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Only 800,000 to go.


Tonik

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Before we hit the break even point on people with healthcare before Obamacare. What was the initial claim, 30 million to the good? Then it was 15, then like 7. Now they can only hope to break even? Asshats.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/11/news/economy/obamacare-enrollment/index.html

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and... only 25% of the needed under-25 group have jumped in. 75% short.

20% of everyone signed up haven't paid, facing cancellation.

83% are receiving federal aid to purchase.

Only 10% so far are of the original target group of uninsured.

Apparently the other 90% are mostly people that had their insurance cancelled?

And I'm not seeing data on how many signing up are actually going after the Medicaid instead of the insurance plans.

 

About by now I'm pretty sure we would have been better off hiring some other country to manage this for us.

 

edit: the irony seems to be more people lost insurance than uninsured people got insurance.

Some sort of reverse psychology, I guess.

Edited by ReconRat
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"The uninsured rate has fallen to 15.9 percent, Gallup reports, after conducting 28,000 interviews with Americans from Jan. 2-Feb. 28. By comparison, the uninsured rate in the fourth quarter of 2013 was 17.1 percent."

 

No shit sherlock. 4th quarter of 2013 was when 6 million people found out that they could not keep their plan, period.  Then Obama ignored Obamacare and wrote an executive order saying they could and many of them got it back. Oh, and this little tidbit is great news, for big business.

 

"The Gallup survey also showed that the percentage of Americans getting insurance through an employer has fallen nearly two points this year to 43.4 percent, while slightly more Americans have insurance they pay for themselves or that a family member pays for."

 

Let's do some math shall we.  Number of uninsured went down 1.2 percent and the number paying for it themselves went up 2 percent.  So .8 percent more are paying for it now that were not before.

 

And then there is this from the article:

 

"For instance, starting in 2015, businesses with more than 50 workers will be required to provide health care coverage or pay fines of $2,000 per employee."

 

That's a lie. It is delayed until 2016. Maybe CBS should read CBS.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/another-obamacare-mandate-delay-for-small-businesses/

Edited by Tonik
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Sure, it's a cluster. And you'd rather we go back to pre-ACA days, when we all paid for the uninsured, pre-conditioned and chronically ill who didn't have (or use) preventative care while abusing their lungs, livers, hearts and arteries?

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Sure, it's a cluster. And you'd rather we go back to pre-ACA days, when we all paid for the uninsured, pre-conditioned and chronically ill who didn't have (or use) preventative care while abusing their lungs, livers, hearts and arteries?

 

Non sequitur. ACA was supposed to make it better. 'splain how it did that. I am hoping you are not going to claim that the people you mention are being covered for free, at no cost to the rest of us. They cost us the same now as they did before. Hospitals overcharged us to cover their costs when they came in without insurance. Now we pre-pay that in higher premiums? Of course, that means hospitals should lower what they charge now right. Let me know when that happens please.

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Non sequitur. ACA was supposed to make it better. 'splain how it did that. I am hoping you are not going to claim that the people you mention are being covered for free, at no cost to the rest of us. They cost us the same now as they did before. Hospitals overcharged us to cover their costs when they came in without insurance. Now we pre-pay that in higher premiums? Of course, that means hospitals should lower what they charge now right. Let me know when that happens please.

We're a ways out before being able to conclude much about the ACA. Remember the website? It's pretty much functional now by all accounts, but that wasn't true in late 2013. At the end of '14 the situation will likely be changed yet. Anyone offering conclusions at this moment is revealing their political bias more than offering game totals.

And yes, of course the previously uninsured cost everyone the same now... But under the ACA they have coverage of preventative care when they want it, that's the point.

The GOP's solution? We're still waiting... because it was more important to turn the ACA into a Waterloo than to tune the ACA into something far better with more direct cost-reducing measures while providing coverage to people before their conditions turn chronic and expensive. You can't do that with a shrill who barks out "government death panel" comparisons while giving corporate insurance actuaries and appeals panels a pass.

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Baloney. There have been several repeal and replace proposals. Serious proposals that Reid won't let anyone vote one. Here is the latest.

 

http://time.com/4001/obamacare-republican-alternative/

 

The problem with this "alternative" if you want to call it that... is that it is essentially a carbon copy of the "popular" bits of Obamacare, but then leaves gaping loopholes for insurance companies to do the same thing they've been doing forever. Sure they can't refuse to sell you insurance based on a pre-existing condition, but they sure as hell can sell you a plan that covers everything but the thing you've got pre-existing.

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The problem with this "alternative" if you want to call it that... is that it is essentially a carbon copy of the "popular" bits of Obamacare, but then leaves gaping loopholes for insurance companies to do the same thing they've been doing forever. Sure they can't refuse to sell you insurance based on a pre-existing condition, but they sure as hell can sell you a plan that covers everything but the thing you've got pre-existing.

 

Gaping hole for the insurance companies? Why should they be required to pay for cancer treatment for a guy that didn't pay any premiums until yesterday. That is actually the most retarded part of Obamacare. People will pay the 2K penalty until they get sick, putting the rest in their pocket. And that is happening already, it's shown in the numbers ReconRat posted above. Healthy people that think they are bullet proof are not buying insurance. And that's why anything less than universal coverage will fail. Sure the Repub's plan will fail, but it will be far more sustainable than Obamacare.

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Gaping hole for the insurance companies? Why should they be required to pay for cancer treatment for a guy that didn't pay any premiums until yesterday. That is actually the most retarded part of Obamacare. People will pay the 2K penalty until they get sick, putting the rest in their pocket. And that is happening already, it's shown in the numbers ReconRat posted above. Healthy people that think they are bullet proof are not buying insurance. And that's why anything less than universal coverage will fail. Sure the Repub's plan will fail, but it will be far more sustainable than Obamacare.

 

What about the guy who's been paying premiums his whole life and has to switch employers?

 

and yes, we need a single payer option...but the republicans shut that option down.

Edited by magley64
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I have a busy day today so I gotta be brief, but a big problem with this whole healthcare debate is that a vast number of voices don't understand the fundamentals of risk pools, and that in this country, because we have made the ethics decision to NOT let anyone go untreated at an ER, there is no real separation between risk pools - it all flows into the same risk ocean.

 

Do you have private insurance?  Great, so do I!  But if you then join my company and enter my insurance risk pool you've now increased or decreased my pool's costs, right?  Except that you don't really.  You've simply transferred your risk from one private pool to another, and both are serviced by the same providers, who price their services accordingly, thus mixing the individual pools' risks.  And if you weren't on insurance before, or drop your insurance, you've now transferred your risk to the public, even if deferred, because of national identity's ethics thing.  It's even way more complicated than that, but I don't have time at the moment.

 

The upshot is that costs are pooled, no matter how you look at it, and the absence of coverage means that well people don't share the costs of unwell folks directly enough (they still do, but it's time-delayed and abstracted) and unwell people get worse because they don't have preventative and maintenance care, thus increasing their risk components to the rest of us in private, public and uninsured plans.

 

The single-payer concept, derided by corporatism as a communist notion, fundamentally acknowledges that all pools drain into the U.S. healthcare risk ocean.  Unfortunately the concept is harder to game by health insurers and healthcare providers, and so they use the libertarian rouge of "government intervention" to rally citizens who are already paying for it all to their side.

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What about the guy who's been paying premiums his whole life and has to switch employers?

 

and yes, we need a single payer option...but the republicans shut that option down.

 

No, the Dems shut down the single payer option when THEY decided to run with the ACA. They had all the votes, all the houses and the white house. They could have done anything they wanted with Healthcare. NONE of this is on the Repubs, who despite being asshats, have ZERO blame for the current mess. It is all on the Dems, who are also asshats.

 

As for switching employers that is a made up issue. I have switched many times taking my wife who has Asthma with me every time and she is covered every time. It is very typical in employer group plans for pre-existing to be covered IF the person moving over had coverage prior.

 

Now again I ask about a real issue, how do we sustain the ACA when people are going to wait until they are in trouble before they get insurance. Read smcrory's great explanation on pooling risks and costs before you answer.

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And then there is the money end of it all. The whole thing was a bust from the start.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Not before Obama and clearly not with Obama.

 

All of the talk of previous conditions and poor little citizens who fit a certain profile are just rhetoric.

Not a heartless statement rather an observation on how well Obama controls the media talking points.

 

As to the claim that it was going to be less expensive - How about this from Obama.

http://www.publiusforum.com/2014/03/12/obama-tells-us-cancel-cell-phone-cable-pay-obamacare/

 

Obama was presented with a question about a family that makes $36,000 a year and found that the cheapest Obamacare plan they could find would cost them $315 a month. This, the family felt, was too expensive and something they could not afford.

 

The President’s response was chilling. Obama said, “if you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill… it may turn out that, it’s just they haven’t prioritized health care.”

 

 

 

So it sounds like Obama knows what the rates are. He also knows the plans are expensive.

He also is putting the brakes on the implementation dates to push them past the election dates.

With good reason it would seem.

 

Noble ideas + Good intentions = but it still fails

Edited by Strictly Street
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And then there is the money end of it all. The whole thing was a bust from the start.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Not before Obama and clearly not with Obama.

 

All of the talk of previous conditions and poor little citizens who fit a certain profile are just rhetoric.

Not a heartless statement rather an observation on how well Obama controls the media talking points.

 

I can name 3 friends without insurance prior to the ACA, who have it now.  I'll be sure to call them profiled talking points this weekend.

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Anyone want to bet that the open enrollment period is extended WELL beyond March 31?

 

Agreed, I bet it'll be extended.  Not indefinitely, but certainly beyond this month or else the risk pool will be asymmetrical and insolvent.

 

Again, those who say that "Obamacare has failed" are revealing their own political bent more than observing the end of a story.  This thing is just getting wound up.

 

Tonik, I completely agree that anything short of total coverage will fail, because it'll leave the risk pool asymmetrical as it was prior to the ACA.  I see nothing from the GOP that takes the total risk pool into consideration, even their February 2014 proposal.

 

Speaking of, it's great that the GOP has finally offered an alternative - years and years too late.  Had the GOP been more than actively disengaged when the ACA was crafted, it would have been a better bill, but the GOP couldn't bring themselves to do anything that would help the president, betting their whole farm on blocking it completely (their gamble failed).

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Had the GOP been more than actively disengaged when the ACA was crafted

 

 

 

Obama very much told the R's to f' off when it first started. It was actually the first recorded us of his 'We got this' term. It was early in his first term and they were not at total war yet, they called him and offered to sit down and talk, he REALLY blew them off. That was about the same time he cut the sweat heart deal for the prescription companies and announced prescription drug costs were 'off the table'. It's a shame those two events have gotten lost in history.

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I can name 3 friends without insurance prior to the ACA, who have it now.  I'll be sure to call them profiled talking points this weekend.

 

Of course they are. I can also think of self employed people who now qualify for Medicare. And yes they are talking points too! As in Obama saying look how I helped this guy. Isn't the ACA just wonderful!

 

Harry Reid assures me that everyone who claims a bad experience with the ACA are all liars! There is no fall out from the ACA. Only good things happening to good people.

 

Nancy Polosi is ecstatic that we will all be liberated from our jobs. No one will have to work again!

 

Obama himself assured me that I would be saving $2500/yr in premiums. And I could keep my doctor and my healthcare plan if I wanted too!

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay. Whether or not you see it yet the ACA is not free health care.  It is a tax and a very expensive one at that.

 

I can name those that have lost insurance, hours on the job limited due to the ACA, those with sticker shock over the rate increases. And we don't even have to talk about the company plans that will be ended after Obama stops trying to protect his political base and puts the full screws in, yet.

 

The employer mandate - delayed. The personal mandate - delayed. When all the delays end after his term in office is over it wont be pretty.

 

For the average family of 4 the CBO projects a $10/hr pay cut ($20,000 premiums / 2000 hrs per year) due to the tax bite this is putting on the taxpayer. Any talk over a subsidy simply means somebody else is paying the difference between what you pay and what it actually costs.

 

How does the ACA pay for the subsidies? By reaching into your pocket and taking it. Are you ready for your pay cut?

 

About the level of care you get. Medicare is cutting benefits to seniors. Vets are getting reduced benefits. Death panels are real. Drugs are being taken off the approved list. It's only going to get worse.

 

But it sure looks good now doesn't it?

Glad your friends got a deal on their healthcare.

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