(CNSNews.com) – In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.
Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.
The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.
The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.
“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.
Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare--after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.
In the new final rules published Wednesday, IRS set in law the rules for implementing the penalty Americans must pay if they fail to obey Obamacare's mandate to buy insurance.
To help illustrate these rules, the IRS presented examples of different situations families might find themselves in.
In the examples, the IRS assumes that families of five who are uninsured would need to pay an average of $20,000 per year to purchase a Bronze plan in 2016.
Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a "penalty" (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a "tax") of $2,400 in 2016.
For those wondering how clear the IRS's clarifications of this new "penalty" rule are, here is one of the actual examples the IRS gives:
“Example 3. Family without minimum essential coverage.
"(i) In 2016, Taxpayers H and J are married and file a joint return. H and J have three children: K, age 21, L, age 15, and M, age 10. No member of the family has minimum essential coverage for any month in 2016. H and J’s household income is $120,000. H and J’s applicable filing threshold is $24,000. The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000.
"(ii) For each month in 2016, under paragraphs (b)(2)(ii) and (b)(2)(iii) of this section, the applicable dollar amount is $2,780 (($695 x 3 adults) + (($695/2) x 2 children)). Under paragraph (b)(2)(i) of this section, the flat dollar amount is $2,085 (the lesser of $2,780 and $2,085 ($695 x 3)). Under paragraph (b)(3) of this section, the excess income amount is $2,400 (($120,000 - $24,000) x 0.025). Therefore, under paragraph (b)(1) of this section, the monthly penalty amount is $200 (the greater of $173.75 ($2,085/12) or $200 ($2,400/12)).
"(iii) The sum of the monthly penalty amounts is $2,400 ($200 x 12). The sum of the monthly national average bronze plan premiums is $20,000 ($20,000/12 x 12). Therefore, under paragraph (a) of this section, the shared responsibility payment imposed on H and J for 2016 is $2,400 (the lesser of $2,400 or $20,000).”
Posted by raybond on :
sounds like a good plan to me, whiner. The commissioner in 2012, Douglas Shulman, was appointed by President George W. Bush.
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
So what if Doug was appointed by Bush. You just gave him credit eh? You think money and power and the chance at promotion care if you are R or D Ray? Have you watched the hearings? Do you have any idea how deep this goes? Probably not. Its like the DNC put your brain in a LG laundry machine, soaked you up, and washed it real good to the owners scent of his liking.
Posted by raybond on :
Romney lost whiner
Posted by raybond on :
IRS Politicization Comes In Many Forms
Revelations that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — in the run-up to last year's presidential election — purposefully delayed processing applications for tax-exempt status from politically conservative groups, pried unnecessarily into their internal affairs and singled out Tea Party activists and donors for tax audits has produced a firestorm of righteous indignation.
The furor is understandable given the popular view that the IRS is a neutral nonpartisan agency with no particular agenda other than collecting taxes.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
As Michael Scherer noted recently in Time magazine, the IRS has been used frequently since World War II to harass and intimidate political organizations.
Under President John F. Kennedy, for example, the IRS had a program known as the "Ideological Organizations Project," which was used to investigate right-wing groups.
President Richard Nixon famously compiled his "enemies list," using the IRS to microscopically examine the tax returns of mainly left-wing antiwar groups and activists.
According to a 1997 book, "Unbridled Power: Inside the Political Culture of the IRS," a super-secret "Special Services Staff" created within the IRS in response to Nixon's directive eventually targeted 11,000 private individuals and organizations for politically inspired tax audits.
The IRS also has been known to go easy on friends of the White House and powerful members of Congress. According to the same book, the head of the IRS's Chicago office intervened in 1979 to prevent local agents from auditing the tax return of a staffer working for then-Rep. Frank Annunzio.
In a 2001 peer-reviewed article I wrote — with Michael Reksulak of Georgia Southern University and Marilyn Young of Lipscomb University — for the journal Economics & Politics, we found a statistically significant pattern of abuse.
First, we assembled a dataset consisting of blind information (meaning we had no access to names, Social Security numbers or any personal information) on all individual income tax returns filed from 1992 through 1997 across the IRS's 33 geographically defined districts.
Our examination of the data showed a disturbing pattern. In addition to the usual criteria the IRS uses to screen returns for closer attention, such as individuals reporting income from self-employment or claiming unusually large deductions or tax credits, the data showed that tax returns were significantly less likely to be audited if the taxpayer lived in a district that was politically important to the sitting president or was represented by a member of Congress serving on a committee with IRS oversight responsibility.
Posted by raybond on :
here is a past great liberal and what he did for health care in his day.
Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has a simple question for Republican lawmakers reticent to take part in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion: “What would Reagan do?” The answer, according to Kasich, is also simple — expand Medicaid.
In an editorial for USA Today, Kasich — who became the fifth Republican governor to endorse expansion in February — noted the irony of GOP state lawmakers citing Reagan’s fiscal conservatism in order to justify their opposition to the health law provision, arguing that Reagan had expanded Medicaid on several occasions:
Leaders in the states that have decided against expanding have often invoked Reagan conservatism as the reason to oppose extending Medicaid health care coverage to more people. After all, doesn’t Reagan embody modern conservatism? He cut taxes, cut government red tape and fought the growth of entitlements.
Yes, he did all those things. However, he also expanded Medicaid, not just once but several times.
For example, in 1986, President Reagan let states add poor children and pregnant women to Medicaid. And after learning that disabled children could receive Medicaid care only in hospitals and nursing homes, he let states provide them care at home also. Ohio resisted both expansions for a decade but saw powerful results for some of our most vulnerable citizens once we made them.
The governor is right on the facts. Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1986. The law bars hospitals from turning away patients based on their insurance or citizenship status; shortly thereafter, Reagan authorized a special annual Medicaid fund that largely subsidizes the cost of low-income or undocumented pregnant women who give birth in hospitals, as well as their young children’s medical bills. In fact, the federal Medicaid budget actually doubled over the course of Reagan’s presidency.
Kasich has been on the road lobbying for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, citing his faith and making the fiscal argument that low-income Ohioans and hospitals that serve poor families will benefit immensely from expanding the program. Independent analyses have found that Ohio is one of the states that would be most positively impacted by the expansion, with the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimating that participation will reduce Ohio’s uninsurance rate by almost 61 percent.
Although conservatives often dismiss Obamacare as a “government takeover of health care,” the fact is that many aspects of the health law are strikingly similar to Reagan-era proposals. For example, Reagan implemented a system of price controls to Medicare hospital payments that moved it to a system of fixed payments and ended up saving the program $49 billion by 1986. Obamacare contains similar provisions which reward providers that are able to improve patient health while lowering Medicare spending. Recently-released government data suggest this provision has already led to systemic changes in U.S. health care that has extended Medicare’s solvency.
Posted by raybond on :
Sen. Rubio Wants To Amend The Constitution To Repeal Obamacare
By Katie Valentine on Jun 4, 2013 at 4:00 pm
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed a constitutional amendment Tuesday that, if approved, would nullify Obamacare’s individual mandate. The amendment is the latest in a string of failed GOP attempts to repeal Obamacare, which many Republicans still view as unconstitutional.
The “Right to Refuse” amendment would make any laws that tax Americans who fail to purchase goods or services unconstitutional, targeting the Affordable Care Act’s stipulation that nearly all Americans must purchase health insurance. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) in the House in February.
In a press release, Rubio cited the recent Internal Revenue Service scandal as one of his reasons for introducing the bill:
“ObamaCare is a disastrous policy that is not only destructive to job creation, it will also unleash the corrupt and scandal-ridden IRS on taxpayers simply for not buying health insurance,” said Rubio. “We should put our faith in the American people to decide what goods and services they want to buy, not have Congress dictate it and have the IRS empowered to harass Americans to make sure they do it.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Obamacare’s individual mandate could be considered a tax, and therefore was upheld under the constitution. But that hasn’t stopped many Republicans from claiming Obamacare is unconstitutional — the act has survived at least 37 repeal attempts since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the most recent repeal vote occurring in mid-May. Since news broke in May that the IRS flagged certain conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny, several Republican leaders have used the scandal to question whether the IRS can be trusted to implement Obamacare.
Constitutional amendments are far more difficult to pass than bills — amendments proposed by Congress require a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate. With a Democrat-controlled Senate, Rubio and Palazzo’s amendment would have difficulty achieving even a simple majority. Rubio has been billed as a rising star in the Republican party and likely 2016 presidential candidate, but his fervent opposition to Obamacare — along with several other positions — show that his views don’t stray far from the status quo of the Republican party.
Posted by Lockman on :
Estimate $20,000 in 2013, probably closer to 30,000.00 by 2016.
A government that promises "FREE" stuff to half it's citizens will ultimately fail...we are on that path...
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by Lockman: Estimate $20,000 in 2013, probably closer to 30,000.00 by 2016.
A government that promises "FREE" stuff to half it's citizens will ultimately fail...we are on that path...
i have to disagree wholeheartedy about this one lockman.. the govt has nothing to do with the cost of health care.
for decades now the health care industry has been allowed to do as they please and charge as they can.
how muvh is your health actually worth? it's priclss. they can take what they want from you for another year of life and they will..
IMO the govt is the only way this cost problem will be fixed... will that lead to other problems? you friggin bet. there will be ratioaing, but it was coming already based on what you can pay... no way around that...
i have had very bad expericnes with doctors in both private insurance and at the VA (govt run helath care) very very bad in fact. i don't really want to share, but i can tell you that BECAUSE i had very good insurance they ran tests on my neck with needles that "stimulate" nerves (elctrocute you) that i would not allow a vet to do to my dog for free... never get a discogram or nerve block unless you are completely crippled, cuz you may very well be after they do it
plain an dsimple? this system we have had has been on the road to hell for decades and the Docotrs are the only ones to blame.. there was time when the doctors took chickens for pay, now they take medicare... who pays that? US taxpayers do... the doctors scam that system allt he time..
doctors kill 100,000 peopel every year in hospital acquired infections alone... that's not counting other assorted malp[ractice BS and they have insurance for that and we pay for the insurance because they are not nearly as good as they think htye are.
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
Originally Posted By Glassman:
"doctors kill 100,000 peopel every year in hospital acquired infections alone... that's not counting other assorted malp[ractice BS and they have insurance for that and we pay for the insurance because they are not nearly as good as they think htye are" -------------------------------------------------
The old saying goes, they bury their mistakes.
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Posted by Lockman on :
The world's oldest human tumor has been found on the rib of a Neanderthal skeleton in Croatia. The tumor would have been discovered sooner, but they have government healthcare over there.
Posted by glassman on :
neanderthals are human? and had govenrmnet?
seriously? i ddin't know croatia even had doctors...
Posted by glassman on :
i watched some Fox news (Cavuto) for a half hour yesterday.
they got on this huge long rant about how the governmnt health care costs are going to be "taxes" paid to the govt to pay for your healthcare if you don't buy real health insurance -and if your salary is less than some arbitrary figure like about 35,000$....
i sat and listened and then i began to wonder what they were complaining about..
here's why.
Healthcare actually costs the US on the whole, 17.6% of GDP....
there is no avoiding that cost in the "free market" we've had one now for the last 100 years.
so why are peopl beaching and moaning when they only have to kick in 9.5%? and wher does the extry money come from?
waht is the friggin difference if you pay the govt or an insurance company?
insurance companies give bonuses to people already making a good amount of dough to cut your costs(deny you as much as they can) anyway.
some stupid bureacrat making half that much who gets no bonus is more likely to screw you over? i doubt it..
human nautre is that they'll all screw you.. look at the motivations. somebody doing it for a bonus or somebody doing it cuz they just a plain old "bureacratic" you know, like the people at the DMV who don't even blink when they see the line is one hour long and go slower?
i know that everybody wants to beleive their doctor will give them better care if they get paid more, but in this system? thats BS, you are not even paying your doctor. you pay somebody else who pays your doctor and your doctor prolly has five employees working full-time just to collect that money (or the 3/4's they actually get - then they deduct the diiffernce on their taxes as a loss)... you are paying for them too, and you are paying for the insurance people who keep trying to figure out how to not to pay for your care after you already paid them, or your boss did who is their actual custmoer- not you...
the system is more than broken. it's insanity. top to bottom...
we need to start over and begin by hiring doctors that actually want to help people for a living.. and we need to train enough of them so that they can work normal 50-60 hour weeks like the rest of us poor slobs.... these guys gradaute with 300,000 in student loans now... then they pay 100 grand a year for malpractice insurance and for good reason, they are overworked and overstressed all the time anyway..
CNN spent the last two weeks trying to get an adult lung transplant for a 10 yr old girl... she was put ont eh adult list and got one by court order.
does anybody have any idea how much that costs? and will cost forever? that girl goes on anti-rejection drugs till the last breath she takes. she'll need a new lung in five years cuz they had to cut the adult lung up to fit it in her- it will be tto small before long, if she lives... her odds are not good. i am not complaining or judging abou this, it is amiracle, but miracles are not free. i am simply stating the fact that this one girl will take up millions of dollars and it is coming out of the tax base plain and simple. insurance pays? you pay, insurance doesn't pay you still pay. period. she can't pay it. everybody gets weepy and teary and says how unfair it is to deny her when you put it in terms they wnat to hear.. how about hte bill? anybody want to talk abou thtat? heck no.. i don't want e ither, but there it is. it is millions, just for her. do not get me started on conjoind twin separations that cost 10's of millions and are always "free" which just means the hospital and all 40 of the doctors on the "teams" charges all of us more to do them...
we would be better off paying doctors as civil servants. doctors might compalin a little at first, but whne thye realise that they don't have all this extra BS to worry about? they'll stop- i'm sure we can figure out a way to allow them to go to private practice if they want, and get paid directly by people who can afford it. heck that's how i make my living, my custmers pay wth thier own cash.
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
President Obama and his family will be going to Africa later this month. But the trip won't be cheap; it's expected to cost American taxpayers $60 to $100 million, according to the Washington Post.
"When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa later this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances. Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of emergency," reports the Post.
"Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet-proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.
"The extraordinary security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander-in-chief on trips abroad
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Posted by rounder1 on :
Good post Glass. I agree with a lot of what you had to say there and I can't say that you are wrong on any of the parts that I disagree with, but...
I think most on this board realize that I am for teeny tiny federal government. I really don't give crap about the cost of the plan. I don't wont the government in this business. They have proven to be ineffective to point incompetent anytime there is a program that requires some level of solvency and the number of programs already being run by the government that are insolvent is already to high.... Postal Service, Social Security, etc.
I have nothing to base this on but here is what is going to happen....because this is the very nature of how large centralized, powerful governments progress. They have this bill passed. In order to have gotten it passed they had to make it appear just as you described. By that I mean that they had to package in such a way that the majority of people will look it over, notice a few trade offs, nothing to major....mull it over and come to the conclusion "hmmmm....what is difference? This ain't so bad."
Wrong Answer! Here is why I believe that. Once they control it, they can change it. They will change it. 25 years from now this Law is not going to function they way it was drawn out. It will be modified continuously and always for the "betterment" of some needy group. It will evolve and evolve ensnaring more and more people in the entitlement culture. This law will become a bartering chip for securing votes....we all know this....we see it every election cycle with things that the government already controls.
Health Care has no business being under government control. Anyone that says that it does is someone that I politely disagree with. If you believe that its okay then you are not looking down the road far enough.
I would not want the board of directors for Blue Cross Blue Shield making decisions about my gun rights, freedoms of speech, protections from illegal S and S, etc.... I do not want the government making decisions regarding my health care.
Its a hell of a lot easier to fire an insurance company than it is to fire a government. I can fire my insurance company right now today based entirely on whatever I want to base my decision on . I sincerely and legitimately fear in the near future that ability will be lost. Individuals will be stuck with what the collective determines...a collective that is influenced in a myriad of ways on countless topics. Personal efficacy takes yet one more lost. On one of the most personal of all issues your only hope will be that your point of view falls in line with the majority of the 300+ million other voices...
I recognize that the law is what it is now...but I am still in disbelief by how easy people roll over ...and I can't help but lament it.
Posted by glassman on :
i actually do not like big government either. and i realise that the govt has many problems with quality control that private business solves simply with a severance, where the govt cannot.
but the doctors are the ones that have brought this on.
can you really switch insurance? cuz when you get a cheaper plan? you are really just taking on more risk yourself.
we are the only developed country in the world without govt run health care. very wealthy peopel do come here to get service. but poor people worldwide go without completely. They evne go without here, until it is crisis, then they show up and cost ten times what it would cost to take preventative care....
Posted by rounder1 on :
I over simplified when I stated about "firing my insurance company"...but it is still a true. In fact a lot of major companies, like the one I work for, fire them about every two years just because....
It is a way of getting the best deal for the associates. Some insurance company other than the one we have today is probably already offering the company a "seemingly" better deal than what we have today for consideration the next time the contract comes up. So we will fire our current company and sign up with the new guys for a couple of years...then we will fire them and go with next suitor...which will probably be a company that we have fired in the past....and merry go round just keeps spinning
It is not perfect but it does drive something like innovation with regards to benefits offered. Of course over time the insurance companies make out....they have to...and their "competition" is really not all that competitive they may even be in collusion and allowing swapping of corporate customers between themselves....but I digress...
Thing is this. Its just more freedom lost.
It is infuriating enough already to pick a candidate that you can stand behind. A big reason for that is government is in too many avenues of our lives. I already have to look for a someone that shares my belief on guns, speech, abortion, taxes, economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, war, faith,etc.....ad nauseum. And now we are going to add this to the mix.
Think about it this way. Guns have been a hot topic on this board here as of late. Lets say that in 30 years the government has substantial control over all health care. Now lets say that there is a pandemic in this country of some sort. For that election cycle health care would be the number one issue....and if it were bad enough...it would be all that lower intelligent voters would care about basing there vote on. Voters would compromise anything to insure the person promising the best healthcare to protect them from the super bug....perhaps to the point voting for someone that will also take their guns or free speech, or whatever.
There is just too much potential for this to a Trojan Horse....Heck, I don't believe that it was designed to be one....but you and I both know that it has the potential to be one....and somebody at some point is going to use it for exactly end.
paranoia....perhaps.
How about this scenario:
In 50 years the government controls healthcare. you have areas of the country that are major slums other areas of the country where basic resources are becoming scarce to the point of putting major stress on society. Quick fix: do a controlled release of that biological super bug that military developed. The government can simply say they don't know where it came from...I am gonna drop off that idea right there but let your mind drift through scenarios that could unfold from there...its too much power, its unchecked,and its gonna be too damn tempting for someone or some group.
...and perhaps I am completely wrong, but why risk it? I personally believe that if you invite a wolf to dinner he will come and he will eat.
Its a noble goal....but I believe there are some things you don't sacrifice....and it causes some people pain. Its just my ideology that to keep the majority free is worth some experiencing pain. On the surface that sounds like a pretty chitty thing to say, but its the same logic that we use for going into wars...
and to those that would say that its not gonna be an encroachment on freedom answer this....If it were not viewed as encroachment on freedom why has it taken our society nearly 250 years to get to a point where approximately half the country will accept it?
Posted by Pagan on :
quote:Originally posted by rounder1: I over simplified when I stated about "firing my insurance company"...but it is still a true. In fact a lot of major companies, like the one I work for, fire them about every two years just because....
It is a way of getting the best deal for the associates. Some insurance company other than the one we have today is probably already offering the company a "seemingly" better deal than what we have today for consideration the next time the contract comes up. So we will fire our current company and sign up with the new guys for a couple of years...then we will fire them and go with next suitor...which will probably be a company that we have fired in the past....and merry go round just keeps spinning
It is not perfect but it does drive something like innovation with regards to benefits offered. Of course over time the insurance companies make out....they have to...and their "competition" is really not all that competitive they may even be in collusion and allowing swapping of corporate customers between themselves....but I digress...
Thing is this. Its just more freedom lost.
It is infuriating enough already to pick a candidate that you can stand behind. A big reason for that is government is in too many avenues of our lives. I already have to look for a someone that shares my belief on guns, speech, abortion, taxes, economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, war, faith,etc.....ad nauseum. And now we are going to add this to the mix.
Think about it this way. Guns have been a hot topic on this board here as of late. Lets say that in 30 years the government has substantial control over all health care. Now lets say that there is a pandemic in this country of some sort. For that election cycle health care would be the number one issue....and if it were bad enough...it would be all that lower intelligent voters would care about basing there vote on. Voters would compromise anything to insure the person promising the best healthcare to protect them from the super bug....perhaps to the point voting for someone that will also take their guns or free speech, or whatever.
There is just too much potential for this to a Trojan Horse....Heck, I don't believe that it was designed to be one....but you and I both know that it has the potential to be one....and somebody at some point is going to use it for exactly end.
paranoia....perhaps.
How about this scenario:
In 50 years the government controls healthcare. you have areas of the country that are major slums other areas of the country where basic resources are becoming scarce to the point of putting major stress on society. Quick fix: do a controlled release of that biological super bug that military developed. The government can simply say they don't know where it came from...I am gonna drop off that idea right there but let your mind drift through scenarios that could unfold from there...its too much power, its unchecked,and its gonna be too damn tempting for someone or some group.
...and perhaps I am completely wrong, but why risk it? I personally believe that if you invite a wolf to dinner he will come and he will eat.
Its a noble goal....but I believe there are some things you don't sacrifice....and it causes some people pain. Its just my ideology that to keep the majority free is worth some experiencing pain. On the surface that sounds like a pretty chitty thing to say, but its the same logic that we use for going into wars...
and to those that would say that its not gonna be an encroachment on freedom answer this....If it were not viewed as encroachment on freedom why has it taken our society nearly 250 years to get to a point where approximately half the country will accept it?
Well...two things. Like Glass, you need to change the foil in your hat first. Second, who are the "less intelligent voters"? Are those the one's that don't agree with you? What makes you the one to decide who is intelligent as far as voters? Pretty assinine to make a blanket statement like that. But to each his own I guess. I'm sure glass will love your sentiment.
Posted by rounder1 on :
haha....whatever, Pagan.
Your not so dull as to think that all voters are of the same intelligence level. They can be either less intelligent because of natural constraint or less intelligent due to ignorance brought on my political and societal apathy.
For instance...I am not an intelligent mechanic, brain surgeon, golfer, and many many other things...
Try again and use better bait...
Posted by Pagan on :
quote:Originally posted by rounder1: haha....whatever, Pagan.
Your not so dull as to think that all voters are of the same intelligence level. They can be either less intelligent because of natural constraint or less intelligent due to ignorance brought on my political and societal apathy.
For instance...I am not an intelligent mechanic, brain surgeon, golfer, and many many other things...
Try again and use better bait...
Well here we agree. Obviously your not very intelligent to make an idiotic blanket statement like you just did. So at least we agree on that.
Posted by rounder1 on :
Your correct....I am an idiot.
Posted by rounder1 on :
see I proved your point by misusing "you're"....guess I aint an English Teacher either...
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by rounder1: see I proved your point by misusing "you're"....guess I aint an English Teacher either...
pagan did it too... i tend not grade intellignce by how well people FOLLOW rules...
Marjk Twain was one f Amruica's greates prodigies... yet he wrote words as he heared them rayther thayen how they'z spelt, and folxes loved it-still do.. iam no Mark Te=win, i do all this bad stuff cuz i can only type with three fingers adn thum took me ten years to be able to use the other fingers and thumb-used to be two fingers for the longest time...
so we have intleelignce to follow instrcutions, and we we have "native itnelligence" to make chit up as you go and see if you successfull without the rules..
my wife (hahaPagan) is a Phd Research Scintist.Does GMO on insects..they glow under a blacklight-trippy huh? I are a untrained lover and abd observer of nature and humanity... i help her wiht the imaginitive side of her wrok all the time. obviously i do not have the whole organic chemsitry strucutre memorised and categorised like she does, but because i have not been taught "what can be done"? i dunno what cannot be done and ask her off the beaten path questions that regularly set back on the path to the answers she is looking for. my activity in this process is not gnius, it is moronic( i admit that freely) but by not knowing "the rules" that everyone gets taught in school? i frequently put my finger right on ht edge the "known" map for her. I can't actaully do anything with it either but that's not he point, it gets her to where she wants to be...
as an artist? i come up with fresh (to me) ideas every day, but then i have to go thru and search the internet to make sure it also new to everyone else before i begin t invest in th enew project.... i do get allot of good ideas that are not new at all... if i make those? i am only craftsman, not an Artist.... nothing wrong wiht being a craftsman either but i try to be an artist
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by Pagan: Well...two things. Like Glass, you need to change the foil in your hat first. Second, who are the "less intelligent voters"? Are those the one's that don't agree with you? What makes you the one to decide who is intelligent as far as voters? Pretty assinine to make a blanket statement like that. But to each his own I guess. I'm sure glass will love your sentiment.
my hat is 24KT gold foil with some palladium trim- man, why you wanna make fun of that hat, i am quite proud if it but d have tot ake it off whn i am being an artist cuz it blocks the co(Z)mic brainwaves i need to make art but i do put it back on to be a craftsman other wise i end up making th epeice to creative... Posted by raybond on :
Most Media Coverage Ignores Premium Drop, Focuses On GOP Effort To Undermine Obamacare
By Igor Volsky and Andrew Breiner on Jul 18, 2013 at 1:51 pm
(Credit: Shutterstock) Early on Wednesday, as House Republicans prepared to vote for a delay of the Affordable Care Act’s employer and individual mandates, New York state officials announced that health care premiums in the new exchange will plummet by at least 50 percent as a result of the law.
For reform advocates, the story represented a reprieve from the constant drum beat of media coverage about implementation delays, predictions of rate shock, and employers dropping coverage. But a ThinkProgress analysis of television reports about the health care law for Wednesday, July 18th, confirms that even with good news to report, bookers and segment producers are still far more interested in broadcasting stories about the political brinkmanship in Washington, DC than the actual, tangible progress of implementation. New York joined Oregon, Montana, California, and Louisiana in reporting lower than expected rates in the law’s new health care marketplaces.
ThinkProgress’ review of all national and local news segments containing the term “Obamacare” from 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday to 11:00 P.M., found that Americans were far more likely to hear about the GOP’s 38th and 39th efforts to legislatively slow down the law — bills that the Senate has pledged not to take-up and President Obama said he would not sign — that learn about lower insurance rates for New Yorkers. Of the 147 segments identified by media program Critical Mention to include “Obamacare,” almost all or 120 mentioned the House vote, while just 71 — or less than half — discussed the lower premium rates:
The results signal that administration officials will have an uphill battle spreading the word about the law and its implementation and will have to to break through the clutter of negative news and the millions in negative advertising to convince Americans to enroll.
As it already stands, 40 percent of Americans don’t know whether the Affordable Care Act is actually law, and for that, the media may be at least partly to blame.
ThinkProgress intern Joseph Diebold conducted the research for this post.
Posted by raybond on :
Growing Number Of States Are Reporting Lower Than Expected Health Care Premiums
By Igor Volsky on Jul 27, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Health premiums in Maryland’s exchanges will be “among the lowest of the 12 states that have available proposed or approved rates for comparison,” the state’s exchange — Maryland Health Connection — announced Friday. The news comes just as New York,Oregon, Montana, California, and Louisiana are also reporting lower than expected premiums.
In Maryland, a 25-year-old will be able to purchase a plan that is more comprehensive than policies currently available on the individual market for $114 per month, while a middle aged adult will have to pay approximately $260 per month for insurance. A 21-year-old non-smoker can start as low as $93 a month. Officials say they used their authority to deny rate increases to reduce the proposed premiums by “more than 50 percent.” Thirty other states have have similar authority.
The prices Marylanders will pay are lower than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipated, but do cost more than the bare-bones plans that are available today. Residents will have a choice of nine insurance carriers and three out of four people purchasing coverage through the exchange will qualify for tax credits, further reducing the cost of coverage. Nationally, 6 million out of the 7 million people who are expected to enroll in 2014 will receive subsidies.
“Historically, insurance carriers have been allowed to turn down people with pre-existing conditions and allow only the healthiest individuals into their plans,” said Rebecca Pearce, Executive Director of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange. “In 2014, that will change, and 740,000 Marylanders will have new access to health coverage with more robust benefits.
Earlier this week, the Connecticut exchange announced that since a new insurer lowered its projected premiums, “the average cost for an individual-market HealthyCT plan dropped by 36 percent, from $427 per month to $271.” In Nevada, preliminary costs find that strong competition between insurers in some areas of the state will lower individuals’ premiums.
The news is on track with a report from the Department of Health and Human Services, which found that “the lowest cost silver plan in the individual market in 2014 is, on average, 18 percent less expensive” than past projections.
Posted by raybond on :
Rick Perry Quietly Lobbies The White House For $100 Million In Obamacare Funding
By Sy Mukherjee on August 21, 2013 at 10:58 am
Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX)
CREDIT: AP Images
Politico reported Tuesday evening that Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) administration is in negotiations with the Obama White House to accept about $100 million in federal money to implement an Obamacare Medicaid program to help elderly and disabled Americans.
Perry has been a heated opponent of the health law. He refused to accept $100 billion in federal funding to expand Texas’ Medicaid program under Obamacare, which could have helped 1.5 million poor Texans afford basic health benefits. As recently as April, Perry essentially called the expansion a joke. “Seems to me April Fool’s Day is the perfect day to discuss something as foolish as Medicaid expansion, and to remind everyone that Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into the fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system,” said Perry.
Now, Perry is seeking federal dollars for Texas’ Medicaid program anyway.
The Affordable Care Act grants state funding to expand a program called Community First Choice, which aims to improve the community-based medical services available to disabled and elderly Americans. The wildly popular program is administered through Medicaid and could prevent thousands of disabled and older Americans from being uprooted from their homes and into a long-term care facility for their treatments. Approximately 12,000 Texans could take advantage of it in the first year alone.
Perry spokespeople emphasized to Politico that the governor’s support for the program — and the Medicaid funds that make it possible — shouldn’t come as a surprise and doesn’t change his position on the Affordable Care Act.
“Long before Obamacare was forced on the American people, Texas was implementing policies to provide those with intellectual disabilities more community options to enable them to live more independent lives, at a lower cost to taxpayers,” said the spokesperson in a statement. “The Texas Health and Human Services Commission will continue to move forward with these policies because they are right for our citizens and our state, regardless of whatever funding schemes may be found in Obamacare.”
Advocates for the poor and disabled who support expanding Community First Choice under Obamacare were apprehensive to even talk about the program’s relation to the health law out of fear that Texas officials would back out of their funding bid over political considerations.
“[I]t would be worse than a shame if Texas’s moving ahead with [Community First Choice and Balancing Incentive Program] policies — both are from the ACA — was hurt as the result of scrutiny from a press inquiry,” one Texas advocate told Politico.
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven’t noticed.
Ask any health economist and they’ll no doubt tell you that health care cost growth is slowing, growing at a low, unprecedented rate.
Go tell him what? What difference at this point does Romney make (hillary voice).
Should I go find Michael Dukakis and Al Goreleone and tell them too?
Saw something you would be proud of. You really enjoy the direction this country is going dont you.
Study: Welfare pays more than work in most states
In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.
your a fool. all that tells me is what a joke the private sector is when welfare surpasses there wages. if what you are saying is true because I don't believe a word of it.
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
Not sure what is really true or not, but what really is sad is the whole picture of what condition are economy is in.
People who work in many jobs can't make enough to live, people on welfare can't get enough to support their families. Many jobs and small business owners can't really afford to pay employees wages enough to support their families for basic jobs, and many of these low skill level jobs should not require high wages.
It's really about where this nation has gone in the last 40 years, and how the dollar's true worth has gone down the tube. I think gas prices are a great example of a comparison of what has happened to this nation. $.29 back in the 60's now $4.00. How many jobs have wages increased by let's say 10 times, since the sixties? None i have worked in.
What's the solution, not sure at this point, neither are the representitives that supposedly serve us.
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Posted by glassman on :
15$ per hour won't pay rent or commuting in NYC, San fran. and ahalf dozen other cities where people still want cheap labor. there's planty of palces you can live on 15$ but not everywhere.
none of this is new or even surprising.
it's always been a problem in every single cicvilization, and always will be. the Romans solved it by owning slaves
when we put people out in space to live? the same problem will occur. the maintenance people are always pi$$ed on. yet they are the backbone of society/civilization.
i am always amazed at how many brilliant people i know very well that can't fix a friggin thing. they have no clue how to do it, and they don't think they should pay the people who do know how to do it anything. The engineers who designed the faulty chit get paid a ton of money too thinkaboutit- you buy a car and pay 400$ per month now. that's before gasoline.
the real problem is not hat we pay the low wage workers too little, it's that we allow the people in charge of decision making to pay themselves too well in comparison to the lowest wrokers.
fact; no factory can run without being swept. the sweepers are just as important as everyone else. you cannot give a job that impacts every other worker int he plant to someone and tell them they are chit. i'm not saying they deserve CEO pay, but CEO's do not deserve to make 1,000 times waht they make. in fact when you overpay CEO's and give them golden parchutes, you are GARANTEEING long-term failure. once they have their nest-egg? they will run your co. into the ground. so today, we raise the level of need for nest-eggs to keep these bastids wroking? and the little guys have NOTHING in comparison. so just stoppaying top level mangement any more than 50 times their lowest entry level employees, -
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
Originally Posted by Glassman:
i am always amazed at how many brilliant people i know very well that can't fix a friggin thing. they have no clue how to do it, and they don't think they should pay the people who do know how to do it anything. The engineers who designed the faulty chit get paid a ton of money too -------------------------------------------------
And the $8.00-10.00 a hour maintenance guy has to fix it. But it should work if designed by a engineer!
Sorry don't mean to offend any of you engineers out there.
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Posted by raybond on :
Conservatives Finally Announce Alternative To Obamacare: Just Go To The Emergency Room
By Igor Volsky on August 22, 2013 at 10:57 am
JimDemintHeritage president and former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint continued his campaign to convince Republicans to shut down the government in a ploy to defund the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, telling a town hall in Tampa, Florida that “This might be that last off-ramp to stop Obamacare before it becomes more enmeshed in our culture.” The law “is not about getting better health care,” he continued. Uninsured Americans “will get better health care just going to the emergency room.”
The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008.
“That’s something that I think we should do for the whole country,” DeMint told Fox News. “And the governor just looked at the numbers like a good businessman and realized that we could give people private insurance policies cheaper than we could provide free health care.”
The so-called “free” care at emergency rooms is a result of The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay. But EMTALA only applies to medical emergencies like heart attacks or serious injury. It does not offer any treatment for chronic conditions, leaving the millions of Americans with diabetes who need regular access to medication to stay alive, or asthma patients, or women diagnosed with breast cancer without access to care.
Studies also show that not all emergency room patients have equal outcomes. The uninsured who suffer “traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance.”
Posted by a surfer on :
quote:Originally posted by rounder1: Good post Glass. I agree with a lot of what you had to say there and I can't say that you are wrong on any of the parts that I disagree with, but...
I think most on this board realize that I am for teeny tiny federal government. I really don't give crap about the cost of the plan. I don't wont the government in this business. They have proven to be ineffective to point incompetent anytime there is a program that requires some level of solvency and the number of programs already being run by the government that are insolvent is already to high.... Postal Service, Social Security, etc.
I have nothing to base this on but here is what is going to happen....because this is the very nature of how large centralized, powerful governments progress. They have this bill passed. In order to have gotten it passed they had to make it appear just as you described. By that I mean that they had to package in such a way that the majority of people will look it over, notice a few trade offs, nothing to major....mull it over and come to the conclusion "hmmmm....what is difference? This ain't so bad."
Wrong Answer! Here is why I believe that. Once they control it, they can change it. They will change it. 25 years from now this Law is not going to function they way it was drawn out. It will be modified continuously and always for the "betterment" of some needy group. It will evolve and evolve ensnaring more and more people in the entitlement culture. This law will become a bartering chip for securing votes....we all know this....we see it every election cycle with things that the government already controls.
Health Care has no business being under government control. Anyone that says that it does is someone that I politely disagree with. If you believe that its okay then you are not looking down the road far enough.
I would not want the board of directors for Blue Cross Blue Shield making decisions about my gun rights, freedoms of speech, protections from illegal S and S, etc.... I do not want the government making decisions regarding my health care.
Its a hell of a lot easier to fire an insurance company than it is to fire a government. I can fire my insurance company right now today based entirely on whatever I want to base my decision on . I sincerely and legitimately fear in the near future that ability will be lost. Individuals will be stuck with what the collective determines...a collective that is influenced in a myriad of ways on countless topics. Personal efficacy takes yet one more lost. On one of the most personal of all issues your only hope will be that your point of view falls in line with the majority of the 300+ million other voices...
I recognize that the law is what it is now...but I am still in disbelief by how easy people roll over ...and I can't help but lament it.
100% agree!!
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
excellent post
Especially about the "just roll over and take it" part. I wish Ray could respond articulately to that post. All he can do is say "Romney lost". He still does. Its like that dope that was on FOX News at a protest in MI. The "fox lies" guy you can see on youtube.
Ray, why do you think that bloated and dysfunctional government will be able to provide cheaper and better health care than we have now?
Posted by a surfer on :
quote:Originally posted by CashCowMoo: excellent post
Especially about the "just roll over and take it" part. I wish Ray could respond articulately to that post. All he can do is say "Romney lost". He still does. Its like that dope that was on FOX News at a protest in MI. The "fox lies" guy you can see on youtube.
Ray, why do you think that bloated and dysfunctional government will be able to provide cheaper and better health care than we have now?
Ray will never get it. He is the culprit. Excert from Jim Cook.
READ RAYBOND...
The most important thing for the left is giving money to people. They are happy to see the growth of food stamps, disability payments, housing subsidies, free healthcare and all the other welfare benefits. They utterly fail to see the damage it is doing to the recipients. Whole cities that once flourished have deteriorated into rotting eyesores populated with shambling hulks of chemically dependent drones. These people are no longer employable. They have become incompetent and helpless and the liberals can’t see that it’s their doing.
Furthermore, each new wave of subsidized citizens (and immigrants) promises to ultimately fall into the same behavioral sinkhole - if not them, their offspring who will quickly learn to embrace the subsidized life. We hear only that the bad economy is propelling the growth in government handouts. We never hear that the subsidized life is easier, softer and without challenge. We never hear that it is the opposite of ambition, struggle and growth.
This curse on our nation’s character goes hand-in-hand with the debt and inflation that’s necessary to pay for it. We are debasing the dollar paying for government subsidies. This loose money turns a nation into speculators and spenders rather than producers and savers. Throw in the government’s many other socialist schemes and you have the mess we are in. It’s getting worse. The culture and the people are growing coarser. The productive people will soon be in the minority if they are not already. The nation has lost its way and the left so widely chronicled in the media and revealed by the economic ignoramuses on CNBC bears sole responsibility. The liberal agenda is the blueprint for national ruin.
Someday the free lunch will have to disappear. The government will no longer be able to provide free lunch because they won’t have the means to pay for it. A bankrupt nation with a bankrupt culture; that’s what these so-called progressives have saddled us with. Their runaway social sympathy has brought us permanent crisis and the erosion of our prosperity and greatness. They are the architects of our downfall.
Posted by raybond on :
Thanks for reminding me cash Romney lost
Posted by raybond on :
Under Obamacare, Millions Of Americans Will Pay Less Than $100 Per Month For Health Insurance
By Tara Culp-Ressler on September 17, 2013 at 8:58 am
Obamacare-Sebelius-And-Obama-649x376 CREDIT: AP
About 6.4 million Americans will be able to purchase insurance for less than $100 each month on Obamacare’s new state-level marketplaces, according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s because those people will be eligible for federal subsidies that will reduce the price of purchasing a plan under the health reform law.
The Obama administration calculated the expected premiums for people buying “silver” plans, which are the second-cheapest option on the new insurance marketplaces. Even though not every marketplace has announced its premium rates yet, researchers were still able to estimate those payments based on the health law’s rule for determining subsidies.
Americans who make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level — which works out to be $94,200 for a family of four — are eligible for subsidies that ensure they’ll only pay a certain percentage of their income for a health plan. Using census data on Americans’ income levels, researchers were able to extrapolate how many of them would be paying less than $100 for monthly premiums for silver plans.
The new HHS report aligns with previous research that has found that many Americans won’t be covering the full cost of premiums for individual plans on Obamacare’s marketplaces. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 48 percent of the Americans who need to buy insurance on the marketplaces will receive federal subsidies to help them afford it. That number rises even more for young Americans between the ages of 18 to 34 years old, who comprise the largest share of any age group to benefit from this cost-saving provision.
One of the persistent criticisms of the health reform law is that it will dramatically hike Americans’ premiums. But many of the reports about potential “rate shock” don’t take into account the effect of the federal subsidies. It’s difficult to predict how Obamacare will impact specific premiums in every state, but it is important to remember that the plans being created under the health law are brand new. They won’t necessarily be comparable to the insurance that Americans currently have, because Obamacare’s marketplaces will require each plan to meet a set of requirements to ensure they provide adequate coverage.
In addition to subsidized plans on the marketplaces, other Americans will end up paying less than $100 for their insurance because they will qualify for Medicaid under their state’s expanded program. Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is optional, and the HHS report calculated the effect it will have in the 25 states that have so far indicated they will accept it. In that half of the country, about 12.4 million uninsured Americans will pay less than $100 each month — and many of them will pay nothing at all — to participate in the public health insurance program.
Between federal subsidies and increased Medicaid enrollment, more than half of the Americans who are currently uninsured won’t need to pay more than $100 per month to begin accessing health coverage under Obamacare, according to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Posted by Relentless. on :
So 2.03% of the populace will have affordable healthcare while the rest of us will simply not be able to afford the premiums or the fines?
Sounds like a good way to kill a country to me.
Posted by glassman on :
none of this has a damn thing to do with our government;
we pay as much as ten times as much as almost every other coutnry for the exact same things.
the rumor that people from all over the world come here for better care is just that, a rumor...
the real probelm is that we have been ordering off a menu with no prices on it and sending the bill to somebody else for the last fifty years...
it really is a fact that the price of "not dying" is priceless right?
Obamacare Will Give Americans Cheaper Health Coverage Options If They’re Laid Off From Work
By Tara Culp-Ressler on September 17, 2013 at 1:15 pm
unemployment CREDIT: Shutterstock
Under Obamacare, Americans who get laid off from their jobs will have more options for getting affordable insurance coverage while they’re unemployed. It’s just one of several ways that the health reform law will allow people to have slightly more job flexibility without worrying about losing access to their health care.
The majority of Americans access health insurance through their employers. If they lose their job, they lose that health care — unless they opt to continue it through the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act (COBRA). But paying for COBRA can be prohibitively expensive.
Under an employer-sponsored plan, workers are only responsible for part of their monthly insurance premiums, and their employer picks up the rest. Under COBRA, however, terminated workers typically must cover the entire cost of the premium to continue their plan. Thanks largely in part to rising health costs, paying for those high COBRA premiums eats up most of Americans’ unemployment benefits. It can also be a complicated bureaucratic maze to navigate, sometimes involving multiple benefits administrators and allowing people to fall through the cracks. And COBRA benefits only last for 18 months.
But when Obamacare’s state-level insurance marketplaces open to the public next month, those unemployed Americans will gain another option. Consumer advocates say that enrolling in an Obamacare plan will probably be cheaper than paying for COBRA. That’s because the health law extends federal subsidies to people making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line. Most Americans purchasing plans on the marketplaces will qualify for that assistance to make their plans cheaper.
“COBRA was a transitional type of coverage while you’re between jobs, but now we have a subsidized form of coverage available, exchange plans with subsidies,” Edwin Park, the vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told NPR.
Health care advocates are hoping that Americans learn more about their options under Obamacare so they’ll be prepared in the event of a job loss. If they’re not aware they can enroll in the marketplaces, and get locked into a COBRA plan instead, they’ll be stuck until the next annual open enrollment period. And they’ll likely be paying dramatically more for their coverage. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average monthly premium for an employer-sponsored health plan is $490 — and under COBRA, terminated workers will be responsible for paying for all of that. In the Obamacare marketplaces, on the other hand, millions of Americans who qualify for subsidies will be able to pay less than $100 each month for their insurance plans.
The uneven nature of the sluggish economic recovery has resulted in a huge employment gap between rich and poor Americans. As lower-income Americans struggle to find work, being able to save money on health care could go a long way toward preventing them from falling deeper into poverty.
Even when Americans don’t get laid off, and simply want to switch jobs, the Obamacare marketplaces could afford them more flexibility to do so. Studies have shown that people who get health insurance through work are less likely to switch jobs, partly because they may be worried about losing their coverage — but under the health reform law, that won’t be as much as a concern. And a recent report from the Urban Institute also predicts that Obamacare’s new coverage options will make it easier for Americans start their own businesses, since self-employed people will gain better options on the individual market.
Posted by raybond on :
Latest Obamacare Lie Claims Doctor Will Be Forced To Ask Patients About Their Sexual History
By Rebecca Leber on September 17, 2013 at 5:00 pm
(Credit: Shutterstock) (Credit: Shutterstock)
In a New York Post op-ed, the inventor of the death panels lie, Betsy McCaughey, now claims that the Affordable Care Act is turning “doctors into government agents” by having them ask patients about their sex history. “Obamacare will question your sex life,” the headline says, and the issue has gained traction among conservatives. For example, Media Matters notes how Fox and Friends has amplified McCaughey’s argument, claiming that “doctors will be forced to ask patients about their sex life, even if it has nothing to do with the medical treatment that they are seeking at the time.”
But the questions McCaughey finds so outrageous are already routine physician practice. In fact, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for doctors refers to questions about sexual history as “an important part of a regular medical exam or physical history.” Aaron Carroll at The Incidental Economist further debunks McCaughey. She cites a cardiologist upset over “insensitive” sex questions, and yet Carroll points out there is good reason why doctors in any variety of fields, including cardiology, should be aware of patients’ sex lives.
Instead, what Obamacare accomplishes on sexual health is requiring insurers to reimburse preventative care at no additional cost to doctors or patients, and these can include sexual health, from STI counseling, birth control, to Pap smears.
McCaughey’s advice is that patients “defend their own privacy by refusing to answer the intrusive social-history questions.” This is, easily, bad advice. While Obamacare doesn’t grant the government access to patients’ sexual history, withholding important information from a doctor directly impacts a person’s health care. Patients are able to refuse to answer, of course, but an adult and frank conversation with doctors helps lead to better customized diagnosis and treatment.
Posted by Relentless. on :
quote:Originally posted by glassman: none of this has a damn thing to do with our government;
we pay as much as ten times as much as almost every other country for the exact same things.
the rumor that people from all over the world come here for better care is just that, a rumor...
the real problem is that we have been ordering off a menu with no prices on it and sending the bill to somebody else for the last fifty years...
it really is a fact that the price of "not dying" is priceless right?
Well that's right. Let's just use Canada to compare... How is it remotely possible that Canadians spend less per capita than we do and receive more coverage? How is that possible? They have a single payer system with no co-pays, no deductibles, prescriptions have (or had when I was there) a $1 copay. Taxes are higher in Canada.. Ok yes this is true. However are taxes higher to the extent that they are comparable to what I have to pay for premiums for a family of four? Crap that alone doesn't make sense, then add in copays and deductibles. Maximum out of pocket expenses. The list goes on and on.
None of it makes sense, so we remove that and we are left with what we don't want to believe..
"They" are doing everything they can to collapse the system, while also using that collapse to gain total control of every facet of every life in this country.
Posted by raybond on :
More Kids Now Have Health Care, And You Have The Federal Government To Thank For That
By Igor Volsky on September 18, 2013 at 10:44 am
More children are enrolled in health care coverage as a result of government safety net programs and provisions included in the Affordable Care Act, a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute finds.
“As of 2011, the percentage of those children with health insurance stands at 87.2, up from 81.7 in 2008,” while “the number of children eligible for Medicaid/CHIP, but uninsured, dropped from 4.9 million in 2008 to just 4.0 million in 2011.”
Print
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have achieved participation rates of 90 percent or higher and just four — Alaska, Montana, Nevada, and Utah — reported rates below 80 percent. Three states — Texas, California and Florida — with the largest number of eligible but uninsured children make-up almost 37 percent of the total number of eligible uninsured children.
The advances in coverage come as a result of state efforts to simplify the enrollment process and several provisions included in the Affordable Care Act. The law has established a single streamlined application, decreased the paperwork burden, and awarded grants to community organizations tasked with enrolling eligible populations in the safety net programs. Obamacare has also ensured that an estimated 3.4 million young Americans now have access to health coverage. Under the health law’s provision allowing Americans up to 26 years old to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans, the country has seen a record drop in the number of uninsured young adults.
“The new data released today by the Urban Institute, showing a boost in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) participation rates, demonstrates that the nation is moving in the right direction with respect to children’s health coverage,” a spokesperson told ThinkProgress. “CMS is greatly encouraged by this steady progress, as we continue our efforts to enroll all children who are eligible for these programs and to keep them covered for as long as they qualify.”
Posted by raybond on :
The huge disparities in health care across the country have contributed to a dynamic in which low-income Americans’ access to high quality care is largely dependent on the state they live in, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund.
Commonwealth’s new scorecard attempts to investigate whether states are successfully providing health care to economically disadvantaged populations. The nonprofit finds a dramatic range between the highest-ranked states and the lowest-ranked states on its list. While the poor residents of states that rank higher on Commonwealth’s scale of health care quality are more likely to be covered under some type of insurance and receive some kind of regular medical treatment, the poor residents living in states with lower rankings are much less likely to have access to the same care.
For instance, when Commonwealth looked at how many low-income adults over the age of 50 are receiving their recommended preventive care — like cancer screenings and vaccines — researchers found that states like Idaho, Oklahoma, and California have rates of 26 percent or less. But in Massachusetts, 42 percent of that population receives that care. Commonwealth found that the average national rate for this health indicator was somewhat in the middle of those two figures, at 32 percent.
Low-income adults are also much more likely to have dental issues in lower-ranked states. In West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, about 25 percent of poor residents under the age of 65 have lost six or more teeth due to decay or disease — compared to less than 10 percent of those people in Connecticut, Hawaii, and Utah.
“There are often two Americas when it comes to healthcare, divided by geography and income,” the study’s authors concluded.
Ultimately, the stark differences in health care access and quality are leading to thousands of preventable deaths among poor Americans. The researchers point out that if the lowest-ranked states brought their health care delivery up to the standards that already exist for wealthier people in the highest-ranked states, an estimated 86,000 fewer people would die prematurely each year:
commonwealth 1 CREDIT: Commonwealth Fund
Previous research has found that the health disparities between rich and poor areas of the United States are only getting increasingly worse. Ironically, those gaps will likely widen once the health reform law is fully implemented.
Obamacare seeks to expand the Medicaid program to extend health coverage to additional low-income Americans, but the expansion is optional — and the states that are resisting it tend to be the same ones with disproportionately large uninsured populations and poor health care outcomes. Poor Americans in the South have the most to gain from Medicaid expansion, but their lawmakers are the ones refusing to cooperate with it. If stubborn Obamacare opponents keep digging in their heels against reform, the political fight over Medicaid is expected to widen the gulf between what are already the healthiest and sickest states in the country.
The Commonwealth Fund’s report didn’t specifically examine the impacts of the Affordable Care Act, but the researchers do note that the health reform law represents a “historic opportunity for states to provide better health care to economically vulnerable people by providing resources to overcome the geographic and income divide.” Of course, that’s only if states accept it.
“The lack of Medicaid will only exacerbate the disparities our scorecard highlights,” the Commonwealth Fund’s president, David Blumenthal, told USA Today.
Posted by raybond on :
Icon 1 posted 17-09-2013 15:11 Profile for glassman Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- none of this has a damn thing to do with our government;
we pay as much as ten times as much as almost every other coutnry for the exact same things.
------------------------------------------------- You are 100% right glass. If a person need the proof of that go to mexico where the cost of American made drugs is one tenth or less than here in America. I asked a big wig for merc. once about that. his answer to that was somebody has to cover the cost and America is it.
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
quote:Originally posted by raybond: Icon 1 posted 17-09-2013 15:11 Profile for glassman Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- none of this has a damn thing to do with our government;
we pay as much as ten times as much as almost every other coutnry for the exact same things.
------------------------------------------------- You are 100% right glass. If a person need the proof of that go to mexico where the cost of American made drugs is one tenth or less than here in America. I asked a big wig for merc. once about that. his answer to that was somebody has to cover the cost and America is it.
What do they cost in Canada?
Posted by glassman on :
cashcow, in Canada family pratice Doctors make 2/3's what they do in the US about 125K versus 185K per yearand doctors administrative costs are much lower there too; A 2010 Health Affairs study found that doctors in Ontario, a Canadian province, spent $22,205 each year dealing with the single-payer agency, compared to the $82,975 American doctors spend dealing with private insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid.
doctors in canada are not government employees,
Posted by raybond on :
Five Major Ways That Republicans Are Trying To Sabotage Obamacare
By Sy Mukherjee on September 19, 2013 at 1:48 pm
keep-your-politics-out-of-my-healthcare-RALLY CREDIT: Center for American Progress Action Fund
In two weeks, uninsured Americans will finally be able to start signing up for health coverage through Obamacare’s statewide insurance marketplaces. But even as the critical enrollment period inches closer, Obamacare opponents remain engaged in an all-or-nothing effort to block the law. Congress is trying to defund, delay, and repeal Obamacare on a federal level. State executives and lawmakers are working to stymie outreach efforts and undermine its individual provisions. And grassroots misinformation campaigns are ramping up their efforts.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) released a new report on Thursday exploring the major efforts that Republican officials and Obamacare critics are currently using to sabotage the law:
1. Defund, delay, repeal.
Since Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) won the Speaker’s gavel in 2011, House Republicans have held votes on either fully repealing, partially repeal, delaying, or defunding Obamacare a staggering 41 times. A ThinkProgress analysis in August found that the current Republican Conference in the House has collectively voted to repeal or defund the health law a total of 7,386 times.
The New York Times put it another way back in May: since 2011, the House spent 15 percent of all of its floor activity on repealing Obamacare, which amounts to about $17 million of Republican members’ salaries. And those figures will continue to grow this week, as House Republican leadership caved to conservative members’ and Tea Party senators’ demands to try to defund Obamacare as part of a deal to keep the government funded.
The federal attacks on Obamacare aren’t just focused on the law as a whole, either; they’re also taking on the law’s individual provisions. On Thursday, House and Senate Republicans introduced a bill to delay enrollment in Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces — which launch in just two weeks — until complete data privacy can be assured. The Obama administration has insisted that its digital hub that will handle marketplace enrollment is secure and announced new initiatives to quell fears about privacy and financial security on Wednesday.
2. Preventing Americans from getting all the facts about Obamacare.
What if a health care law could help millions of Americans — but no one knew about it? CAPAF’s report highlights the ways that diehard Obamacare opponents have been imposing hurdles on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and groups trying to teach Americans about Obamacare.
For instance, when word got out that the White House was considering partnering with sports organizations like the NFL and NBA to inform their fans about opportunities they may have under health care reform, GOP members of Congress sent threatening letters to the groups, warning them not to do the Obama administration’s “dirty work.” The plans to partner up with major sports leagues fizzled after the warnings, although individual teams like the Baltimore Ravens have agreed to team up with HHS to promote Obamacare.
Conservative groups’ ongoing misinformation campaigns about the law, the lack of funding allocated for red state’s outreach efforts, and gag efforts on the federal level have all taken their toll. Over 40 percent of Americans who could benefit substantially from the health law remain utterly confused about it. Now, it’s up to outside groups and community organizations to make sure people know how to take advantage of the law.
3. Opposing the law’s optional Medicaid expansion.
The Medicaid expansion is one of the primary mechanisms through which Obamacare tries to extend health coverage to the poor and uninsured. As originally written, the health law would provide generous funding to the states so that they could expand their Medicaid eligibility threshold to anybody earning 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) or less.
But the Supreme Court ruled the expansion to be optional last summer, leaving it up to individual states to decide whether to accept it. And since then, many of the states with the highest rates of poverty and uninsurance in the country have stubbornly refused to take billions of dollars in federal funding to extend basic health coverage to the poorest Americans. Six out of the 22 states that are not expanding Medicaid under Obamacare are among the ten most uninsured states in America, and another five have uninsurance rates that are higher than the U.S. national average of 21 percent. Close to one in five Americans in those states lives in poverty.
Unless those resistant red states come around, about two-thirds of the Americans who were expected to gain Medicaid coverage under Obamacare won’t actually get those benefits next year. And in addition to hampering efforts to extend coverage to additional uninsured Americans, the failure to expand Medicaid in these poor regions also risks driving hospitals that primarily serve the poor and uninsured out of business.
4. Putting onerous requirements on the people who will help Americans sign up for Obamacare plans.
As CAPAF points out, Republicans in Congress have also targeted organizations that are hiring “navigators” — the people that will help Americans sign up for coverage under the law — by asking the groups to submit voluminous amounts of paperwork at the very time when they need to focus their attention on reaching out to Americans about Obamacare. These information requests have actually been targeted in states that have some of the highest uninsurance rates in the country, and are led by conservative officials who have done little to properly implement Obamacare.
It’s not just congressional Republicans targeting the navigators, either. GOP governors critical of the health law, like Rick Scott (R-FL), have also sent Congress letters suggesting that the navigators may wind up being fraudsters, scam artists, or criminals who use their position to steal Americans’ personal financial information. Those concerns were part of the reason that the Obama administration is set to announce new security measures for the insurance marketplaces, such as a toll-free number to report fraud and an identification verification system to prevent identity theft.
Some states have also imposed even tougher restrictions on who is eligible to be a navigator in the first place, making it difficult for some local organizations to hire enough workers just weeks before Obamacare’s initial enrollment period begins.
5. Simply refusing to enforce Obamacare’s provisions.
When all else fails, just refuse to enforce the law you hate so much!
A majority of states have not set up their own insurance marketplaces, opting to let the federal government run one instead. But six of those states (Texas, Arizona, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) have taken it to an extreme by explicitly refusing to oversee Obamacare’s most basic and popular protections, such as barring insurers from denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing medical conditions and discriminating against women on the basis of gender.
Unlike the other 20 states that will have a federally-run marketplace, these states won’t even police the insurers who sell plans on them within their borders. That means that consumers will have to submit complaints and ask questions to the federal government rather than state insurance departments, which are far more suited to deal with local insurance matters. Texas health advocates worry that this could lead to confusion and harm consumers at a critical juncture for the health care law.
The CAPAF report also explains that seven other states have formed a “health compact” that would essentially repeal Obamacare within those states. Since this compact has to be approved by the federal government, there’s little fear that it will actually happen. State lawmakers in Indiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have all introduced (failed) legislation that would make it a crime punishable by fines or prison to implement and enforce Obamacare.
Posted by Upside on :
As far as I know Minnesota is the only state that has published the plans that will be available on their exchange come October 1st. You can also find the rates for each plan based on age and geographic location, they have 9 different rating regions. There's a total of 141 plans to choose from although the employer sponsored plans might be included in that number.
As an employer I've been poring over the plans and rates for the last few days and the one thing that really jumped out at me was the disparity in rates between comparable plans if purchased by an individual versus employer sponsored. There's no comparison, a plan purchased by an individual with a monthly premium of $300.00 will cost a business over $500.00 for the exact same coverage.
This is playing right into the governments hands but can anyone tell me why I, or any other employer for that matter, should continue to offer health care as a benefit? Why not simply subsidize the employees pay after they purchase an individual plan on their own? Am I missing something here or is the real intent to get employers out of the health insurance game?
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by Upside: As an employer I've been poring over the plans and rates for the last few days and the one thing that really jumped out at me was the disparity in rates between comparable plans if purchased by an individual versus employer sponsored. There's no comparison, a plan purchased by an individual with a monthly premium of $300.00 will cost a business over $500.00 for the exact same coverage.
This is playing right into the governments hands but can anyone tell me why I, or any other employer for that matter, should continue to offer health care as a benefit? Why not simply subsidize the employees pay after they purchase an individual plan on their own? Am I missing something here or is the real intent to get employers out of the health insurance game?
i think so, and i don't think it is bad to get employers out of the health care biz...
Posted by raybond on :
Meet Butch Matthews, A Republican Who Came To Love Obamacare After Realizing It Will Save Him $13,000
By Sy Mukherjee on October 2, 2013 at 4:52 pm
61-year-old Butch Matthews, left, with his wife Debbie 61-year-old Butch Matthews, left, with his wife Debbie
Butch Matthews is a 61-year-old former small business owner from Little Rock, Arkansas who used to wake up every morning at 4 A.M. to deliver canned beverages to retailers before retiring in 2010. A lifelong Republican, he was heavily skeptical of the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. “I did not think that Obamacare was going to be a good plan, I did not think that it was going to help me at all,” he told ThinkProgress over the phone.
But after doing a little research, Matthews eventually realized how much the law could help him. And on Tuesday, his local Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) provider confirmed that he would be able to buy a far better plan than his current policy while saving at least $13,000 per year through Arkansas’ Obamacare marketplace.
quotes-18Matthews was self-employed between 1997 and 2010, meaning he had to purchase his own plan on the individual market. He chose a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan for himself and his wife that charged a $250 per month premium and had a $2,000 deductible. But the price of that policy kept rising even as it covered fewer of his costs, eventually devolving into his current rate of $1,069 per month with a $10,000 deductible. At this point, it doesn’t even cover his medication or doctors’ visits — particularly concerning considering he had to have two stents placed in his heart in 2006.
“I do not work now, I’m 61, and we do have assets saved up. But still, to come up with that $1,069 per month….” he said, trailing off. “I went to Blue Cross Blue Shield, and they don’t even sell that plan anymore, but I could not change it to anything else. So I was locked in with it.”
That all changed once Obamacare’s state-level marketplaces opened to the public on Tuesday. Matthews knew that, at his income level, the law would help him pay for insurance. But even he might not have expected just how good of a deal he could get: his new coverage will cost him absolutely nothing in monthly premiums after factoring in federal subsidies, and has a deductible of $750.
“Which is a lot different from $10,000,” he pointed out, laughing.
The mid-level “Silver” policy that he picked out also offers a significantly better benefits package. “It’s a lot better plan,” Matthews said. His old plan was considered to be “Bronze” and had much higher co-pays. Under Obamacare, when Matthews visits a doctor, it will no longer cost him around $150. It will cost $8.
quotes-19So what would Matthews tell other Americans who are skeptical about Obamacare? “I would tell them to learn more about it before they start talking bad about it,” he noted. “Be more informed, get more information, take your time and study and not just go by just what you hear on one side or the other. Actually check the facts on it.”
“I still am a very strong Republican, but this… I’m so happy that this came along,” he continued. “Our home is paid for, vehicle’s paid for, this is our expense that we have. We have more expense on medical care than everything else put together, so this is going to be a great help for us.”
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took me ten years to be able to use the other fingers and thumb-used to be two fingers for the longest time...![[Confused]](confused.gif)