The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[DC Tom]

Isn't the VA socialized medicine? That works pretty well, doesn't it? Try to tell veterans to f-off and join in the market, they will never give up their socialized system

 

Seriously, retard? Don't you remember the huge scandal about six years ago where the VA WASN'T working well?

 

If not, look up your old posts. Whatever sock puppet you are now, I'm sure you bitched about it back then.

[Tiberius]

Seriously, retard? Don't you remember the huge scandal about six years ago where the VA WASN'T working well?

 

If not, look up your old posts. Whatever sock puppet you are now, I'm sure you bitched about it back then.

 

You mean when they had trouble dealing with the massive influx of veterans from a war?

[DC Tom]

You mean when they had trouble dealing with the massive influx of veterans from a war?

 

So the VA's effective as long as there's no veterans...?

 

[/dev/null]

Seriously, retard? Don't you remember the huge scandal about six years ago where the VA WASN'T working well?

 

If not, look up your old posts. Whatever sock puppet you are now, I'm sure you bitched about it back then.

 

Well duh, 6 years ago Bush was President so Obama hadn't fixed Health Care yet

[OCinBuffalo]

37 weeks--at the worst case-- as opposed to not getting it at all? I think anyone going to choose the wait, duh!

Yeah, let's F everybody over, because some people can't get their act together. While we are at it: let's cover the rest of your dopey premises.

 

Let's F around with insurance, even though OUR insurance plan(Medicare) is the root cause of 90% of the insurance problem.

 

Let's discourage the supply of health care in every single way we can, and mandate increased demand, while doing NOTHING to increase REAL competition amongst providers, and of course, let's not make anyone that doesn't take care of themselves or their children, pay for that abuse.

 

Meanwhile, let's allow an entire class of people to make their living sucking money out of the system, while adding no value. Why? Because they vote for us!

$700 and it's only a few days.

What's this doing here? Free association?

Isn't the VA socialized medicine? That works pretty well, doesn't it? Try to tell veterans to f-off and join in the market, they will never give up their socialized system

More free association.

 

If you actually knew anything about the VA, you'd know that every veteran who isn't named John Kerry, would instantly drop them for a private insurer, and providers, if they were given the option.

Edited September 16, 2013 by OCinBuffalo

[Doc]

So the VA's effective as long as there's no veterans...?

 

He's got a point. Medicare was doing fine until more old people started entering the system.

[B-Large]

Are you saying businesses have more money isn't a good thing? And you actually try to pass yourself off as someone that knows something?

 

 

 

Go live in some libertarian country then where there is no health care, no schools no anything. Can't believe Conservatives have not tried to found a dumbfukastan somewhere with a minimalist government of no sewers or roads. Come on guys, lets get to it!

 

Its not called Dumbfukastan, that was vote down as the choice name of the place, but as it stands today is it Colorado Springs. The have roads and sewer and turn out the street lights when the tax money runs out to have them on. I'm not living there, but some people seem to like it.

 

Seven MONTHS for an MRI? Yet there are still people who are pining for this.

 

Amazing.

 

In fairness, they don't qualify the point by saying what the MRI was for. We have people here who demand an MRI for a condition that doesn't really warrant one, but they are a pain in the MD's ass so they justy order it to get the patient off their backs.... its hard to make a judgement on the article's duration of getting an MRI without more details.

 

I assume its not unlike then a patient here had stage 1 thyroid cancer and they are told their surgery is in 6-8 weeks they FREAK OUT, but they don't want to hear that they could wait a year and it wouldn't be much of a difference. Its called triage and appropriate utilization... people don't always like it, but its good medicine.

Edited September 16, 2013 by B-Large

[meazza]

Its not called Dumbfukastan, that was vote down as the choice name of the place, but as it stands today is it Colorado Springs. The have roads and sewer and turn out the street lights when the tax money runs out to have them on. I'm not living there, but some people seem to like it.

 

 

 

In fairness, they don't qualify the point by saying what the MRI was for. We have people here who demand an MRI for a condition that doesn't really warrant one, but they are a pain in the MD's ass so they justy order it to get the patient off their backs.... its hard to make a judgement on the article's duration of getting an MRI without more details.

 

I assume its not unlike then a patient here had stage 1 thyroid cancer and they are told their surgery is in 6-8 weeks they FREAK OUT, but they don't want to hear that they could wait a year and it wouldn't be much of a difference. Its called triage and appropriate utilization... people don't always like it, but its good medicine.

 

For the amount that is withdrawn from my paycheck as well as contributions, I should get an MRI every !@#$ing week.

 

Seriously imagine paying for a Ferrari and having to drive in an old Honda Civic. That's healthcare in Canada.

[B-Large]

For the amount that is withdrawn from my paycheck as well as contributions, I should get an MRI every !@#$ing week.

 

Seriously imagine paying for a Ferrari and having to drive in an old Honda Civic. That's healthcare in Canada.

 

why would you want an MRI every week?

 

That analogy is really more suited to the US Health System if you think about. We're the most expensive by far, have worse outcomes (I know, I know, its all propoganda and number bending and completely BS) comparatively against other 1st world healthcare systems in many regards.... We pay for Ferraris, get Civic and our Civics often have a bad AC Joint, leak oil and only have a broken AC compressor. I am not complaining about the system at all, but I work on the inside and get in the front of the line cause I know everybody... call me biased.

 

I am also guessing you are a young guy who rarely needs care.. Perhaps hold your judgement until you need stuff for a severe or chronic illness? Ot not, you can always just be pissed for having to pay for it I guess.

Edited September 16, 2013 by B-Large

[meazza]

why would you want an MRI every week?

 

That analogy is really more suited to the US Health System if you think about. We're the most expensive by far, have worse outcomes (I know, I know, its all propoganda and number bending and completely BS) comparatively against other 1st world healthcare systems in many regards.... We pay for Ferraris, get Civic and our Civics often have a bad AC Joint, leak oil and only have a broken AC compressor. I am not complaining about the system at all, but I work on the inside and get in the front of the line cause I know everybody... call me biased.

 

I am also guessing you are a young guy who rarely needs care.. Perhaps hold your judgement until you need stuff for a severe or chronic illness? Ot not, you can always just be pissed for having to pay for it I guess.

 

I didn't say I want an MRI every week, I said, at the amount that I'm paying in taxes in total outflows, I should be getting one every week. It's hyperbole.

 

Generally speaking, walk into any emergency room and, unless you have a gun shot in the right location, you're probably not getting out before 12-15 hours.

[B-Man]

Sorry, Mr. President, There Is ‘Serious Evidence’ Obamacare Is Bad for Economic Growth

By Patrick Brennan

 

 

President Obama’s long, rambling speech today blended two messages many in Congress will find contradictory: Pass a budget that’s good for economic growth, and stop opposing my health-care law. He’s actually right that a government shutdown or a debt-ceiling showdown, one way to fight Obamacare, won’t be good for the economy per se, but he’s absolutely wrong to suggest that the Republican House’s opposition to Obamacare doesn’t have sound economic justifications.

 

“There’s no serious evidence that the [Affordable Care Act], which has kept the rise of health-care costs to their lowest level in 50 years, is harming economic growth,” the president said.

 

This is not a serious statement.

 

Obamacare might be a great law, but it imposes serious costs to the U.S. economy: The law will levy $1 trillion in taxes over the next ten years — which, regardless of whether the transfers it funds are socially desirable, is undeniably a large drag on the economy; taxes are inherently inefficient. And the ACA’s taxes, which will increase double taxation of capital, impose excise taxes on an important industry (medical devices), and raise the costs of employment, are especially damaging.

 

The law’s provisions will increase the implicit, marginal income tax on labor by about 5 percentage points, according to the University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan. No less serious an authority than the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the large expansion in means-tested free insurance the ACA will provide will cause millions to drop out of the labor force — which makes the unemployment rate look better, but is undoubtedly a bad development for the economy overall. One could go on.

[IDBillzFan]

With friends like these...

 

Warren Buffett: Scrap Obamacare and do something else.

 

You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that "we need something else." Money Morning writes: "Healthcare costs in the United States are like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.

 

"Those words come from famed investor Warren Buffett, who said he would scrap Obamacare and start all over.

 

"'We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,' he added. 'And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.'

 

"Buffett insists that without changes to Obamacare average citizens will suffer.

 

"'What we have now is untenable over time,' said Buffett, an early supporter of President Obama. 'That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.'

 

"Buffett does not believe that providing insurance for everyone is the first step to take in correcting our nation's healthcare system.

 

"'Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage,' he said. 'I would much rather see another plan that really attacks costs. And I think that's what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill.'"

[B-Large]

I didn't say I want an MRI every week, I said, at the amount that I'm paying in taxes in total outflows, I should be getting one every week. It's hyperbole.

 

Generally speaking, walk into any emergency room and, unless you have a gun shot in the right location, you're probably not getting out before 12-15 hours.

 

I was kidding about the MRI every week, I know what you meant. 12 hours in an ED in the US is not abnormal, in facts almost everyday the last 2 years we have been in divert in our ED... we now have a new ED that has sq footagle equal to 2 football fields, so the theory is we can accomodate more and we now have 350 more beds (at least will when built out).

 

With friends like these...

 

Warren Buffett: Scrap Obamacare and do something else.

 

Buffet will probably have ot pay taxes on his plan now.. oh the irony, isnt he the one who was championing tax hikes?

[B-Man]

JAMES TARANTO: About That Other Debacle: For ObamaCare, it’s only the end of the beginning.

If you’re the kind of driver who can’t help but gawk at the wreckage when you pass an accident–and honestly, who isn’t?–you’ll enjoy today’s lengthy account in The Wall Street Journal of the runup to last week’s Putin-Assad triumph.

Right off the bat we learn, which is to say our suspicion is confirmed, that this was a case of a willful president with atrocious political instincts. When Obama consulted his cabinet and top staffers about the idea of seeking congressional approval for a strike in Syria, “senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pegged the chances of Congress balking at 40%. . . . Mr. Obama took the gamble anyway and set aside the impending strikes to try to build domestic and international support for such action.”

In retrospect, it seems clear that while Pfeiffer was on the right track in warning that Congress might scuttle the plan, he underestimated the probability of that outcome. . . .

Which brings us to the Affordable Care Act. Three and a half years after the springtime enactment of what was touted as Obama’s signature legislative achievement, it’s autumn for ObamaCare, with many of the law’s provisions taking effect Oct. 1, two weeks from tomorrow.

ObamaCare was another case in which the president asked Congress to act. That time, lawmakers granted his request, although for a time the odds seemed very much against their doing so. Unlike in 2013, in 2009-10 Republicans did not control the House. Unlike the idea of military intervention in Syria, ObamaCare did not go against the Democrats’ ideological grain.

But like the prospective Syria strike, ObamaCare lacked broad public support. It still does, as illustrated by a pair of polls out today, from The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. . . . Quite apart from the law’s merits, what Page has described is an enormous political miscalculation. Unlike in the Syria case,

Obama had the political strength to push this legislation through Congress (if barely). But while it’s easy to imagine he was and remains disdainful of public opinion on the matter, it’s almost certain that he expected it to turn around by now.

Yet it’s actually more unpopular than when it passed.

.

[B-Man]

*

Layoffs coming to Cleveland Clinic in plan to reduce budget by $330 million:

The Cleveland Clinic has told workers they will be laying off an unspecified number of employees as part of an overall, sweeping cost-reduction plan….

 

[Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil] said early retirement would be offered to 3,000 eligible employees. Most vacant jobs are not being filled.

 

She attributed most of the budget reductions to looming changes accompanying the start of the Affordable Health Care Act.

 

Sheil said the Clinic had not made overall layoffs in the past 11 years….

 

She added that any layoffs would be across the board, including doctors.

 

The Clinic issued the following statement:

 

“To prepare for healthcare reform, Cleveland Clinic is transforming the way care is delivered to patients. Over the past several years, we have had an ongoing focus on driving efficiencies, lowering costs, reducing duplication in services and enhancing quality to make healthcare affordable to patients.

 

Although we have made progress, we need to further reduce costs to the organization by $330 million in 2014….”

 

 

 

"You can keep your doctor, period."

[/dev/null]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure-doctor-networks-20130915,0,2814725.story

[Nanker]

One can only hope that in November, 2014 after SOME of the effects of the OBama-Dama-Ding-Dong Care Act become more keenly felt by the deaf-dumb-and blind electorate, that voters will have a moment of pause and ask themselves, "just exactly why the !@#$ did the Democrats !@#$ with MY healthcare INSURANCE COVERAGE?"

[B-Man]

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/176222/

 

MAYBE THE GOP IS PLAYING INTO OBAMA’S HANDS BY STOPPING THIS TRAINWRECK. A longtime reader emails:

 

 

Through serendipity I’ve ended up working in HIT (health information technology). I take 50 calls a day with independent insurance agents/brokers to navigate the hoops to qualify to sell on the FFM (Federal Facilitated Marketplaces).

 

The Government websites they need to access to register are riddled with random error messages, and simply attempting to log in to complete this process routinely fails. The agents/brokers are, to a person, terrified. If they cannot complete this process by October 1st (the deadline) they are hosed. Nobody knows what to do, and this will only get worse when millions of consumers join the fray of the marketplace. It appears nobody scaled the back end to accommodate this exponential growth.

 

And now?, It’s too late. It’s like the owner of the White Star line getting a telegram about the Titanic sinking and saying “We need to order more lifeboats.” And these are the smartest guys in the room? #soscrewed. For obvious reasons, don’t use my name please..

 

 

Some journalism on this subject would be nice.

 

 

.

[OCinBuffalo]

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/176222/

 

MAYBE THE GOP IS PLAYING INTO OBAMA’S HANDS BY STOPPING THIS TRAINWRECK. A longtime reader emails:

 

 

Through serendipity I’ve ended up working in HIT (health information technology). I take 50 calls a day with independent insurance agents/brokers to navigate the hoops to qualify to sell on the FFM (Federal Facilitated Marketplaces).

 

The Government websites they need to access to register are riddled with random error messages, and simply attempting to log in to complete this process routinely fails. The agents/brokers are, to a person, terrified. If they cannot complete this process by October 1st (the deadline) they are hosed. Nobody knows what to do, and this will only get worse when millions of consumers join the fray of the marketplace. It appears nobody scaled the back end to accommodate this exponential growth.

 

And now?, It’s too late. It’s like the owner of the White Star line getting a telegram about the Titanic sinking and saying “We need to order more lifeboats.” And these are the smartest guys in the room? #soscrewed. For obvious reasons, don’t use my name please..

 

 

Some journalism on this subject would be nice.

Scaling the back end won't do much, as I imagine that these brokers and TPAs all have state-specifc requirements, and given the state of things, they haven't accounted for any of them, hence the errors, etc. All scaling would accomplish is more bad faster.

 

IF the raw data being entered is suspect, then it doesn't matter what your back end looks like. ( on purpose. This is a joke, that, while old, is always funny to me)

 

Besides, random errors being thrown at end users? That also reaks of haphazard front/middle tier development, and, poor, if not nonexistant testing.

 

They are just throwing this system up, most likely with some con men consultants who over-promised on the deadline. I've seen this before. It never ends well.

 

The most important thing, ahead of everything, is: end user confidence in the system overall. If they have it, then errors or bugs don't phase them, especially if they are resolved quickly and completely. However, if you lose end user confidence? The whole thing crashes very quickly, and it's nearly impossible to regain it.

 

Again, as I've said all along: IT, and not law, is the where Obamcare will do it's most spectacular failing. IT has always been the weakness, not legal mewling. Just wait until they realize that they have to hire all sorts of outside people to make these systems work, and, one of them turns out to be a thief. As designed, Obamacare has no defense against that. And, given the conditions and dependencies, it never will.

[B-Man]

The Obamacare Scams Are Already Starting

 

We were warned that the new Obamacare insurance exchanges could threaten your privacy—and it’s already happening, before the exchanges are even open.

 

In a new report, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee presented these shocking findings:

 

there are already numerous reports of scam artists posing as Navigators and Assisters to take advantage of people’s confusion about ObamaCare. According to recent news reports, scam artists are calling individuals and asking for information to sign them up for their “ObamaCare card,” are asking seniors for their personal information to verify their Medicare and Social Security status and are going door-to-door threatening people with prison time if they do not sign up on the spot. The Administration is keenly aware of these reports and concerns, but has thus far failed to take appropriate measures

.

 

Even when it’s not malicious, the new Obamacare system—employing “navigators” who aren’t run through background checks or adequately trained—opens up a host of opportunities for identity theft. Last week, an employee of Minnesota’s insurance exchange (MNsure) emailed out the names and Social Security numbers of 2,400 insurance agents. The insurance broker who received the email said, “If this is happening now, how can clients of MNsure be confident their data is safe?”

 

Indeed.

 

The Oversight Committee reports that the exchange system thus far is a combination of shoddy planning and bad incentives. Navigators, who are supposed to help people sign up for the exchanges, are allowed to be paid based on the number of people they enroll in Obamacare

(Thats an INVITATION to Fraud)

 

http://blog.heritage...m_medium=social