Posted on 09/13/2014 4:42:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
Yes according to Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and the Commonwealth Fund. But all these folks were cheerleaders for the Affordable Care Act from day one.
Sarah Kliff, another ObamaCare supporter, estimates that health reform has enabled about 5 million people to become newly insured. But that’s only about 10 percent of the uninsured. What happened to the mandate that required that everyone have health insurance this year or face a fine? Turns out that the mandate doesn’t actually apply to millions of people. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 90 percent of the uninsured are exempt from the mandate.
Certain exemptions are written into the law itself. For example, the mandate doesn’t apply to American Indians, to people who have religious objections or to people who earn too little to be required to file an income tax return. But as I wrote at Forbes the other day:
… the administration has piled on with 14 ways people can avoid the fine based on hardships. These include homelessness, domestic violence, being evicted from a residence, having a utility cut off, property damage from a fire or flood, and even a canceled insurance plan. Also, people can avoid the penalty if a close family member has died recently or if they have medical expenses resulting in substantial debt.
It gets worse. Many of the people who signed up didn’t pay their first premium. Of those who did, many have stopped paying. For example, Aetna is estimating that by the end of this year they will have lost about 30 percent of their initial enrollees. There is a report of similar attrition out of Florida, which has apparently lost one fourth of its initial enrollees already. The administration, which has access to national numbers, has refused to release any information on such “buyer’s remorse” since May.
Underlying all this is the fact that millions of newly insured people didn’t understand what they were buying, even though their premiums are being heavily subsidized. As Lena Sun, writing in the Washington Post, reported:
Nonprofit organizations across the country are being swamped by consumers with questions. Many are low-income, have never had insurance and have little knowledge of the health-care system. The rampant confusion poses a potential hurdle for the success of the health law: If many Americans don’t understand how health insurance works, that could hurt their ability to use their benefits – or to keep their coverage altogether.
Health insurance guru Robert Laszewski puts it this way:
So what you’ve got is an insurance industry that did not do a good job in gearing up for a population that has never had health insurance before, an Obama administration that did a horrible job on the back end, resulting in a flood of calls to insurer call centers, and a population that is low-income and is not health-insurance literate. Put those things in a bag and you’ve got a problem.
So if ObamaCare is failing miserably at insuring the uninsured, what difference does it make? Even though the health insurance mandate is affecting very few of the uninsured, it is having a major effect on people who are insured.
Up to 80 percent of the people who had individual insurance last year will lose their coverage by the time all the ObamaCare rules completely set in. Up to 90% of the plans that cover people at work will lose their grandfathered status. In many of these cases, people are being forced to buy richer and more expensive plans – with more coverage than they want or need. In other cases, they may lose insurance altogether.
Early reports are that the trend of small business to dump their health plans and move employees onto the exchanges is occurring faster than was expected.
It has been enormously successful at ending a WWII benefit.
At a given urban hospital medicine ward there are, in this case forty patients. In forty rooms. The hospital is new, and it was built with all private rooms, as people are not expected to live among each other. In previous times it was four to a room and greater
Each of these patients has some manifestation of self abuse. Diet and exercise to start then alcohol, drug, and tobacco
None have insurance
They are in this medical unit for days and weeks. Private room, pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures (amputations) tests MD attention, three squares, all the morphine Obama can buy them with our money,
No families, no visitors no friends, no jobs, no money no societal contribution. Our country has no history of this ridiculous situation It is not a tenet of conservatism nor in our constitution that supporting this will benefit society for the investment
It is an investment
Our government has opted to invest taxpayer money on this. Ted Cruz and mike lee alone tried to defund this
Each of those hospital rooms are filled every day. The room, the doctors, nurses, tests, drugs, and medical supplies cost daily more than any one of these people have ever made in a year
They are treated like golden princes.
Across the pedestrian bridge is the va hospital It is an entirely different world/system. And it is not obamacare.
Multiply that by say a hundred people per day times forty cities
All year long, every year
Obamacare money will not only run out, the investment will prove to have been as sound as enabling one’s drunken, unemployed, hopeless brother in law’s behavior by giving him one’s hard earned cash and taking it away from one’s children’s’ future to do it
Yes, the DIMocRAT created nobamacare is “working”. It is working at undermining all of us and this country. Great job DIMs. May you rot in...
Once you take the bait the pain of the hook will ensue.
Yes. And in a typical exchange between nurses and social workers, the nurse says a patient is being discharged but cannot get dialysis reserved as he has no insurance. So he is advised to register twice a week in the ER where they’ll get him in.
The whole group is crying. They feel so bad for him. He can’t get a dialysis chair reserved because he has no insurance. He’s been living in this country undocumented, he’ll extract hundreds of thousands from us, not having invested in an insurance plan, and our children, who work hard in school and will contribute what they can to society and pay their own way not getting scholarships shoveled out to illegals, and other Mexicans, will pay for him and millions like him
And the problem is, not Obama, he will come and go, saints be praised, but those people who work in the medical and other systems who haven’t got the slightest freakin clue for all of their masters degrees in social work etc, about the first thing on economics
Who keep Obama in power, giving our kids’ stolen resources to illegal self abusing drug addicts
Geeze!
All of us had been self-insured... my kids and their father on one policy... which was cancelled because Aetna pulled out of the individual market in Maryland... apparently the fed regs don’t allow companies to offer individual policies if they don’t also offer obamacare -_-
My policy I thought was safe... as they raised their rates and told me the policy was obamacare compliant. Just got a notice that they’re pulling out at the end of the year. So I’ve got to shop for a new policy during open enrollment in November. I had a very reasonable and cheap policy for years... suited my needs as I have no health issues. I’m waiting to see how steep the new ACA premiums will end up being.
Exactly.
I watched a Princeton health economist last week on C-Span.
He said $200 billion would pay all the health expenses for America's uninsured.
That's less than 7% of the current federal budget.
Instead, we have ripped the best health care system in the world into pieces that can never be put back together.
Worst of all - the GOP leadership has done nothing serious or sincere to stop it.
I believe all dialysis expenses are guaranteed by the federal government.
In other words, with insurance, or without, no dialysis costs are passed onto the patient.
The reason?
Without dialysis, death is certain.
I believe many things are covered this way, like AIDS medication, child birth, infant and child care, even for people illegally in the country.
Well, fine. And for people who have been abusing their bodies for decades - unchecked diabetes, drug abuse, out if control blood pressure, they are guaranteed this treatment, but it’s hospital stays, methadone, md and nursing care, meds out the ying yang
And what would people do without this invention, dialysis? What did they used to do?
Why do they get the same treatment whether they pay into insurance or no?
Why are illegal immigrants getting treated a magnitude better than our war veterans, across the board?
Why are our children getting put jnto a deeper than $17 trillion debt for this care of people who do not pay their way nor do step one to take care of themselves?
And how long do you think the money and resources will hold out?
It’s not Monopoly money.
The money has already run out.
We’re just waiting around for the day when that big, vicious dog decides to attack.
In the meantime, politically, it’s just not possible to ignore people in America with life threatening medical issues.
People like the one described here will end up as the lead story on every MSM news broadcast, and, we both know how the story will end after that.
Probably about $400 per family member per month.
Like what?
As far as “sincerity,” the House voted a dozen times to repeal it.
But, when the budget came up for a vote, the House not only threw away the “Sequester” cuts, they fully funded ObamaCare for two years, including guaranteed bail outs for any insurance company that lost money selling ObamaCare policies.
When the House voted on raising the debt ceiling, same story, they voted “yes” and went home, not one squeak about O-Care.
If repealing O-Care is not important enough to risk a government shutdown, if O-Care is not important enough to risk political damage to the Republican Party, then why bother to have a Republican Party at all?
Finally, just 7 weeks from the election, Ted Cruz is the only nationally known elected Republican who is publicly campaigning for the repeal of O-Care.
The GOP leadership policy on O-Care is “Mend it, don't end it.”
And that is appalling.
Now just a second!
I thought that was Clinton on affirmative action.
The Republican position, last I knew, is "Repeal and Replace" and I know exactly what that means. I wish to hell it was already done.
Like I said, Ted Cruz is the only nationally known elected Republican who is vigorously and sincerely campaigning for repeal.
If you have some other well known names, I’ll be glad to change my mind.
And, I do not mean the useless, theatrical repeal votes the House has staged every month for the last few years.
I think Z is partially right.
Q: Is dialysis expensive? A: Yes. Dialysis costs a lot of money. However, the federal government pays 80 percent of all dialysis costs for most patients. Private health insurance or state Medicaid programs also help with the costs.
I actually don't know who guarantees payment.
I do know I haven't read one news story in my entire life where someone died because he couldn't afford the co-pay.
We have "nationally known elected Republicans"? Why would RINOs take a strong stance on that issue?
Mostly TEAparty representatives are gung ho for that, and they are not "nationally known".
So, what about the Coburn-Burr-Hatch Proposal? What's wrong with that?
What about Tom Price’s “empower patients first” Act?
Oh wait...he’s not “nationally known”.
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