The ACA and Small Businesses

[IDBillzFan]

Say what you want but the argument that it is so incredibly confusing is stupid.

 

Are you phucking kidding me? Have you even bothered to talk to small business owners? They have to hire people just to speculate what is coming next. It's so freaking confusing that the WH is planning to hire people to help people make sense of the absolutely clusterphuckastrophy that this bill has become.

 

The people who will pay for it are confused, and will hold off on hiring until they understand directly how it will affect their bottom line.

 

But you keep telling yourself that one of the authors of the bill -- openly worried about how confused everyone is -- is just being stupid.

 

How you guys won last year is beyond me because you could not be more out of touch with the way Obamacare is affecting business growth.

[Doc]

Say what you want but the argument that it is so incredibly confusing is stupid.

Obamacare was a piece of **** as it was written. Its complexity in understanding and implementing it makes it an even bigger piece of **** than it already was. We'll end up spending $6T to insure maybe 10M more people, while everyone else's rates continue to skyrocket, the delivery of healthcare worsens, and people don't get any healthier.

[We Come In Peace]

Obamacare was a piece of **** as it was written. Its complexity in understanding and implementing it makes it an even bigger piece of **** than it already was. We'll end up spending $6T to insure maybe 10M more people, while everyone else's rates continue to skyrocket, the delivery of healthcare worsens, and people don't get any healthier.

Yeah but those health insurance companies stand to make a ton more money. And really, aren't they the ones we should be protecting? They're job-creators!

[Doc]

Yeah but those health insurance companies stand to make a ton more money. And really, aren't they the ones we should be protecting? They're job-creators!

Seems like Barry did a good job of that.

[Nanker]

It's reminiscent of the Y2K bug scare running up to 1/1/2000.

Governments required the private sector to spend billions on getting certified that their software was safe to cross into the new millennium.

It worked wonders for the Internet and Bill Clinton. It's probably the single factor that was most responsible for the "Clinton economy" that the left is so proud of.

Nothing says, booming economy like, "Spend whatever you have to to keep grandma's respirator running beyond one second past midnight on New Year's eve. And make sure the traffic lights keep working too. We don't want chaos in the streets."

[We Come In Peace]

Seems like Barry did a good job of that.

Without question.

[Doc]

Without question.

I have a question: why?

[We Come In Peace]

I have a question: why?

Money.

[Doc]

Money.

Yep. Which is why it was doomed to fail from the start.

[Azalin]

Say what you want but the argument that it is so incredibly confusing is stupid.

yep, especially since the feds were good enough to hire an additional sixteen-thousand new IRS employees to help us keep it simple.

[Nanker]

Get ready for Sticker Shock in 2014. 80% rate hike? Yikes!

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[B-Man]

Putting Lipstick on the Obamacare Pig ....Even formerly enthusiastic Democrats now predict a “train wreck.”

 

By John Fund

 

 

The Department of Health and Human Services has just handed out a $3.1 million PR contract to improve the public image of Obamacare. Advertising Age reports that the firm Weber Shandwick will help “roll out a campaign to convince skeptical — or simply confused — Americans the Affordable Care Act is good for them and convince them to enroll in a health plan.”

 

Obama officials insist the ads won’t be political, but critics recall that just before the 2010 midterm election, HHS spent $3.2 million on “educational” TV ads praising Obamacare. The spots featured the late actor Andy Griffith, a favorite of seniors, who told his fellow retirees that “more good things are coming” from Medicare. But FactCheck, a nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, noted that the ads made no mention of the dramatic cuts to 10 million Medicare Advantage recipients, who are likely to see their privately managed care scaled back. “The words in this ad ring hollow, and the promise that ‘benefits will remain the same’ is just as fictional as the town of Mayberry was when Griffith played the local sheriff,” FactCheck concluded in July 2010.

 

Indeed, the facts today are that Obamacare remains as unpopular now as when it was passed in 2010, and Democrats are increasingly worried it will return to haunt them in the midterm election next year, the first to take place after the stepped-up implementation of the law. Reporters at the Cook Political Report, a respected Washington watcher of election trends, noted this month that “almost all” of the Democratic insiders they talked to “voiced concern about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014.” At no point since its passage has Obamacare been viewed favorably by more than 45 percent of voters, and the latest Kaiser Family Health Foundation poll pegs its nationwide support at only 37 percent.

 

The administration is already preparing its excuses if insurance premiums skyrocket next year and parts of Obamacare miss key start dates. HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius complained this month that “no one fully anticipated” the difficulties involved in setting up Obamacare. She blamed obstructionist Republicans for engaging in “state-by-state political battles” to slow down the creation of health-care exchanges.

 

But many of her fellow Democrats aren’t exactly following her line. West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller, one of the main architects of Obamacare, calls the bill “probably the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress.” Referring to the implementation of the bill, he says, “If it isn’t done right the first time, it will just simply get worse.”

 

Senate Finance chairman Max Baucus of Montana has an even gloomier assessment. “I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” he told Sebelius in a hearing last week. “When I’m home, small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect, they don’t know what affordability rules are, they don’t know what penalties may apply. They just don’t know.”

 

Some backers of Obamacare are even jumping ship completely. Kinsey Robinson, the president of the 22,000-member United Union of Roofers, issued a public statement last week calling for “repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.” He explained that his union’s “concerns over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, [have been] totally ignored.” Many of the bill’s quickly drafted provisions, he added, “are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could keep it.”

 

 

 

.

Edited April 22, 2013 by B-Man

[Alaska Darin]

Wow. Who could have seen this coming?

 

Nice job liberals, as usual. But continue to trumpet the five things you actually know about Obamacare, as if the other 2700+ pages don't matter even a little bit.

 

RETARDS.

[B-Man]

Figures................

 

 

Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption

 

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

 

A source close to the talks says:“Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.” (JEEZ that would be tragic !!)

 

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

 

 

 

 

http://www.politico....l#ixzz2RUNOm5YN

[Azalin]

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public.

like that's ever stopped them before.

[IDBillzFan]

Figures................

 

Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption

 

Man, I miss the good old days when one of the main selling points about Obamacare care was that it was only fair to give the average American the equal level of health care that is provided to our elected officials.

 

Good times.

[DC Tom]

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public.

 

Yeah. Because we had no idea until now.

[Magox]

That would be an unbelievably horrible PR move by the Democrats.

[Alaska Darin]

as you said, this isn't new and wasn't started by obamacare. private practice has been a dying dinosaur for quite some time. if you're still in it and haven't made the jump you're proabably doing worse financially than your colleagues that have are (excepting concierge practice which has it's own headaches). obamacare will push this faster however. i believe we're moving towards bundled payments for overall care and accountable care organizations. hard to do that and compete in a small practice. probably eventually going to move away slowly from fee for service (via bundled payments and more in line with the kaiser type model). fee for service just doesn't work for cost effectiveness. quality will be compensated and already is. be damn near impossible to get quality bonuses if you can't measure quality with electronic medical records which some small practices still don't have. medical home is an interesting and promising prospect for internists, especially. most of us have been doing this all along (acting as the patient's advocate and "orchestra conductor" for care, if you will. now were going to get paid for it. and that should incentivize more docs to do it. most of these things are good in my opinion. hate to see small practices go away but that's more out of nostalgia than a belief that they are a better mousetrap. all of this would have happened with or without obamacare. it's just happening sooner with it.

So...Big Business GOOD when liberals say it is?

 

Nice hypocrisy. Highlighted even further by your ridiculous "damn the consequences, the end goal is worth it." I guess that doesn't apply to entitlement spending cuts, right?

 

Friggin' liberals.