Posted on 12/07/2016 4:38:55 PM PST by spintreebob
Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt on Wednesday urged all lawmakers to improve on the progress made by the Affordable Care Act, rather than plunge the healthcare industry into chaos if the ACA is repealed and inadequately replaced, or isn't replaced at all.
“There should be no pride of authorship,” Slavitt said. “If we can improve upon the things that were started in the ACA, we should do it. It doesn't matter if that comes from a Democrat. It doesn't matter if it comes from a Republican. I would encourage people on both sides of the aisle to say, 'Let's take a step forward, let's focus on the things that haven't been working.'” Slavitt spoke Wednesday morning at Modern Healthcare's 2016 Leadership Symposium in Chicago during a one-on-one interview with editor Merrill Goozner.
Slavitt said the ACA has helped lower the uninsured rate to 9.1% and expand health insurance to people previously denied coverage for having pre-existing medical conditions. He also said the ACA has been instrumental in improving quality of care measures and bending Medicare's cost curve.
But now as the new administration under President-elect Donald Trump takes control of the White House, the future of the ACA is on increasingly shaky ground. Congressional Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace the ACA, but have given few details surrounding a replacement plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at modernhealthcare.com ...
Somebody needs to put this gasbag on suicide watch when Trump pulls the plug on this bassturd’s balloon.
While a nurse was sewing together a huge hole in my arm, she went over the new codes required by Obamacare. One was “injured by alien encounter.” I can’t remember them all but it appears there are some 17,000 codes. A doctor can be seriously punished for using the wrong code.
One thing I discovered in QA is that if there are too many failure codes, the tech will find just one general one and use it for everything. If the doctor does that he could be in serious trouble. The codes are ridiculous.
Close VA— Vets get medicare day one of honorable discharge. Commander certified “combat” vet pays no monthly premium” . Take VA infrastructure and move to a public option for poor. Reinstate free enterprise medical care for those that want it. SIMPLE!!
Well, well....Prof. Gruber, architect of this disaster, was wrong again. The voters were not as stupid as he said they were. Pres. Trump should repeal the ACA root and branch, so that it is totally his brand new plan.
Pride of authorship?
Obamacare had not one Republican vote
No Republucan amendments were allowed
Voted on Christmas Eve
After bribing thier own democrat senators
Using only 51 votes in an illegal parliamentary maneuver
After the democrat house majority leader said we had to pass it to find out what was in it
Oh - and f*ck you
Reminds me of my Air Force days. We had cards to account for how spent our time, and many codes for filling in the cards. We were on mid-shift, and would come in to find that day shift filled in “troubleshot system” in all of their spaces. It accounted for their time, but failed to explain how they worked on aircraft that were out flying over the Gulf.
What does this ‘dummy’ think the present situation is, if not chaotic?
” rather than plunge the healthcare industry into chaos if the ACA is repealed”
It was already put into chaos.
My insurance cancelling out three times in one year attests to that.
Very succinct, so true, thanks!
Obamacare architect blasted for 'deliberate deception'
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
By:Richard Weir
An MIT professor considered one of the architects of Obamacare is being blasted by critics over a video they say shows him admitting the law's "lack of transparency" was designed to dupe a gullible American public.
Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the explosive comments that have now gone viral on the Internet as a panelist during a lecture on "The Role of Economics in Shaping the ACA" at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School on Oct. 17, 2013.
Here is a link to the video: Jonathan Gruber brags about the way the bill was written to obscure what it really is...
QUOTE: "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. ... So it's written to do that," Gruber said, suggesting "it would not have passed" if the law "made it explicit" that healthy people would "pay in" and the sick would get money.
QUOTE: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Gruber continued. "Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass. I wish ... we could make it all transparent. But I'd rather have this law than not."
Gruber, when reached by phone yesterday, said repeatedly, "I have no comment."
David Tuerck, head of the Beacon Hill Institute and chairman of Suffolk University's Economics Department, calls it "damning" that a "gleeful" Gruber "brags" about making the law's less palatable parts intentionally obscure to get them past the American public. "What you see is breathtaking hubris on the part of Gruber," Tuerck said. "He has a cynical disregard for the opinions of the voter. He is happy to call the public gullible."
Gruber's remarks went viral in the conservative blogosphere after Phil Kerpen of American Commitment, a free market advocacy group, tweeted snippets of them after being sent a link to the lecture on Friday. "I think it exposes there was a deliberate deception at the core of Obamacare ... for the purposes of deceiving the American public," Kerpen told the Herald.
Mark Pauly, a UPenn professor and co-panelist, said, "I thought it was a poor way of explaining what he was talking about - political expediency and the idea of reducing the subsidy of employment-based health insurance. If you explicitly said that people would tax your health benefits, that would be political dynamite. It was not really about voters being stupid but about the political process."
Slavitt declared last summer that he was going to push through a massive number and complexity of regulations before Jan 20. >>>>
here’s one.... your EOB will now come with a page and a half of various languages explaining your right to get an EOB in your language, even though the contract you make for your health insurance is in english.
Improving the ACA is turd polishing.
In an era when computers recognize speech there is no need for codes.
Looked around and found that the rate was 13.3% before it all kicked in - looks like they twisted a few youngsters' arms and gave a lot of "free" insurance to some folks but really changed nothing except to make those who could pay, pay more....
Sounds a lot like what the Obamacare repeal will be like.
ACA did in fact lower the uninsured rate. More people on Medicaid is 100% of the difference. 75% of the additional people on Medicaid were previously eligible for Medicaid and thus were uninsured by their own choice. They reluctantly signed up for Medicaid because the navigators made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
25% of the additional Medicaid is in the few states that expanded Medicaid.
The rationale for adding more people to Medicaid was that these people would now go to the doctor for preventive care and would use the expensive emergency room less.
Surprise. Unintended Consequence.
The additional people on Medicaid are not going to the doctor for preventive care. They are going to the Emergency Room even more now than when they were not covered by “insurance”.
There is another game with the insurance covdrage statistic. Many workers went from full to part time and lost their employer’s insurance plan. Employer’s plans became much more expensive under ACA. So the ACA now subsidizes people who previously had unsubsidized coverage. And in most cases, the previous unsubsidized coverage was better coverage.
But there is a miniscule minority who did “benefit” from the ACA. A few with pre-existing conditions who could not get coverage can not get coverage. The number is so small it is lost in the larger statistics.
Bottom line: A program that is hated by 80% and penalizes 99% is needlessly costly when the cost of the miniscule “benefit” it does provide could have been provided with a small, limited program.
But note how many “St Judes” and “Catholic Charities” are still appealing for private donations to cover the needy and those with pre-existing conditions. The amount of voluntary charity still is far greater than the amount of taxpayer money in actually benefitting those who need help. That is because St Judes, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, etc are very efficient and the government is very inefficient.
As an aside, the ACA did benefit a major class of people financially. Slavitt, CMS boss previously was in charge of the team that designed and built the original ACA website. He was promoted to CMS boss due to the track record of that website launch.
Under Obama, Murphy’s Law is reversed. The incompetent are promoted beyond their ceiling.
THAT makes sense—Spread that around!!
Let the government take care of the indigent & very poor.
Stay out of the system that worked for the bulk of America.
My chiropractor had to hire another person for her VERY small practice-—just to handle the codes. She also said that reimbursement from the Feds for Medicare patients under Obamacare has frown from about 60 days to as much as 180 days. She says it is a nightmare trying to pay the bills when the government owes you so much money.
To me is makes perfect sense to close the VA and let these guys on Medicare at honorable discharge. Great benefit. If they want a supplement they buy it like the others on medicare. If you are “combat certified” you don’t pay the monthly premium. The VA infrastructure goes to safeth net for the poor. This will work!!
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