BigMedicine, BigInsurance crapifies healthcare.
ACA succeeded in getting more people coverage, but BigInsurance, BigPharma set the prices.
America will remain ed and un able until we have Medicare for all, paid out of everybody's pay slip, just like now.
And Govt MUST regulate prices of drugs and procedures. SCOTUS just allowed, 6-2, to let providers keep their prices, stats, etc, secret.
Blaming America's health care catastrophe on ACA is pure bull .
btw, IRS penalties are doubling for people who didn't buy insurance last year.
America is radically ed (and You People just accept it), and it will take a radical solution to un it.
ACA was a direct sop to Insurance and Pharma sectors. It's working more or less as designed (behind closed doors, prior to any legislative process): to keep insurance and pharmanceutical firms flush with cash.
meanwhile, rising premiums and deductibles for ever crappier coverage is becoming the norm.
only a few years in, the ACA isn't very affordable.
face it, boutons, it's crap.
Enrollment drops by over 1.1 million in last half of 2015
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth.../#771959b029ab
of yeah? ask the Ms of people who now have access to affordable insurance and/or have heretofore uninsurable pre-conditions.
US health care system is crapified by predatory, greedy for-profits assholes. ACA can't fix the entire stinking pile of US health care crap.
ACA needs fixing, as would any first cut of anything so complex (and as written by a team headed by a health insurance exec/lobbyist and the whole project extorted by BigPharma), but Repugs want to keep ACA unfixed to piss off people so the Repg ideology that all govt sucks, can't do anything good (for the 99%) is fulfilled.
the ACA is not sustainable and its affordability is exaggerated. coverage has been expanded, to some extent that is good, but also bad -- policies cover less and cost more year over year.
Health health care / insurance totally s Human-Americans, who are un able.
Proof: When ACA was the "best" that was politically acceptable, one knows we're all ed.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-19-2016 at 06:06 PM.
What did you guys expect? You give millions new "free" insurance someone has to pay for it...turns out relatively healthy middle class workers are paying for it...gee...what a surprise.
Before ACA, 80/20 or 90/10. And you don't complain about the healthies paying $100Bs every year for smokers' cancer, drinkers' liver, fatties' TypeII D, etc, etc.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-20-2016 at 05:42 AM.
The biggest problem I have seen in the ACA is the rush to healthcare services for those who don't necessarily need it. It is causing a back log for those who do need it, and can't get appointments for months at a time thus exacerbating their condition. Also nursing wages have remained stagnant for the last 10-15 years, while the job has only grown more difficult.
primary care docs and nurses had already been understaffed for many years, "free market" and all that magic.
Docs prefer the wealth of specialties.
Most nurses, like teachers, don't recommend, nor would repeat, their professions.
Pretty ed up, but what does one expect from The Proudest, Greatest, Wealthiest Country in the Universe?
Govt could lead with some solutions, but the Repugs would block them all.
Free market has nothing to do with it. It's government regulations bringing a ton of extra paperwork and mandating electronic health records for both doctors and nurses which is causing stagnation and burnout. Things can't get done in a timely fashion due to the ton of paperwork involved whether it's filling out forms trying to get medications or tests approved for patients or do enting things electronically which takes a lot longer than writing on paper.
Also, no one wants to see medicaid or ACA patients because the reimbursement is crappy. You're basically losing money when you factor in the time and effort compared to the reimbursement.
Another prediction failure for ‘Obamacare’ critics
Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, I put together a top-10 list of failed predictions from “Obamacare” critics about the reform law. As it turns out, however, there are new additions that we can add to an even longer list. The New York Times reported today:
The Affordable Care Act was aimed mainly at giving people better options for buying health insurance on their own. There were widespread predictions that employers would leap at the chance to drop coverage and send workers to fend for themselves.
But those predictions were largely wrong. Most companies, and particularly large employers, that offered coverage before the law have stayed committed to providing health insurance.
In fairness, it was generally difficult to take this prediction seriously before, and I imagine most health care wonks are less than shocked by the evidence. Still, Larry Levitt, a senior executive at Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Times that the employer-coverage market is proving to be even more stable “than anyone anticipated.”
Michael Thompson, the chief executive of the National Business Coalition on Health, which represents employers and other buyers of insurance, added, “The demise of employer-based coverage was definitely overstated.”
Wait, you mean claims from anti-health care partisans, offered as part of a ridiculous political crusade, have turned out to be wild exaggerations? Imagine that.
In the meantime, Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter noted that healthcare employment continues to be robust as the ACA takes root, with medical offices and facilities adding “36,800 jobs in March,
representing roughly 1 out of 6 jobs that were created in the entire U.S. economy last month.”I continue to think this chart, inspired by Forbes’ Dan Diamond, is very difficult for conservatives to explain away.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Failed Prediction #1: Americans won’t enroll in the ACA
In 2009 and 2010, it was widely assumed among Republicans that Democrats had fundamentally miscalculated public demand and consumers would show no real interest in signing up for coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, among some on the right, this was a foregone conclusion – Americans wouldn’t trust “Obamacare.” We now know, of course, that the opposite is true and that millions of families have eagerly signed up for benefits through the ACA.
Failed Prediction #2: The ACA won’t meet its enrollment goals
OK, so maybe some consumers would enroll, Republicans eventually said, but the ACA would inevitably lose the numbers game when the enrollment projections proved overly ambitious. In reality, both this year and last year, enrollment totals exceeded the Obama administration’s preliminary projections.
Failed Prediction #3: Insurers will want no part of the ACA system
Conservatives were absolutely convinced that private insurers would refuse to participate in the ACA’s exchange marketplaces, repeating the prediction over and over again. This also proved to be the opposite of the truth, as insurance companies have been eager to compete for Americans’ business.
Failed Prediction #4: The economy will suffer terribly because of ‘Obamacare’
Among Republicans, there was near-certainty that 2014 – the first full year for ACA implementation – would be an abysmal year for the American job market. After all, it seemed obvious to the right that “Obamacare” would crush job creation and push unemployment higher. In reality, 2014 was the best year for American job creation since the ’90s; the unemployment has shown sharp improvement; and there’s literally no evidence that the ACA had an adverse effect on economic growth at all.
Failed Prediction #5: Even if Americans enrolled, they won’t pay their premiums
When the evidence started looking good for the ACA, Republicans got a little desperate, looking for ways to downplay good news, and the “people won’t pay their premiums” talking point took root. It was, however, completely wrong.
Failed Prediction #6: Even if people pay their premiums, the flawed ACA structure will send premiums soaring
Those hoping to see the American system fail counted on soaring insurance premiums. This just hasn’t happened and the ACA model has proven to be quite effective.
Failed Prediction #7: The ACA won’t reduce the uninsured rate because it will only help those who already have coverage
This was a GOP favorite for quite a while, right up until the evidence proved the right had this backwards, too.
Failed Prediction #8: The ACA will lead to a “net loss” on overall coverage
This line was pushed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for a while, with the Republican leader arguing a year ago that “Obamacare” would end coverage for more people than it would expand coverage to, “a net loss.” Boehner said, “I actually do believe that to be the case.” As it turns out, his actual beliefs were ridiculously wrong.
Failed Prediction #9: The ACA will lead to higher deficits and a weaker fiscal footing for the nation
One of the projections that never sat well for Republicans, who sometimes pretend to care about the deficit, was that “Obamacare” would reduce the nation’s deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years. The GOP assumed the non-partisan budget analyses were wrong and proceeded to tell the country the law would make the deficit larger and “bankrupt” the country. According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, Republicans got this backwards, too. In fact, the overall price tag of the ACA is now smaller than previously projected.
Failed Prediction #10: Americans will end up hating the coverage they receive through the ACA
Customer satisfaction rates came as a huge surprise to Republicans, who expected the opposite results: “A majority of Americans give good reviews for insurance they recently acquired through government exchanges within the past year, a new poll shows. With the second round of Obamacare enrollment set to begin on Saturday,
71 percent said their coverage through the exchanges was good or excellent, according to a Gallup poll released Friday. Another
19 percent said the coverage was fair, while
9 percent rated it poorly.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...eir-lying-eyes
Keep pumping up this pos excuse for redistributing wealth and controlling 1/6 of the economy. The 3 risk adjustments end at the end of 2016. Hopefully the true cost of this abomination will be revealed on November 1 - just in time for the election - although it's probably a good bet that Obama will delay the start of the open enrollment period until after the election.
Maybe instead there should be some compassion for the middle class which is bearing the cost of high premiums, deductibles, co-pays and limited networks. It's only going to get worse when the risk adjustments go away.
Dear POS, the "middle class" was ed annually by BigMedicine, BigInsurance skimming your salary for decades before ACA was dreamed of. Where was your compassion then?
‘Obamacare’ delivers a big boost to those who need it most
When it comes to evaluating the Affordable Care Act’s successes, one of the key metrics is pretty straightforward: “Obamacare” is lowering the uninsured rate to the lowest levels on record, bringing coverage to people who didn’t have it. But it turns out there’s an even more detailed way to consider this measurement.
The New York Times, relying largely on Census data, published a fascinating report on which American cons uencies have seen the sharpest improvements thanks to the reform law, and the results point to an important angle for the larger political debate.
The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for low-wage workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found. Immigrants of all backgrounds – including more than a million legal residents who are not citizens – had the sharpest rise in coverage rates.
Hispanics, a coveted group of voters this election year, accounted for nearly a third of the increase in adults with insurance. That was the single largest share of any racial or ethnic group, far greater than their 17 percent share of the population. Low-wage workers, who did not have enough clout in the labor market to demand insurance, saw sharp increases. Coverage rates jumped for cooks, dishwashers, waiters, as well as for hairdressers and cashiers. Minorities, who disproportionately worked in low-wage jobs, had large gains.
In other words, struggling, low-wage workers, who tend to have the least amount of political capital, have seen the biggest gains. While there’s been progress among every demographic since the ACA was implemented, the Times analysis found that the reform law has narrowed “the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” even while income inequality has gotten worse overall.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Study: Medicaid Expansion Encourages More Poor Adults To Get Health Care
In states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, low-income adults were more likely to see a doctor, stay overnight in a hospital and receive their first diagnoses of diabetes and high cholesterol, according to a study published Monday.
Yet researchers found no improvement in adults’ own assessments of their health, a conclusion echoed by similar studies, the authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Two factors might explain the lack of perceived improvement. People did not sign up for Medicaid as soon as it expanded in January 2014 so there was little time to better their health. Also, survey participants’ increased contact with health providers and fresh knowledge about their health might have negatively affected their opinions, the authors said.
Researchers at University of Michigan and the University of California-Los Angeles who did the study said it provides the first evidence of low-income adults’ increased use of health services in states that expanded Medicaid. Federal surveys of adults living in poverty conducted in the second half of 2014 were the foundation for the study.
Joel Cantor, director of the Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy, said the study confirms that enrolling people in Medicaid means they are more likely to access health services. He anticipates better results in 2015 after people have more time to use their healthcare coverage. “Health status is not a leading indicator. It’s a lagging indicator,” said Cantor, who was not involved in the study.
“The first step is people get coverage.
Second, they get care,” he said.
The third step is better health and we will see that in later years.”
http://khn.org/news/study-medicaid-e...k-health-care/
Light Blue states in image above are the Repug "death panel" states.
Thanks, Repugs
UnitedHealth Group to exit Obamacare exchanges in all but a ‘handful’ of states:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ful-of-states/
Or if you prefer Huffington Post - Major Health Insurer Bailing On Most Obamacare Exchanges
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0018f9cbade3b
Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster.
House Republican on health care plan: ‘Give us a little time’
One of the best running jokes in American politics is the one about Republicans releasing their own alternative to the Affordable Care Act.
Any day now, GOP leaders have been saying for many years, they’re going to have a plan that rivals “Obamacare,” and it’s going to be awesome.
Yesterday, The Hill reported on the latest installment in this ongoing fiasco.
A group of senior House Republicans is promising to deliver proof that the party is making headway in its six-year struggle to replace ObamaCare.
“Give us a little time, another month or so,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) told reporters this week. “I think we’ll be pretty close to a Republican alternative.”
Upton is not just some random figure in the broader effort: The Michigan Republican is a key committee chairman and a member of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “task force,” responsible for coming up with the GOP’s reform alternative.
Upton said the Republican group is currently in “listening mode” – which it’s apparently been in since its creation 14 months ago.
And yet, we’re apparently supposed to believe that in “another month or so,” House Republican lawmakers will be “pretty close” to having their own reform plan.
Who knows, maybe the GOP is making enormous strides towards its goal. Maybe “listening mode” is going so well that the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act is nearly complete. Maybe, with “a little time,” they’re ready to deliver.
It’s certainly possible, but the odds are heavily against it.
As we discussed when the Republican “task force” was created early last year, the political world may not fully appreciate just how overdue this GOP health care plan really is.
It was on June 17, 2009 that then-Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) made a bold promise. The Missouri Republican, a member of the House Republican leadership at the time, had taken the lead in crafting a GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and he was proud to publicly declare, ”I guarantee you we will provide you with a bill.”
The same week, then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters that the official Republican version of “Obamacare” was just “weeks away.” We’d all see the striking proof that far-right lawmakers could deliver real solutions better than those rascally Democrats.
This was nearly seven years ago. The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young has gotten quite a bit of mileage out of a joke, do enting all of the many, many times in recent years GOP officials have said they’re finally ready to unveil their big health care solution, only to quietly fail every time.
In early April 2014, then-House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said his party’s health plan was nearly done, but it was being delayed “at least a month.” That was 24 months ago.
In 2015, assurances that the Republican plan was on the way were also wrong.
In 2016, however, a GOP leader has been reduced to arguing, “Give us a little time,” seemingly unaware of how hilarious this is.
As we talked about last week, the problem probably isn’t dishonesty. In all likelihood, Republicans would love to have a health care plan of their own – no one likes to appear ridiculous while breaking promises – but haven’t because they don’t know how to craft one.
As New York’s Jon Chait explained,
“The reason the dog keeps eating the Republicans’ health-care homework is very simple: It is impossible to design a health-care plan that is both consistent with conservative ideology and acceptable to the broader public.
People who can’t afford health insurance are either unusually sick (meaning their health-care costs are high), unusually poor (their incomes are low), or both. Covering them means finding the money to pay for the cost of their medical treatment. You can cover poor people by giving them money. And you can cover sick people by requiring insurers to sell plans to people regardless of age or preexisting conditions. Obamacare uses both of these methods. But Republicans oppose spending more money on the poor, and they oppose regulation, which means they don’t want to do either of them.”
Or as a Republican Hill staffer famously put it in 2014, “As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a of a lot like the Affordable Care Act…. To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA.”
Which, of course, Republicans can’t bring themselves to do.
But hope springs eternal, and I can’t wait to hear more about the GOP’s progress in “another month or so.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Here's a Sneak Preview of the Upcoming Republican Health Care Plan
I've seen a leak of their upcoming plan. Here it is:
- Block granting of Medicaid
Repugs love 'em, "just give us the $Bs, we know where to spend it"
- Tort reform
- Interstate purchase of health plans (
- High-risk pools
- Tax breaks for buying individual coverage
- Health savings accounts
None of this would have much effect on the health care market, and it would probably fall about 19 million short of covering the 20 million people currently covered by Obamacare.
That's why they don't want to unveil it.
They know what they want, and they know how to craft it, but they still don't know how to make up a plausible set of lies about how it will do anybody any good. As soon as they figure that part out, they'll go public the next day.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dru...alth-care-plan
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