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

[boutons_deux]

Obamacare Opponents Still Await The Apocalypse



Conservatives denounced the plan as “socialized medicine” or a “communist takeover” of the American health care system. One notable conservative was especially alarmist, declaring that if the proposal passed Congress, “… you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

No, that hysterical tirade didn’t come in response to the Affordable Care Act. Those words were spoken in 1961 by Ronald Reagan, who was crisscrossing the country to campaign against the adoption of Medicare. Yes, Medicare, which Congress passed in 1965 and is widely considered a resounding success.

Fast-forward a few decades. The same alarms were sounded more recently, as progressive activists and politicians pushed for legislation to provide inexpensive health insurance for those who couldn’t afford it. Actually, the denunciations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, usually called “Obamacare,” may have been even more hysterical.

First off, let’s note that there has been no “socialist takeover” of American medicine. Obamacare uses private health insurance providers; the law merely sets requirements for health insurance plans and issues subsidies to patients who cannot afford to purchase policies.

As you might expect, the number of Americans with health insurance — and, therefore, with access to preventive medical care — has increased in the last five years. Before the law went into effect, there were 48 million uninsured Americans. Now, with 16 million people having signed up for Obamacare, that number has been cut by a third.

Furthermore, health insurance companies are no longer allowed to deny coverage to patients who are already sick or to set a “lifetime cap” on the amount of money a company will pay for medical care. Adult children, who might be in college or working at low-paying jobs without benefits, can stay on their parents’ policies until they are 26.

The Affordable Care Act may also have decreased the rate at which health care costs were escalating. Five years ago, medical care costs were skyrocketing, well beyond the rate of general inflation. Now, those costs are still going up — but at the lowest rate in 50 years. While economists aren’t certain that Obamacare’s cost-containment measures are responsible, many of them give the law credit.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamacar...he-apocalypse/

Dems kicked Repugs asses, and ESPECIALLY St Ronnie The Diseased, in the 1960s with Medicare and Medicaid

Dems kicked Repugs asses in the 2010s with ACA.

All Repugs left is their FUD and LIES, all proven to be lies.

[boutons_deux]

Anti-ObamaCare GOP Governors Collect $400M in Health Grants

Four anti-ObamaCare governors who are likely gunning for the White House in 2016 have quietly received nearly $400 million in grants under the law, federal records show.

The Republican governors —

Scott Walker of Wisconsin,

Chris Christie of New Jersey,

Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and

former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — have all spent much of their tenures working to undo the healthcare law.

All four have refused to help the rollout of the law, leaving federal officials to launch ObamaCare exchanges on their own in their states.

But a review of records by Reutersshows that the four states have received a windfall of federal dollars under programs created or expanded under ObamaCare.

Walker, Jindal and Perry have been the fiercest critics of the law. In addition to refusing state exchanges, all three have refused to expand the eligibility for Medicaid out of opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare...ors-eying-2016

Repugs, LIARS, HYPOCRITES, DEMAGOGUES.

[boutons_deux]

Fact check: Has Obamacare helped save 50,000 lives? Why yes, it has


Largely relying on more than 30,000 medical records, the study looked at how many fewer patient-related problems had taken place in hospitals—the study calculated 1.3 million fewer incidents over three years—and then used that to determine how many lives might have been saved. In general, the researchers used mortality estimates from other research.For instance, pressure ulcers, which result from a lack of blood flow to the skin because of sustained pressure, are estimated to result in additional 72 deaths per 1,000; meanwhile, adverse drug events result in an additional 20 deaths per 1,000.

Higher costs are involved, too, with estimated of $17,000 for each pressure ulcer and $5,000 for drug events. So overall the study estimates $12 billion in health care costs were saved in addition to the 50,000 lives. […]

The numbers might seem large, but the research seems solid, according to experts we consulted, and it is based on a review of an extensive database. The results likely reflect work that predated the ACA but at the same time the ACA has spurred even greater cooperation among hospitals. Since the president is using a figure more than a year old, it is likely understated—unless, of course, the interim number for 2013 turns out to be overstated.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...8Daily+Kos%29#

[boutons_deux]

The Obamacare Doomsday Cult Struggles to Adapt to World That Did Not End


The Republican Party in the Obamacare era is a doomsday cult after the world failed to end. Its entire analysis of the issue is built upon a foundation of falsehoods.

Michael Tanner, a health-care analyst at the Cato Ins ute Libertianism! , has a column forNational Review usefully summarizing the most current iteration of anti-Obamacare talking points. Most of Tanner’s piece is devoted to arguing for alternative proposals, but he begins with the ritual incantation of Obamacare doomsaying. Tanner does not argue that Obamacare is wrong because conservatives philosophically object to using taxation and regulation to transfer resources from the rich and healthy to the poor and sick. Instead he makes eight substantive claims about the law’s impact on health-care access. Every single one of them is overblown or demonstrably wrong.

1.“Millions of Americans were forced to change insurance plans.”

2. “ ... and others found themselves pushed into smaller networks with few choices of providers.”

3. “Premiums rose.”

4. “Businesses, laboring under the higher costs imposed by the law ... ”

5. “ ... have slowed growth.”

6. “many have delayed hiring … ”

7. “or shifted workers from full- to part-time.”

8. “The potential impact on the quality of care remains troubling.”

This is the reality that the entire Republican Party has failed to come to grips with. The American health-care system before Obamacare was an utter disaster — the most expensive in the world and also the only one that denied access to millions of its own citizens. Obamacare set out to change those things, and it has worked.

There is one remaining indictment of the law that Tanner makes, and it’s true. “The law remains extraordinarily unpopular, with opponents topping supporters by nearly 11 percentage points, according to the latest Real Clear Politics average,” he argues.

It is telling that, having lost every substantive argument about the law’s operation, their sole remaining refuge is an argument about its perception. It’s true: Their lies got halfway around the world before the truth could get its pants on.

Indeed, if you google most of the factual disputes I discuss above, you’ll get a lot more hits from conservatives making hysterical and false predictions than you will find from reports showing those predictions failed to come true.

Those myths still hold enormous sway over public opinion.

Far more Americans believe Obamacare has death panels, which is false, than believe its costs have come in under projections, which is true.

Conservatives have won the propaganda war over Obamacare. The trouble is that they think this is an indictment of Obamacare, when in fact it’s an indictment of them.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-to-adapt.html

Propaganda, Lies (O'Reilly!), Slander, etc are all the Repugs have, and 10Ms of Americans are ignorant, stupid enough (the ideal Repug base) that they believe it all.

[boutons_deux]

This Red State Almost Expanded Health Insurance to 280,000 Poor People -- Then Koch Group Got Involved

Bill Haslam, aims to expand Medicaid coverage to Tennesseans who live 138 percent below the federal poverty level ($16,000 for an individual and $27,000 for a family of three). It also aims, desperately, to differentiate itself from Medicaid expansion that's associated with the Affordable Care Act (Tennessee is one of 22 states that refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA).

The next day, the plan died in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, dashing the hopes of activists and sympathetic lawmakers who'd been energized by last week's resurrection of the proposal, after it had been voted down at a special emergency session in February.

It should not be surprising that anti-government conservatives backed by the Koch brothers gave torpedoing the plan their all. The day of the Moral Monday protest, Tennessee's chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group (David Koch heads AFP's Foundation), had relaunched its radio campaign against Insure Tennessee.

AFP-Tenn has relentlessly hammered the proposal's parallels to Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, making things exceedingly awkward for its Republican backers. "Obamacare has been a disaster. Expanding Obamacare in Tennessee will be the same," the latest ad said.

"Radio ads, social media and grassroots activism led by AFP-TN was a significant factor in the defeat of the Insure Tennessee plan,"

a larger AFP strategy of impacting politics at the state level, especially in states in the South and West with Republican-controlled legislatures, where "policy debates are between more moderate Republicans and the party's conservative wing."

"The vote was one of the clearest illustrations of the increasing power of AFP and other conservative groups funded in part by the Koch brothers,"


"Now we have to address the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Is Insure Tennessee Obamacare? I can assure you, it is not." Sen. Briggs declared.
Their sell was predictably pro-business Republican. They made market-friendly arguments, such as that a healthy workforce is essential to economic prosperity. They pointed out that many rural hospitals were at risk for closure due to the economic hit of treating the uninsured and noted that businesses might think twice about relocating to an area where their employees would not have access to a hospital.
"This is no free ride for the insurance-less,"

Michele Johnson, co-founder and executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, managed to come up with a hopeful message. "What happens now is, we take this democratic movement to every part of the state. We'll keep telling the truth. Just keep telling the truth."

http://www.alternet.org/red-state-al...ter1034202&t=1

Thanks, Repugs, you murderous, socipathic Death Panels.

[boutons_deux]

‘Give it up, a**hole!’: Tennessee Republican shouts at health care protester




A Republican state senator from Tennessee got into a heated exchange with an irate protester at the state’s capitol on Tuesday, calling the cons uent an “asshole” before stomping away.According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the protester was a supporter of Gov. Bill Haslam (R)’s Insure Tennessee initiative, which would extend health insurance coverage to many of the state’s poor and uninsured.

“Senator, are you willing to give up your health insurance?” the protester asked.

“Why don’t you give it up, asshole?” said Gardenhire as he walked away down the corridor.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/g...e+Raw+Story%29

Looks like not only TB "bag of s" losing his cool around here!

[TeyshaBlue]

RSS feed rousing the rabble per par.

[boutons_deux]

RSS feed rousing the rabble per par.

TB stalking the Great Boutons

TB coward NEVER articulates anything, just crap

TB trash-talking an Internet protocol

How that's bag of s tasting?

[TeyshaBlue]

stalking

Do I need to post slapping links again? Please say "yes" coward.

confirmation bias feed.

facile coward.

[boutons_deux]

stalking

Do I need to post slapping links again? Please say "yes" coward.

confirmation bias feed.

facile coward.

TB is really really butthurt

[TeyshaBlue]

...boutons is really scared.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol simpleton

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...20#post7603920

[TeyshaBlue]

Yeah, that's what I thought.

[boutons_deux]

18,000 Californians use extended Obamacare sign-up to avoid tax penalty

California officials said about 18,000 people have taken advantage of an extended Obamacare enrollment period that was created as a final opportunity to escape the health law's tax penalties

The special enrollment window runs until April 30 for people who claim they were unaware of the Affordable Care Act's financial penalties for being uninsured.

Peter Lee, executive director of the Covered California exchange, said Tuesday that since Feb. 23 more than 18,000 people have signed up for a private health plan and cited that reason for enrolling during the extended period.

Normally, obtaining a policy outside regular open enrollment, which closed Feb. 20, is reserved for people who experience a qualifying event such as divorce, having a child or losing employer coverage. That type of special enrollment is available year round.

Overall, 1.4 million Californians get their health coverage through the state marketplace.

Uninsured people can't avoid a health-law penalty for lacking coverage in 2014. But there's still time to do something for the 2015 tax year.

"It's not too late to avoid a penalty for 2015," Lee said. "2014 is water under the bridge. You can't affect that."

http://www.latimes.com/business/heal...407-story.html

[TeyshaBlue]

"Cadillac tax' the next big Obamacare battle
Experts say a majority of employers could eventually face the tax on health care benefits.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...ax-116659.html

[TeyshaBlue]

Obamacare Cadillac plans? You're gonna
Pay for that.....

www.cnbc.com/id/102170937

[Th'Pusher]

"Cadillac tax' the next big Obamacare battle
Experts say a majority of employers could eventually face the tax on health care benefits.

www.politico.com/story/2015/04/obamacare-health-care-cadillac-tax-116659.html

Everyone can agree that they don't want to pay for en lements.

I can't remember, did they end up repealing the medical device tax? At some point, we'll be left with the en lement and congress will have repealed all taxes imposed to pay for said en lement, but it will have been done in a bipartisan fashion. Hooray!

[TeyshaBlue]

Everyone can agree that they don't want to pay for en lements.

I can't remember, did they end up repealing the medical device tax? At some point, we'll be left with the en lement and congress will have repealed all taxes imposed to pay for said en lement, but it will have been done in a bipartisan fashion. Hooray!

The med device tax has not been repealed yet, but there's a pretty good push from both sides to do away with it.

[boutons_deux]

"deficits don't matter" so the Repugs would love to add $90B/year to the deficit, just like they'd love to privatize Fanny and Freddy handing free money to the financial sector (until they see F & F pumping profits of $50B/year into the Treasury).

What govt should do is a cadillac tax on home mortgage tax deductions, but the financial sector would block that.

[TeyshaBlue]

[CosmicCowboy]

Boos politics of envy.

[boutons_deux]

Boos politics of envy.

CC and conservatives ALWAYS wrong.

[TeyshaBlue]

delusional slapped hack.

[Th'Pusher]

If you can't repeal the law, you shouldn't be able to repeal the mechanisms implemented to pay for said law.

[TeyshaBlue]

The stealth repeal is as old as politics.