It seems the ACA/Obamacare is creating another generation of ungrateful tea partiers

[Texashiker]

Are you trying to suggest that if everyone who worked a minimum wage job simply wanted to "get way from minimum wage jobs" and put effort into it that no one would have to work minimum wage jobs any longer? Would the effort expended to seek out better jobs make higher wage jobs suddenly sprout on the magic jobs tree?

Minimum wage trap.

Make more money and you do not qualify for benefits. There is a gap between minimum wage and a living wage that a lot of workers fall into.

Would you rather make minimum wage and get free health care for your children. Or get a $10 an hour job and have to pay $400 a month for health insurance?

 

[Incorruptible]

There isn't any guarantee that a middle class person receiving employer-sponsored health insurance will not lose his job/career tomorrow, in which case the subsidized health insurance will be available.



Is it possible that the blame for the high costs of health care is being misplaced by brain dead conservatives? Instead of blaming our inefficient quasi-free market health care system, everyone is blaming Obamacare. In contrast, every other first world nation seems to be able to provide health care for 100% of the populace at a much lower percentage of GDP and dollars per capita cost. Perhaps the blame is being misplaced.

The system isn't free market you moron. The US hasn't had a free market system for a long time and you're pathetic for trying to attack the free market on false parameters.

 

[row]

The allegation by Harold McGraw III that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner threatened S&P with unspecified retribution as punishment for a downgrade of U.S. debt has the ring of a litigation tactic—but a clever one, and one that ought to force the government to clarify why it singled out S&P, as opposed to its rating-industry rivals.

so, wonder if it's time for another phone call

Moody’s Investor Service has changed its outlook for the U.S. health care insurance sector from stable to negative, citing Obamacare’s rollout and the uncertainty it brings.

The private credit rating agency said potential fallout from the Affordable Care Act’s implementation — including changes to the individual market and the impact of the law’s “employer mandate” on commercial group plans in January 2015 — presents the greatest challenge to health insurers’ credit profile. Lower reimbursement rates among Medicare Advantage plans also are creating financial pressure, it said.

“While all of these issues had been on our radar screen as we approached 2014, a new development and a key factor for the change in outlook is the unstable and evolving regulatory environment under which the sector is operating,” Moody’s said. “Notably, new regulations and presidential announcements over the last several months with respect to the ACA have imposed operational changes well after product and pricing decisions had been finalized.”

First came the president’s panicky, ass-covering call to un-cancel plans, replete with promises to use the law’s bailout provisions to help insurers cover the extra cost.

Then came the mandate penalty waivers for people who’d lost their coverage, which treated ObamaCare itself as a “hardship” worthy of an exemption for individuals.

Then came the shifting enrollment and payment deadlines in December, creating a backlog of applications that insurers are still coping with.

And then came the threat from Sebelius to boot companies from the exchanges next year if they didn’t let people pay their first month’s premium after coverage went into effect on January 1.

Hard to believe in hindsight, but that witches’ brew of uncertainty was concocted over just five short weeks, from mid-November to the week before Christmas. The news isn’t that insurers are now an unacceptably unstable investment due to capricious politicized meddling by the feds. The news is that that was inevitable and yet only now is Moody’s getting around to the downgrade. Of course the outlook’s negative, silly.

lol...if regressives agenda was to pave the way for single payer they're certainly on the right track :thumbsup:

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The system isn't free market you moron. The US hasn't had a free market system for a long time and you're pathetic for trying to attack the free market on false parameters.

It isn't a strict free market system, I agree. However, it has significant free market elements. Besides, free market health care would be a disaster (millions of people dying due to lack of health care, insurance company death panels, negligent/reckless health care, etc.)

 

[Nebor]

Not in Texas it's not.

 

[Brovane]

This article reminded me of this cartoon.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

The fact that a citizen opposes a particular policy on the grounds that it is bad for the country overall even though they personally benefit from it does not necessarily indicate any paradox or cognitive dissonance. It fact, it often is the result of a combination of genuine concern for the country overall and individual self awareness. I know plenty of middle and upper middle class people who believe many tax deductions are bad policy while still taking advantage of them. We would be better off as whole if more voters took this altruistic, intellectually honest approach.

However, that's not really what Sullivan is driving at here. He says it's cognitive dissonance, but what he really means is that poor white rural Conservatives are too stupid to know what is good for them.

 

[BUnit1701]

It isn't a strict free market system, I agree. However, it has significant free market elements. Besides, free market health care would be a disaster (millions of people dying due to lack of health care, insurance company death panels, negligent/reckless health care, etc.)

Not if we made insurance insurance once again. By that, I mean it covers catastrophes, and everything else becomes an out-of-pocket. Doctors can only charge reasonable rates else they will have no business and be driven out, a-la a real free market.

 

[theeedude]

Not if we made insurance insurance once again. By that, I mean it covers catastrophes, and everything else becomes an out-of-pocket. Doctors can only charge reasonable rates else they will have no business and be driven out, a-la a real free market.

That's what we had before Medicare. It didn't work. If it did, we wouldn't have needed Medicare in the first place.

 

[fskimospy]

Not if we made insurance insurance once again. By that, I mean it covers catastrophes, and everything else becomes an out-of-pocket. Doctors can only charge reasonable rates else they will have no business and be driven out, a-la a real free market.

So someone gets shot and will bleed to death in the next 10 minutes. What's a reasonable rate? Maybe the deed to your house is reasonable. Think of it as Uber style matching of fees to demand.

Health care is home to massive motivation and information asymmetries. In so many cases it cannot function as a free market.

There's a reason why the only countries with 'free market' health care are the poorest of the poor. Everyone else has found out there are better ways.

 

[glenn1]

That's what we had before Medicare. It didn't work. If it did, we wouldn't have needed Medicare in the first place.

It worked fine and mortality rates for the elderly had been declining for decades. In fact, studies show "the establishment of universal health insurance for the elderly had no discernible impact on elderly mortality. However, we find a substantial reduction in the elderly’s exposure to out of pocket medical expenditure risk."

Of course, if your only success criteria for determining whether the system "worked" before Medicare was making a value judgement about how much the elderly themselves had to pay for care and how much was picked up by taxpayers at large, then I guess anything could be termed a "failure."

 

[theeedude]

It worked fine and mortality rates for the elderly had been declining for decades. In fact, studies show "the establishment of universal health insurance for the elderly had no discernible impact on elderly mortality. However, we find a substantial reduction in the elderly’s exposure to out of pocket medical expenditure risk."

Of course, if your only success criteria for determining whether the system "worked" before Medicare was making a value judgement about how much the elderly themselves had to pay for care and how much was picked up by taxpayers at large, then I guess anything could be termed a "failure."

If it "worked" so "fine," why was it replaced with Medicare?

 

[Incorruptible]

It isn't a strict free market system, I agree. However, it has significant free market elements. Besides, free market health care would be a disaster (millions of people dying due to lack of health care, insurance company death panels, negligent/reckless health care, etc.)

It has some elements of the free market but it is in no way a free market system. It's like how people say the financial crash was a result of the free market when it was the government that was responsible. Besides, socialized healthcare would be a disaster and is BS.