In order for ACA to work, uninsured should get no treatment.

[Tom]

See bolded above

States that don't accept the changes in Medicaid won't increase eligibility to 138% of poverty.

And the point is increasing the amount of money a person can earn and still qualify for Medicaid reduces the negative incentive to not work.

Which is better for the economy and society ?

A. people not working to qualify for Medicaid.

B. people working and still qualifying Medicaid.

It's true I think working is better. I assume you don't since you made a point of not agreeing.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

States that don't accept the changes in Medicaid won't increase eligibility to 138% of poverty.

And the point is increasing the amount of money a person can earn and still qualify for Medicaid reduces the negative incentive to not work.

Which is better for the economy and society ?

A. people not working to qualify for Medicaid.

B. people working and still qualifying Medicaid.

It's true I think working is better. I assume you don't since you made a point of not agreeing.

I don't think the states will have any choice and there's no fanancial impact to the states.

http://www.medicaid.gov/affordablecareact/affordable-care-act.html

Beginning in 2014 coverage for the newly eligible adults will be fully funded by the federal government for three years. It will phase down to 90% by 2020.

I don't think insurance will make any difference in whether a person wants to work or not specially if they receive more for sitting at home rather than working. I would prefer to see people that choose not to work having to perform services within their community to receive aid. This goes for disabled people who could man phones at help centers.

 

[dank69]

Thank you for making my point. You on the left are some of the most hateful people in the US, I think the appropriate name for your ilk is Libhadist.

Whatever floats your boat. Evil Libhadist is intolerant of dishonesty. Fight for your right to spew bullshit.

Wow, nice strawman you got there.

Another conservative who doesn't know what a straw man is. The rapist position wasn't characterized as yours, it was an example showing you that tolerance isn't a binary state. The dishonesty position is actually your position, you are just oblivious to that fact. You think I am degrading people simply because I disagree with them when I am only doing so because they are blatantly lying or willfully ignorant. I have civil disagreements with people on here all the time if they are making good faith attempts at being honest.

 

[Zaap]

We don't tolerate dishonesty or willful ignorance, guess we're intolerant.

Most of your positions are dishonest or willfully ignorant, so I guess so.

And yes, I believe you're an expert on the use of strawmen, since that's another favored liberal tactic.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Whatever floats your boat. Evil Libhadist is intolerant of dishonesty. Fight for your right to spew bullshit.

Another conservative who doesn't know what a straw man is. The rapist position wasn't characterized as yours, it was an example showing you that tolerance isn't a binary state. The dishonesty position is actually your position, you are just oblivious to that fact. You think I am degrading people simply because I disagree with them when I am only doing so because they are blatantly lying or willfully ignorant. I have civil disagreements with people on here all the time if they are making good faith attempts at being honest.

LMAO!!!! Keep on spewing your hate and vitriol as well as strawman arguments.

Funny how data is king when it backs up the libhadist POV but bad when it doesn't.

 

[dank69]

Most of your positions are dishonest or willfully ignorant, so I guess so.

And yes, I believe you're an expert on the use of strawmen, since that's another favored liberal tactic.

The esteemed Zaap has declared most of my positions as dishonest or willfully ignorant. I wonder if he can pick out a single one and explain how or why it is dishonest.

LMAO!!!! Keep on spewing your hate and vitriol as well as strawman arguments.

Funny how data is king when it backs up the libhadist POV but bad when it doesn't.

I'm sure it seems like magic to you. Ooga booga data, how him make it work?

 

[rudder]

Including emergency treatment. Media reports that the young will not buy insurance, I guess they would rather spend it on shopertainment and 120 dollar a month iphone .

Would you buy insurance when you are in the demographic that is supposed to pay enough so obamacare works? Be honest.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

dank69 = good example of a libtard

 

[dank69]

dank69 = good example of a libtard

I heard Jesus hated liberals, too.

 

[werepossum]

All this talk about pro-obamacare anti-obamacare is etc etc etc is becoming a moot point.

People need to wake up and smell the roses, because this is just simple fourth-grade math at this point.

The failure isn't really even about the website or the software.


Oregon :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-success-no-one-has-bought-private-insurance/

"The state had, in the course of 17 days, signed up 56,000 people for the health law's Medicaid expansion. In one fell swoop, the state had cut its uninsured rate by 10 percent.
That is, however, only part of the story from Oregon. When it comes to private insurance, spokeswoman Amy Fauver said that it has not yet had any sign-ups."

Connecticut :

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...are-rollout-is-remarkably-breakdown-free.html
"... 10,678 applications were opened, and the state processed 2,372 applications for policyholders. "
"About half of those processed were for Medicaid. The other half of enrollees purchased policies"
"About 29 percent of the enrollees are under the age of 35, but most of those gaining coverage through the exchange are between the ages of 55 and 64."


So what we have is a bunch of extremely poor 20-35 yr olds going on Medicaid, at states expense. Then we have 55-64 year olds getting insurance they could never have gotten before.

What's missing is the people who were supposedly going to enroll and pay for it all.

So the highest reports I've seen are around 52,000 people enrolled through the federal exchanges so far.

Meanwhile, the numbers of those who LOST healthcare :

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323893004579059393251153348

International Business Machines Corp. IBM -0.60% plans to move about 110,000 retirees off its company-sponsored health plan and instead give them a payment to buy coverage on a health-insurance exchange


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...g-20-000-part-timers-to-health-exchanges.html

Home Depot Inc. (HD), the world’s largest home improvement retailer, plans to end medical coverage for about 20,000 part-time employees


http://www.syracuse.com/news/index....ms_for_more_than_22000_poor_and_disabled.html

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield is dropping out of public health insurance programs for the poor and the disabled in a move that will affect more than 22,000 Central New Yorkers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/thousands-get-health-insurance-cancellation-notices-8C11417913

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage



This whole picture is starting to become clear.

Some of the largest health insurance companies, including Aetna, Cigna, and United HealthCare, only participated in a small number of states. For example, none of the 3 are available in California under the ACA exchanges.

Cigna, for example, is only participating in 5 state exchanges.

So, if the above trends continue, what we're going to see will be very simple.

The smaller insurance companies who participated in this are going to get tens of thousands of previously uninsurables that they are covering, and cannot deny coverage.

The states who expanded Medicare/Medicaid will wind up paying to cover tens of thousands they did not previously cover.

The states will raise taxes. The smaller insurance companies will go bust.

Meanwhile potentially hundreds of thousands of *paying workers* who had employer based coverage will wind up uninsured.

And to top it off, the federal Gov't payments to hospitals in order to compensate for the 'Uninsured ER cases' are being slashed. The result being that hospitals are cutting staff and costs.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/13/hospital-job-cuts/2947929/

""While the rest of the U.S. economy is stabilizing or improving, health care is entering into a recession," says John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month — 8,128 — largely because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies."


It's always possible this will reverse itself, but in my book that's waiting for a 'Hail Mary pass' (for those not in the USA, that's a long forward pass in football to turn a game in the final moments, where completion is considered unlikely).

As far as the website goes - sure, that may be why the absolute number of enrollees is low.

But even if the website gets fixed, it's unlikely to affect the 'type' of enrollees. In other words, you will wind up with hundreds of thousands of 55-64 year olds on the exchanges, and hundreds of thousands of 20-35 year olds in state medicare.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people who had employer based insurance will do without.

This all just adds up to EPIC FAIL.

Good post and some good points, but I'm missing something here. The article says that no private insurance sign-ups have happened in Oregon, but it also says "About half of those processed were for Medicaid. The other half of enrollees purchased policies". Are they purchasing Oregon government policies? Seems like if half of the enrollees purchased policies, that would be through private insurance, so either there are Oregon government policies being purchased or I'm missing something completely. Also, four other brief points. (1) The hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters may not be that big a deal, as people are now free to purchase somewhat standardized plans on the exchanges and may well end up with a better deal depending on their age, family size and risk factors. (2) Employer-furnished health insurance is a market distortion, making us blind to actual health care costs, encouraging over-consumption, and fostering the belief that "someone else" should pay for your health care, so I'm not entirely disappointed to see coverage moving away from employers even though there will be a lot of pain involved. (3) Penalties get progressively more draconian, so that even though the target funding demographic might not be signing up right now in consecutive years the price for not playing will be much higher and those opting out likely to be a much smaller percentage. (4) There's going to be a very interesting dynamic here as states with poor, fat, and black populations see their exchanges abandoned by large companies more interested in well-to-do, thin, white populations. If you are Mississippi, might not be much point in having a state exchange. On the plus side, being forced to accommodate Mississippi (indeed, much of the South) may well lead to insurance companies pushing research aimed at delivering to blacks the same level of outcomes generally enjoyed by whites. Previously health insurance companies competed only within a state, and typically with no more than three (often only one) really large carriers. If a health insurance company is competing at the federal exchange level, it now has an economic incentive to figure out why blacks have worse outcomes and fix the problem(s), thus gaining a competitive edge over health insurance companies who ignore this disparity. Obviously this would help blacks, but it also would help the whole nation and ultimately lower system health care costs and increase national productivity.

Seems like a win-win for Democrats. If Obamacare works, they can run on it (see, we needed government) and progressively strengthen it until private health insurance is destroyed. If the private health insurance system is destroyed, they can point to the need for government single payer (see, private health insurance doesn't work.) Either way, the federal government controlling health insurance allows the government to impose burdens from which it can then "save" the voter. Almost a perfect plan from the Saul Alinksky progressives. In the mean time there will be massive collateral damage, but there are winners and losers in any big government program.

That might be statistically accurate, I don't know.

But I do know there are millions of young people that have no insurance.

I think a lot of us, myself included, tend to think of young males whose primary need for healthcare comes from injury.

But remember, half of young people are women. Many with young children. The "old" way of doing things created an incentive for some young mothers to not work, so their children could be covered by Medicaid.

Under ACA, at least in the states that aren't trying to destroy it, this disincentive to work is lessened.

Just one way the ACA is potentially good for the economy, and society.

Good point. There is a lot of bad with the ACA, but also a fair amount of good, some fairly subtle like this. There are winners and losers in any big government program and the good here is definitely worth keeping.

I just can't wait until we get averages across all the different states, so far the only ones I have heard of where the averages were lower are NY, CA, NJ and Vermont. Everywhere else saw an average increase in costs, and some where actually really high. It's likely affected by how each state is handling the new law, but nonetheless that what I have noticed.

Also, Tom you keep saying there is no negatives to the law. I'd beg to differ, Health Care industry is seeing some serious restructuring (layoffs), and while you see some people with lower rates you WILL have people with higher rates. I know my family is either seeing the same or higher averages atm and my wife just dropped her insurance to go on Tricare (under me) because her insurance while she worked with General Dynamics literally skyrocketed to something ridiculous.

We did a poll here a few weeks ago which showed a fairly even spread but favored increased costs.

I've mentioned it before but my dad took a 600 dollar a month paycut due to Moses Cone restructuring under Obamacare (yes they used it as the primary reason) and two other family members were completely let go. He is in maintenance and was making about 38k(?) but since he is so close to retirement he is sticking with it for a few more months.

Progressives hate the private health insurance and private health care industries with a blind passion. Therefore the layoffs, pay cuts, and general pain are necessary evils at worst and net positives at best, being signs that government is taking its rightful place controlling, funding and ultimately providing health care. (Not aiming that at Tom in particular, just saying that in general proggies do not see these things as you or I might.)

 

[shady28]

Good post and some good points, but I'm missing something here. The article says that no private insurance sign-ups have happened in Oregon, but it also says "About half of those processed were for Medicaid. The other half of enrollees purchased policies". Are they purchasing Oregon government policies?

On the point above, I think you got Connecticut and Oregon mixed up. The Oregon article said there had been NO signups other than Medicaid. The Connecticut was half and half, but the half that signed up was primarily 55-64 year olds.

Not going to get into the other points you made because whether you see them as good or bad depends on your political alignment. My post really was to point out that there is a string of serious failures in Obamacare that endanger the entire healthcare system, love it or hate it.

This can be summarized in 3 points :

1 - The demographics are not what is needed for success

2 - People who had healthcare are being thrown off healthcare; insufficient numbers are signing up in exchanges to offset this

3 - Hospitals are being budget crunched due to cutbacks for ER care funding, cuts based on the assumption that fewer people will be without healthcare

Taking #2 and #3 together above is disastrous for hospitals and care providers; #1 is going to be disastrous for state and federal budgets, given that states have expanded Medicare. That is a federal funding problem in 2014, but starting in 2015 it will be a state funding issue.

 

[werepossum]

On the point above, I think you got Connecticut and Oregon mixed up. The Oregon article said there had been NO signups other than Medicaid. The Connecticut was half and half, but the half that signed up was primarily 55-64 year olds.

Not going to get into the other points you made because whether you see them as good or bad depends on your political alignment. My post really was to point out that there is a string of serious failures in Obamacare that endanger the entire healthcare system, love it or hate it.

This can be summarized in 3 points :

1 - The demographics are not what is needed for success

2 - People who had healthcare are being thrown off healthcare; insufficient numbers are signing up in exchanges to offset this

3 - Hospitals are being budget crunched due to cutbacks for ER care funding, cuts based on the assumption that fewer people will be without healthcare

Taking #2 and #3 together above is disastrous for hospitals and care providers; #1 is going to be disastrous for state and federal budgets, given that states have expanded Medicare. That is a federal funding problem in 2014, but starting in 2015 it will be a state funding issue.

Ah, I was indeed conflating Connecticut and Oregon; thanks for the clarification. There must be SOME reason why Connecticut's and Oregon's responses are so very different.

I definitely agree that hospitals and care providers are being squeezed by the ACA cuts. They were also previously being squeezed by insurance companies; unfortunately those squeezes will continue and probably increase alongside the government squeezes as insurance companies strive to continue being viable. I strongly suspect that you are correct that the reduced payments will not nearly cover the non-insured's costs, although I do expect that to get better as the cost of being uninsured climbs.

I fully expect most insurance companies to be driven out of the health insurance business over the next decade or two; I think that is the driving long term goal. I think we'll also see states and even the federal government taking over hospitals over the same time frame. There are just too many hospitals that are not economically viable. Throw in reduced Medicare/Medicaid payments and reduced subsidies and such hospitals just won't be viable even as not-for-profits.

 

[sactoking]

Ah, I was indeed conflating Connecticut and Oregon; thanks for the clarification. There must be SOME reason why Connecticut's and Oregon's responses are so very different.

Oregon's exchange has been a Charlie Foxtrot; it has been shut down for three weeks and is likely at least still one or two weeks away from opening. They haven't received any non-Medicaid applications because they are refusing to accept non-Medicaid applications at this time.

 

[werepossum]

Oregon's exchange has been a Charlie Foxtrot; it has been shut down for three weeks and is likely at least still one or two weeks away from opening. They haven't received any non-Medicaid applications because they are refusing to accept non-Medicaid applications at this time.

LMAO! That explains that. Thank you for the well-informed information, as always. So this is a non-issue for the value (or lack thereof) of Obamacare, merely another well-deserved condemnation of its initial implementation.

 

[Fern]

I don't think the states will have any choice and there's no fanancial impact to the states.

http://www.medicaid.gov/affordablecareact/affordable-care-act.html




I don't think insurance will make any difference in whether a person wants to work or not specially if they receive more for sitting at home rather than working. I would prefer to see people that choose not to work having to perform services within their community to receive aid. This goes for disabled people who could man phones at help centers.

I'm pretty sure that part of the SCOTUS (Obamacare) case concerned the issue of whether Obamacare could force states to increase Medicaid. IIRC, the SCOTUS ruled Obamcare could NOT. I.e., states can opt to not participate.

Fern