Progressives tout California Health care "success"

[TakeYouToTasker]

IRS - Institutional Revenge Society

Heh, I just actualy laughed out loud when I thought about the "S" standing for "service".

[GG]

Signs of things to come?

[IDBillzFan]

[Doc]

ObamaCare Doing What Term-Limits Movement Couldn’t.

 

“Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting.”

I hope it happens. If the rich can't afford Obamacrap...

[Doc]

Obamacrap is turning Walmart workers into temps.

 

Soon it will be a nation of part-time workers. Forward!

[B-Man]

Obamacare Round-up: ACA Support in a Death Spiral.

With each passing year, people are becoming warier and warier of Obamacare. WSJ has the results of a new survey on attitudes toward the ACA conducted by Mercer. It found that only 9 percent of companies now believe Obamacare won’t raise their health care costs significantly, compared to 20 percent last year and 25 percent in 2011.

 

Maybe, just maybe the decline in support has something to do with the information we’ve gotten in recent weeks about the likely costs of insurance under the ACA. It’s becoming clearer every day that the rates on the California exchanges are going to be too high for many Americans, President Obama’s celebratory remarks on California’s lower-than-expected premiums notwithstanding. Even ACA supporters are now saying that the rates are too high. . . .

 

Declining support for and increased anxiety about the ACA is bad news for the President because it’s self-fulling in a way: the more the public distrusts Obamacare, the less likely it is that people will sign up for insurance—and the more likely in turn that the law will fail. But there’s perhaps an even more immediate problem for the law hitting the news today. Many insurers aren’t signing up to offer plans in the small business exchanges.

 

 

 

It’s almost like it was designed to fail or something.

 

 

.

[B-Man]

 

Doctors dump health insurance plans, charge patients less

 

WICHITA, Kan., June 14 (UPI) --

 

A Kansas physician says he makes the same income and offers better quality care to his patients after he dumped all health insurance companies.

 

Thirty-two-year old family physician Doug Nunamaker of Wichita, Kan., said after five years of dealing with the red tape of health insurance companies and the high overhead for the staff he hired just to deal with paperwork, he switched to a system of charging his patients a monthly fee plus the price of an office visit or test, CNN/Money reported.

 

For example, under Nunamaker's membership plan -- also known as "concierge" medicine or "direct primary care" practices -- each patient pays a flat monthly fee to have unlimited access to the doctors and any medical service they can provide in the practice, such as stitches or an EKG.

 

For adults up to age 44, Nunamaker charges $50 a month, pediatric services are $10 a month, and for adults age 44 and older it costs $100 a month. Although Nunamaker calls the practice "cash-only," he accepts credit and debit cards for the fees and services

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20130614-232724-6523

 

 

 

U.S. producing 'abysmally low' number of primary care doctors

 

WASHINGTON, June 15 (UPI) --

Despite a shortage of U.S. primary care doctors, less than 25 percent of new doctors go into this field, and fewer still work in rural areas, researchers say.

 

Lead study author Dr. Candice Chen, an assistant research professor of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, said the study also found only 4.8 percent of the new primary care physicians set up shop in rural areas.

 

"If residency programs do not ramp up the training of these physicians the shortage in primary care, especially in remote areas, will get worse," Chen said in a statement. "The study's findings raise questions about whether federally funded graduate medical education institutions are meeting the nation's need for more primary care physicians."

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20130614-235806-4920

[Doc]

 

http://www.breitbart...614-232724-6523

 

http://www.breitbart...614-235806-4920

Soon, if you want to see a doctor, you'll have to join a concierge practice, as many of them retire and aren't replaced, and limit the number of patients they see. Seeing a NP or PA, who have far less training, knowledge, and expertise, will be what Medicare, Medicaid, and exchange patients get to see, after long waiting times. Forward!

[B-Man]

OFA’s first ObamaCare ad: Hey, Americans are already seeing the benefits!

 

I mentioned on Friday that I’d been wondering when Organizing for Action née the Obama campaign was going to throw their full weight behind the White House and Democrats’ ferociously crucial endeavor to “inform” the public about the many “benefits” with which the “Affordable” Care Act is going to be [forcibly] serving them, because without insurers and plenty of insurees ready and rarin’ to sign up for the law’s proffered programs, the whole thing is wildly less likely to get off to an even halfway decent start — which is going to be a pretty crucial feat to accomplish before the fight for their electoral chances in the 2014 midterms next year. Ergo, here they come, guns blazing with a brand-new seven-figure summer ad buy touting the benefits that Americans are supposedly already seeing:

 

 

 

Better coverage, lower costs? My, that sounds nice, except that plenty of Americans don’t necessarily want better coverage (like the many young and healthy people the law needs to pay up for more expensive and comprehensive plans), and it’s turning out that a lot of these “lower costs,” aren’t. Less likely to appear in what I’m sure will be more forthcoming ads over the next year will be the fact that ObamaCare might in effect be hurting some of the very people it’s designed to help; as Jillian Kay Melchior explains at NRO, a lot of low-income hourly workers are likely looking at paying larger health care costs than they did before the law was implemented:

So the federal government has proposed so-called safe-harbor standards, which will stipulate the minimum requirements of an “affordable” plan, putting employers legally in the clear. Basically, such a plan would include a $3,500 deductible, a $6,000 cap on out-of-pocket costs, and premiums of $90 or less a month. …

 

It’s easy to see why low-income workers might be frustrated by the new law. Before, many employers who paid by the hour offered limited medical plans. These policies often got a bad rap because of their lack of catastrophic coverage. But to their credit, they were inexpensive and contributed to health-care costs immediately, without workers needing to first meet a deductible.

 

Now, these low-wage hourly workers would be forced to spend at least $5,300 before their coverage really begins to benefit them. For someone who’s already under financial duress, that’s a real burden.

[B-Man]

Despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer money being spent on "outreach"..............it's still dropping.

 

 

Poll: 19 Percent of Americans Believe They’ll Be Better Off Under Obamacare

 

 

 

 

Taking ObamaCare of Business

 

By Mark Steyn

 

In Investor’s Business Daily, Betsy McCaughey notes that Washington has given just shy of a billion dollars to California “to set up its insurance exchange.” That’s not chump change, even in Obama’s America. So what’s it been spent on? “Outreach”:

California lawmakers passed a law (Senate Bill 35) requiring that voter registration be part of the health insurance exchange.

Last month, Covered California announced $37 million in grants to 48 organizations to build public awareness about the opening of the health exchange on Oct. 1.

Of the 48 organizations that got grants, only a handful are health-care related

. The California NAACP received $600,000 to do door-to-door canvassing and presentations at community organizations.

Service Employees International Union, which says its mission is “economic justice,” received two grants totaling $2 million to make phone calls, robo-calls and go door to door.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

AFL-CIO got $1 million

for door-to-door, one-on-one education and social networking. It describes its role as “engaging in both organizing and political campaigns, electing pro-union and pro-worker candidates.”

 

 

Obamacare won’t add a single doctor or nurse or even hospital janitor, but it does divert staggering sums of money to Democratic party interest groups entirely unrelated to health care, and that’s what matters.

 

 

The supposed rationale for Obamacare was that Americans pay more for health care than any other country, and yet too many of its citizens get none at all. On the eve of implementation, two things can now be said for certain: Health care will be more expensive than ever, and worse than ever. This will be a disaster beyond the wildest dreams of the British NHS or any other socialized system.

 

 

 

.

Edited June 20, 2013 by B-Man

[B-Man]

Young People Should Say No to Obamacare :The program needs them, but it’s not worth it for them to sign on.

 

By John Fund

 

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will attempt to get almost every American to obtain health insurance. The system desperately needs healthy young people, millions of whom don’t have health insurance, to sign up because their money is needed to subsidize treatment for older, sicker Americans. But will they?

 

Young people will be asked to buy policies that don’t reflect the low risk they have of getting sick. Obamacare allows health insurers to vary premiums based on age, but they can charge older customers only up to three times as much as healthy young customers, while most insurers have as much as a five- or six-to-one ratio. This means lower prices for older (and wealthier) folks, but high prices for the young. “They’ll have sticker shock,” House budget chairman Paul Ryan told me.

 

Indeed, the law will require four out of five young Americans to pay more than they otherwise would for health coverage — yet another form of generational theft from young to old that ought to sour young people on government “help.”

 

 

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has found that less than half of those under 30 will sign up for Obamacare coverage on the exchanges if their premiums rise by 30 percent. Those kinds of increases for private policies are already routinely showing up in states preparing for Obamacare.

 

Even if premiums don’t rise dramatically, the process of signing up for health insurance has become dramatically complicated. The online application that has become the standard for everyone seeking Obamacare subsidies for coverage runs to more than 60 pages’ worth of questions, demanding information on income, family status, details on any health insurance offered at an applicant’s workplace, and lifestyle.

 

Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician who is brother to former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has spent a lot of time gaming out how Obamacare will work. He frets that young people will be “bewildered,” and they may “forgo purchasing insurance and opt to pay a penalty instead.” Indeed, the penalty starts at just $95 a year, and, though it will automatically rise some, Democrats will be loath to propose increasing it to an effective level.

 

And whether they are slackers, students, or software engineers, young people are smart enough to figure out that they can easily wait to sign up for coverage until after they get sick. Obamacare requires every insurance company to take anyone on as a customer regardless of any pre-existing conditions.

 

If young people boycott Obamacare, the law of adverse selection kicks in. Too few young people in an insurance pool means fewer healthy people to subsidize the sicker people. Costs and premiums will rise more than expected, which will lead to fewer young people signing up and costs going up even more. In insurance jargon, it’s called a death spiral.

[IDBillzFan]

Young People Should Say No to Obamacare :The program needs them, but it’s not worth it for them to sign on.

 

 

Funny you posted this because I came to post a rather funnier version of this from Jonah Goldberg: A Challenge To Young Obama Voters

 

Between those two elections, the president pandered to you like no president in American history. As I wrote last fall, he visited college campuses more often than a Red Bull delivery truck. He’s carried water for you on college loans like an aqueduct. He made sure you can stay on your parents’ health-care plans until you’re 26, which is a really nice consolation prize when you can’t find a job.

 

And not to put too fine a point on it, but you kids ate that stuff up. It reminded me of H. L. Mencken’s line about Harry Truman: “If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayers’ expense.”

 

Whenever curmudgeons like yours truly suggested that young people were getting caught up in a fad or that Obama was simply buying votes at the expense of taxpayers, you’d have a fit. You’d insist that millennials are not only informed, but eager to make sacrifices for the greater good.

 

Well, here’s your chance to prove it: Fork over whatever it costs to buy the best health insurance you can under Obamacare. Just in case you forgot, under Obamacare healthy young people such as yourself not only need to buy health insurance in order for the whole thing to work, but have to be overcharged for it. If you don’t pay more — probably a lot more — than what you could get today on the market in most states, Obamacare will come apart like wet toilet paper.

[B-Large]

Ran through a exhange estimation on individual private health insurance for Colorado yesterday, just interested to see what is might be as I may quict by job on January.....

 

Cigna

$125.00 month premium

$5,000 deductible

20% Coinsurance

 

Not too bad, honestly. Heck if I can put that $5000 in HSA, this is pretty reasonable.

[birdog1960]

 

 

http://www.breitbart...614-232724-6523

 

 

 

 

http://www.breitbart...614-235806-4920

saw this article linked to drudge. comments are hilarious. talk about distortion.primary care numbers have been down for years. it's not about obamacare, which is actually likely to help. it's about pay. specialists make multiples of what primary care docs do, on average. and this is a result of for profit medicine not obamacare. this level of disparity is not found in countries with socialized medicine. it happened imo, because in general, the specialities attract more vocal and aggressive personalities. they leveraged the smaller initial difference in pay to larger and larger differences by lobbying and monetary based influence and it produced a viscous cycle. obamacare has actually already begun to level the playing field and will continue to do so. and no, there won't be a shortage of applicants to med schools. the writing's on the wall and there are still record numbers of applicants.

[B-Man]

Obamacare Hopes to Draft the NBA

 

By Ian Tuttle

 

As an old Disneyland commercial inquired, “Lebron James, you just won the NBA Championship! What are you going to do next?”

If the White House has any say, perhaps answer would be: advertise Obamacare. Politico reports:

The Obama administration has reached out to the NBA about a potential marketing partnership to promote the health law, POLITICO has learned. . . .

In its first big public call about Obamacare outreach plans Tuesday, Enroll America said it will reach out to professional sports leagues to help encourage people to sign up for insurance. . . .

The Obama administration’s NBA outreach came up at a meeting last week of the Health Connector – the agency that runs Massachusetts’s health insurance exchange. Connector officials said a White House-NBA partnership was being considered.

 

 

The NBA has declined to comment, and the Massachusetts officials who revealed the possible partnership are not offering details.

But it seems reasonable enough to us.

 

Who better to discuss the burden of rising healthcare costs than professional athletes making $213,000 per game?

Edited June 21, 2013 by B-Man

[Doc]

Funny you posted this because I came to post a rather funnier version of this from Jonah Goldberg: A Challenge To Young Obama Voters

If I were a child, I'd probably take the penalty/tax/slaponthewrist. Hell even as a guy with a family of 4, I'll probably end up taking the penalty if I can reduce my withholding enough.

 

And who are we kidding? Libs are masters at spending other people's money. Ask them to spend though and it's like you kicked them in the ovaries.

[B-Man]

Obamacare Hopes to Draft the NBA

 

Who better to discuss the burden of rising healthcare costs than professional athletes making $213,000 per game?

 

 

 

SEBELIUS: NFL 'actively and enthusiastically engaged' in talks to promote Obamacare...

 

 

.

[DC Tom]

SEBELIUS: NFL 'actively and enthusiastically engaged' in talks to promote Obamacare...

 

 

"We know the Red Sox were incredibly effective in Massachusetts … so it's a logical place to go," Sebelius said.

 

Oh my God...

[B-Man]

Let's see.........

 

N.B.A. - check

 

N.F.L. - check

 

 

President to Recruit Celebs to Improve ObamaCare's Sinking Poll Numbers

 

President Barack Obama got plenty of aid from Hollywood during the 2012 election cycle in terms of both money and promotion, but he still needs their help.

 

It seems his signature health care reform, ObamaCare, isn't polling too well as more facts emerge about its unexpected costs. So the Obama administration plans to reach out to Hollywood--again--to prop up those sinking poll numbers.

Trevor Neilson, a veteran of the Clinton White House, said he's in talks with the Obama administration and that his clients are "looking at ways to be involved."

Neilson represents Eva Longoria, John Legend and many other stars as president of Global Philanthropy Group. His past clients have reportedly included Shakira and Madonna, and he has close ties to Bono and Bill Gates.

 

 

This isn't about passing legislation. ObamaCare will soon be the law of the land. It's all about image, so who better than A-list types to rush to the Celebrity in Chief's side when he needs them the most?

[DC Tom]

Let's see.........

 

N.B.A. - check

 

N.F.L. - check

 

 

Can we just crown he and Michelle Homecoming King and Queen and be done with it already?