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.
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?
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.
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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.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
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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.”
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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.
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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,
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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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.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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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?
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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...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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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.”
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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