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I know that we are supposed to use ACA now instead of Obamacare, but since he was so comfortable embracing it before the “roll out” I will use it now.
Will the latest deadline be met?
just got myself into another discussion with yahoo over their e mail service… yahoo, a site that has been around since the internet came into being still can’t provide a reliable and easy to use e mail service….it’s just email!
….how much more complex and difficult can the obamacare site be? lol
come on – admit it caballeros! you are NOT opposed to obamacare or their website, you oppose universal healthcare in general, in principle…
consequently you no doubt oppose romneycare, the godfather of aca, which is working great, saving money and keeping americans insured in massachussetts?
Yes, I am opposed to Obamacare. Mandatory medical insurance is not healthcare. The website is just an example of things that are too big for the federal government to handle efficiently and the disregard to details. Medical reform is necessary, but the need to gut one of the best medical care systems in the world shouldn’t be included. Especially without tackling tort reform.
Many points of Obamacare are good. The whole package sucks. I would simply say, the bill has been passed into law. The deception and the how will be judged by the voters. For the voters to understand the impact of the law it should have simply been funded and put into place on Oct 1 as described in the law with a few simple logical differences. No Exemptions, No exclusions and No Waivers. If it works out better for the people then the Democrats will own it and do well in the 2014 and 2016 elections and it would be good for the country. If, it is indeed a “train wreck” then the Republicans would do well and have an actual chance to change or repeal it. The damage will be done financially either way (different subject)
I could be wrong but I would bet on the latter.
What is undeniable is that America’s health costs have risen at an insane rate that has driven many Americans into bankruptcy. Health care is truly a human right and if America continues to want to claim it is the greatest nation in the world then the country must contain health costs and care for all. Obama care is also undeniably flawed but is the best that could be expected in the political gridlock that congress has become. Neither side is willing to compromise for the good of the country.
I would highly recommend watching this documentary by PBS called sick around the world,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/
Unfortunately the video can no longer be seen in Mexico.
excellent points for which the conservative supporters of insurance company ripoffs rarely have an answer
great video ….fortunately you can watch it on youtube
“Obama care is also undeniably flawed but is the best that could be expected in the political gridlock that congress has become”. Obviously false statement. Obamacare passed with the democratic majority in the house, a necessary super-majority in the senate and the white house. If universal health care was wanted, a party line vote would have given the United States that. Unfortunately the ACA was passed (shoved) through without time for anybody to really check it out and signed without being published for three days as the American people were promised. You know, “we have to pass it so we can see whats in it”. Huh?
If Obama had really wanted to have a revolution he would have gone with single payer. The notion that republicans have not been for mandates is false. Check out these links below. They argue that individual mandates have deep republican roots. But for sure it was crazy when stated we have to pass it to see what is in it, what a joke. Of course it was shoved through, they knew they would not have the house for long.
http://ivn.us/2013/09/27/obamacare-was-originally-proposed-by-republicans/
Former Republican Senator John Chafee formally introduced the proposal in a 1993 bill titled, “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993,” which had 20 Republican co-sponsors and included an individual mandate and vouchers for lower income individuals.
Another interesting link on a yahoo forum, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110201081500AAUpuhN
Also the Daily Kos link with history on Republican sponsored mandates in the Nixon years, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/29/1104398/-The-Real-Reason-Republicans-hate-Obamacare#
for all the social paranoids:
the concept of universal healthcare is not based on entitlement but simply because it makes sense economically and from a public health point of view…
prison convicts, military personnel, and so many others receive FREE healthcare not because they DESERVE it but because the result of NOT doing so is not exactly desirable
most “civilized” countries have discovered this, except in america, the land of coporate capitalism and welfare…mainly because it threatens profits
Profits, what a dirty word. It keeps business going. Sure comes in handy on payroll day and for the ability to employ workers. At least for me.
The big “dirty” corporations sure have done well with this administrations pumping the market with our future moneys every month though. Meet the new boss…………
“workers” is the dirty word then?
they create profits…at least in my business, no workers means no profits…healthy, happy workers generate MORE profits…
unhealthy beings human or otherwise create nothing but expenses, delays, low quality, and worse: ill will
ObamaCare’s Plans Are Worse
How the Affordable Care Act raises prices and limits medical choices.
Nov. 29, 2013 7:05 p.m. ETEven as President Obama reluctantly granted Americans thrown off their health plans quasi-permission to possibly keep them, he called them “the folks who, over time, I think, are going to find that the marketplaces are better.” He means the ObamaCare exchanges that are replacing the private insurance market, adding that “it’s important that we don’t pretend that somehow that’s a place worth going back to.”
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with health insurance chief executives at the White House in Washington November. Reuters
Easy for him to say. The reason this furor will continue even if the website is fixed is that the public is learning that ObamaCare’s insurance costs more in return for worse coverage.
Mr. Obama and his liberal allies call the old plans “substandard,” but he doesn’t mean from the perspective of the consumers who bought them. He means people were free to choose insurance that wasn’t designed to serve his social equity and income redistribution goals. In his view, many people must pay first-class fares for coach seats so others can pay less and receive extra benefits.
Liberals justify these coercive cross-subsidies as necessary to finance coverage for the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions. But government usually helps the less fortunate honestly by raising taxes to fund programs. In summer 2009, Senate Democrats put out such a bill, and the $1.6 trillion sticker shock led them to hide the transfers by forcing people to buy overpriced products.
This political mugging is especially unfair to the people whose plans on the current individual market are being taken away. The majority of these consumers are self-employed or small-business owners. They’re middle class, rarely affluent. They took responsibility for their care without government aid, and unlike people in the job-based system, they paid with after-tax dollars.
Now they’re being punished for the crime of not subsidizing ObamaCare, even though the individual market was never as dysfunctional or high cost as liberals claim. In 2012, average U.S. individual premiums were $190, ranging from a low of $123 in North Dakota to a high of $385 in Massachusetts. Average premiums for family plans fell that year by 0.5% to $412.
Those numbers come from the 13,000 different policies from 180 insurers sold on eHealthInsurance.com, the online shopping brokerage that works. (Technological wonders never cease.) Individuals can make the trade-offs between costs and benefits for themselves. This wide variety is proof that humans don’t all want or need the same thing. If they did, there would be no need for a market and government could satisfy everybody.
That is precisely what the Obama health planners believe they can do. Regulators mandated a very rich level of “essential” health benefits that all plans in the individual market must cover, regardless of cost. This year eHealth EHTH +0.29% reported that its data show individual premiums must be 47% higher than the old average to fund the new categories in the individual market.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare’s plans are limited to essentially four. Yes, four. The law converts insurance products on the ObamaCare exchanges into interchangeable commodities that finance the same standard benefit at the same average expense over four tiers known as bronze, silver, gold and platinum.
So, for example, a bronze plan covers 60% of health-care expenses and the beneficiary pays a lower premium to pick up the remaining 40% out of pocket. Platinum carries a higher premium for a 90%-10% split. But there can be little deviation from the formulas—that is, there is little room for innovation or policy choice—to suit customer preferences.
In any case all four tiers are scrap-metal grade, because the rules ObamaCare imposes to create a supposedly superior insurance product are resulting in an objectively inferior medical product. The new mandates and rules raise costs, so insurers must compensate by offering narrow and less costly networks of doctors, hospitals and other providers in their ObamaCare products. Insurers thus restrict care and patient choice of physicians in exchange for discounted reimbursement rates, much as Medicaid does.
Nearly half of the ObamaCare plans are tightly managed HMOs, according to a McKinsey & Co. analysis. In states like California, Missouri and New Hampshire, many networks are 40% or 45% the size of those offered for normal commercial coverage. Patients face the prospect of waiting months and driving miles to clinics and county hospitals.
Narrow networks can be a useful cost-control tool, to the extent people choose to give up medical options in return for lower premiums. But that’s rarely what people want when they’re choosing with their own money. Some 82.5% of eHealth customers in 2012 purchased preferred provider organization plans (PPOs) that are structured so patients can visit virtually any physician.
The awful irony of this new ObamaCare health system is that all adults now enjoy mandated pediatric vision benefits, even if they don’t have kids, but parents can’t take their daughter to an expensive children’s hospital if she gets really sick. Everybody gets “free” preventive checkups with no copays, but not treatment for a complex illness from specialists at an academic medical center.
If the old individual market was as bad as Mr. Obama said it was, then he shouldn’t pretend it’s a place worth going back to, even for a year’s delay. His “fix” is necessary politically because ObamaCare’s willful destruction of this alternative is the worst act of government mayhem since FDR’s National Recovery Act. The Affordable Care Act’s main achievement is turning out to be diminishing affordable care.
Good article, Dex. But I watched the many commercials during the NFL and College football games this weekend from the ACA website they say and happy days are here again.
I was happy to see that as the few of us who actually pay taxes footed the bill for the commercials. Although the argument from the left could explain that no money from that tax collections were used, Only on funds derived by quantitative easing.
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