of the country that have rejected Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. Millions of low-income people are being locked out of health reform because their lawmakers continue to resist accepting federal funds to expand the Medicaid rolls. Rural hospitals in states like Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, andNorth Carolina have been forced to close because they can’t afford to remain operating without the Medicaid reimbursements from the low-income people who would have been eligible for the expansion.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...pensated-care/
Thanks, Repugs!
Study: Anti-Obamacare Ads Might Have Actually Increased Enrollment
The millions of dollars being spent in televisions ads that criticize Obamacare might have actually backfired and led to increased enrollment under the health care reform law, according to a studypublished Wednesday by the Brookings Ins ution.
Brookings fellow Niam Yaraghi observed "a positive association between the anti-ACA spending and ACA enrollment." Spending on negative Obamacare ads has outpaced spending on positive ads 15 to 1, according to media research. In Senate races where Democrats are running for re-election, which have been the major targets for anti-Obamacare ads, Yaraghi detected a e in enrollment.
"This implies that anti-ACA ads may unintentionally increase the public awareness about the existence of a governmentally subsidized service and its benefits for the uninsured," Yaraghi wrote of his findings.
The results weren't perfectly clear-cut. In states where it's a Republican defending their Senate seat, negative ads did seem to lead to a reduction in enrollment, according to Yaraghi. But anti-Obamacare ad spending has been heavier in general in states with a Democratic in bent.
The Brookings analysis accounted only for the 8 million people who enrolled in private coverage under Obamacare, although Yaraghi said he also controlled for other state factors like low-income population and average insurance premiums.
Aside from general increased awareness, Yaraghi had an interesting alternative or secondary theory for the phenomenon he observed:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/brookings-anti-obamacare-ads-enrollment?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&u tm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29
On the other hand, an individual’s prediction about the chances of repealing the ACA may be associated with the volume of advertisements against it. In the states where more anti-ACA ads are aired, residents were on average more likely to believe that Congress will repeal the ACA in the near future. People who believe that subsidized health insurance may soon disappear could have a greater willingness to take advantage of this one time opportunity.
Libertarian Accidentally Shows How Obamacare Is Succeeding
The Commonwealth Fund has a new survey showing that the proportion of adults lacking health insurance has fallen by a quarter, from 20 percent of the population to 15 percent. (Most respondents, including 74 percent of newly insured Republicans, report liking their plan.)
Also, this week, the Congressional Budget Office again revised down its cost estimates for Medicare, which now spends $50 billion a year less than it was projected to before Obamacare passed. Also, the New England Journal of Medicinerecently estimated that 20 million Americans gained insurance under the new law.
The latter study comes in for criticism by Peter Suderman, Reason’s indefatigable health-care analyst. Like the entire right-wing media, Suderman’s coverage of Obamacare has furnished an endless supply of mockery of the law’s endless failures and imminent collapse.
While some of his points have validity, it’s fair to say that the broader narrative conveyed by his work, which certainly lies on the sophisticated end of the anti-Obamacare industry, has utterly failed to prepare his libertarian readers for the possibility that the hated health-care law will actually work more or less as intended.
And yet, in another way, the conservative media has provided a useful lagging indicator of Obamacare’s progress.
The message of every individual story is that the law is failing, the administration is lying, and so on.
The substance, when viewed as a whole, tells a different story. Here is how Suderman, to take just one example, has described the continuous advancement of the law’s coverage goals:
January 21: The prognosis was so grim that Obamacare might not have yielded any net reduction in the uninsured (“it appears possible that there has been no net expansion of private coverage at all”).
January 23: The situation had grown perhaps slightly less bleak — meager reductions in the uninsured rate may have taken place (“it's still possible that the number of people with insurance of any kind (including Medicaid) has increased, but the number of people with private insurance has not”).
February 24: It appeared that non-trivial numbers of Americans, perhaps a couple million, had gained insurance, but far less than the claimed 7 million:
We don’t know how exactly many people have gotten health coverage through Medicaid for the first time as a result of Obamacare, but the actual number is certainly much lower than the 7 million President Obama claimed …
That means a significant downward revision is coming — a 20 to 30 percent reduction would bring total enrollments down to between 2.31 million and 2.64 million.
March 11: The number of newly covered had risen from the mid-2 millions to around 3 million — far less than the 13 million claimed by Obama:
instead of the 13 million people the administration the administration counts as having obtained coverage under the law, the total gain in coverage for the previously is really more like 3 million, most of which comes through the dysfunctional Medicaid system. If so, that’s not nothing, but it’s a lot less than most anyone who supported the law predicted or hoped.
July 8: A New England Journal of Medicine report that 20 million Americans have gained insurance under Obamacare, argues Suderman, is probably too high (“it’s too early to say exactly how many so far — only that 20 million is almost certainly an overstatement”).
We have gone from learning that the law has failed to cover anybody
to learning it would cover a couple million to learning it would cover a few million
to learning that it has probably insured fewer than 20 million people halfway through year one.
The message of every individual dispatch is a confident prediction of the hated enemy's demise, yet the terms described in each, taken together, tell the story of retreat.
The enemy’s invasion fleet has been destroyed; its huge losses on the field of battle have left it on the brink of surrender; the enemy soldiers will be slaughtered by our brave civilian defenders as they attempt to enter the capital; the resistance will triumph!
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...e-success.html
suck it, "Reason"-able libertarians, right-wingers.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-10-2014 at 11:25 AM.
Turns Out, Republicans Love Obamacare
Overall, 73 percent of people who bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance.
Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their plans.
Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before — including members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year — were happy with their new coverage.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/10/3458577/even-republicans-are-satisfied-with-the-new-obamacare-coverage-poll-finds/
Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-10-2014 at 01:28 PM.
There are still 5 million people left out of the good Obamacare news
The Commonwealth fund created a handy info graphic to show the key findings from its big new survey of insurance coverage. Here's a big chunk of it:
But for a moment, let's focus on this part:attribution: Commonwealth Fund
attribution: Commonwealth FundAmong adults who earn less than poverty wages in states that didn't expand Medicaid, the uninsured rate is 36 percent, a decline of two percentage points (termed not statistically significant) from last year. That compares to a dramatic drop from 28 percent to 17 percent in states that expanded Medicaid.States that didn't take Medicaid aren't reaping the benefit of having less uninsured people.
Those benefits are things like hospitals not losing as much money treating people who don't have insurance, and increased revenue, more jobs, and more economic activity by all those people who have more disposable income because they have affordable health care.
Or forcing older couples to separate to keep regular Medicaid.
More than 5 million people are stuck in the Medicaid gap.
More than 250,000 of them are veterans.
People are dying because of it. And that's all on the GOP.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...8Daily+Kos%29#
Did you verify this one, or not?
"Do You Own Research"
--WC
LOL...
I was just asking.
Can't you give a simple yes or no?
Oh my debacle.....
The percentage of Americans without health insurance fell to a new low in recent months, according to the results of a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Specifically, the uninsured rate fell to 13.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014. That's down from its peak of 18 percent in the third quarter of last year, and it's the lowest quarterly average that Gallup has seen since it began tracking this type of data in 2008.
The percentage of uninsured Americans has fallen steadily since the beginning of Obamacare's open enrollment period for buying insurance in October. President Obama's health law mandates that nearly all Americans either have health insurance or pay a fine.
iHstoric Jesus on the old Prague Cemetery, Czech Republic
Photo Credit: Kajano
http://www.alternet.org/belief/most-...sal-healthcareDo you recall the part in the Bible where Jesus healed the leper, the blind, and raised Lazarus from the dead? I do. Apparently, Republicans remember those three respective biblical stories a little differently. According to a new YouGov poll, Republican Jesus did indeed heal the leper, the blind, and a dead man, but only after he asked each for a co-pay.
The poll was conducted July 1-2 among 1,000 U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. On a wide range of political issues, from healthcare to gun control, from raising taxes on the rich to climate change, respondents were asked what would Jesus support or oppose.
According to the results of the poll, a majority of Democrats and independents have read the same version of Christianity’s Holy Book as I. For Republicans, however, it appears that, once again, they’ve conflated Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with the Bible.
Eighty percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said Jesus would support universal healthcare. Indeed it’s hard to imagine Jesus would deny care to those who lack the financial means to enjoy the comfort of our for-profit capitalist healthcare industry. But that’s not the Jesus Republicans know. Only 23 percent of Republicans believe Jesus would support healthcare for all.
Great way to run a country. Here's a major sector, a huge component of the economy, critical to the country, and it's ed up.
Thanks, free market! We are sure you'll fix this disaster with the optimum solution.
Bottlenecks in Training Doctors
The new head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Sloan Gibson, told a Senate committee last week that he needed $17.6 billion over the next three years to hire some 1,500 doctors, 8,500 nurses and other clinicians to reduce the unconscionably long waiting times that many veterans now endure before they are able to see a doctor.
That news was bad enough, but the department’s problems are emblematic of an even deeper problem: a nationwide shortage of doctors, especially primary care doctors, and other health care professionals, that will only get worse in coming years. No less alarming, the current medical education system is ill-equipped to train the number of professionals needed.
Experts disagree over how bad the current shortages are. But virtually all agree that the problem is acute in rural areas and in poor urban neighborhoods. As of June 19, according to one estimate cited by analysts in the Department of Health and Human Services, there was a shortage of 16,000 primary care physicians in such underserved areas.
The Association of American Medical Colleges reiterated last week an earlier warning that there will be a shortfall of 45,000 primary care physicians and 46,000 surgeons and medical specialists by 2020, leaving too few doctors to care for an aging population and for the millions of patients who will gain health coverage and seek treatment under the Affordable Care Act.
Some experts, however, believe that the real problem is not an overall shortage of doctors but an imbalance in the use of existing resources. For example, there may be too many specialists and too few primary care doctors; too many professionals in cities and affluent areas, too few in rural or impoverished areas; too many doctors doing routine procedures that could be handled by advanced-practice nurses, physician assistants or pharmacists.
In any case, there is a desperate need for accurate, up-to-date information. But congressional Republicans, who refuse to cooperate in any way with the Affordable Care Act, have blocked a commission that was supposed to sort it all out and make recommendations. The reform law created a National Health Care Workforce Commission, whose members were appointed in late 2010, but the panel has never met and it has no staff or budget to support its operations. This year, President Obama gave up even requesting $3 million for the panel, after losing that battle in previous years.
One obstacle to producing enough doctors is a shortage of residency slots in teaching hospitals to provide clinical training for doctors who have just graduated from medical school. Medical school enrollments and the number of medical schools have soared over the past decade, statistics show, but the number of residencies to train graduates has increased only modestly, largely because of a congressional cap on paying for the slots.
Another hurdle that will potentially affect nurses and physician assistants — as well as students in medical and osteopathic schools — in coming years is an expected shortage in clinical training sites in community hospitals and clinics. This is where students get the hands-on experience they need to supplement classroom instruction and earn their degrees.
There are bills in Congress to increase the number of residency slots for new doctors by 15,000 over a five-year period. This seems entirely warranted, given the increase in doctors who will be pouring out of the medical schools. Whether Congress will appropriate the money needed for that purpose — on top of spending large sums to rehabilitate the Department of Veterans Affairs health system — is questionable.
Beyond that, attention must be given to expanding the number and use of other health care professionals, as well as to improving the efficiency of health care delivery with the help of new technologies and new organizational structures.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/20...tors.html?_r=0
the "free market" and "for profit health" aren't solving , and the Repugs block all governmental efforts to provide guidance and solutions.
btw, the new Hep C pill Sovaldi is $1000 (nice round number pulled out of Gilead's investors' asses), $84K/year
ACA subsides ruled illegal in 36 states:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nation...711-story.htmlPresident Obama's healthcare law was dealt a severe blow Tuesday as a federal appeals court panel ruled that government subsidies should be cut off for the majority of low- and middle-income residents currently receiving help with their insurance premiums under the program.
Defenders of the healthcare law called the ruling a temporary setback and predicted that it will be reversed by the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where Democratic appointees now outnumber Republicans. Obama administration officials confirmed Tuesday that they plan to appeal.
In a 2-1 vote, a panel of judges on the appeals court rejected the administration's argument that the problem in the case was triggered by imprecise language in the complex Affordable Care Act and that Congress had always intended to offer the subsidies nationwide to low- and middle-income people who bought insurance through one of the state or federal health exchanges created under the law.
But as written, the law states that subsidies should be paid to those who purchase insurance through an "exchange established by the state." That would seem to leave out the 36 states in which the exchanges are operated by the federal government.
“We conclude that the ACA unambiguously restricts the [authorized] subsidy to insurance purchased on exchanges ‘established by the state,'” said Judge Thomas Griffith. “We reach this conclusion, frankly, with reluctance. At least until states that wish to can set up Exchanges, our ruling will likely have a significant consequences for millions of individuals receiving tax credits through federal exchanges and for health insurance markets more broadly.”
badly written law, Thanks, lawyers.
will be appealed, up to SCOTUS, which will certainly up ACA, 5-4.
fix the law? no, Repug Congress will block any change.
This was predicted long ago and is the reason why you don't push things through like this administration did. I feel bad for the people losing their subsidies.
Obummercare sucks assPERIOD, deal with it....
in your ignorant, stupid opinion, dictated by your thought masters.
ACA is an overwhelming success with the people it was intended to help.
Original bill that passed
ACA after HHS filled in the "details"
What's the Republican alternative?
I mean, since Obama stole their original idea.
Quite a few more cases still
The IRS Challenge:
Pruitt vs. Sebelius
Halbig vs. Sebelius
King vs. Sebelius
Indiana et al vs. IRS et al
The IPAB Challenge:
Coons vs. Geithner
The HHS Mandate Challenge:
Becket Fund HHS Information Central
The Origination Clause Challenge:
Sissel v. Department of Health and Human Services
Hotze v. Sebelius
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