How to Protect Yourself From Obamacare

[Gaspar]

In no way shape or form can it cost less if the goal is to improve healthcare for everyone.  It's almost as if you have no real grasp on economics or you simply enjoy being a crank.

Well of course it would Conan.  All government programs yield a higher quality of service for a reduced cost.  Always!
Get with the program.

[heironymouspasparagus]

We already had coverage for the poor and it's even single payer for them: it's called Medicaid. 

What was the point in re-jiggering the entire insurance industry when all they needed to do was expand Medicaid in the first place?  What a bunch of smoke and mirrors for one of the biggest redistribution schemes ever foisted on U.S. citizens.

You are whining about $100 billion over 10 years - or $10 billion a year...actually making life better for people??  As opposed to when your guys spent over $2 trillion (on credit!) and 4,400 of our kids lives and 30,000 + wounded....on the wrong war!  And yeah, it IS history.  It is also relevant history, because the talk has been since Bush's day, continuing with the latest clown in the White House, that we should go slap the snot out of Iran and remake it into our own image.  Like we have done such a great job of in Iraq....

It's all about perspective.  Sadly, little exists.

[Townsend]

Prosperity Policy: Many sizes fit all

http://journalrecord.com/2013/03/27/prosperity-policy-many-sizes-fit-all-opinion/#ixzz2Oq4xopUn

A key component of the Affordable Care Act is the extension of Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults. With the Supreme Court’s ruling in June, the decision of whether to extend Medicaid was left to each state. The ACA gives states a huge financial incentive to extend Medicaid by committing the federal government to paying 100 percent of the cost of newly insured individuals for three years and 90 percent from 2020 onward. Still, many governors, including Oklahoma’s, have come out against accepting federal funds to extend Medicaid or expressed strong concerns. Now the federal administration is showing new flexibility in finding ways to extend health care coverage to low-income adults. Most notably, the Obama administration has given Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe support in principle for a proposal to use Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance.

[Conan71]

You are whining about $100 billion over 10 years - or $10 billion a year...actually making life better for people??  As opposed to when your guys spent over $2 trillion (on credit!) and 4,400 of our kids lives and 30,000 + wounded....on the wrong war!  And yeah, it IS history.  It is also relevant history, because the talk has been since Bush's day, continuing with the latest clown in the White House, that we should go slap the snot out of Iran and remake it into our own image.  Like we have done such a great job of in Iraq....

It's all about perspective.  Sadly, little exists.

First, Obamacare has zilch to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or other foreign policy issues. Please follow the topic or start another.

Second, justifying reckless spending by pointing to earlier reckless spending is precisely why we are nearly $17 trillion in debt. If you truly believe the WOT is justification for Obamacare, you are part of the problem.

Third, the 100 billion in the story previously cited is NOT the cost of Obamacare, that is new taxes on insurance providers which will be passed on to individuals via higher health insurance premium costs.  This alone should be of concern to you if you pay for your own health insurance or your employer does.

The latest CBO numbers as of two weeks ago is $1.76 trillion over ten years, close to double what Obama claimed when he sold this pile to Congress and the taxpayers in 2009.

President Obama's landmark healthcare overhaul is projected to cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, reports the Congressional Budget Office, a hefty sum more than the $940 billion estimated when the healthcare legislation was signed into law. To put it mildly, ObamaCare's projected net worth is far off from its original estimate -- in fact, about $820 billion off.

Backtracking to his September 2009 remarks to a joint session of Congress on healthcare, Obama asserted the following: "Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration."

When the final CBO report was released before the law's passage, critics surmised that the actual 10-year cost would far exceed the advertised projections. In other words, the numbers were seemingly obscured through a political ploy devised to jam the legislation through Congress.

"Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation," asserted Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner, "the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014." This accounting maneuver allowed analysts to cloak the true cost of ObamaCare, Klein alleged, making the law appear less expensive under the CBO's budget window.

If that doesn't tickle your fancy, maybe this will: "President Obama's healthcare reform law coverage provisions will cost less but cover fewer people than first thought," the Hill reported, considering data from the CBO's Tuesday report. Revised estimates of ObamaCare's coverage provisions indicate that 2 million fewer people will acquire coverage by 2016.

Moreover, the CBO estimates that 4 million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health plans by 2016, a far cry from the 1-million-person figure forecasted last year. Further yet, 1 million to 2 million fewer people will be granted access to the federally-subsidized healthcare exchanges, while an additional 1 million are estimated to qualify for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Provision.

In a second blog post published on Tuesday, Mr. Klein summed up the debacle: "It's also worth noting that we were told time and again during the health care debate that the law didn't represent a government takeover of health care. But by 2022, according to the CBO, 3 million fewer people will have health insurance through their employer, while 17 million Americans will be added to Medicaid and 22 million will be getting coverage through government-run exchanges."

http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-obamacare-price-tag-shifts-940-billion-1-163500655.html

[Townsend]

This must mean they feel they've been able to hide the bad stuff well enough.

Governor's Office to Release Emails on Medicaid

http://kwgs.com/post/governors-office-release-emails-medicaid

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Gov. Mary Fallin's office plans to release thousands of documents connected to her decision to reject an expansion of Medicaid that would have provided health insurance to an estimated 200,000 working poor in Oklahoma.

An attorney in Fallin's office, Rebecca Frazier, notified The Associated Press that the documents would be released on Friday.

The AP is one of several media outlets in Oklahoma that requested the documents under the state's Open Records Act.

Despite support from hospital and medical officials, Fallin in November rejected the option under the federal health care law to expand the state's Medicaid program to include Oklahomans earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Fallin claimed the expansion would be too costly both to the state and the federal government.

[Teatownclown]

She sucks so big! 1%? SHE'S HIDING SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=504&articleid=20130329_504_0_OKLAHO875938

Friday's release omitted 31 documents due to executive privilege, or less than 1 percent, according to the governor's office.

Evidence in those docs omitted....impeach her donkey.

[heironymouspasparagus]

First, Obamacare has zilch to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or other foreign policy issues. Please follow the topic or start another.

Second, justifying reckless spending by pointing to earlier reckless spending is precisely why we are nearly $17 trillion in debt. If you truly believe the WOT is justification for Obamacare, you are part of the problem.

Absolutely NOT justifying reckless spending - the Affordable Care Act justifies itself by what it has already done and what it is likely to do for a large number of people in this country who previously stayed "hosed" by the previous system.

It has plenty to do with foreign policy ignorance!  We have wasted trillions on nonsense for no valid reason - and no benefit to our citizens, but PLENTY of detriment!!  And yet, when something that actually does help, the RWRE propaganda machine fires up and spew their litany of lies!!  Once again, goes to that old Biblical saw about "mote in one's eye versus the beam in the other".

Still amazes that about half of the population consistently approves of something that is absolutely, diametrically opposed to their best interest - not to mention the lives of their children!  And disapproves of something that absolutely, positively will be of benefit to not just them, but ALSO their children!  That is psychosis!  And the Koch Brothers view of "freedom".


And lest the LWRE feel slighted - they do the same time on many issues!  But their issues tend to cost less and kill fewer.  Well, except for Viet Nam...which was a collaborative effort from Truman to Nixon, so doesn't really apply....

Side note; the deficit for this year is projected to be about $900 billion.  Way down from the last Bushy deficits.  Now, if anyone in Washington - meaning Blobama - had any brains or guts, the Bush tax cuts would already be gone, and we would be closing in on parity!

[Conan71]

Absolutely NOT justifying reckless spending - the Affordable Care Act justifies itself by what it has already done and what it is likely to do for a large number of people in this country who previously stayed "hosed" by the previous system.

It's not an RWRE machine issue.  CBO figures are showing the cost of Obamacare was grossly under-stated while coverage expansion was grossly over-stated in the pitch to the American public.  In other words fewer people are going to get new coverage than was promised and the cost is nearly double what we were told.  No one with any common sense would believe you can bring more people into a risk and claims pool and the cost would go down for everyone. 

[Gaspar]

It's not an RWRE machine issue.  CBO figures are showing the cost of Obamacare was grossly under-stated while coverage expansion was grossly over-stated in the pitch to the American public.  In other words fewer people are going to get new coverage than was promised and the cost is nearly double what we were told.  No one with any common sense would believe you can bring more people into a risk and claims pool and the cost would go down for everyone. 

How in he!l did that happen?  When has any government program EVER over-promised and under-delivered?  What a strange anomaly!
I am sure that the American people are so shocked that they are beside themselves.  Who would have ever thought that politicians would present a government program that was incapable of meeting its financial obligations or achieving its promoted social goals.  This is indeed a shocker.

[Teatownclown]

Whiners...accept the reality. Without the AHCA over the next 5 years there would be huge escalations in insurance premiums, prescription drugs, hospital care, and indigent care etc.  This new law has stymied the Medical Industrial Complex. It would be much worse if we had simply done nothing. Quit whining. Move on.

[Gaspar]

Whiners...accept the reality. Without the AHCA over the next 5 years there would be huge escalations in insurance premiums, prescription drugs, hospital care, and indigent care etc.  This new law has stymied the Medical Industrial Complex. It would be much worse if we had simply done nothing. Quit whining. Move on.

Yes, clown, the t-shirts should be available soon.


The other alternative would have been to eliminate the state by state regulation of medical insurance and allow people to purchase from a broader base of offerings therefore increasing competition and forcing decreases in price.  Combine that with the elimination of corporate/insurance collusion allowing the individual employee to choose from a multitude of plans through his employeer or independently, and we could have corrected the problem (that government created in the first place). 

I'm sure that once this thing morphs into a single payer system, services will expand and costs decrease. 

We've got to get those doctors unionized too! 

[nathanm]

The other alternative would have been to eliminate the state by state regulation of medical insurance and allow people to purchase from a broader base of offerings therefore increasing competition and forcing decreases in price. 

Hi, I thought you believed in federalism? Or is that only when convenient?

[Conan71]

Whiners...accept the reality. Without the AHCA over the next 5 years there would be huge escalations in insurance premiums, prescription drugs, hospital care, and indigent care etc.  This new law has stymied the Medical Industrial Complex. It would be much worse if we had simply done nothing. Quit whining. Move on.

It hasn't stymied anything.  There have been marked cost increases over the last four years in the run up to full implementation of AHCA.  When your medical professionals decide to retire early or only accept cash for payment then I suppose you will characterize them as greedy, un-caring individuals.

[Gaspar]

Government fails to produce a viable solution for small businesses, so the people get a reprieve until 2015.

WASHINGTON — Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.

The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.

This choice option, already available to many big businesses, was supposed to become available to small employers in January. But administration officials said they would delay it to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running insurance markets known as exchanges. And they will delay the requirement for other states as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/us/politics/option-for-small-business-health-plan-delayed.html

[Conan71]

Government fails to produce a viable solution for small businesses, so the people get a reprieve until 2015.

WASHINGTON — Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.

The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.

This choice option, already available to many big businesses, was supposed to become available to small employers in January. But administration officials said they would delay it to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running insurance markets known as exchanges. And they will delay the requirement for other states as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/us/politics/option-for-small-business-health-plan-delayed.html

You do know who is at fault here, right?