New, Improved Obamacare Program Released On 35 Floppy Disks

[paddoboy]

Red Herring

I didn't ask about medicare, I asked about the rates of Australian entering Australian Public Hospitals that either die or are harmed or receive no benefit at all.

Red Herring? No fact...
Your other question, I really don't know, but I would say it is amongst world's best standards.
As usual, the rest of your propaganda/diatribe, is just that, diatribe and propaganda. :shrug:

Don't you ever get sick of pushing a cause that is never going to eventuate [and thank f%$@ for that!]

 

[paddoboy]

Oh, and I'd advise you to try and get private healthcare insurance. That one was for free.

Never had it [except for extra cover for optical/dental coverage when I had a young family] never needed it, neither did my parents from the time it was implemented, and neither did my own immediate family.
If you don't like it, go to a country that has whatever the system is that suits your needs :shrug:

 

[Michael]

Never had it [except for extra cover for optical/dental coverage when I had a young family] never needed it, neither did my parents from the time it was implemented, and neither did my own immediate family.

The physicians who treated you could be considered 'old school'. Their mentors originated in a time prior to public healthcare. Regardless, the nice thing about data, is it is what it is.

Anyway, wave the *magic wand* around, stick your head in the ground, and maybe pray to the Gods - for all the good it'll do. See, *magic thinking* isn't going to fix these problems - and there are plenty of problems that need fixed. See, unlike you, I'm privy to the data.

 

[paddoboy]

The physicians who treated you could be considered 'old school'. Their mentors originated in a time prior to public healthcare. Regardless, the nice thing about data, is it is what it is.

Anyway, wave the *magic wand* around, stick your head in the ground, and maybe pray to the Gods - for all the good it'll do. See, *magic thinking* isn't going to fix these problems - and there are plenty of problems that need fixed. See, unlike you, I'm privy to the data.

No magic wand needed, and no head in the sand, and no need to pray to any God....just some good old fashion policy for all citizens regardless of colour, creed, or standing in society.
The only thing you are obviously privy to is biased diatribe.


Our Universal health care system fufills what it is supposed to.

 

[Write4U]

For all readers (except Michael) a few examples of the risks of coverage by private for-profit health insurance companies.

Insurance Bad Faith
Article: United Health Care: Huge Fines & Scandals

Many states have sanctioned the Minnesota based insurer for poor claims handling processes over the past five years and it has recently been hit with several very large fines. In November 2007, the Texas Department of Insurance imposed a $4.4 million fine against UHC for prompt payment violations. In January 2008, California’s Department of Managed Health Care fined PacifiCare, which was acquired by UHC in 2005, $3.5 million for poor claim handling. In the same action, California’s Insurance Commissioner, Steven Poizner, cited UHC for over 130,000 claim handling violations and said that the insurer may be subject to $1.3 billion in penalties.

Fines aren’t the only problem the insurer has been facing. In late 2006, UHC’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. William McGuire, left the company after a scandal broke out over backdated stock options allegedly worth over $1.5 billion. McGuire, and several dozen others in UHC’s senior management team, resigned or were terminated around the same time for similar issues. Insurer blames acquisition process

Resulting problems:

Whatever the reason for UHC’s claim handling issues, the problems that have resulted are not doing anything to improve the insurer’s image. Here are some examples from two California news agencies that show how the company’s actions have affected doctors and patients alike:

From the Sacramento Bee:
•A Sacramento-area surgeon couldn't schedule surgeries for more than six months because the insurer simply took too long to enter his contract in its computer system.
•A policyholder reportedly spent 11 months trying to get his claims paid for his family and their autistic child. His wife, who needed an EKG, had to keep postponing the test because they feared that they would never pay their claims.

From the San Francisco Gate:
•PacifiCare patients of a pediatrician in Modesto received letters erroneously telling them the doctor was no longer in their network, when he really was.
•A San Diego area doctor reported that PacifiCare simply could not keep track of claims information or adequately respond to his complaints.
Insurance companies need to have processes in place to care for their policyholders. If your insurance company has denied your valid claim or acted in bad faith, contact an attorney whose practice focuses on insurance issues.

http://attorneypages.com/hot/united-health-care-huge-fines-scandals.htm

and here is another example of standard private for-profit health insurers claim procedures.

While there is some discretion in many instances, the trend for many insurance companies is to deny legitimate claims as a matter of policy, and pay only when forced to do so under the threat of litigation by an insurance lawyer.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.co...rance-law-bad-faith-3-18300.html#.UtUB-9N3vhc

There is what would result from the Free Market at work without regulation and enforcement.

Under the Affordable Care Act this is no longer possible.

 

[Michael]

No magic wand needed, and no head in the sand, and no need to pray to any God....just some good old fashion policy for all citizens regardless of colour, creed, or standing in society.
The only thing you are obviously privy to is biased diatribe.


Our Universal health care system fufills what it is supposed to.

As they say, ignorance is bliss. Enjoy it while you can.

 

[Michael]

There is what would result from the Free Market at work without regulation and enforcement.

Your examples are from the CURRENT hyper-regulated markets. I find it funny you blame a non-existent 'free' market with your examples of crony-capitalistic government regulated markets.

The combination of television and public schools do seem to get one thing right. They have you pointing up and yelling down, pointing down and yelling up.

Under the Affordable Care Act this is no longer possible.

Much of the ACA was written BY the insurance companies.

My Gods... does the lunacy ever end?


Anyway, ObamaCare is a wonderful example of what happens when the State finally runs out of children to sell debt on and has to shift the costs onto the kids in real-time. A great example of government's inability to actually provide a good or service wanted at cost without taking on more debts. AND, given our lovely-dovey Government spent all it's money bailing out the top 1% - it's broke. This red herring isn't going to change that fact.

So, we get to live in a world where there's no more children to sell off to the bankers - even the Asians. Let's see how you like paying $5.00 for a $1.25 letter. I do believe, you'll go to the free market and pay the $1.25 - just watch.


Yes, it's interesting to see what young Americans think about having to actually pay for their own way - as well as their parents and their grandparents way. I don't think they're liking it much. Although I did hear the US Government is going to use the Federal Reserve to start bailing out the Insurance Companies in the coming years (probably by 2015). Hey, what's a little inflation tax between friends.

 

[Michael]

 

[madanthonywayne]

Obamacare: The worst is yet to come

An interesting article on upcoming problems ahead for Obamacare. Here's an excerpt with some of the highlights:

· 2014: Small-business policy cancellations. This year, the small-business market is going to get hit with the policy cancellations that roiled the individual market last year. Some firms will get better deals, but others will find that their coverage is being canceled in favor of more expensive policies that don’t cover as many of the doctors or procedures that they want. This is going to be a rolling problem throughout the year.

· Summer 2014: Insurers get a sizable chunk of money from the government to cover any excess losses. When the costs are published, this is going to be wildly unpopular: The administration has spent three years saying that Obamacare was the antidote to abuses by Big, Bad Insurance Companies, and suddenly it’s a mechanism to funnel taxpayer money to them?

· Fall 2014: New premiums are announced.

· 2014 and onward: Medicare reimbursement cuts eat into hospital margins, triggering a lot of lobbying and sad ads about how Beloved Local Hospital may have to close.

· Spring 2015: The Internal Revenue Service starts collecting individual mandate penalties: 1 percent of income in the first year. That’s going to be a nasty shock to folks who thought the penalty was just $95. I, like many other analysts, expect the administration to announce a temporary delay sometime after April 1, 2014.

· Spring 2015: The IRS demands that people whose income was higher than they projected pay back their excess subsidies. This could be thousands of dollars.

· Spring 2015: Cuts to Medicare Advantage, which the administration punted on in 2013, are scheduled to go into effect. This will reduce benefits currently enjoyed by millions of seniors, which is why they didn’t let them go into effect this year.

· Fall 2015: This is when expert Bob Laszewski says insurers will begin exiting the market if the exchange policies aren’t profitable.

· Fall 2017: Companies and unions start learning whether their plans will get hit by the “Cadillac tax,” a stiff excise tax on expensive policies that will hit plans with generous benefits or an older and sicker employee base. Expect a lot of companies and unions to radically decrease benefits and increase cost-sharing as a result.

· January 2018: The temporary risk-adjustment plans, which the administration is relying on to keep insurers in the marketplaces even if their customer pool is older and sicker than projected, run out. Now if insurers take losses, they just lose the money.

· Fall 2018: Buyers find out that subsidy growth is capped for next year’s premiums; instead of simply being pegged to the price of the second-cheapest silver plan, whatever that cost is, their growth is fixed. This will show up in higher premiums for families -- and, potentially, in an adverse-selection death spiral.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/resolved-obamacare-is-now-beyond-rescue.html

 

[Write4U]

You have a better idea of insuring 40 million people who currently have no Health insurance?

 

[joepistole]

An interesting article on upcoming problems ahead for Obamacare. Here's an excerpt with some of the highlights:

Well that amounts to a Great White Republican Hope List of problems for Obamacare. It’s more than a little disingenuous to blame Obamacare for all of the problems associated with healthcare before Obamacare. And your libertarian author is making a host of negative assumptions about the future and claiming that they will occur, and basing her prognostications upon those assumptions. She cannot know how much, if any, insurers will be reimbursed for “excessive losses. She doesn’t even know if excess loses will be incurred. But that doesn’t stop her from asserting it as fact and the amounts will be huge. And she also fails to mention that hospitals, before Obamacare, received huge payments from the federal government to cover the care for the uninsured. Under Obamacare those hospital subsidies are going away, because everyone should be insured.

Narrow networks didn’t begin with Obamacare. Expensive healthcare didn’t begin with Obamacare. Insurance cancellations didn’t begin with Obamacare. For decades now, employers have been pushing more and more healthcare expenses onto employees and cancelling insurance policies. For decades now healthcare costs in the US have been growing at multiples of the growth of income. And for the first time in decades, under Obamacare, the growth in healthcare costs has begun to slow.

And the rest of her argument boils down to her belief that she is entitled to be irresponsible and to become a burden to others should she and those like her become ill or injured. I just don’t buy into that notion. It’s a very “anticonservative” position to take. But for some odd and unfortunate reason, neoconservatives think it is their God given right to be fiscally profligate and inept. And by God, they have been!

 

[Michael]

You have a better idea of insuring 40 million people who currently have no Health insurance?

Yeah, it's called the free market, or colloquially known as civil liberty, that is, personal freedom.

Oh, but you know what? Central planning has been working so well for our public schools, public housing and "our" public currency - lets do that for our healthcare too. Hope you like your ObamaCare served with a side of salmonella.

 

[joepistole]

Yeah, it's called the free market, or colloquially known as civil liberty, that is, personal freedom.

Oh, but you know what? Central planning has been working so well for our public schools, public housing and "our" public currency - lets do that for our healthcare too. Hope you like your ObamaCare served with a side of salmonella.

You have central planning on the head. I bet you lay up at night in fear of the boogieman central planner who lives under your bed. Insuring access to healthcare isn't a state rationing of resources (i.e. central planning) anymore than the state legislating contract laws.

And here is your problem, you cannot point to a single instance of a successful "free market" healthcare system. On the other hand there are examples of successful Obamacare healthcare systems. Years ago every wealthy country in the world abandoned, with the exception being the US, the US healthcare model in favor of some form universal healthcare.

 

[Write4U]

Yeah, it's called the free market, or colloquially known as civil liberty, that is, personal freedom.
Oh, but you know what? Central planning has been working so well for our public schools, public housing and "our" public currency - lets do that for our healthcare too. Hope you like your ObamaCare served with a side of salmonella.

Madanthonywayne, will uninsured people stop being sick? Needing healthcare is not a choice, no one is exempt.
The problem here has nothing to do with personal choice. Everyone gets sick at one time or another, and if you are not insured you are passing the bill for others to pay. Hospitals cannot refuse (by oath) to provide services. They also have no choice, even if you cannot pay for you medical services. So they are forcced to make others pay more. Hardly a free market arrangement, wouldn't you say?

Instead of complaining about the "failures" of our current health care system, why don't we study "successful" socialized health care systems around the world most of which seem to work just fine. People in Canada and Europe are smart and dismissing their successful socialized healthcare systems just because that's "unamerican" is just stupid!

 

[Michael]

House Social Progressive Democrat slams Obamacare… (after announcing his retirement first - - following TWELVE TERMS as a "Servant" of The People *barf* who voted FOR ObamaCare)

A top House Democrat slammed Obamacare’s inability “to work” — but only after he announced his impending retirement from Congress.

12-term Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, an Appropriations Committee member who said this month that he will not seek re-election in 2014, said that not enough young people are signing up for Obamacare coverage to make the law work.

“I’m afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations. But I don’t think we’re going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially,” Moran said in an interview with WAMU American University Radio.

“And, frankly, there’s some legitimacy to their concern because the government spends about $7 for the elderly for every $1 it spends on the young,” Moran said.

“I just don’t know how we’re going to do it frankly. If we had a solution I’d be telling the president right now,” Moran said.

Moran voted for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which depends on young healthy “invincibles” to sign up for health insurance exchanges to offset the high number of older, sicker people that drive rates up and make Obamacare plans more expensive.

Looks like a few of the fatter rats are leaving a sinking ship.....

 

[Michael]

New Scientist: Counting the hidden victims of medicine

WHAT is the third leading cause of death in the developed world? Given that cancer and heart disease top the list, you might hazard a guess at diabetes, stroke or car accidents. You'd be wrong. The answer is "iatrogenic" deaths – those caused by medical errors, adverse drug reactions or hospital-acquired infections.

Take a good look at the mediocrity and near uselessness of a Public "High" school diploma, now combine this with a shit-smear of a Public Housing slum-project and the ineptitude and nepotism seen of Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan - you'll only wish it were the third leading cause of death. I promise, you will NOT want treated at a Public Hospital in the USSA circa 2035. You'll see, I think many of you will be taking a chance with a friend of a friend and iPhone20 app.

 

[Michael]

Madanthonywayne, will uninsured people stop being sick? Needing healthcare is not a choice, no one is exempt.
The problem here has nothing to do with personal choice. Everyone gets sick at one time or another, and if you are not insured you are passing the bill for others to pay. Hospitals cannot refuse (by oath) to provide services. They also have no choice, even if you cannot pay for you medical services. So they are forcced to make others pay more. Hardly a free market arrangement, wouldn't you say?

There ARE free-market solutions, but that'd mean we'd have to live in a free society - the very last thing your typical public 'educated' near-illiterate Amerikkkan would want. My guess is 99.999% of Americans don't know the difference between The State and The Government, let alone what a Civil Liberty is.

Nope, we have to ride this f*cker to the bottom, because you know, everyone get's hungry at one time or another. Everyone needs a place to sleep. Only Dear Leader can save us now.

 

[joepistole]

House Social Progressive Democrat slams Obamacare… (after announcing his retirement first - - following TWELVE TERMS as a "Servant" of The People *barf* who voted FOR ObamaCare)

Looks like a few of the fatter rats are leaving a sinking ship.....

Just mindlessly repeating lies doesn't make them any less of a lie. Please provide one credible source. Citing specious sources known for promulgating misinformation simply isn't credible.

 

[Michael]

Just mindlessly repeating lies doesn't make them any less of a lie. Please provide one credible source. Citing specious sources known for promulgating misinformation simply isn't credible.

Nice one Joe, you should go work for Faux News.

Audio Link HERE

Let me pull a few quotes out for you:
"I'm afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations, but I don't think we're going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially." (AKA - stick them with their grandparents [who own 80% of all assets, equities and property] medical bills).

"And, frankly, there's some legitimacy to their concern because the government spends about $7 for the elderly for every $1 it spends on the young"

"I just don't know how we're going to do it frankly" (by 'do it' he means stick the young with more of their selfish self-centered grandparents bills).
"If we had a solution I'd be telling the president right now." (oh, there's a 'solution' it's called tax the middle class more and hit the poor with inflation as the State monetizes the debt through the Fed with more inflation/screw-the-poor-tax).

$8.5 Trillion WASTED losing two more Wars - good god damn we're lucky to have the Federal Government looking after our well-being. Just remember, you don't get the Big Government without losing your Civil Liberties and Privacy Rights. Good Ole' "Progressive" Obama - sure don't see him repealing the "Patriot" Act now do you? ObamaCare is a good distraction though, as the State steals what little the poor had. Speaking of which, I have an idea, how about we take everything away from everyone over the age of 50 and 'redistribute' equally - that'd be the fairest. Don't you think so Joe?

 

[Grumpy]

From the Brookings Institute.

"The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will improve the well-being and incomes of Americans in the bottom fifth of the income distribution. Under our broadest and most comprehensive income measure we project that incomes in the bottom one-fifth of the distribution will increase almost 6%; those in the bottom one-tenth of the distribution will rise more than 7%. These estimated gains represent averages. Most people already have insurance coverage that will be left largely unaffected by reform. Those who gain subsidized insurance will see bigger percentage gains in their income."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...t-Round-up-On-Obamacare-and-income-inequality

I don't have anything to add to that right now, talking to Micheal is less productive that holding a conversation with a stump. I just posted this so we can make popcorn and watch his head explode.oke:

Grumpy