Health Care Reform Dead

[lpetrich]

Originally Posted by Jerome

Obamacare is a boon to the insurance industry you guys dislike.

But it's the lesser of the various evils. I think that many of us would prefer "Medicare for All".

Funny how you can;t see this is nothing but a scam to transfer wealth from the worker to the elite only because you want to *believe* in Obama.

Talk about left-wing drag.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Jerome

That is not the same thing and you know it. You are being willfully ignorant.

Those 70+ million may just pay the fee because they forgot or had trouble getting on the exchange ... we will see.

Maybe when my company changes plans next time, I'll forget to sign up during the open enrollment period, or have trouble registering! This demonstrates that is reasonable to refer to everyone who works here having "lost coverage" every time the health plan changes!

[Jerome]

ACA in action to lower cost by denying access to care.

A New York brain surgery patient who’s stood strong for four separate operations is only now starting to crumble after finding out in February that Obamacare isn’t going to give her easy access to the care or providers she needs.

“I’m frustrated with the system,” said Margaret Figueroa, 49, who has a neurological disorder that has required numerous surgeries and ongoing medication, in the New York Post. She was covered for treatment, but then in February, she was forced to enroll in a new plan as required by Obamacare. That’s when troubles really hit, she said.

[...]

She said she paid her premium, received her new albeit temporary identification card, but then was denied service at her local pharmacy. The pharmacist told her she wasn’t in the system and that her doctors — the same ones who had been treating her all along — weren’t included in her Obamacare plan, the New York Post said.

“They just don’t have enough doctors,” she said in the newspaper. “Two of them are full to capacity, and the others aren’t even in my radius. There are some who don’t even speak English. Now I have to find a whole new set of doctors. The doctors I had were familiar with my condition. I’ve had my neurologist for years. You want to stay with someone who’s been in your brain and knows what’s going on.”

Brain surgery victim struggles with Obamacare: 'It's scary' - Washington Times

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I don't think the government counts as a middle man since they don't remove any profit from the equation. And a lot of savings is gained by being able to negotiate on a massive scale for the price of medical products and services.

Profit has nothing to do with having to pay a bureaucracy to transfer a fee from a patient to a doctor. Removing the bureaucracy, whether big insurance or big government, this will reduce the cost of care dramatically.

You can sue the government, and also we-in theory-have control over who is running our government and making the policy that determines how such as system would operate.

Not like you can sue a private company. It is magnitudes more difficult and costly, with the inherent conflict of interest considering the courts are the government. The purpose of government is to act as a neutral party in a dispute, you are removing this when you place government as a party to the contract.

I think such a system would break down because many people would not go to the doctor as regularly as they should if it costs them considerably each visit, this leads to higher cost for emergency care. Also not everyone will be able to afford this.

We are able to feed everyone without the government or insurance acting as a middleman between the eater and the grocer. As I said before, government does have a role in providing for those that can not provide for themselves.

If catastrophic medical is entirely private than many people would not be allowed to purchase or would have to purchase VERY expensive policies to get any coverage. Insurance is about pooling risk. It is critical to the success of insurance that those who don't need the care pay for those who do. So that that everyone is able to pay a reasonable amount. If private companies can pick their customers they no reason to insure those that are likely to cost them money.

Life insurance is the ultimate catastrophic coverage, it is super cheap.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Jerome

Gallup: Fewer people have health insurance now than in 2009 | The Daily Caller

Originally Posted by Jerome

15.4% is lower than 15.6%, but don't let that bother you.

Originally Posted by Jerome

Check here to see when Obama took office: Barack Obama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The uninsured rate was 15.4%.

Today the uninsured rate is 15.6%.

There are more uninsured.

Dur dur dur dur... Here's the problem with the deception you were attempting, Jerome... more facts keep coming in. Trying to present performance from before the law is even fully implemented as evidence of its failure has the fatal flaw that once it is more fully implemented, new performance numbers will come in that will be harder for you to spin.

Gallup: Uninsured rate drops to 13.4%, significantly lower than it was even before Obama won the Democratic primary.



Just as I predicted:

Originally Posted by erimir

Note that the percentage of uninsured starts to decline steeply when the exchanges go live, and that Gallup points out that the rate of uninsured in the second half of March was 14.5%, indicating it was still dropping.

Their next survey will likely find an even lower percentage.

Whoops! Looks like your bullshit has been unequivocally revealed to be bullshit! Who could've seen that coming?

What do you have to say now?

[The Man]

Long analysis of the cost of the Medicaid decision. Clicking through to DeLong's piece is worth it too.

Plus, have a bonus piece on the clusterfuck that is the Phoenix Veterans Administration Hospital.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by Jerome

Life insurance is the ultimate catastrophic coverage, ....

Originally Posted by Jerome

... it is super cheap.

------------

From The Man's link:

The expansion of Medicaid [in ACA] meant that a great many people who used to show up at safety-net hospitals without any insurance at all will now be covered by Medicaid, so the rationale for the Disproportionate Share Payments to safety-net hospitals that treat the uninsured will go away, hence the ACA eliminates the no longer-needed DSP. But in states in which Medicaid isn’t expanded, the need for the DSP remains. When [Chief Justice John] Roberts rewrote the law, did he rewrite the law so that the DSP remains for states that do not accept Medicaid expansion? No.

Attaboy, Cochise. Way to ensure that healthcare providers get totally stiffed.

Lobertarians-of-convenience advise not fucking with Medicare because "[p]hysicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living." Is that any less true of Medicaid? I think not!

[Jerome]

Get ready for massive tax bills to those who can least afford them.

The government may be paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the situation.

[...]

The inability to make certain the government is paying correct subsidies is a legacy of computer troubles that crippled last fall's launch of HealthCare.gov and the initial months of the first sign-up period for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Federal officials and contractors raced to correct most of the technical problems hindering consumers' ability to choose a health plan. But behind the scenes, important aspects of the website remain defective — or simply unfinished.

Federal subsidies for health insurance might be wrong for more than 1 million - chicagotribune.com

[Jerome]

Affordable is Expensive
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery

You just might want to pay attention to the latest health insurance jargon. It could mean thousands of dollars out of your pocket.

The Obama administration has given the go-ahead for a new cost-control strategy called "reference pricing." It lets insurers and employers put a dollar limit on what health plans pay for some expensive procedures, such as knee and hip replacements.

Some experts worry that patients could be surprised with big medical bills they must pay themselves, undercutting financial protections in the new health care law. That would happen if patients picked a more expensive hospital - even if it's part of the insurer's network.

[...]

Say the limit is $30,000. The plan offers you a choice of hospitals within its provider network. If you pick one that charges $40,000, you would owe $10,000 to the hospital plus your regular cost-sharing for the $30,000 that your plan covers.

The extra $10,000 is treated like an out-of-network expense, and it doesn't count toward your plan's annual limit on out-of-pocket costs.

That's crucial because under the health care law, most plans have to pick up the entire cost of care after a patient hits the annual out-of-pocket limit, currently $6,350 for single coverage and $12,700 for a family plan. Before the May 2 administration ruling, it was unclear whether reference pricing violated this key financial protection for consumers.

Cost-control plan for health care could cost you

[Kael]

This dire prediction is, of course, not quite borne out by the available facts, cited within the article itself:

CalPERS started with knee and hip replacements in 2011, steering patients to hospitals that had been vetted for quality and charged $30,000 or less.

Ann Boynton, the agency's health benefits director, said the program has been a success, with patients able to choose from about 50 hospitals.

"People do not feel like we went to bargain-basement hospitals where the quality is not good," she said. "The quality is the same, and in some instances, better."

Economist James C. Robinson of the University of California at Berkeley studied the CalPERS experiment and found not only that many patients shifted to lower-cost hospitals, saving money, but that expensive hospitals responded by cutting their prices.

But they don't let that stop them from ending on a note of IMPENDING DOOM!

Although insurers don't appear to be using reference pricing on the new health exchanges, Robinson said he thinks it's only a matter of time.

And doubly of course, none of this would be an issue if we had the sort of pricing and profiteering controls that every other industrialized nation on the planet has, but that would be SOCIALISM!!!!!

[Jerome]

price controls = limiting of supply

[Kael]

[Jerome]

I noticed you ignored the article about the massive tax bills coming on top of the increased insurance costs.

[Kael]

Probably because it's full of baseless speculation yet still admits the discrepancies go both ways, too high and too low. That the sources are three people "familiar with the situation" and documents they don't show or link to doesn't exactly boost confidence in its accuracy.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by lpetrich

I think that many of us would prefer "Medicare for All".

Sure, and many would prefer "insert any number of unicorns".

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by Kael

Probably because it's full of baseless speculation yet still admits the discrepancies go both ways, too high and too low. That the sources are three people "familiar with the situation" and documents they don't show or link to doesn't exactly boost confidence in its accuracy.

I guarantee you will be first on-line to call for the taxes to be collected from these marginal income earners due to their not correctly guessing their future income.

[Kael]

That's what will happen, for whatever percentage are receiving higher subsidies than the ACA calls for. That's not what I'd call for, since I'd rather see a real universal system put in place. [oldmanrambling]Hell if I had my druthers I'd go for ceptimus' suggestion of a "flattening tax."[/oldmanrambling]

[lpetrich]

Originally Posted by Jerome

Sure, and many would prefer "insert any number of unicorns".

Why that comparison? What would be so horrible about it?

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by lpetrich

Why that comparison? What would be so horrible about it?

Because it will just be an old nag with a fake horn. It will reduce access to care and cost more.

[chunksmediocrites]

Yes, building a health care model similar to the many, many UHC models in the world that in almost every instance have lower costs and better outcomes than the US model- in Jerome's mind that would surely be a disaster costing more and with less access somehow. Never mind that Medicare and Medicaid- who take the highest risk pools- still have lower overhead and higher satisfaction ratings than private health care.

Don't let evidence cloud your preconceptions that anything touched by government is bad. Cling to your biases like a life raft.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

... in almost every instance have lower costs and better outcomes than the US model ...

Lowered costs reduced access, in every instance. Dramatically reduced access in comparison to even the broken US model.

Mealymouthed 'outcomes'. They have to count bigger stillbirths to get the average lifespan longer. Many fewer 0 year-old deaths to pad the stats.

[chunksmediocrites]

Source?

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

Cling to your biases like a life raft.

Originally Posted by Jerome

Lowered costs reduced access, in every instance.

Say what you will about Dr. Corsi-Soetoro, but the man sure as hell can take direction.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by erimir

Gallup: Uninsured rate drops to 13.4%, significantly lower than it was even before Obama won the Democratic primary.



What do you have to say now?

[The Man]

Less stress now, better outcomes later » Balloon Juice

Shocking news — reducing immediate stress allows people to improve their distant futures.

A 10 percentage point increase in childhood Medicaid eligibility reduced the rate of high school dropouts by 5 percent and increased completion of a bachelor’s degree by 3.3 to 3.7 percent.

Previous research has demonstrated a positive short-term relationship between access to health care and education — when schools offer health care services to students, attendance rates rise and teen pregnancies fall — but this paper is the first to look at educational impacts over a longer time frame.