Initial attempts to sign up for ObamaCare go about as well as expected

[RandomGuy]

Don’t kill Obamacare
As the Supreme Court considers whether to gut Obamacare, evidence is mounting that the law is working

AMERICA’S health-care system is the costliest in the world, gobbling up 17% of GDP. The average for rich nations is only 9%; even the French spend less than 12%. Despite this avalanche of cash, one American in ten has no cover and American life expectancy, at 79, is four years worse than Italy’s.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare, was supposed to deal with these problems. Five years later, Barack Obama’s most important domestic reform is unpopular (56% of Americans disapprove of it) and under renewed attack. This week the Supreme Court heard yet another legal challenge. In King v Burwell, the law’s opponents argue that its subsidies for individuals buying health insurance on the federally organised online exchanges are illegal (see article). They are unlikely to prevail but, if they do, the law will be gutted and the insurance market thrown into turmoil.

[RandomGuy]

Obamacare appears to be working better than expected. First, despite the incompetent rollout of healthcare.gov (the website that allows people to use the federal exchanges), the proportion of Americans who lack cover has fallen from 16.2% to 12.3% since 2009. Second, the previously terrifying pace of medical inflation has slowed. The amount that America spends on health care grew by 3.9% a year in nominal terms between 2009 and 2011—having grown by 7.3% a year in 2000-08. The trillion dollar question is: how much of this squeeze is because of Obamacare?

Not all, clearly. The economic downturn accounted for much of the fall in health-care inflation: 77% by one estimate, 37% by another. Yet Obamacare also played its part. For one thing, it may have helped trim some of the fat from Medicare, the bloated public-health scheme for the old. Many hospitals appear to have changed the way they behave in anticipation of the law. The old rule of thumb for American health care—and particularly for Medicare—was that doctors were paid for every test and surgical procedure, and so performed many that were unnecessary. The new law has provisions that encourage them to keep people well; for example, it imposes penalties on hospitals where patients are frequently readmitted. Hospitals are merging, streamlining and restraining their enthusiasm for buying all the latest expensive equipment (see article). A new paper in Health Affairs shows that they have improved productivity in the past decade, and especially since 2009.

http://www.economist.com/news/leader...e-mounting-law

[boutons_deux]

(56% of Americans disapprove of it)

typical ty reporting, by leaving out a bunch of that 56% wanted ACA to go further, like a govt public insurance option.

and probably 30% are "I obstruct everything from the n!gg@ even if ACA would help me get insurance" assholes.

[ElNono]

Karma is a . Mack railed against Obamacare for years but didn't have the sense to get any health insurance of his own. And now because of being so shortsighted he's reduced to being a "taker" from strangers to pay for costly medical bills. The comments from people giving him money are amusing.

http://www.gofundme.com/helpsheriffmack

But, but Mitt and Ted said they could just go to the emergency room...

[boutons_deux]

Obamacare’s Projected Costs Continue To Tumble, CBO Report Says

Costs of providing health care under the Affordable Care Act are projected to be almost one-third less than what had been anticipated by the Congressional Budget Office in 2010. By 2019, the costs are expected to be 33 percent less than forecast.

Continued reductions in private insurance premiums are largely responsible for the decline, the CBO said, along with a slight reduction — to 24 million, down 1 million — in the number of Americans projected to gain insurance under the program.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamacar...o-report-says/

[boutons_deux]

Another Repug nasty failure to "govern" actually succeed to enrich BigMed (the objective from the start)

A FOIA find for CPI: Government study identified inflated payments in Medicare Advantage

In a three-part series last summer, Schulte and his CPI colleagues showed how some sellers of Medicare Advantage plans have taken advantage of the program’s structure to overcharge the government. Under the program, the federal government pays the plans a set fee each month based a “risk score” which measures how sick each patient is. Sicker patients mean higher payments, and some insurers have figured out how to game the system and inflate those risk scores. From 2008 to 2013, “improper” payments amounted to $70 billion, mostly due to overbilling, according to CPI’s coverage.

On Friday, Schulte reported that at least some in the government have been aware of these issues for years.

A 2009 study commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that Medicaid Advantage risk scores began rising in 2004, and that between 2004 and 2008 enrollees’ scores grew twice as fast as they would have had the same person remained in traditional Medicare—and that it was “extremely unlikely” the MA patients were actually getting that much sicker.

The coding inflation resulted in “inappropriate payment levels,” in the words of the report—or “widespread billing errors and overcharges that have since wasted billions of tax dollars,” as Schulte puts it.

The CMS report was never published on a government website. CPI obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.

If the overbilling concerns have been known for so long, why do they persist?

Schulte’s coverage explains that, too. Medicare Advantage is popular with many seniors, and the insurance industry lobbies hard for the program, often through “grassroots” efforts like a recent “food truck” promotion that drew visits from Sens. Mark Warner and Orrin Hatch.

In past years, these lobbying efforts have helped turn proposed rate cuts into increases, and there is bipartisan support in Congress for the status quo.

http://www.cjr.org/the_second_opinio..._integrity.php

Thanks, Repugs. Screwing taxpayers again, as always, by distributing taxpayer wealth to BigCorp

[boutons_deux]

16 Million Fewer Uninsured Thanks To Obamacare

More than 16 million Americans gained health coverage because of the Affordable Care Act, mainly via the law's health insurance exchange and Medicaid expansion, according to an analysis published Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The government estimate is consistent with numerous surveys taken over the past two years. The Health and Human Services report issued Monday is based in part on findings from the polling company Gallup, which found the uninsured rate has fallen from 20.3 percent in October 2013, when Obamacare sign-ups began, to 12.3 percent during the first quarter of this year.

The latest figures stand as more evidence that Obamacare is achieving one of its core goals of reducing the number of uninsured Americans, even as the Affordable Care Act remains embattled in Congress and faces an uncertain future at the Supreme Court.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...ushpmg00000003

Repeal O'BamaCare!

[boutons_deux]

HUSSEIN OBAMAcare kickin Repug ass

once people get the TRUTH rather than the Repug/Fox lies and FUD:

Poll on Health Care Law Shows Increased Support

The gap between Americans who view the Affordable Care Act favorably and those who do not is smaller now than at any time since the fall of 2012, a year before the law’s disastrous rollout, according to a monthly poll that has tracked at udes about the polarizing law since President Obama signed it five years ago.

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted in early March by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy research group, found that 43 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of the law, while 41 percent viewed it favorably. Though more Americans continue to reject the law than embrace it, the margin has narrowed considerably even since last July, when 53 percent viewed it unfavorably in the Kaiser poll and 37 percent viewed it favorably.

Drew Altman, the foundation’s president, noted that the near closing of the gap had happened after a three-month open enrollment period that involved few technological problems, and at a time when the law is not being as bitterly debated in Washington and in the states as it has been in the past.

“It reflects the fact that the last several months have not been a time when, compared to the past, the Affordable Care Act has been under sharp political attack,”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/20...port.html?_r=0

so Repugs' totally bogus, -red-states and America totally DISHONEST FUD of "sharp political attack" on Obamacare ceases, AMERICA ADVANCES!

Thanks, Repugs!

[cd021]

Obama Care Approval Rating:

March, 2015

Approval-41%
Disapproval-43%
Don't Know-15%

In July, 2014 (8 months ago)

Approval-37%
Disapproval-53%
Don't Know-10%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6900938.html

Americans starting to figure it out

[boutons_deux]

Obama Care Approval Rating:

March, 2015

Approval-41%
Disapproval-43%
Don't Know-15%

In July, 2014 (8 months ago)

Approval-37%
Disapproval-53%
Don't Know-10%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6900938.html

Americans starting to figure it out

The disapprovers includes significant %age who want ACA to be more "socialistic", including a non-profit govt health insurance option, like universal Medicare (kill Advantage).

[boutons_deux]

With Expansion of Medicaid, Some States Are Identifying More New Diabetes Cases

suggesting that the health care law may be helping thousands of people get earlier treatment for one of this country’s costliest medical conditions.

One in 10 Americans have diabetes, and nearly a third of cases have not been diagnosed. The disease takes a toll if it is caught too late, eventually causing heart attacks, blindness, kidney failure and leg and foot amputations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the disease accounts for $176 billion in medical costs annually. The poor and minorities are disproportionately affected.

In the states that expanded Medicaid, the number of Medicaid enrollees with newly identified diabetes rose by 23 percent, to 18,020 in the first six months of 2014, from 14,625 in the same period in 2013. The diagnoses rose by only 0.4 percent — to 11,653 from 11,612 — in the states that did not expand Medicaid.

In all, the Quest study identified 434,288 people as having diabetes — equal to about a quarter of all new American cases in a year, according to the most recent federal data.
The number of Americans with diabetes more than tripled from 1990 to 2010,

“We just know the change for Quest. But that change was real. And it was not splitting hairs — 23 percent versus zero.”

is the first step in preventing some of the most severe long-term consequences and saving dollars and lives. He pointed out that diabetes rates tended to be highest in the Southern states that did not expand Medicaid, and that full insurance coverage there would likely produce an even stronger effect.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/science/with-expansion-of-medicaid-some-states-are-identifying-more-new-diabetes-cases.html

So, all you right-wingers who vote in Repug Death Panelists, how's it goin'?

Repugs are committing HOMICIDE, and increasing Medicaid spending, for political purposes for not expanding Medicaid.

[Winehole23]

AZ, AK, IN, IA, MI, NV, NY, MA, NM, ND and OH, all GOP run states, have expanded Medicare.

TN and UT have plans to do so.

So then, wouldn't it be true to say Republicans are saving lives in at least a dozen states?

[Winehole23]

if King v. Burwell fails and a Republican is elected in 2016, opposition to to the ACA and expanding Medicare will diminish. the political cost of reducing access to healthcare will be too high -- look how many GOP controlled states have already caved.

[boutons_deux]

AZ, AK, IN, IA, MI, NV, NY, MA, NM, ND and OH, all GOP run states, have expanded Medicare.

TN and UT have plans to do so.

So then, wouldn't it be true to say Republicans are saving lives in at least a dozen states?

yep, but it always Repugs shoveling money to BigCorp, not the original Medicaid plan.

The still-recalcitrant and caving Repugs look pretty stupid, but their Medicaid-needy voters don't care, because even when govt helps them save their heatlh and lives, they hate govt blindly.

[Winehole23]

when Dems expand health care it's compassion, but when the GOP does it, it's because they're greedy and stupid.

(rolls eyes)

[Winehole23]

demonizing one side completely makes you look like the unreasonable asshole who twists words and tortures facts until they say what you want them to.

[boutons_deux]

when Dems expand health care it's compassion, but when the GOP does it, it's because they're greedy and stupid.

(rolls eyes)

When did Repugs expand expand healthcare?

[boutons_deux]

demonizing one side completely makes you look like the unreasonable asshole who twists words and tortures facts until they say what you want them to.

Not my job to demonize the non-Repugs. Whine Hole is butthurt.

[TeyshaBlue]

Job.

[Winehole23]

trolling the GOP. it's his job.

[boutons_deux]

trolling the GOP. it's his job.

I troll all you jerks and stalkers. It's my job

[TeyshaBlue]

Job.

[boutons_deux]

TB just got trolled, and he doesn't even know it.

[TeyshaBlue]

Trolled.

[Winehole23]

odd wrinkle:

The U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through annual appropriations.

At issue are payments to insurers known as cost-sharing subsidies. These payments come about because President Obama’s healthcare law forces insurers to limit out-of-pocket costs for certain low income individuals by capping consumer expenses, such as deductibles and co-payments, in insurance policies. In exchange for capping these charges, insurers are supposed to receive compensation.


What’s tricky is that Congress never authorized any money to make such payments to insurers in its annual appropriations, but the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...care-payments/