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Showing posts with label health insurance exchanges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health insurance exchanges. Show all posts
WITH all the media coverage of the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare there are still too many Americans who don't realize they may qualify for a government subsidy to help pay for the health insurance plan they choose. Share this calculator with family, friends and coworkers who should be signing up with the federal government health care exchange or with one of the state exchanges. No matter what you think of the Affordable Care Act, you know life for family, friends and coworkers will be better for them if they have health insurance. Please share this e mail.....
Over the weekend, I was shocked to read this: Nearly seven out of 10
uninsured people don't know that financial assistance may be available
for anyone looking for coverage through the new health insurance
marketplace.
The reality is, about six in 10 uninsured applicants can pay less than $100 per month for coverage.
THE repiglicans and tea-baggers and their corporate masters, the voluntarily ignorant, the haters, the liars, the greedy are all ramping up their attacks on Obamacare. At times the most rabid of those who oppose Obamacare are almost hysterical, lending credence to the need to increase mental health coverage. Their goal is to destroy Obamacare, to take us back to being the nation with the "best health care in the world, if you can afford it". WE MUST NOT, WE WILL NOT GO BACK to the days of people being denied health care because they can't afford it, to people being denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, to children being denied health care because they are uninsured, to families being destroyed financially because of catastrophic illness. There are problems with the launch of Obamacare, but the tens of thousands who have signed up since 1 OKT 13 and the tens of thousands "window shopping" on the government exchange and health care websites and even the numbers of people who tried to sign up but were not able to because of the website problems testify to the need and desire for affordable health insurance. This system will be fixed, and it will work in spite of the obstructionism of repiglicans, tea-baggers and jellyfish democrats. This from Daily Kos and HuffPost......
This should be the day's leading Obamacare news: enrollements across the country are surging, coming in ahead of projections in states across the country.
"What we are seeing is incredible momentum," said Peter Lee,
director of Covered California, the nation's largest state insurance
marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally
in October. California—which enrolled about 31,000 people in health
plans last month—nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this
month.
Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are
outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the
federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second
half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials
said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October
enrollment figure, officials said.
Enrollments are moving at a faster clip than during October in these,
despite the fact that some people are confused by the problems the
federal site has had, not sure if the sites in their own states are
working. Covered California's director said that the state has had to
change its marketing to remind people that the state site wasn't the
same as the federal site, and was working just fine.
Unfortunately, so far enrollments on the federal site are still
lagging. For example, just 2,991 people in Texas were able to complete
enrollment in October, fewer than Kentucky, which has a sixth of Texas'
population. But there's better news on the federal site front today, as
well. HealthCare.gov is now working for 90 percent of users
who have tried again to sign up. The Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services updated reporters Monday with the news that the site
was functioning better, and that it had sent out 275,000 emails to
people who had started to create accounts, but couldn't get through the
process. CMS says that 90 percent of those people who tried again got
all the way through the process. So far in November, 50,000 people have selected a plan in the federal site, up from 27,000 for the entire month of October.
Many people are likely still in window-shopping mode, and enrollments
should pick up even more—both on the state sites and the federal
site—in the last week or two before the December 15 deadline for
insurance to be in place on January 1, and then again in February and
March before the final deadline. The Massachusetts experience
provides the best model for enrollment patterns, and in the first four
months of enrollment just about one-fifth of the uninsured population
enrolled.
The people will come. They're not freaked out over what most people
perceive as inevitable: a problematic new government program. They're
not abandoning support
for the program in droves. They're not calling for an end to the
program. They're patient enough to give it time to work, even if
Republicans and the traditional media are not.
Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Tue Nov 19, 2013 at 09:32 AM PST.
We're entering a bizarre end-of-the-year edition of Silly Season
in which the news media is laser-focused on the wrong things. As
stories about the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act begin to
dissipate, it looks like we've segued into an especially nonsensical "MSNBC Anchor Wants to Poop in Palin's Mouth" meets "Wacky Toronto Mayor Does Wacky Stuff" news cycle.
Lost in the mix, of course, is the ongoing far-right effort to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.
I'm not talking about the myths and propaganda -- the "death panel"
nonsense and the like. This is serious business: the well-financed,
broadly implemented sabotage campaign designed to rig the law for
failure, while also making it more difficult for Americans to receive
insurance. Sabotaging the Website
We've known for quite some time that most Republican governors
refused to open health insurance exchanges in their states. 27 states
don't have exchanges and therefore uninsured residents are shuffled over
to the Healthcare.gov website to buy a policy.
However, earlier this month, we learned that Republican Party leadership directly urged those governors not to do it -- chiefly to burden the federal exchange with a heavier load.
Worse yet, the ACA contained zero funding for the development and
implementation of the site, and there's no way the congressional
Republicans would ever authorize more money for it. It's unclear why the
federal exchange was unfunded in the law, but one thing's for sure, a
House of Representatives that voted 46 times to totally repeal the law wouldn't have coughed up a dime to rectify the oversight.
So, what happened? A cash-starved Healthcare.gov development process,
which precipitated serious glitches when October 1 rolled around --
problems that should never have occurred.
And those glitches might've been exacerbated when right-wing
hacktivists reportedly conducted "denial of service" attacks against
Healthcare.gov -- deliberate attempts to overwhelm the website's
servers. CNN reported on Monday:
Hackers have attempted more than a dozen cyber attacks
against the Obamacare website, according to a top Homeland Security
Department official. The attacks, which are under investigation, failed,
said the official.
Authorities also are investigating a separate report of a
tool designed to put heavy strain on HealthCare.gov through a so-called
distributed denial of service. It does not appear to have been
activated.
What else? Sabotaging the Medicaid Expansion
Americans for Prosperity, funded by Charles and David Koch, launched advertising campaigns
to strong-arm state lawmakers to block the expansion Medicaid in
Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Virginia. Once again, in the 26 states that blocked
the Medicaid expansion, we're left with five to eight million people
who are consequently unable to afford exchange policies but who also
make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
In Alaska yesterday,
Governor Sean Parnell, a Republican, obviously, rejected the Medicaid
expansion thus denying health insurance to 40,000 Alaskans. Parnell
said, "I believe a costly Medicaid expansion especially on top of the
broken Obamacare system is a hot mess."
That's a lie. Fact: the federal government pays the entire cost of
the Medicaid expansion for 2014 through 2016. The states pay nothing. So
it's not costly at all. In fact, it's free for the first three years.
What happens when the expansion is blocked throughout more than half
the nation? Potentially millions of pissed-off working class Americans
due to what's perceived as punitively expensive Obamacare premiums --
premiums that are only too expensive because Republican governors
blocked the Medicaid expansion.
There's more. Sabotaging ACA Marketplace Enrollment
Speaking of the Koch brothers and Alaska, a group called Foundation for Government Accountability launched a campaign
to convince Alaskans to deliberately not buy insurance policies in
order to undermine ACA enrollment goals, and, naturally, to express
their self-defeating hatred of President Obama. Smart.
A pair of websites, along with accompanying Facebook pages, were
launched back in September: dontenrollalaska.org and
knowthefactsalaska.org. And go figure:
Based in Naples, Fla., the Foundation for Government
Accountability (FGA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit that "promotes public
policies that achieve limited, constitutional government and a robust
economy that will be an engine for job creation across the states." One
of the foundation's directors is Robert Levy, the chairman of the board
of the Cato Institute, the Washington, D.C. think tank with a long and
complicated relationship with the Koch brothers.
Yep. All roads lead back to the Kochs.
There's something especially visceral and sinister about
well-protected billionaires telling middle class Americans to go without
health insurance in order to, you know, kick Obama in nuts.
At the end of the day, if not enough people enroll in the exchanges,
the law entirely falls apart. Combined with everything else, that's
sabotage, plain and simple, while the Koch brothers can rest assured
knowing they'll never be without quality healthcare, so screw it. Let
fly. After all, the traditional press won't really cover it with the
same hard-nippled vigor with which they've covered the buggy website, or
with which they've almost universally blamed the low enrollment numbers
on the president.
For that, much of the press is an active, though not entirely knowing
conspirator in the sabotage plot. And there's no indication any of it
will change any time soon. Cross-posted at The Daily Banter. Click here to listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast. BobCesca.com Blog with special thanks to Karin Riley Porter.
I got this from an old friend. We are friends, Terry and Barb are like family. But we are political opposites, they are extremely conservative republicans, I am a radical Christian Socialist. Their e mail and my response below.....
I received my "Obamacare enrollment
packet: This is good
FYI ...... I wanted to let you
know that earlier today I received my "Obamacare enrollment packet” from
the White House. It contained:
· An aspirin and a band-aid. · An 'Obama Hope & Change' bumper sticker · A 'Bush's Fault' yard sign · A 'Blame Republicans first, then anybody and everybody'
poster · A 'Tax the Rich' banner · An application for unemployment and a free
cellphone · An application for food
stamps · A prayer rug · A letter assigning my debt to my grandchildren · And lastly, a coupon for a machine that blows smoke up my
ass. Everything was made in "China" and
all directions were in Spanish. Keep an eye out. Yours
should be arriving soon.
I signed up. I saved. And so will millions of Americans.
Honestly, I couldn’t wait to sign up for ObamaCare — not because I
talk about it on television, but because I’m tired of being ripped off
by my insurance company.
I live in New York State — which for several decades has had the highest individual insurance premiums in the nation.
For the past three years, since leaving a job at a non-profit
organization and then exhausting my COBRA, I have relied on the
individual insurance market to get coverage for myself, my partner and
our daughter.
Ideologues may not like ObamaCare, but my wallet and my family’s health sure do.
Three years ago when I was shopping for insurance, there weren’t that
many options to choose from. And the plan I ended up with is expensive
and, to put it bluntly, crappy.
Currently, I pay $965 per month for family coverage that includes:
• a whopping $7,000 deductible;
• $36,000 out-of-pocket max per year;
• an annual coverage limit of $2,000,000;
• a $35 co-pay for doctor’s visits ($55 for specialists); and
• a $15 co-pay for generic prescriptions.
All this plus the plan has very limited out-of-network coverage that,
I found out the hard way, is subject to such a gauntlet of procedural
hurdles that my family has spent thousands of dollars in
so-far-unreimbursed out-of-network expenses.
I’m not going to tell you who my current provider is, though I’m
inclined to purely out of loathing and spite. But for the record, for
over a year I paid for their version of “gold” coverage that had a
$3,000 deductible, only a $25 doctor’s co-pay and a $6,000 out-of-pocket
max.
But that plan didn’t process any of my reimbursements either and cost
a whopping $1,687 per month. That’s over $20,000 per year!
You can see why, regardless of what party I vote for, I was excited to have some more affordable options.
So I logged onto the New York State health insurance exchange
website. Yeah, I had a few false starts — the website was down a lot
early on either because of service glitches or overwhelming traffic.
For a few days, I couldn’t do anything at all on the website.
Then for a day or so I could “log-in” but not complete registration.
And then for a day, I could answer the questions to complete my
registration but not actually complete the process.
On one occasion, I got so frustrated at the stalled exchange website that I actually shook my computer.
Not pleasant.
But finally, early on the first Saturday morning following the launch
of the exchange site — probably because the rest of the state (unlike
my five-year-old) was still asleep -- I was able to log-in and complete
my registration and check out all my options for insurance.
There were literally 50 plans that were better than my current
insurance -- both with lower premiums, lower out-of-pocket costs and
better coverage. And there were ten plans with a higher premium than my
current insurance, but with lower deductibles.
So -- and here’s an important point -- the reason that more people
haven’t signed up for coverage yet is probably that, just like me, they
needed to take some time (and first, find some time!) to weigh all the
options.
While the exchange site was user-friendly and explained my options in
a clear and simple way, picking an insurance plan isn’t exactly like
ordering a hamburger. It took a minute to find my calculator and think
about the options.
Within a week, I had settled on a “gold” plan offered by Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. The plan includes:
• a $2,000 total deductible;
• an out-of-pocket max of $12,500 for the year;
• a $30 co-pay for visits to our primary care doctor;
• a $15 co-pay for generic prescriptions;
• NO annual coverage limit — because that’s now prohibited thanks to the Affordable Care Act; plus
• an added bonus: the plan I selected includes child dental.
This option will cost my family $931 per month — $408 per year less
than my previous crappy plan and a $5,000 savings in deductibles. A big
win for me and my family financially and in terms of what’s covered.
Plus in the past, I spent several days looking for and comparing
insurance options. Under ObamaCare, even with the slow and sticky
website, I spent a total of four hours — to save over $5,400. That kind
of return on investment would make Warren Buffett drool.
Counter to wild stories
about the government taking over health care, the exchange was simply a
public portal to a range of all-private insurance options. I went with a
“gold” plan for lower deductible and out-of-pocket costs. And I chose
Blue Cross Blue Shield because my current primary doctor is in-network.
But one of the most exciting things is the new companies providing
private insurance through the exchange; I’ll be watching the reviews
over the next year and might change plans when re-enrollment comes
around.
As of October 20, the Associated Press reported that 476,000 Americans
had filled out insurance applications through the federal and state
exchanges. Not bad, considering the poor performance of the sign-up
websites.
But it’s only been 20 days since the exchanges launched, and folks
have 60 more days (through December 15) to sign up for coverage to take
effect on January 1, 2014. And people have 60 days after that (February 15) before the individual mandate penalty kicks in.
In other words, there’s still plenty of time to fix the websites and
for more Americans to enroll — and save. Meanwhile, we know that in a
state like Oregon, ObamaCare has already reduced the number of uninsured
individuals by 10%. Glitches aside, that’s a great start.
We’ve suffered through four years of outlandish attacks against
ObamaCare -- that it will kill our grandmothers, or at least just kill
our economy. But the fact is that ObamaCare has created a private
marketplace so that millions of American families like mine can get
affordable, quality health insurance while keeping more of our
hard-earned money.
Ideologues may not like ObamaCare, but my wallet and my family’s health sure do. Sally Kohn is a writer. You can find her online at http://sallykohn.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sallykohn. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/21/was-obamacare-guinea-pig/
MUCH to the consternation of tea-baggers and the right wing media people across the country are signing up for Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act / ACA. There are still issues with the system on the web, that is to be expected, just ask google, apple and microsoft. But the problems are being solved, and people are getting insurance.
Friday, October 18th, 2013
Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare
While there have been extensive problems with HealthCare.gov,
across the country people are using the Health Insurance Marketplace to
get affordable health coverage. See some of their stories below, then
share the news with others.
FOTZE ann coulter is spreading lies again, but what else can you expect from this Schlempe? From PolitiFact....
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
"No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare."
Ann Coulter on Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 in a column
Ann Coulter says no doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare
Share this story:
Conservative political commentator Ann
Coulter leaves a party at the Honey Pot in Tampa's Ybor City during the
2012 Republican National Convention.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is not known for
mincing words, but a recent column prompted many PolitiFact readers to
contact us, seeking a fact-check.
In the Oct. 9, 2013, column -- titled, "Democrats to America: We Own the Government!" -- Coulter pummels Democrats over provisions of President Barack Obama’s health care law.
We were most intrigued by one claim, since we hadn’t heard it before
-- that "no doctors who went to an American medical school will be
accepting Obamacare."
Really?
We tried to ask Coulter through her speaker’s bureau if she could
provide any evidence for this, but we did not receive a reply. We are
sure the claim wasn't intended as a joke, because it's included in a
bullet-point list of straightforward criticisms of the law.
So let’s start by looking at the claim literally. Is there any
provision of the Affordable Care Act that would prevent U.S.-trained
doctors from accepting "Obamacare" patients -- that is, patients who
secure insurance through the marketplaces that are a centerpiece of the
law?
We feel comfortable, both from talking to experts and from our years of reporting on the law, that there is no such provision. If there were, it would probably be ripe for challenge on constitutional grounds.
In fact, when we asked experts for their reaction to this claim,
their responses included words such as "outrageous," "ridiculous" and
"ludicrous."
"Of course there's nothing in the law that would bar any doctor from
seeing any patient," said Katherine Baicker, a health economist at the
Harvard School of Public Health.
So, no dice on the literal reading of her claim.
Still, we wondered whether there was some other tiny, buried grain of
truth in what Coulter claimed. Is the idea that American-trained
doctors will be pickier about accepting insurance?
There is some evidence that medical practices are wary about taking
patients from plans sold on the marketplace. In September, the Medical
Group Management Association -- a trade group for medical-practice
executives -- surveyed 1,000 physician groups that collectively employ 47,500 doctors.
The survey asked, among other things, "Does your practice plan to
participate with any new health insurance products sold on an ACA
exchange?" Only 29 percent of respondents gave a definitive "yes." That
rate is twice as high as the share that that said "no" (14 percent) but
less than those that were still weighing their options (40 percent).
The top reasons? A fear of bureaucratic regulations, low
reimbursement rates and the need to collect payment from patients with
higher deductibles.
However, it’s important to remember that this study is not evidence
that can be used to support Coulter’s specific claim, because it says
nothing about foreign-trained doctors.
In fact, the closer you look at the issue of foreign-trained doctors, the less plausible Coulter’s claim becomes.
According to a 2010 study by the American Medical Association,
about 26 percent of physicians in the United States were trained in
other countries. This number includes both foreign-born doctors who
trained overseas and Americans who received their medical education in
other countries.
But tough licensing requirements for foreign-trained doctors --
requirements that won’t be changed by Obama’s law -- are keeping the
number of foreign-trained physicians low. A key barrier is the need to
obtain a residency in the United States, even if an applicant had
practiced or had a residency overseas.
According to the New York Times,
just 42 percent of foreign-trained immigrant physicians who applied for
residencies through the leading matching service succeeded, compared to
94 percent of those who had trained in the United States.
With such high barriers to entry, it’s not credible that a flood of
foreign-trained doctors will suddenly swoop in and, without the help of a
single American-trained doctor, serve each one of the newly insured
patients who bought policies on the new marketplaces.
"I haven't seen any study that would suggest that American-trained
doctors would be disproportionately less likely to see the newly
insured," Baicker said.
And even if there were such evidence, "disproportionate is a far cry
from ‘none,’ " said Gail Wilensky, the former head of Medicare and
Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush. "There is no limit to the
nonsense that some are saying. This borders on the absurd." Our ruling
Coulter said that "no doctors who went to an American medical school
will be accepting Obamacare." Nothing in the law bars American-trained
physicians from treating newly insured people under Obamacare. It’s a
ridiculous claim -- one with a whiff of xenophobia -- that merits a
Pants on Fire.
THE repiglicans and tea-baggers and right wing fanatics and corporations who oppose Pres Obama are the ones who are spreading the lies, deceptions and misinformation about Obamacare. They are doing their best to keep the very people who need medical care out of a system designed to provide medical care for them. Here are two real life stories about Obamacare doing what it is supposed to do, from Daily Kos....
My Uncle was a good man. He was loyal to his wife and patiently cared
for her quadriplegic son. He was Christian in the old fashioned sense
of being kind and generous. He worked hard as a appliance repair man,
and his customers trusted him. He was quiet and gentle and loving. And
he died six months ago.
My uncle never thought to take care of himself. He had been in pain
for years, but didn't bother to have it checked out. When it became too
much to bear, his wife took him to the emergency room. They told him he
had cancer. That it filled his entire abdomen. That he had less than a
month to live.
And then they told him they could not help him, that he should just
go home and wait to die. You see, my uncle's insurance, which he had
paid into for decades, saw no point in paying for care for a man who
could not be saved. And he was a bit too young for Medicare. The
hospital wouldn't be paid, so there was nothing they were willing to do.
He went to a second hospital, and was told the same thing. He wasn't
offered any additional effort, any hospice, any real help at all.
His wife was heartbroken and terrified. She had NO idea how to take
care of him. What would he need? How would they deal with the pain? Was
there absolutely nothing that could be done? Panicked, she got on the
phone and called the local teaching hospital, and they, thank the gods,
knew what to do.
They put her in touch with a patient advocate, who convinced the
insurance company that they damn well were going to pay for whatever he
needed. The advocate arranged to have him admitted to the teaching
hospital and to have appropriate tests done. When their last ditch
efforts were clearly failing, she arranged for him to have the equipment
and medication he needed at home. She educated his caregivers. She let
them know they were not alone.
My aunt was told that this advocate position was created by
Obamacare. Most of my family is conservative, but not at all politically
aware. They had thought that Obamacare was something to fear. Now they
know better.
My Uncle died at home, with his family, in no pain, with no fear. His
last actions were to give a thumbs up to his brother and say, "I'm
good". That wouldn't have happened without that advocate's loving work.
And that is now what Obamacare means to my family.
Mark E. Anderson wrote a diary today about his first experience with
Obamacare being a free physical. When I read it, I knew I had to share
my experience. I hope others will continue the trend. This program is
about to change our lives. We should document the experience.
No matter what else the President does or does not do, I will always be grateful for this.
This is the biggest fear of every Republican that should not have
been if they had simply been party to the solution. Instead they lied,
misinformed, and ultimately made what would be a great law, a law that
will need improvement.
Kentucky is geared up with their health exchanges. They are now
informing residents of how to get access to health insurance. They
market their Obamacare state exchange under the Kynect name. The following reported encounter with a Kentuckian shows the dangers of being misinformed.
A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding
table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium
balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are
hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange
established by Obamacare.
The man is impressed. "This beats Obamacare I hope," he mutters to one of the workers.
“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the
operation. She doesn't. If he signs up, it's a win-win, whether he knows
he's been ensnared by Obamacare or not.
More on Obamacare—or Kynect—below the fold.
Right Wing Republicans have so maligned the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare) that they actually began to believe their own lying and
misinforming rhetoric. Fortunately all the data suggest that Obamacare is actually working.
Americans will now have brochures with actual plans and options to
choose from. They can now compare reality with the lies they heard.
Anyone wondering why Right Wing Republicans are in overdrive to shut
the government down lest Obamacare is defunded realizes the eyes of many
Americans are about to be opened. The millions that will see not a
giveaway but help in getting access to affordable health insurance,
screenings, and health care for the first time in years are also voters.
They are voters that will wonder how a politician could be so
convincingly evil to have wanted them denied something many needed for
their health care or financial survival.
Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is adamant that Obamacare be defunded. But Kentucky citizens are yearning for health insurance.
The crush of people don't greet Diaz-Dempsey with tea party dogma or
amateur constitutional scholarship. No one is there to complain about
the individual mandate or heckle about death panels. They have
questions.
They wonder if they could get coverage despite having a pre-existing
medical condition, how much it will cost them. They ask if Indiana has a
similar program, or if this was only for Kentucky. Could they just
enroll their child? They talk about their sons and daughters, neighbors
going without health care, and ask about the subsidies.
The vast majority are relieved to learn about the health exchange.
Linda Parrish, 47, showed up at the table and gushed to Diaz-Dempsey:
"This is what I've been waiting on." Parrish has health insurance, but
her best friend doesn't.
It is not all roses in Kentucky. The tea party has been calling
people telling them not to sign up because they falsely claim there are
no real health insurance exchanges. Many low income workers are against
it because they were lied to about what the costs would be.
Christopher McClure hobbles through the doors, his inner thigh
hurting from what he suspects are a pair of spider bites. He is not
employed and does not have health insurance. His wife Michelle, 29,
works as an assistant manager at a pizza chain making $12,000 a year.
She also has no insurance and would qualify for the Medicaid expansion.
But she's against Obamacare, convinced that it will wipe out her meager
earnings. “Next enrollment season," she says, "they’re going to sock it
to me.”
The McClures under Obamacare would be fully subsidized. They are so
misinformed that they have no clue that Obamacare is that one leg on the
stool that removes a financial burden that is materially affecting
their access to real financial independence. It makes sense to remove
the health care anchor from people’s neck giving them the wherewithal to
go seek a job or make their own job.
The reelection of President Obama which makes it impossible to kill
Obamacare before implementation is the best thing that has happened to
the uninsured, the poor, and the working middle class. The pilfering of
the last disposable dollar by insurance companies will eventually end.
Medical bankruptcy will cease and families’ economic stabilization will
begin.
Originally posted to ProgressiveLiberal on Fri Aug 23, 2013 at 09:18 AM PDT.
repiglicans and tea-baggers in the US House continue to hold meaningless votes to repeal Obamacare. These are a total waste of time, their only purpose is to keep support of their obstructionist policy (obstruct and defeat anything proposed by the Obama administration) going, no matter the harm it does to the nation, to their constituents. Here is a look at what the gop has proposed, in the past, to replace Obamacare with. From the Washington Post's Wonkbook....
Sens.
Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), first and third from
left, introduce the Patients’ Choice Act with Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), second and fourth from left. (Burr’s office)
Remember “repeal and replace”?
That was the Republican party’s 2010-vintage response to the Affordable
Care Act. It wasn’t that they opposed the idea of universal health
care; they just thought that the Obama administration and their allies
in Congress went about it the wrong way. They wouldn’t just repeal the
bill. They’d replace it with something better.
But what? The Romney campaign was very vague on this point, and the few points of commonality Congressional Republicans have on the issue don’t add up to a full replacement. Four years ago, however, they did. It was called the Patients’ Choice Act,
it was proposed by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Rep. Paul Ryan
(R-Wis.), two of the most influential Congressional Republicans on the
issue, and it was a credible way of covering almost all Americans; the
House bill got 13 co-sponsors (nine of whom are still in office) and the Senate bill got seven (six of whom are still in office).
Here’s how it would have worked:
• States would open health insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses could buy coverage.
• Insurance plans on the exchanges would have to provide a base level of coverage set by the federal government.
• Insurers couldn’t turn down customers, including because of preexisting conditions (guaranteed issue).
• Individuals and families would get a refundable tax credit to pay for insurance.
• That tax credit would be financed in part by limiting the tax exemption on employer-provided insurance.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Those are all sentences that
accurately describe both the Patients’ Choice Act and the Affordable
Care Act. There are plenty of differences, of course. Obamacare expands
Medicaid; the Patients’ Choice Act restricts it to low-income disabled
people, moving the rest of its beneficiaries onto private insurance.
Obamacare cuts Medicare provider payments; the Patients’ Choice Act
mean-tests premiums and does competitive bidding for private Medicare
Advantage plans.
Obamacare has individual and employer mandates; the Patients’ Choice
Act instead auto-enrolls people in state exchanges when they do stuff
like get driver’s licenses or register their cars (Duke economist Donald
Taylor calls this a “soft individual mandate”).
Obamacare limits the tax exemption on employer-provided insurance by
taxing expensive employer-provided plans; the Patients’ Choice Act
eliminates it for income taxes while keeping the payroll tax exemption.
Those are real differences. But they aren’t huge ones; the Patients’
Choice Act actually credits the idea of converting the employer health
exclusion into a refundable credit — a hugely progressive shift — to Jason Furman,
now chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, who was involved
in the health reform process at the National Economic Council. The
Patients’ Choice Act and Obamacare are both operating within the same
basic framework.
That isn’t a coincidence. Obamacare bears a heavy resemblance
to basically every real universal health-care plan that Republican
legislators have proposed in the past half century, including the
Patients’ Choice Act, Sen. John Chafee’s (R-R.I.) plan offered as an alternative to Hillarycare in 1993, and the universal plan Richard Nixon offered at the end of his presidency.
All four provide new subsidies for low-income families who make too
much to get Medicaid. All use either a nudge (the Patients’ Choice Act’s
“auto-enrollment”) or a push (Obamacare and Chafee’s individual
mandates) to get universal coverage. All but Nixon’s feature state
exchanges, include guaranteed issue provisions, and limit the employer
health exemption in some way:
Embracing the Patients’ Choice Act now, then, runs into a tricky PR
problem. Republicans could look like they have a plan to replace
Obamacare, as they’d likely frame it. But it could just as easily be
pitched as a right-leaning fix to the act that doesn’t muck with its
overall approach. That could be an awkward sell.
The Patients’ Choice Act also runs into a problem in that its
coverage provisions cost significantly more than Obamacare’s. According
to the Tax Policy Center, swapping the employer tax exclusion for a
$2,300 per individual, $5,700 per family refundable tax credit, as
proposed by the Patients’ Choice Act, would cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Obamacare’s coverage provisions, by contrast, cost
about $1.2 trillion over 10 years. You’d need to make up that revenue
somehow, or else accept bigger structural deficits, for the plan to
work.
I asked Ryan and Coburn’s offices if they’re still on board. A Ryan
spokesman said he is: “You’re right to note that Republicans put forward
alternative solutions and Democrats ignored them (well, except Wonkblog)
before they jammed Obamacare into law. Chairman Ryan believes the
Patients’ Choice Act would have actually addressed the main drivers of
health-care costs. Going forward, he believes similar common-sense
solutions would be superior to the Obamacare trainwreck.”
I haven’t heard back yet from Coburn — or from Sen. Richard Burr
(R-N.C.) or Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who also backed the legislation
— on his current views. But Ryan’s support suggests this idea has at
least some purchase in the conference. We’ll see whether future
repeal-and-replace efforts reflect that. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/25/republicans-had-a-plan-to-replace-obamacare-it-looked-a-lot-like-obamacare/?wpisrc=nl_wnkpm
in the nation.
Conservative political commentator Ann
Coulter leaves a party at the Honey Pot in Tampa's Ybor City during the
2012 Republican National Convention.
