Obamacare is Here to Stay

[orygunluvr]

CNN Breaking News
12:10 PM

More than 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare, a symbolic victory after the program's difficult rollout.

That's 6 million the same number that SFLiberal said lost their crappy insurance because of Obamacare. Coincidence???

To bad no one has anyway of knowing how many really have signed up and paid. 2 weeks ago sebellius even said as much.

[SFLiberal]

CNN Breaking News
12:10 PM

More than 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare, a symbolic victory after the program's difficult rollout.

That's 6 million the same number that SFLiberal said lost their crappy insurance because of Obamacare. Coincidence???

Ok, if you actually believe anything this administration says, they are proven liars, 6 million have now enrolled.

Now of that 6 million how many have actually paid their premiums? The administration says it doesn't know, which we all know is another lie. Their policies do not take affect until they pay their premiums. You and I know if it was a big number we would be hearing about it, and they need 40% of those that sign up and actually pay to be the young and healthy for Obamacare to be viable. At last count they totaled 25%.

So why won't they tell us how many have paid their premiums? Care to answer?

Obamacare Enrollment Numbers? 'They Are Lying to Us,' Rep. Blackburn Says
March 28, 2014 - 11:03 AM

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration now says more than 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare, but critical information is missing, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told Fox News on Friday.

"I think that they are lying to us about who has paid, who has not paid, who is getting subsidies...They don't want to give us the numbers," she said. "The way they are surveying this (web)site -- you know they are trying to cover things up."

Blackburn said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius must answer five questions when she testifies again next month before the House Energy and Commerce Committee:

Video

"We don't know how many of the 6 million previously had insurance and were just forced into the Obamacare program; we don't know how many have paid...we don't know how many are the young/healthy that you have to have to make it actuarially work; we don't know how many were Medicaid or how many got subsidies.

"And those are the five questions that you have to have answers to before you can say how many new people came into the system."

Blackburn said if HHS's "new math" doesn't add up, it shows how unsuccessful Obamacare really is -- and how much more expensive it will be than originally estimated.

"What they've forgotten is, this is not their money. It is taxpayer money. Taxpayers want us to get to the bottom of it."

The administration is withholding information to obscure the fact that "this whole exercise is about transferring the health insurance marketplace to the federal government and about (a) single-payer system and federal government control of all healthcare," Blackburn said.

"And they need to tell us the truth. They need to stop hiding behind all these shifting numbers and they need to say, look we tried it -- it's not worked; it's going to end up costing tens of millions of dollars over what we thought it was going to be, just to get people to the website. We need to start over."

- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jo...mSme3.dpuf

[SFLiberal]

CNN Breaking News
12:10 PM

More than 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare, a symbolic victory after the program's difficult rollout.

6.2 Million lost their insurance due to Obamacare. Almost out of the hole and at square one. Whooo Hoooo!!!

[MarkM]

Still waiting to see which of the WH facts I posted is wrong.

and waiting

and waiting

and waiting

kinda like trying to see a doctor before Obamacare!

[orygunluvr]

Obama Care, is a mess.
We already know it and understand the problems ahead.
We also understand that "repeal" is simply not an option, would be a step back and find us again in a place akin to an undeveloped backward nation not able to provide for far too many of our citizens.

If you read widely you understand that most pundits who have knowledge of this problem do see it as a mess. Yet, most agree that it is "fixable" and in the long run will be a positive program that will free up the responsibility of employer paid programs and save business money when the books are settled. (As one example)

It will take time, and it will be painful for some in the "short term". But it's acknowledged that the pain will hit the middle class who can well afford to bear this slight burden for a short period. Maybe on less special Starbucks coffee each day.

But to constantly deride a program we have needed for a hundred years (or more) that can work (in time) is to betray the good efforts of so many who have worked so hard to make a more equitable society.

Think long and hard before you parrot the voices of the shrill negative types who's history of opposition to all progressive programs has been a constant thorn in the side of making life better for all our people. They support the elites, and the elites don't really need all that much help.

You are right: It's a mess (Oregon especially). It's fixable, it will someday be seen as a watershed moment in our national evolution to a great state, and you might want to be part of making it happen.

I'm hoping so.

Hold on there, Wonk. You've bought into the Dark Side Spin.

Obamacare is not a mess. On the contrary, it has been quite a success. Granted, the federal website was a mess, as were the websites in several states, Oregon the most notable of those. The Cover Oregon website was worse than a mess. It was an unqualified disaster.

Despite that completely non-functional website, Oregon still enrolled over 80,000 for health insurance. When you consider the handicap, that's quite astounding.

As I wrote elsewhere, it's not that right wing conservatives want Obamacare to fail; they are fearful it will succeed -- even a little bit. If government works even a little bit to improve people's lives, then their whole "government always fails / everything should be privatized" argument falls apart. So for them, everything government touches must necessarily turn to poop. It can be no other way. Therefore, Obamacare is a mess.

But it's not.

Remember, Obamacare celebrated its fourth birthday this weekend. Four years it's been around. Remember how it would destroy America, hail socialism, collapse the economy, cause warts, and everything else terrible? Never happened. In fact, Obamacare has improved the lives of millions of Americans in real tangible ways. For instance,



End to Pre-Existing Condition Discrimination: Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition like asthma and diabetes, providing peace of mind for parents of the more than 17.6 million children with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, no American can be discriminated against due to a pre-existing condition.

End to Limits on Care: In the past, some people with cancer or other chronic illnesses ran out of insurance coverage because their health care expenses reached a dollar limit imposed by their insurance company. Under the health care law, insurers can no longer impose lifetime dollar limits on essential health benefits and annual limits are being phased out by 2014. More than 105 million Americans no longer have lifetime limits thanks to the new law.

End to Coverage Cancellations: Insurance companies can no longer drop your coverage when you get sick due to a mistake you made on your application.

Value for Your Premium Dollar: Thanks to the Affordable Care Act’s 80/20 rule, if insurance companies don’t spend at least 80 percent of your premium dollar on medical care and quality improvements rather than advertising, overhead and bonuses for executives, they will have to provide you a rebate. In 2012, 8.5 million people received half a billion dollars in refunds.

Stopping Unreasonable Rate Increases: In every State and for the first time ever, insurance companies are required to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10 percent or more.

Small Business Tax Credits: Small businesses have long paid a premium price for health insurance – often 18 percent more than larger employers. The tax credit will benefit an estimated 2 million workers who get their insurance from an estimated 360,000 small employers who will receive the credit in 2011 alone.

Free Prevention Benefits: Insurers are now required to cover a number of recommended preventive services, such as cancer, diabetes and blood pressure screenings, without additional cost sharing such as copays or deductibles. Already, 54 million Americans with private health coverage have gotten better preventive services coverage as a result.

Coverage for Young Adults: Under the law, most young adults who can’t get coverage through their jobs can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 – a change that has already allowed 3.1 million young adults to get health coverage and given their families peace of mind.

Coverage for Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions: Before the law, many Americans with pre-existing conditions were locked or priced out of the health insurance market. More than 50,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions have gained coverage through the new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. This temporary program makes health coverage available and more affordable for individuals who are uninsured and have been denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. In 2014, insurance discriminating against anyone with a pre-existing condition will be illegal.

Affordable Insurance Exchanges: Affordable Insurance Exchanges are one-stop marketplaces where consumers can choose a private health insurance plan that fits their health needs. Starting in 2014, they will offer to the public the same kinds of insurance choices members of Congress will have. Exchanges will select health plans qualified to offer coverage; facilitate consumer assistance, shopping and enrollment; and coordinate eligibility for the Exchange and potential premium assistance. Already, 33 States and the District of Columbia are on their way to building Exchanges, having received at total of nearly $670 million in Exchange Establishment Grants.

Lower Cost Prescription Drugs: In the past, as many as one in four seniors went without a prescription every year because they couldn’t afford it. To help these seniors, the law provides relief for people in the donut hole – the ones with the highest prescription drug costs. As a first step, in 2010, nearly four million people in the donut hole received a $250 check to help with their costs. In 2011, 3.6 million people with Medicare received a 50 percent discount worth a total of $2.1 billion, or an average of $604 per person, on their brand name prescription drugs when they hit the donut hole. Seniors will see additional savings on covered brand-name and generic drugs while in the coverage gap until the gap is closed in 2020.

Free Preventive Services: Under the new law, seniors can receive recommended preventive services such as flu shots, diabetes screenings, as well as a new Annual Wellness Visit, free of charge. So far, more than 32.5 million seniors have already received one or more free preventive services, including the new Annual Wellness Visit.

Fighting Fraud: The health care law helps stop fraud with tougher screening procedures, stronger penalties, and new technology. Thanks in part to these efforts, we recovered $4.1 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2011, the second year recoveries hit this record-breaking level. Total recoveries over the last three years were $10.7 billion. Prosecutions are way up, too: the number of individuals charged with fraud increased from 821 in fiscal year 2008 to 1,430 in fiscal year 2011 – nearly a 75 percent increase.

Improving Care Coordination and Quality: Through the newly established Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, this Administration is testing and supporting innovative new health care models that can reduce costs and strengthen the quality of health care. So far, it has introduced 16 initiatives involving over 50,000 health care providers that will touch the lives of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in all 50 states.

Providing Choices while Lowering Costs: The number of seniors who joined Medicare Advantage plans increased by 17 percent between 2010 and 2012 while the premiums for such plans dropped by 16 percent – and seniors across the nation have a choice of health plans.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/h...e-overview

Before OL and SFL go postal about this info coming from the WH, let me issue a challenge. You prove any of these facts incorrect and I will donate $10 to a charity of your choice. Get going.

So you see, Wonky, Obamacare is not a mess. The mess was the healthcare system that preceded it. It's much, much, much better now. More than that, Democrats have proved once again that government can be used efficiently and effectively to improve the lives of people in real, tangible ways -- even if there are hiccups and glitches along the way.

"Lower cost prescription drugs", boys seizure meds have stayed at about $500.00 a month. His insurance will only provide generics now and won't even allow us to pay the difference. Generics have proven to not be effective on seizures so every time he has one it could be his last, if you know what I mean. We spent Christmas eve in the hospital with boy hooked to machines to make sure he didn't go into cardiac arrest from another seizure like the one he had that morning. Kind of strange, before Obamacare we had no problem getting name brand seizure meds. Obamacare did away with our out of pocket expense deduction and limits it to $2,500.00. That hits families like ours with special needs disabled kids disproportionately because we have large out of pocket expenses that aren't covered under insurance.

Keep your $10.00 bucks mark, your kids are going to need it. That should buy a gallon of milk still.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecar...by-64-146/

Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%

[orygunluvr]

If Obamacare is so great, why all the extensions mark? If iot was meant to get more people on insurance why have an enrollment period? Before Obamacare anyone could buy insurance at anytime, without the possibility of a penalty.

[orygunluvr]

http://www.conservativeinfidel.com/uncat...democrats/

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/j.../page/full

The Obamacare Flaw: People Aren't as Dumb as Democrats

You only have 5 to 7 days or maybe 30 days to comply with the law and this time they mean it.

Kind of.

And once again Obama has shown us that his basic problem is not one of governance but one of math.

After sternly vowing there would be no more delays for Obamacare, Obama and company sternly vowed to delay, and delay, and delay until every man woman and child in America is sick to death of Obama's signature legislation.

"According to a Health and Human Services official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about decisions that have not been made public,” wrote the Washington Post in what counts as news these days, “an exact time frame for this extension has not been set, and depends in part on how many people request it. Nor have officials decided precisely how long people will have to select a health plan after they get the extra time."

Gee, it sounds like they’re talking about a budget. An Obama budget. That can take years in extension.

I'm guessing the administration figures that if they're sick enough hearing about it, they’ll go get coverage.

Don't get me wrong: Obama still has a problem of governance, but you can't work on basic shapes and colors until you get your numbers right.

And no matter how hard he tries, Obama can't get his numbers right.

On anything.

Here's what's driving this fiasco: the whole premise of Obamacare has been that younger people will sign up en masse, allowing older people – – you know the ones who vote? – – to keep this party rolling.

You see, because it's a numbers-based system, where supposedly more money is supposed to come in than go out…

Yeah.

That's the problem Obama has. Don't ask. It's a liberal thing.

So hey youth of America, this is what hope and change looks like.

And get used to it until you're very, very old.

Because according to the US debt clock.org, our debt per citizen is $193,163 and our debt per family is $757,716.

And that's before we even start paying for Obamacare.

And that's before we even start paying rising interest rates.

And that's before you start paying your student loan, your car, your house, and any of the other happy crap the federal government now decides that you have to purchase from them. Did someone just order a GPS monitor for that Tea Party non-profit?

Let's just hope they don't ask us to buy everything online.

"Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services,” says the New York Times, “has said repeatedly that the federal website has been repaired and is ready to handle a surge of applications expected just before the deadline. But White House officials and some technology experts working on the exchange began to worry that the website might freeze up if the demand exceeded expectations."

On the other hand, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid contends people are too stupid to know how to use the Internet, and that's why Obamacare failed to hit the deadline.

Amazon, Ebay, Priceline, Facebook, all figured it out.

Even GEICO (Government Employee Insurance CO) made it so easy a caveman can do it.

That's because they trained federal employees, like Harry Reid, first.

Yet somehow they want us to believe that the youth of America lacks the technical skills to fill out an online application, and press the submit button.

This is a generation of youth who knew how to press the enter key before their grandparents did.

This is a generation of youth who believe that "all thumbs" is a sign of physical fitness.

And here's a question for you: if the IRS can design a system to collect taxes online, why can't they design a system to purchase insurance online?

Yeah, I know.

You see, because it's a numbers-based system, where supposedly more money is supposed to come in than go out…

[orygunluvr]

http://www.conservativeinfidel.com/uncat...ckey-kaus/

I’ve been thrown off my health insurance — THANKS, OBAMACARE! — and have spent hours and hours over the past month trying to figure out my options now that the Democrats have made my old plan, which I liked, “illegal.” (I prefer to think of my plan as “undocumented.”)

Whom do I bill for the hours of work Obamacare forced me to perform? How about you, Mickey? You’re the smartest living liberal (faint praise), and you assured us that Obamacare was going to be fantastic.

By now, Obama has issued “waivers” from Obamacare to about 99 percent of the country. (Perhaps you’ve heard, there’s a big midterm election this year.) As one of the few Americans not granted a waiver, I’m here to tell you: You have no idea what’s coming, America.

I thought I had figured out the best plan for me a month ago after having doctors and hospital administrators look at the packets of material I was sent by my old insurance company — the same mailing that informed me my old plan was “illegal” under Obamacare.

But when I checked online recently, I discovered the premier plan — the “platinum,” low-deductible, astronomically expensive plan that might be accepted by an English-speaking doctor who didn’t attend medical school in a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts — does not include treatment at any decent hospitals.

That’s sort of unfortunate because THAT’S THE ONLY REASON I WANT INSURANCE! That’s the only reason any sane homo sapiens wants health insurance: to cover health care costs in the event of some catastrophic illness or accident — not to pay for Mickey Kaus’ allergy appointments. But my only options under the blue-chip plan were hospitals that also do shoe repair.

I called Blue Cross directly to ask if its most expensive insurance plan covered the only hospital I’d ever go to in an emergency. Since that’s all I wanted to know, that’s what I asked. (I like to get to the point that way.)

But — as happens whenever you try to ascertain the most basic information about insurance under Obamacare — the Blue Cross representative began hammering me with a battery of questions about myself.

First my name. (Does that make a difference to what hospitals its plans cover?) Then my phone number. By the time he got to my address, I said, CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME IF ANY OF YOUR PLANS COVER XYZ HOSPITAL? I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF I WANT TO SIGN UP WITH YOU!

Finally, he admitted that Blue Cross’ most expensive individual insurance plan does not cover treatment at the hospitals I named. Their doctors are “out of network” (and the person who designed this plan is “out of his mind”).

This was the rest of the conversation, verbatim:

ME: None of your plans cover out-of-network doctors?

BLUE CROSS: No.

ME: Why is it called “Premier Guided Access WITH OUT-OF-NETWORK PLAN”?

BLUE CROSS: Where did you see that?

ME: On Blue Cross’ own material describing its plans.

BLUE CROSS: Oh. I don’t know why it’s called that.

ME: None of your plans cover (the good hospital)?

BLUE CROSS: No.

ME: I don’t know who you are, but I have a very specific set of skills that will help me find you. And when I find you, I am going to kill you. (Click.)

True conversation. Except the last sentence. That was my fantasy.

I decided to approach it from the opposite direction and called one of the nation’s leading hospitals to ask which plans it accepted. The woman listed a series of plans, but she couldn’t tell me if I was eligible for any of them. For that, she said, I’d have to go to the Obamacare website.

Does Obamacare cover suicide?

I went to “healthcare.gov” and — I guess I had heard this, but had blocked it from my memory like a rape victim unable to remember her attack — you can’t even peek at the available plans until you’ve given the government reams of personal information about yourself.

How about they let me look at the merchandise first?

Inasmuch as the cost of health insurance under Obamacare is so high that it will generally make more sense just to pay for your own catastrophic health emergencies, I was not interested in telling Kathleen Sebelius everything about me in order to have the privilege of glancing at the government’s crappy plans.

But that’s the only choice. As the Obamacare website directs:

(1) Create an account. (Name, password.)

(2) Tell us about yourself and your family. (Every single thing.)

(3) Choose a health insurance plan. (That’s where you finally get to see the plans.)

I wonder if other consumer-oriented businesses will start demanding names, addresses, passwords and phone numbers before the customer is allowed to browse the merchandise. Maybe Williams-Sonoma could pick up a few sales tricks from Ezekiel Emanuel! Oh, you’d like to see the bronze muffin tin? Sure, but first I’ll need your Social Security number, date of birth and mother’s maiden name. Sign here, here and here.

The main point of the Obamacare website is to encourage people other than me to get a government subsidy. There’s also a section helping you register to vote. You just can’t see the insurance plans. (Guess which one you need a government ID for?)

With zero help from the Obamacare website, I eventually figured out that there was one lone insurance plan that would cover treatment at a reputable hospital. The downside is, no doctors take it.

So my only two health insurance options — and yours, too, as soon as the waivers expire, America! — are: (1) a plan that no doctors take; or (2) a plan that no hospitals take. You either pay for all your doctor visits and tests yourself, or you pay for your cancer treatment yourself. And you pay through the nose in either case.

That’s not insurance! It’s a huge transfer of wealth from people who work for a living to those who don’t, accomplished by forcing the workers to buy insurance that’s not insurance. Obamacare has made actual health insurance “illegal.”

It’s not “insurance” when what I want to insure against isn’t covered, but paying for other people’s health care needs — defined broadly — is mandatory.

It’s as if you wanted to buy a car, so you paid for a Toyota — but then all you got was a 10-speed bike, with the rest of your purchase price going to buy cars, bikes and helmets for other people.

Or, more precisely, it would be like having the option of car insurance that covers either collisions or liability, but not both. Your car insurance premium would be gargantuan, because most of it would go to buy insurance, gas and air fresheners for other people in the plan.

If you have employer-provided health care, you may not have to make the 400 phone calls I had to, but the result will be the same: You’re not getting what is commonly known as “insurance.” You’re getting a massive bill to pay for other people’s chiropractors, marriage counselors, birth control pills, smoking cessation programs, “preventive care” appointments and pre-existing conditions.

Health insurance has been outlawed, replaced with a welfare program that has been renamed “insurance.”

When Matt Drudge decided he’d rather pay for his own health care, liberals hysterically denounced him for not buying an Obamacare transfer-the-wealth, fake “insurance” plan. It used to be shameful to be a public charge. Now it’s shameful to pay for yourself.

And it’s shameful to work for yourself. The self-employed are currently the only Americans subjected to Obamacare. (In a way, it’s lucky for the Democrats that there aren’t enough of us to hurt them in this year’s midterm elections!)

But we’re the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. You may have an employer-provided plan now, but the waivers can’t go on forever. If you live in America, your health insurance is going to disappear, too.

The government simply cannot force all insurance companies to give subsidized health care to a third of the country, to ignore the pre-existing health conditions of its customers, to pay for every little thing tangentially related to health — like smoking cessation programs, marital counseling and pediatric dental care — and also expect them to cover your cancer treatment.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been paying for insurance your whole adult life. That policy is now “illegal.” Put your hands in the air, nice and easy, and step away from the policy …

You 99-percenters still unaffected by Obamacare will blithely go to the polls this November and vote on some teeny-tiny issue, completely unaware of the total destruction of health insurance in America. The waivers have worked.

[orygunluvr]

http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/12/supp...erishment/

"How Are We Supposed To Live?" Michigan Workers Discover Obamacare Means Impoverishment


The 41 employees of Extreme Dodge in Jackson, Mich., are very familiar with trade-ins, but this year they’re learning about trade-offs as they come face to face with the new realities of health care. A few workers say they’re getting a great deal, but most have a severe case of sticker shock.

“I feel like I’ve been taken to the cleaners,” said Neal Campbell, a salesman.

The news was presented at the company’s annual benefits meeting earlier this month, when employees were told that the health insurance plan that the auto dealership had provided its workers was canceled because it doesn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Rather than officially sponsor a new policy, the company – voted one of the 100 best car dealerships to work for in the country last year – will instead provide its employees with $2,400 apiece to buy their own insurance, or to pocket and pay the new federal penalty if they elect to go without it.

[…]

A handful of the Extreme Dodge workers came out winners -- mostly low-wage earners who qualify for subsidies and therefore pay very little for insurance. The biggest winner is Brandon Chisholm, a detailer with two daughters, who will get health insurance for the first time, and will have to pay virtually nothing for it because he qualifies for a big government subsidy. That means he can bank the $200 a month the company is giving workers to replace the health insurance it previously provided.

Asked if he was excited at the prospect of getting nearly free coverage on top of the cash stipend, he replied, “Oh yeah! Anything that can help me and my family out, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Twenty-six of the dealership's workers had been covered this year under the old company plan. Twenty-one have now decided to go with the new group plan recommended by the company for next year, though they realize that they face sharply higher out-of-pocket costs next year.

Their deductibles will go from $1,125 this year to $3,000 next year, and maximum out-of-pocket costs jump from $2,250 to $6,350. And for families, those numbers double: to a $6,000 deductible and $12,700 out-of-pocket maximum.

“How is this helping the average American that’s working 40 to 50 hours per week?” said Terry Hardcastle, a salesperson. “How are we supposed to live?”

Cathy Smith, who’d hoped she’d qualify for a subsidy and made just a little too much money, had tears in her eyes. "You don't make that much money to begin with,” she said, “and the prescriptions are going to kill me."

[Scrapper]

http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/03/the-c...acare.html

The conspiracy to pretend tens of millions of people aren’t being helped by Obamacare

The White House announced on Thursday that six million people had picked a health insurance plan through an Obamacare exchange and Republicans said all at once, as they’ve been training each other to do, “BUT HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE PAID?”

“How many people have paid?” is a great argument against Obamacare, if your alternative were single-payer, where paying isn’t optional and everyone gets covered.

Single-payer is a fine alternative to Obamacare because we know it works! See: Medicare, which consistently controls costs better than our private health care providers. See also: the rest of the industrialized world, which covers far more of the population than far less than we spend.

As an alternative to single-payer, Obamacare will make a huge dent in the uninsured population but it won’t cover everyone. It wasn’t designed to because it’s made up of compromises on top of compromises, as The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn often points out.

The Republican alternatives, the sketches of these mythical beasts that exist, will cover far fewer people than Obamacare with far fewer benefits. And since the right’s plan likely won’t be single-payer, it will also require people to pay, which about 20 percent won’t, because paying for things is much harder than having the cost just deducted from your paycheck. (And if Republicans wanted more people covered without them having to pay, they could simply expand Medicaid to the five million working people they’re denying coverage by turning down the expansion their state is paying for anyway.)

So critics of Obamacare have a point when they say six million enrollments won’t end up being six million enrollments. But there’s a far greater chance that we’re under-counting than over-counting.

The genius of Charles Gaba’s ACASignups.net is that he attempts to quantify the success of Obamacare by giving a fairer sense of the law’s winners than we’ve been seeing in the media.

He counts the paid enrollments in the echanges that most people are fixated on. He also is tracking Medicaid signups, assiduously trying to determine how many are new, how many are the direct result of expansion, how many are “woodworkers” who are just signing up now because the publicity. And he gives the law credit for people up to age 26 who are covered under their parents’ plan thanks to Obamacare.

Charles also notes that the off-exchange enrollments are even harder to track than the jumbled state numbers he’s been sorting through. He estimates that as many as four million Americans have gained coverage through that method.

As of Friday afternoon, Charles found that at least 12.6 million and as many as 16.2 million Americans have gained coverage thanks to the law. This number will vary! It will go up a lot as the deadline nears and the people still in line have a chance to enroll in the next month. It will go down when some people don’t pay. And it will go up as Medicaid enrollment continues and expansion begins in new states, including Michigan.

The resulting number — somewhere around 18 million, I’d guess — will still only be a fraction of the uninsured population. But one of the greatest fictions about the law is that it only helps the uninsured.

It also is crucial for the underinsured, people who thought they had enough coverage — until they got sick. A new Kaiser Foundation Report finds that nearly 32 million Americans were “insured but underinsured” before the ACA, meaning they spent “a high-share of their income” on health care.

Obamacare both caps the amount the insured can be asked to spend in one year and removes the lifetime caps that insurers used to put on their policies. It adds free preventative care for everyone who is covered, while expanding mental health care and substance abuse treatment.

So with all these winners, why is the law so unpopular? Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to misrepresent the law hasn’t helped. The least popular parts of the law are the best known and the lies about it manage to stick like a bad pre-existing condition.

The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy looked at a recent Kaiser Foundation poll and noted, “It suggests that one in three Americans believe that the A.C.A. established a ‘death panel’ to make decisions about the end-of-life coverage that people receive under Medicare, and another one in four Americans aren’t sure whether such a panel exists. (It doesn’t.)”

There’s a real conspiracy to scare people about the law. And there is a real obliviousness of the number of people the law is helping because — like the largest tax cut for the middle class in history buried in the Stimulus — some of the new benefits are quietly baked in to your policy.

But the number of people the law is helping isn’t six million or the four-point-something million of that six million who will pay.

Obamacare has helped at least 12 million Americans get covered while improving coverage for tens of millions more. And if Republicans aren’t satisfied with that number, I can’t wait to see their plan that would do better.

[MarkM]

If Obamacare is so great, why all the extensions mark? If iot was meant to get more people on insurance why have an enrollment period? Before Obamacare anyone could buy insurance at anytime, without the possibility of a penalty.

Enrollment periods are nothing new to the insurance racket. Every company insurance plan has one.

The real penalty is needing insurance and not having it while you're on your way to the ER.

[MarkM]

Obama Care, is a mess.
We already know it and understand the problems ahead.
We also understand that "repeal" is simply not an option, would be a step back and find us again in a place akin to an undeveloped backward nation not able to provide for far too many of our citizens.

If you read widely you understand that most pundits who have knowledge of this problem do see it as a mess. Yet, most agree that it is "fixable" and in the long run will be a positive program that will free up the responsibility of employer paid programs and save business money when the books are settled. (As one example)

It will take time, and it will be painful for some in the "short term". But it's acknowledged that the pain will hit the middle class who can well afford to bear this slight burden for a short period. Maybe on less special Starbucks coffee each day.

But to constantly deride a program we have needed for a hundred years (or more) that can work (in time) is to betray the good efforts of so many who have worked so hard to make a more equitable society.

Think long and hard before you parrot the voices of the shrill negative types who's history of opposition to all progressive programs has been a constant thorn in the side of making life better for all our people. They support the elites, and the elites don't really need all that much help.

You are right: It's a mess (Oregon especially). It's fixable, it will someday be seen as a watershed moment in our national evolution to a great state, and you might want to be part of making it happen.

I'm hoping so.

Hold on there, Wonk. You've bought into the Dark Side Spin.

Obamacare is not a mess. On the contrary, it has been quite a success. Granted, the federal website was a mess, as were the websites in several states, Oregon the most notable of those. The Cover Oregon website was worse than a mess. It was an unqualified disaster.

Despite that completely non-functional website, Oregon still enrolled over 80,000 for health insurance. When you consider the handicap, that's quite astounding.

As I wrote elsewhere, it's not that right wing conservatives want Obamacare to fail; they are fearful it will succeed -- even a little bit. If government works even a little bit to improve people's lives, then their whole "government always fails / everything should be privatized" argument falls apart. So for them, everything government touches must necessarily turn to poop. It can be no other way. Therefore, Obamacare is a mess.

But it's not.

Remember, Obamacare celebrated its fourth birthday this weekend. Four years it's been around. Remember how it would destroy America, hail socialism, collapse the economy, cause warts, and everything else terrible? Never happened. In fact, Obamacare has improved the lives of millions of Americans in real tangible ways. For instance,



End to Pre-Existing Condition Discrimination: Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition like asthma and diabetes, providing peace of mind for parents of the more than 17.6 million children with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, no American can be discriminated against due to a pre-existing condition.

End to Limits on Care: In the past, some people with cancer or other chronic illnesses ran out of insurance coverage because their health care expenses reached a dollar limit imposed by their insurance company. Under the health care law, insurers can no longer impose lifetime dollar limits on essential health benefits and annual limits are being phased out by 2014. More than 105 million Americans no longer have lifetime limits thanks to the new law.

End to Coverage Cancellations: Insurance companies can no longer drop your coverage when you get sick due to a mistake you made on your application.

Value for Your Premium Dollar: Thanks to the Affordable Care Act’s 80/20 rule, if insurance companies don’t spend at least 80 percent of your premium dollar on medical care and quality improvements rather than advertising, overhead and bonuses for executives, they will have to provide you a rebate. In 2012, 8.5 million people received half a billion dollars in refunds.

Stopping Unreasonable Rate Increases: In every State and for the first time ever, insurance companies are required to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10 percent or more.

Small Business Tax Credits: Small businesses have long paid a premium price for health insurance – often 18 percent more than larger employers. The tax credit will benefit an estimated 2 million workers who get their insurance from an estimated 360,000 small employers who will receive the credit in 2011 alone.

Free Prevention Benefits: Insurers are now required to cover a number of recommended preventive services, such as cancer, diabetes and blood pressure screenings, without additional cost sharing such as copays or deductibles. Already, 54 million Americans with private health coverage have gotten better preventive services coverage as a result.

Coverage for Young Adults: Under the law, most young adults who can’t get coverage through their jobs can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 – a change that has already allowed 3.1 million young adults to get health coverage and given their families peace of mind.

Coverage for Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions: Before the law, many Americans with pre-existing conditions were locked or priced out of the health insurance market. More than 50,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions have gained coverage through the new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. This temporary program makes health coverage available and more affordable for individuals who are uninsured and have been denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. In 2014, insurance discriminating against anyone with a pre-existing condition will be illegal.

Affordable Insurance Exchanges: Affordable Insurance Exchanges are one-stop marketplaces where consumers can choose a private health insurance plan that fits their health needs. Starting in 2014, they will offer to the public the same kinds of insurance choices members of Congress will have. Exchanges will select health plans qualified to offer coverage; facilitate consumer assistance, shopping and enrollment; and coordinate eligibility for the Exchange and potential premium assistance. Already, 33 States and the District of Columbia are on their way to building Exchanges, having received at total of nearly $670 million in Exchange Establishment Grants.

Lower Cost Prescription Drugs: In the past, as many as one in four seniors went without a prescription every year because they couldn’t afford it. To help these seniors, the law provides relief for people in the donut hole – the ones with the highest prescription drug costs. As a first step, in 2010, nearly four million people in the donut hole received a $250 check to help with their costs. In 2011, 3.6 million people with Medicare received a 50 percent discount worth a total of $2.1 billion, or an average of $604 per person, on their brand name prescription drugs when they hit the donut hole. Seniors will see additional savings on covered brand-name and generic drugs while in the coverage gap until the gap is closed in 2020.

Free Preventive Services: Under the new law, seniors can receive recommended preventive services such as flu shots, diabetes screenings, as well as a new Annual Wellness Visit, free of charge. So far, more than 32.5 million seniors have already received one or more free preventive services, including the new Annual Wellness Visit.

Fighting Fraud: The health care law helps stop fraud with tougher screening procedures, stronger penalties, and new technology. Thanks in part to these efforts, we recovered $4.1 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2011, the second year recoveries hit this record-breaking level. Total recoveries over the last three years were $10.7 billion. Prosecutions are way up, too: the number of individuals charged with fraud increased from 821 in fiscal year 2008 to 1,430 in fiscal year 2011 – nearly a 75 percent increase.

Improving Care Coordination and Quality: Through the newly established Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, this Administration is testing and supporting innovative new health care models that can reduce costs and strengthen the quality of health care. So far, it has introduced 16 initiatives involving over 50,000 health care providers that will touch the lives of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in all 50 states.

Providing Choices while Lowering Costs: The number of seniors who joined Medicare Advantage plans increased by 17 percent between 2010 and 2012 while the premiums for such plans dropped by 16 percent – and seniors across the nation have a choice of health plans.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/h...e-overview

Before OL and SFL go postal about this info coming from the WH, let me issue a challenge. You prove any of these facts incorrect and I will donate $10 to a charity of your choice. Get going.

So you see, Wonky, Obamacare is not a mess. The mess was the healthcare system that preceded it. It's much, much, much better now. More than that, Democrats have proved once again that government can be used efficiently and effectively to improve the lives of people in real, tangible ways -- even if there are hiccups and glitches along the way.

"Lower cost prescription drugs", boys seizure meds have stayed at about $500.00 a month. His insurance will only provide generics now and won't even allow us to pay the difference. Generics have proven to not be effective on seizures so every time he has one it could be his last, if you know what I mean. We spent Christmas eve in the hospital with boy hooked to machines to make sure he didn't go into cardiac arrest from another seizure like the one he had that morning. Kind of strange, before Obamacare we had no problem getting name brand seizure meds. Obamacare did away with our out of pocket expense deduction and limits it to $2,500.00. That hits families like ours with special needs disabled kids disproportionately because we have large out of pocket expenses that aren't covered under insurance.

Keep your $10.00 bucks mark, your kids are going to need it. That should buy a gallon of milk still.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecar...by-64-146/

Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%

Darn right I'm keeping my Hamilton. You failed the challenge. Once again for those in the back, which of these facts is wrong:

Lower Cost Prescription Drugs: In the past, as many as one in four seniors went without a prescription every year because they couldn’t afford it. To help these seniors, the law provides relief for people in the donut hole – the ones with the highest prescription drug costs. As a first step, in 2010, nearly four million people in the donut hole received a $250 check to help with their costs. In 2011, 3.6 million people with Medicare received a 50 percent discount worth a total of $2.1 billion, or an average of $604 per person, on their brand name prescription drugs when they hit the donut hole. Seniors will see additional savings on covered brand-name and generic drugs while in the coverage gap until the gap is closed in 2020.

Still waiting.

[Wonky]

Mark, you are a fountain of good and useful information. You cite good sources, provide real data, and are proof that rational thinking is all important.

But you won't "win". OL (and the like) have no interest in accepting the facts of this troubled program. Their only true point is that it's evil and a liberal plot and must be destroyed.

The ACA got started as one of the biggest fiascos of modern electronic examples. It was a car wreck. The policy it's self was muddled and poorly (hastily ?) written, and a compromise to avoid Single Payer in hopes of finally having some kind of national health care plan.

That said, it was a watershed moment in our history! We finally got started with providing healthcare for all our citizens, at last matching the achievements of the the other modern industrial nations of the world.

Obama care is still a mess. Cover Oregon is a terrible mess! There are thousands of problems yet to be solved. But solved they will be if "we" don't allow the nut jobs led by the Koch brothers (and others) to derail the work.

Our debates about the ACA must stay on track. The intent of the law is good! The details of the act are a mess. Our attention should be on the importance of a national health care program and how it can be repaired to serve all our people and, at last, provide security for not just the privileged, but but all our people.

OL (and others) would have us repeal it, forever leaving millions at risk of injury or disease.

We can't allow that. but, we can't argue the specific points of this law and pretend it is working well. It's not, for far to many.

Our focus must be on what we can do to improve the ACA and make it work for all our people. Objective experts from all over the political spectrum and those who have expertise with insurance workings know this can be fixed.

Let's not allow the radical's stuck in the 19th century to inflict damage by changing the debate from "repair" to "repeal".

It's a mess, and we should admit it. It's fixable and we must work to get that done. Let's not allow some to kill what is our best chance is our history to provide our nation with a health care system for all. This may be our only chance.

OL does not want to debate the merits. He want's to kill it.
Don't waste too much time directing your efforts to him.

[bbqboy]

I heard A debate on NPR where the pundit said what's likely to happen is that the Health providers will become the insurers, thus eliminating the insurance companies anyway.

[oregon 67]

This is all well and good I glad some people have gotten a great deal on INSURANCE .

Rates have gone up . If you get a subsidies (money from somewhere) no problem .

The insurance companies are making a killing. And everyone is cheering. Yeah more free shit. Let someone else pay . Yeah the rich can afford it.

Great info: whitehouse.gov This is what it will do. Our experts have said it would.

If they are experts and the best of the best .Why on earth wouldn't they work in the private sector?

I think I've found where the sleazy used car salesmen have all gone.

[cletus1]

This is all well and good I glad some people have gotten a great deal on INSURANCE .

Rates have gone up . If you get a subsidies (money from somewhere) no problem .

The insurance companies are making a killing. And everyone is cheering. Yeah more free shit. Let someone else pay . Yeah the rich can afford it.

Great info: whitehouse.gov This is what it will do. Our experts have said it would.

If they are experts and the best of the best .Why on earth wouldn't they work in the private sector?

I think I've found where the sleazy used car salesmen have all gone.

How disappointing, all along I thought you had the ability to overlook politics occasionally and see things without ideology. Now I see you are part of the right wing anti government crowd that thinks public sector people are not talented enough to work in the private sector. That is kind of sad really. Do you think the Republican politicians you vote for are feeding at the government trough too?

[chuck white]

Militarize the health care. Draft all doctors and Nurses. Take control of the medical schools. Nationalize the Pharmaceutical industry.

Do it Now.

[oregon 67]

This is all well and good I glad some people have gotten a great deal on INSURANCE .

Rates have gone up . If you get a subsidies (money from somewhere) no problem .

The insurance companies are making a killing. And everyone is cheering. Yeah more free shit. Let someone else pay . Yeah the rich can afford it.

Great info: whitehouse.gov This is what it will do. Our experts have said it would.

If they are experts and the best of the best .Why on earth wouldn't they work in the private sector?

I think I've found where the sleazy used car salesmen have all gone.

How disappointing, all along I thought you had the ability to overlook politics occasionally and see things without ideology. Now I see you are part of the right wing anti government crowd that thinks public sector people are not talented enough to work in the private sector. That is kind of sad really. Do you think the Republican politicians you vote for are feeding at the government trough too?

I'm not anti government , I'm responsible government . The current R"s aren't the answer.
The thread about the current "D" corruption is disappointing, The "R" s just haven't been caught yet.

It should be about a system that has institutionalized pay off and corruption. Regardless of party affiliation.

This has all can be boiled down to a my team is better than your team analogy.

When people open their eyes and realize we are giving our freedoms to an omnipotent government it will be to late.

I'd be willing to bet that the nsa spying thing has roots in the patriot act . It was temporary. Health insurance , While it is still private and some form of redress is obtainable from the referee (gov't), If your insurance company becomes a denying turd. When this whole mess implodes and we have a single payer system where is our freedom of choice? Where is our redress when the single payer system says your aren't eligible for those for certain benefits. I will use the VA as an example .

[cletus1]

A history of lies.

[Scrapper]

GOP activist in Koch-funded ad attacking Obamacare costs turned down cheaper coverage

The real Obamacare horror story for the GOP? It helps the people it’s supposed to help




A new ad featuring a Grand Rapids resident complaining that her new health insurance plan is “not affordable” due to Obamacare leaves out an important fact. Shannon Wendt turned down Medicaid coverage for family, according to posts she made on her Facebook wall.

The ad from Koch-backed “social welfare” non-profit Americans for Prosperity neglects to mention that the Wendt family could be enjoying nearly fully subsidized government insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

Hmmm. Seems kind of important.

Wendt — a Republican precinct delegate who has taken strident stands against Obamacare in the past — echoes right wing complaints about Medicaid that hint at the fallacious and malicious argument that having Medicaid is worse than having no coverage at all.

A recent study in Oregon found that Medicaid recipients were better off both financially and mentally after brief periods of coverage.

On Facebook, she said she didn’t feel that a family that earns as much as hers should qualify for Medicaid. A spokesperson for AFP said that family had not been happy with MICHild coverage they had for “a short time” in the past.

Wendt preferred her old plan and wanted to keep her family’s doctor, which are completely understandable desires. The promise that people can always keep the plan and doctor they want was’t true before or after the law passed. And Wendt has a point, this was a broken promise. But even in a pre-Obamacare era, millions lost their coverage and their doctors. The number of uninsured Americans went up by 7.9 million under George W. Bush. And if Republicans have a plan where everyone can keep the plan and doctor they want forever, they should offer it now.

But her other complaints are unfounded, specious political attacks. Wendt may not like Medicaid but it provides a crucial lifeline for millions of Americans.

The program could definitely be improved by increasing spending on the program so that reimbursement rates more closely resemble Medicare. Instead, the GOP is denying an expansion coverage to millions of working Americans and Paul Ryan’s budget includes huge cuts to Medicaid that would make the problems the right complains about far worse.

Wendt put her family in the Medicaid gap — a situation millions find themselves in unwillingly. Thus, she has to pay more to get coverage, by her choice. Families in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana and even Maine would be jealous of this predicament.

Wendt had a low premium, high deductible plan where costs could have skyrocketed out of control if someone in her family had gotten sick. (We can’t say this for sure as she hasn’t released the details of her old plan.)

Obamacare was designed to help families like Shannon Wendt’s. But she didn’t want it. AFP should have pointed this out in the ad.

This is the second ad to air in Michigan in as many months with a person with connections to the Republican partty who actually could benefit from the law posing as an Obamacare victim. Julie Boonstra will likely pay less to treat her cancer thanks to Obamacare, which could also help millions of cancer victims who weren’t lucky enough to have insurance get covered. Shannon Wendt has volunteered to pay more to protest Obamacare and she blames Obamacare for her protest.

Clearly, there are many people who have been put in uncomfortable positions because of the failed roll out of Healthcare.gov, which has now been fixed. And of Americans who lost their plans and had to get new ones, there may be a few million who have to pay more to get the guaranteed cover Obamacare offers.

But an upper-middle class person being asked to pay more for coverage that offers more consumer protections isn’t exactly a tragedy. The Kochs are using Republican activists to fake horror stories for a simple reason, they’re having a hard time finding actual horror stories.

In her commercial, Wendt laughably says that Obamacare is “destroying the middle class.” In reality, Obamacare — along with the earned income tax credit — is the only thing the government has done to push people into the middle class and keep them there since the 1960s.

Tens of millions of Americans are benefiting from Obamacare and Republican activists still hate it. Tell us something we don’t know, Koch brothers.

http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/03/repub...erage.html