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Obama's foot dragging, mismanagement and servility to special interests count too, don't they?
There's LOTS of ripoffs and fraudulance, $100Bs/year, in the FOR-PROFIT US health care. It will take time to address them all, if ever, and it will take a LOT LONGER due to Repug obstruction and defunding. What is Steven Brill's position on Repug sabotaging?
Obama's foot dragging, mismanagement and servility to special interests count too, don't they?
sure it does. no servility to the corporations, then ACA would have been Harry-and-Louise'd
thanks for acknowledging Obama and the Dems at least share the blame for the lackluster rollout.
of course they do, never said they were flawless in trying rollout a hyper-complicated kludgeocracy into the insane hyper-complicated kludegocracy of US health care.
And it's Friday, so GFY
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-06-2013 at 11:59 AM.
FTW, the kids used to say.
I love it when you feign disliking the Democrats. what is the opposite of a backhanded compliment?
(in b4 GFY)
I'm not feigning anything. I PREFER Dems to the Repugs, much lesser of two ty parties.
funny, WC says the exact same thing
and just like you, he often must overcome considerable reluctance to criticize his preferred tribe.
toothless criticism?what is the opposite of a backhanded compliment?
WC prefers DEMS?
lesser of two evils
States That Refused Medicaid Expansion Will Lose Billions
When the Supreme Court ruled in the summer of 2012 that individual states did not have to participate in a federal expansion of Medicaid, many Republican governors rejoiced.
“We don’t need the federal government telling us what to do when it comes to meeting the needs of the citizens of our states,” wrote Florida governor Rick Scott (R).
Today, the financial implications of the refusal are now clear: States like Scott’s Florida stand to lose billions because of their ideological crusade against the federal government.
The pro-health care reform Commonwealth Fund released a study this month showing exactly how states will pay for their refusal to accept the Medicaid expansion. The Affordable Care Act states that the federal government is responsible for paying 100 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid for the first three years. After that, the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost. Accepting the expansion is a common-sense economic move by states, according to the study’s authors. They write:
States that choose to participate in the Medicaid expansion will gain considerable new federal funds. States often seek to increase their share of federal funds, lobbying for military bases, procurement contracts, and highway funds. Federal funding provides direct benefits and bolsters local economies.
As the Washington Post notes, Texas will miss out on the most federal funding, but all states who refused the expansion will lose funds offered by the federal government.
Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wisconsin will pass up more than $1 billion, while bigger states like Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia will miss out on more than $2 billion in federal funds.
Nevertheless, Republican governors who lead these states are steadfast in their opposition, despite the negative economic implications.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R), for example, thinks the expansion is the federal government trying to “bully” the states. “We will not allow President Obama to bully Louisiana into accepting an expansion of Obamacare,” he said in a statement.
Similarly, Texas governor Rick Perry (R) said about the Medicaid expansion: “It’s like putting 1,000 more people on the anic when you knew what was going to happen.” Perry also said about Republican governors who accepted the expansion (such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie), “I think it’s a factor; I think it’s a philosophical position.”
Perhaps Christie’s decision was driven by numbers, rather than “philosophy.” By accepting, New Jersey will receive federal funds to expand the program. Texas, on the other hand, will pass up $9.2 billion in federal funds over the next 10 years.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/study-st...lose-billions/
Repug refuseniks are going to have to run against the doctors, hospitals, clinics, medical societies, etc who really, really need those Medicaid $Bs.
damn, these gun fellators are so easily lied to and manipulated
NRA President Pushes Conspiracy Theory That Obama Will Use Medicare To Create Gun Registry
National Rifle Association President Jim Porter falsely claimed that Medicare enrollees are asked to disclose household gun ownership to revive the NRA's decades-old scare tactics about a federal gun registry.
On the December 4 edition of the NRA News show Cam & Company, Porter claimed, "People are not interested in this government going into their records. That's why we are so concerned about everything they are doing to register people in firearms. Even when you go to register for Medicare or under these new programs they ask intrusive questions about -- that they have no business asking, they invade your privacy, and they also are asking questions about whether or not you have firearms in homes." Noting that the NRA has "been concerned about gun registration since 1968," Porter also suggested that his claim about an Obama administration gun registry scheme meant that "the public clearly sees and agrees with us about our concerns."
NRA leadership often baselessly suggests that the Obama administration is attempting to secretly regulate firearms in a manner inconsistent with the administration's public positions. A White House spokesperson has said a national gun registry "is not something that the president has supported" and the post-Newtown massacre Obama administration proposal to reduce gun violence did not call for a registry. In fact, the NRA previously acknowledged in a since-deleted post on its website that the creation of a registry by the government would be currently contrary to two federal laws.
Furthermore, in April, the NRA played a critical role in blocking Obama administration-backed U.S. Senate legislation that would have expanded background checks to all commercial gun sales while also making it a serious criminal offense for an attorney general to create a national gun registry.
Porter offered no evidence to support his claim that Medicare enrollment includes questions about gun ownership and in fact no such question is included in the application for benefits. A related claim that Medicare Annual Wellness Visits include mandatory questions about gun ownership has also been thoroughly debunked.
Hyperbolic claims that the provision of health care is a privacy threat to gun owners is a common theme seen in conservative media and NRA messaging. In January, after the Obama administration issued an executive action clarifying that doctors are allowed -- but not required -- to discuss health hazards, including a lack of gun safety at home, conservative media claimed that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) required doctors to ask patients about guns. This claim was a misreading of the law; in fact, lobbying by the NRA secured language in the ACA that prohibited the Department of Health and Human Services from collecting information about gun ownership under the law.
The NRA's paranoia surrounding medical care is evidenced by the group's support for an uncons utional 2011 Florida law that would have made it a crime for doctors to ask about gun ownership.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/12...hat-oba/197173
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/1...0JJ00S20131204President Barack Obama's administration has found a short-term fix to pay insurance companies for plans selected on HealthCare.gov, the not-yet-complete government website used to shop for insurance required under Obama's healthcare program.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet finished building the part of the website that would transfer billions of dollars in subsidies for plan premiums and cost-sharing payments to insurance companies.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/0...ound-reveals-lOn the most basic level, the newly proposed patch suggests how much work remains on simply constructing the essential technical infrastructure necessary to make Obamacare's exchange-based insurance scheme work. Some 30 to 40 percent of the functionality remains incomplete, according to Henry Chao, the Medicare technology official who oversaw the development of the exchanges. And the features that remain to be built are vital to the system’s functionality.
The core service that health insurers provide is paying for eligible claims by beneficiaries. But if insurers don't get paid themselves, they can’t cut checks for those claims. Some of the larger insurers could finance delays, at least for a little while, but as former Medicare official Kevin Lucia tells Reuters, smaller insurance plans, which are heavily represented in the health law’s exchanges, aren't well equipped to do so. Plan providers need that money, and they need it soon if they're going to be able to actually provide insurance to their plan members.
Likewise, some insurance companies are simply not participating in ACA in some states, and/or not including chains of low-price clinics (that treat sicker poor people) in their network, aka, "cartelization" of health care.
Amid the (fabricated, spurious outrage, lying) Uproar Over the Health Law, Voices of Quiet Optimism and Relief
Since his chronic leukemia was diagnosed in 2010, Ray Acosta has paid dearly for health insurance: more than $800 a month in premiums, plus steep co-payments for the drug that helps keep him alive.
Mr. Acosta, 57, owns a small moving company in Sierra Vista, Ariz., which he said had barely made it through the recession. He was thinking about dropping his coverage, but the insurance company beat him to it, informing him recently that it would cancel his policy at year’s end.
He sought advice from an insurance agent who had used his moving company. She connected him with an application counselor at a community health center, who found — to Mr. Acosta’s astonishment — that he qualified for Medicaid under the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, which gives states the option of expanding the program to include more low-income adults.
“I’m kind of in a disbelieving fog,” Mr. Acosta said last week, two days after completing an application. “I’m just hoping, keeping my fingers crossed, that this might really help me out.”
“After being gouged all these years, trying to make ends meet, to all of the sudden get this?” he said. “I’m really blown away.”
This Thanksgiving, she and her family sat down to explore their options in the new insurance marketplace. After about 45 minutes online, they selected a midlevel, or silver, plan that would cost the family about $30 a month, after tax-credit subsidies based on income.
“We were shocked,” Ms. He said. “I actually called a few places to verify that.”
Ms. He is on her parents’ plan because the health insurance her university offers is not comprehensive enough. Her brother, an engineer, receives insurance through his employer.
“I see so much negativity behind this,” she said of the criticism of the new law. “But in reality there’s a lot of families who are like mine.”
The coverage available through the state high-risk pools for people like him, Mr. Kleinschmidt said, typically have “extraordinarily high premiums with really high deductibles.” On the state’s new online exchange, he was able to select a plan from a well-known insurer that came with a deductible of only $1,000.
“It’s a godsend,” he said.
Although he had trouble signing up through the website because it froze when he first tried, he said, it took only about 90 minutes to enroll after he called someone at the exchange, which is called Kynect. His only concern now is that he has yet to hear directly from Humana so he can set up a payment plan for his premiums.\
etc
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/09...?from=homepage
America's (Dem) government a force for good, a humanitarian force for its own citizens? G M A BIG F B
GOP Comes Up With A Brilliant Outrage Generation Plan
The Republican freakout over the Affordable Care Act has gotten so out of control and elaborate that the freakout is creating more “problems” now for Republicans to freak out over. It’s a dragon eating its own tail form of outrage creation.
For instance, conservatives are up in arms because congressional staffers now can have insurance plans that cover abortion, which is supposedly an outrage because it’s a given in American politics that just because you work for the government, you private finances belong to a bunch of religious fanatics. (If you’re female.)
But the reason staffers have this access is because Republicans made it so. Molly Redden at Mother Jones reports:
The bizarre story of how a conservative, anti-abortion Republican ended up expanding abortion access for congressional staff dates back to the initial fight over the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Here’s how it happened: The Obamacare exchanges were expressly designed to provide insurance to the uninsured, so congressional staffers—who, like most Americans, already had insurance—were initially excluded. Republicans claimed that this amounted to Democrats “exempting” themselves and their staff from Obamacare, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced an amendment that would force members of Congress and their staff to use the exchanges. Grassley’s proposal was intended to embarrass Democrats. But Democrats called Grassley’s bluff, and the law passed with his amendment.
But Grassley’s measure forced congressional staff out of the Federal Health Benefits Program, which federal law prohibited from offering any abortion coverage. Under the the federal plan, any congressional employee who wanted an abortion had to pay for it out of pocket. Now that they’re on the Obamacare exchanges, though, congressional employees will only pay out of pocket for abortion insurance. They’ll be able to choose any of the 112 plans available via Washington, DC’s health care exchange, only 9 of which do not cover abortion.
Now the Republicans are up in arms because congressional staffers can choose to spend their money how they like, on insurance plans that cover abortion. As I argue in RH Reality Check this week, anti-choicers are definitely trying to warm up the public on the notion that anti-choicers have a unique right to control how you spend your money, and this is just another example.
Of course, the Hyde Amendment, which bans the government for providing insurance plans that cover abortion, is equally invalid to bans on letting people spend their own money on abortion coverage. Whether it’s your money or your insurance plan, you earned it and it belongs to you. Giving “religious” control over to someone else because they are especially whiny and en led is bull .
But I digress, and you can read my RH Reality Check piece for a more elaborate argument on this front. What I want to point out is that not only do Republicans not care that they created the “problem” they are now mad about, but that this is actually a stroke of genius from Republicans.
After all, they need to have non-problems to raise a fuss about, ideally involving the evils of female sexuality + the evils of people getting real health insurance.
How better, then, but to find to complain about knowing full well that if it’s “fixed”, then the solution will be something else you can complain about?
Why wait for the Democrats to do something you can feign outrage over, when you can do it yourself, blame the Democrats, and feign outrage over the thing that is, if you have any sense at all, not actually a problem? This is a dream come true for Republicans, a self-generating fountain of bull that is increasingly detached from obstacles like reality.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/0...neration-plan/
holy , you Repugs, tea baggers and the nutty assholes you elect
Ted Cruz coloring book for children says Obamacare‘worse than any war’
Just in time for the holiday season, a controversial publisher has released a new coloring book for children about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
The Missouri-based publisher, Really Big Coloring Books, describes its book as “a non-partisan, fact-driven view of how Texas Sen. Rafael Edward ‘Ted’ Cruz became a U.S. senator and details, through his quotes and public information his ideas for what he believes will help America grow.”
The book states that Cruz supports the Second Amendment, unlike Obama who has a “consistent disregard” for cons utional rights. It invites children to color-in the Ten Commandments on a page devoted to the United States national motto, “In God We Trust.”
The book also references Cruz’s 21-hour anti-Obamacare speech, saying that “millions of citizens believe Obama Care is worse than any war.”
“At least American soldiers have weapons with which to defend themselves,” the book adds.
Really Big Coloring Books sells a variety of coloring books for children. But some of its books have sparked controversy.
On the brink of the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the company announced it was releasing a 9/11 coloring book. The book, “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom,” was accused of being Islamophobic and inappropriate for small children.
The company later released a coloring book about the “Occupy Wall Street” protests.
“Many the US citizens denounce this product; our company aspires to be accurate in description even when upopular [sic] and this book generated hate mail. Surprisingly, the Occupy book sold well in China, France, Eastern Europe and some middle eastern countries; in total outselling the US audience,” Really Big Coloring Books wrote on its website.
Really Big Coloring Books publisher Wayne Bell told Fox News earlier this year that the White House emailed profanity to his company.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/0...-than-any-war/
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-10-2013 at 02:23 PM.
they can't repeal
so the talking point now has moved to "Obama Lied!"
feckless, less assholes, every one of them.
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