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How to Protect Yourself From Obamacare

Started by Gaspar, March 23, 2010, 07:51:49 AM

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guido911

Looks like it's time to start boycotting universities.  

QuoteWhen the Affordable Care Act passed in early 2010, many in academia—faculty and students alike—cheered on. But now that its provisions are going into effect, some of these same people are learning firsthand that Obamacare has some nasty side effects.

A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that many colleges are cutting back on the number of hours worked by adjunct professors, in order to avoid new requirements that they provide healthcare to anyone working over 30 hours per week. This is terrible news for a lot of people; 70 percent of professors work as adjuncts and many will now have to cope with a major pay cut just as requirements that they buy their own health insurance go into effect:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/20/universities-bludgeon-adjuncts-with-obamacare-loophole/

Can't help but laugh at this one.
Someone get Hoss a pacifier.

Townsend

Quote from: guido911 on January 22, 2013, 02:27:16 PM
Can't help but laugh at this one.

The actual article:

Health Law Pinches Colleges
Some Schools Cut Hours of Hard-Pressed Adjuncts to Avoid Rules on Insurance


QuoteThe federal health-care overhaul is prompting some colleges and universities to cut the hours of adjunct professors, renewing a debate about the pay and benefits of these freelance instructors who handle a significant share of teaching at U.S. higher-education institutions.

The Affordable Care Act requires large employers to offer a minimum level of health insurance to employees who work 30 hours a week or more starting in 2014, or face a penalty. The mandate is a particular challenge for colleges and universities, which increasingly rely on adjuncts to help keep costs down as states have scaled back funding for higher education.

A handful of schools, including Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Youngstown State University in Ohio, have curbed the number of classes that adjuncts can teach in the current spring semester to limit the schools' exposure to the health-insurance requirement. Others are assessing whether to do so, or to begin offering health care to some adjuncts.

In Ohio, instructor Robert Balla faces a new cap on the number of hours he can teach at Stark State College. In a Dec. 6 letter, the North Canton school told him that "in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act...employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more than an average of 29 hours per week."

Mr. Balla, a 41-year-old father of two, had taught seven English composition classes last semester, split between Stark State and two other area schools. This semester, his course load at Stark State is down to one instead of two as a result of the school's new limit on hours, cutting his salary by about a total of $2,000.

Stark State's move came as a blow to Mr. Balla, who said he earns about $40,000 a year and cannot afford health insurance.



"I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law," Mr. Balla said. "In education, we're working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example."

Irene Motts, a spokeswoman for Stark State, a two-year community college, said the new rules were necessary "to maintain the fiscal stability of the college. There are a lot of penalties involved if adjuncts go over their 29 hours-per-week average. The college can be fined and the fines are substantial."

Nationally, colleges through trade groups such as the American Association of Community Colleges are asking the Internal Revenue Service to write special rules for adjuncts. The IRS recently acknowledged the issues in higher education, but so far hasn't agreed to take further steps.

For decades, colleges and universities have cut costs by hiring adjuncts instead of tenured or tenure-track faculty. In 1975, adjuncts made up 43% of the faculty at U.S. colleges. By 2009, that number had climbed to nearly 70%, according to John Curtis, director of Research and Public Policy at the American Association of University Professors, a professional group with an affiliated labor union.

Many of the adjuncts have other careers in their subject areas, and teach only a single class each semester. But a sizable number make their living from teaching, and have to pay for their own health insurance. Most adjuncts who don't receive coverage through their employer will be eligible for subsidized insurance starting in 2014 through new exchanges set up by the federal health-care law.

Adjuncts long have complained about the terms of their employment, and unionization by them has steadily increased, said Richard Boris, director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education at Hunter College in New York. Some 37% of part-time, nontenured faculty are in a union, according to a survey conducted by the center between 2008 and 2012.

Some college administrators fear the fallout of the Affordable Care Act will further motivate unionization efforts, said Dan King, executive director of the American Association of University Administrators.

In the short term, Mr. King said he expects many colleges will hire more adjuncts and have each teach fewer classes. But that could make it harder for schools to find enough qualified adjuncts, he said. As a result, he believes institutions over the long term will need to create more full-time teaching positions that rank between a part-time adjunct and a tenured professor.

"I think colleges and universities are going to have to rethink their model for how they compensate adjuncts. It's clear to me over time the current model isn't going to be sustainable," Mr. King said.

At Community College of Allegheny County, which has an annual budget of around $109 million, administrators estimate it would cost at least $6 million to provide health benefits to the 200 adjuncts whose hours are being cut, plus 200 support staff who also work an equivalent of 30 hours.

That likely would have required a significant tuition increase, at a time when the school is trying to keep down the cost for students while absorbing reductions in state funding, said David Hoovler, executive assistant to the college's president.

As part of the college's decision to lower the cap on the number of classes adjuncts can teach, the administration also raised the pay per class by 2.7% and will start offering a health-care plan that adjuncts can buy through the school, Mr. Hoovler said. The college says the plan should be cheaper than what adjuncts could buy on the open market.

Large employers in the private sector also are examining the cost of insuring more employees. Some companies, particularly restaurant operators, have been moving to cut hours to reduce the number of workers to whom they would be required to offer health insurance. Others are preparing to expand health-benefit offerings to more such employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services doesn't expect the law will have a substantial effect on employment, citing the experience of Massachusetts, which has a similar requirement on the state level, as well as a Congressional Budget Office report on the Affordable Care Act.

Health care is just one issue that has been pushing adjuncts to unionize. Many say they also are looking for better pay, job security and more respect.

While the salary of a full professor with a doctorate at a public university has risen with inflation and now averages $120,000 a year, according to the American Association of University Professors, the pay for adjuncts has stayed flat. Even those with a doctorate earn an average of just $3,200 a course each semester, Mr. Curtis said. For a full-time adjunct with a doctorate, that can translate to less than $20,000 a year.

Many adjuncts who hope to break into the academy have been unwilling to risk antagonizing the faculty or administrators who have the power to elevate them to the tenure-track jobs they covet. But as those jobs have become harder to land, adjuncts have become more motivated to challenge the status quo, said Maria Maisto, an adjunct teaching English composition at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland and president of the New Faculty Majority, an organization created in 2009 to empower adjuncts.

She is hopeful that changes made on campuses because of the Affordable Care Act will help draw increased attention to the plight of adjuncts.

"We think it could definitely raise a number of HR issues that have fallen through the cracks," Ms. Maisto said. "It could open avenues for reform that weren't evident before."

Townsend

TW FB post:

OKLAHOMA CITY – Gov. Mary Fallin said Wednesday she will ask lawmakers for $16 million to pay for more mental health services.

Townsend

Mississippi's GOP Governor Says No American Lacks Health Care

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-young/phil-bryant-health-care-r_b_2534962.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

QuoteMississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) doesn't like President Barack Obama's health care reform law. It's too expensive and too intrusive, he says.

And Bryant has another reason to oppose the law, he revealed in an interview with Kaiser Health News: It's not necessary because everyone's doing just fine now.

"There is no one who doesn't have health care in America. No one. Now, they may end up going to the emergency room. There are better ways to deal with people that need health care than this massive new program."

If that sounds familiar, it's because this is a common rationale offered by opponents of expanding government programs that provide health care coverage. Bryant and others are referring to a 1986 federal law requiring hospitals that receive Medicare money (i.e., almost all of them) to stabilize and treat anyone who shows up with an emergency medical condition regardless of ability to pay.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney repeatedly made such comments during his failed bid to defeat Obama last year. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance and take them to the hospital and give them care," Romney said during an interview on CBS News' "60 Minutes" in September.

If, like Bryant and Romney, you believe that no Americans are forced to go without health care because they can't afford it, there's no compelling reason to support expanding coverage to millions of people under President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

Would that it were so simple.

In 2011, 48.6 million Americans had no health insurance, according to the most recent census data. Among those who do have coverage, many still can't afford medical care so they skip it. The truth is, there's a health care access problem and it's been getting worse. And Mississippi has the fifth-highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation: 19 percent.

Funneling uninsured, "underinsured," and poor people to emergency rooms isn't great for the hospitals, either. Hospitals absorbed $41.1 billion in unpaid bills (known in the business as "uncompensated care") in 2011, according to a report issued by the American Hospital Association this month. And unpaid medical bills can haunt patients for years and subject them to brutal debt collections.

Community health centers and free clinics don't have the capacity to handle all the patients who need help. Even in Massachusetts, where Romney enacted the model for Obamacare in 2006 and where just 4 percent of people were uninsured in 2011, free clinics still see a lot of patients, WBUR reported Tuesday.

The predicament is about to get worse for hospitals in states that don't expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Medicare and Medicaid currently provide extra money to facilities that treat a disproportionate share of patients who can't pay their bills. The health care law makes significant cuts to those funding streams -- because more people are supposed to get private health insurance or Medicaid starting next year. Based on this calculation, the American Hospital Association and other national industry lobbying groups endorsed the health care overhaul.

The hospitals in Bryant's home state see things the same way: The Mississippi Hospital Association backs the Medicaid expansion. "It is a win-win for Missouri," Herb Kuhn, the CEO of the association, said in a November press release. Kuhn was a senior health care official under President George W. Bush.

Bryant, like other Republican governors, opposes Obamacare's Medicaid expansion for poor people and he wants to stop state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney (R) from establishing a health insurance exchange in the state under the law. Instead, Bryant wants the federal government operate the marketplace for Mississippi residents, which is what 25 other states have opted to do.

Kaiser Health New's Q&A with Bryant touches on a lot of other issues, including his standoff with Chaney, his view that having Medicaid discourages people from getting better jobs and his threat to consider suing the federal government if more MIssissippians sign up for Medicaid benefits when Obamacare enrollment begins Oct. 1.

guido911

Quote from: Townsend on January 22, 2013, 02:34:47 PM
The actual article:


I linked to the story. Did you post the entire story to point out something?
Someone get Hoss a pacifier.

AquaMan

onward...through the fog

Gaspar

Quote from: guido911 on January 23, 2013, 01:21:44 PM
I linked to the story. Did you post the entire story to point out something?

He just wanted to show you that the link works.
When attacked by a mob of clowns, always go for the juggler.

Townsend


Hoss


Gaspar

Good article on the Protean option.  Many tech companies, like the one I work for, are like this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578193472562389926.html
When attacked by a mob of clowns, always go for the juggler.

Teatownclown


Townsend

In a switch, GOP governors back expanding Medicaid

http://newsok.com/in-a-switch-gop-governors-back-expanding-medicaid/article/feed/498511/?page=1

QuoteDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Once largely united in resisting the Obama administration's new health care overhaul, a growing number of Republican governors are now buying into parts of the system as the financial realities of their states' medical costs begin to counterbalance the fierce election politics of the issue.

This week, Michigan's Rick Snyder became the sixth GOP governor to propose expanding his state's health insurance program to cover more low-income residents, in line with the Democratic administration's strong recommendation. Eleven Republican governors have rejected the idea while a dozen, who have been mostly critical, have not announced a decision.

Although the Democratic president's re-election last fall cleared the way for providing health insurance for millions of Americans who don't have it, many Republican governors have resisted parts of the plan that remained optional. They have been reluctant to expand their Medicaid programs to cover more low-income residents. And many declined to take responsibility for the online exchanges that would offer subsidized private coverage to the middle class.

Both would pose costs to the states and also involved cooperating with a larger government role in health care that many Republicans strongly opposed.

However, the federal government's agreement to pay most of the added Medicaid expense, and belief that fewer residents would be showing up at local hospitals without insurance, have begun to break down some governors' opposition.

"Politically, the dynamic may be shifting," said Matt Benson, a senior aide to Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who proposed expanding Medicaid last month. "There may be some folks looking at this anew."
Two high-profile Republican governors, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida, have voiced skepticism about the federal terms but are still considering the option.

Most Democratic governors have supported expanding their Medicaid programs to cover more low-income residents, mainly adults with no children at home, who don't qualify now. With such an expansion, Medicaid would account for almost all of the state's poor. Under the new federal plan, higher earners would be required to get private insurance. Together, the provisions are aimed at sharply reducing the 15% of Americans who are uninsured.
But many Republican governors shrank from taking on any further costs for Medicaid, which has heavily burdened state budgets. The federal government would pay the full cost for the first three years under the new system, but the states would pay up to 10 percent later. Some governors worried that the federal government could decide to trim back its contribution in the future.

The governors now agreeing to opt in and expand Medicaid include Republicans from different regions of the country and different ideological leanings. This has prompted hope among some health care overhaul supporters of more GOP defections. In addition to Snyder and Brewer, Republican governors who support expanding Medicaid include Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, John Kasich of Ohio, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

In each state, the proposal must still be approved by the legislature, where there is still Republican opposition.

Snyder said that in Michigan, the expansion would provide coverage for about 500,000 uninsured residents, mostly at federal expense, and save state taxpayers $1.2 billion through 2020. The government now helps hospitals cover some of the cost of treating those without insurance.

"This is a federal program that we would not have necessarily created for Michigan," he said Wednesday, but "this is saving money and improving lives."

Governors have been under immense pressure to opt in from hospital and medical associations, as well as advocates for the poor.

In explaining their decisions, Kasich, Brewer and others have said rejecting an expansion would mean their taxpayers would subsidize care for those in other states, while receiving no benefits themselves. In Ohio, that would be an estimated $2.4 billion over two years, Kasich said Monday.

"Ohio taxpayer dollars are coming back to Ohio to support a significant need we have," he said.
But governors elsewhere said they fear the states would be saddled with huge costs if the federal government later reneged on its commitment.

"The federal government, because of their budget problems, starts cutting back and...then you've just bought into something of a lead sinker," said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, among the skeptics. He has asked federal officials to allow his state to craft its own plan for low-income residents.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has also questioned the terms, saying he didn't "believe the federal government can possibly deliver its commitment to fully fund the program."

Twenty four states have agreed to participate in another optional part of the federal health plan —setting up an online marketplace, either by themselves or in partnership with the federal government, where residents can shop for subsidized insurance coverage. The group includes seven GOP-governed states. Under the new system, the federal government will set up the online marketplaces, or exchanges, for states that decline to do so. The new exchanges are scheduled to go into operation in October, with insurance coverage beginning in January 2014.

heironymouspasparagus

I guess I have lost track during all the commotion...tell me again why someone would want to protect themselves from something that is good for them??

"So he brandished a gun, never shot anyone or anything right?"  --TeeDub, 17 Feb 2018.

I don't share my thoughts because I think it will change the minds of people who think differently.  I share my thoughts to show the people who already think like me that they are not alone.

Townsend

Lawmaker asks for AG opinion on whether Oklahoma has to obey federal law

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2013/02_-_February/Oklahoma_bills_aim_to_nullify_Obama_healthcare_act/

A member of Oklahoma's House of Representatives has asked the state's attorney general for legal guidance on whether the state legislature can block the Affordable Care Act and other federal laws it considers unconstitutional. Republican Lewis Moore, the chair of the House States' Rights Committee, announced on Friday that he had asked Attorney General Scott Pruitt for a legal opinion on the legislature's ability to nullify the implementation of the federal laws. A spokeswoman for Pruitt, who has filed his own lawsuit challenging the federal government's ability to implement federal health insurance exchanges, said the office was in the process of reviewing correspondence from Moore.

Teatownclown

Looks like another one bites: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/florida-gov-rick-scott-agrees-to-expand-medicaid-coverage-87874.html

Governess Mary is quite contrary. Her splintered Teabagging Obama hating coalition of states leaves her looking like the shrew with no sense by denying Federal funding.

Looking like a dismal period coming up between her refusal and the sequester. Lots of pain being induced by the extremists.