The Affordable Care Act II - Because Mr. Obama Loves You All

[B-Man]

ED MORRISSEY: Obamacare RIP: Republicans Finally Have a Plan.

 

 

 

 

 

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Wisconsin VA Hospital May Have Infected 600 Veterans With HIV Or Hepatitis.

[North Buffalo]

ED MORRISSEY: Obamacare RIP: Republicans Finally Have a Plan.

 

 

 

 

 

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Wisconsin VA Hospital May Have Infected 600 Veterans With HIV Or Hepatitis.

No there is a recipe for a disaster... a high risk pool for preexisting conditions funding thru a medical savings acct... Gonna drive people broke. Medical Savings accts don't work except peripherally and unless you have a one stop shop its gonna make things even more complicated. Folks are just going to come to the ER without insurance in larger numbers then the currently do and all these doc in a box clinics are going to go away because no one has insurance.

 

I am all for free market prinicipals... this would be a give away to insurance companies by allowing them to cherry pick clients, weed out underperformers and users of health insurance when they need it.

 

I still think the Crop Insurance Model works the best... Mandate coverage and subsidize the high risk pools for both insurance cos and payers and allow insurance cos to keep premiums of low risk pools and split the middle risk pools premiums between Feds and Insurance cos... do it actuarial based, but subsidies should be asset/income based.

[B-Man]

G.O.P. Plans Immediate Repeal of Health Law, Then a Delay

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/obamacare-repeal.html?_r=2

 

 

WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress plan to move almost immediately next month to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as President-elect Donald J. Trump promised. But they also are likely to delay the effective date so that they have several years to phase out President Obama’s signature achievement.

This emerging “repeal and delay” strategy, which Speaker Paul D. Ryan discussed this week with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, underscores a growing recognition that replacing the health care law will be technically complicated and could be politically explosive.

[B-Man]

Why Luxury TVs Are Affordable when Basic Health Care Is Not.

 

“It’s not that complicated, folks. If you want good services, good products, innovative ideas, and low prices, you need competitive markets. The more you control, the higher the prices and the worse the results.”

 

Yes, but more control produces more opportunities for graft.

 

 

 

The Four Legs of a New Health-Care System The Great Recession enabled ObamaCare. Now the law’s failure makes reform possible.

http://www.wsj.com/a...stem-1480550930

Edited December 5, 2016 by B-Man

[B-Man]

Pretty please? Chuck Schumer makes an Obamacare promise we hope Dems will keep

 

Chuck Schumer: Democrats won't help GOP with Obamacare replacement

http://washex.am/2gCFB1d

 

 

 

 

 

A FRAMEWORK FOR REPLACING OBAMACARE

 

James Capretta and Scott Gottlieb of AEI lay out the four reforms around which they say the effort to replace Obamacare should center.

 

 

 

Capretta and Gottlieb are calling for a system that’s fully consumer driven — one that empowers individuals to be the surveyors and purchasers of their care. Such a system would stand in stark contrast to Obamacare which tells people what insurance they must have and pretends that many insurance plans tailored to individual needs are “junk insurance.”

As noted above, Obamacare engages in this pretense to force some people to buy insurance they don’t need as a means of subsidizing other people. Some “subsidizing” will, I assume, be necessary in a post-Obamacare world if popular provisions, such as accommodating folks with pre-existing conditions, are to be continued.

But the way to pay to for any such subsidies is the same way we normally pay for things the public deems desirable — through general revenue, not through coercing unlucky individuals into buying things they don’t want or need.

Edited December 8, 2016 by B-Man

[DC Tom]

Pretty please? Chuck Schumer makes an Obamacare promise we hope Dems will keep

 

Chuck Schumer: Democrats won't help GOP with Obamacare replacement

http://washex.am/2gCFB1d

 

Cool. Now tell them they're just along for the ride, and they can sit in back. And watch their pointy little heads explode with cries of "Racist!"

[keepthefaith]

Pretty please? Chuck Schumer makes an Obamacare promise we hope Dems will keep

 

Chuck Schumer: Democrats won't help GOP with Obamacare replacement

http://washex.am/2gCFB1d

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right, because Obama, Pelosi and Reid got it absolutely right when they passed the ACA. Nobody could ever craft a better solution or improve what is in place.

[Nanker]

US life expectancy declines for the first time in 20 years.

Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993.

 

 

Thank you Obamacare!

[Chef Jim]

US life expectancy declines for the first time in 20 years.

Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993.

 

 

Thank you Obamacare!

 

[DC Tom]

 

 

Thanks, Climate Change!

[B-Man]

US life expectancy declines for the first time in 20 years.

Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993.

 

 

Thank you Obamacare!

 

 

 

If You Like Your Longevity, You Can Keep Your Longevity.

[B-Man]

MICHAEL WARREN: GOP’s game plan for undoing Obamacare.

 

It didn’t take long for Republican leadership in both houses of Congress to get over the shock of winning the election last month and start gaming out a repeal plan. The details remain under discussion, but House speaker Paul Ryan, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence (who is working closely with Ryan and McConnell on repeal) are already coalescing around a rough legislative framework. The plan might be summed up as: repeal, delay, replace. More precisely, Republicans plan to repeal most of the law, delay the implementation of most of that repeal for at least two years—and figure out what to replace it with in the interim.

It’s a legislative strategy adopted largely from the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations. The think tank’s health care experts Nina Owcharenko and Edmund F. Haislmaier authored a brief in November that advocated a four-step process that begins: “Maximize the reconciliation process for repeal.” According to Mitch McConnell, this will come in the form of an “Obamacare repeal resolution” on January 3, the first day of the new Congress.

Why start here and not a straightforward repeal bill? While such a repeal could pass the House of Representatives with a party-line vote, the small majority Republicans hold in the Senate (likely 52 to the Democrats’ 48) means there’s no supermajority of 60 to override an almost-certain Democratic filibuster. So the GOP plans to repeal Obamacare the same way Democrats passed it: through budget reconciliation, because Senate rules limit debate (and thereby avoid the filibuster threat) on budget legislation.

This process, however, also limits what Republicans can repeal.

 

 

 

 

Read the whole thing,............................ although it did leave me with one nagging question: ObamaCare was passed in its entirety via reconciliation, so I don’t understand why it can’t be repealed in its entirety via reconciliation.

[B-Man]

POLITICO ‏@politico 4h4 hours ago

 

A surprising number of Democratic lawmakers say they'd play ball with replacing Obamacare http://politi.co/2hR0xlf

 

 

 

 

It's not really "surprising" at all to anyone outside the beltway.

 

.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

 

Thanks, Climate Change!

 

Thanks, Russia!

[B-Man]

“we were approved for APTC subsidies, which totaled about $1,580 on a monthly basis…”

 

Government Accountability Office: 9 of 12 fictitious Obamacare applicants were able to get coverage with subsidies

 

 

Great work guys........

[B-Man]

YOUR OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Another Obamacare Co-Op Exits Exchanges, Leaving Only 5 Co-Ops in 2017.

 

 

Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. of Maryland announced earlier this month that it is withdrawing from the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, leaving only five co-ops in operation. The co-op will not offer or renew individual health policies in 2017.

“After many months of working closely with Evergreen management, leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and outside investors to find a workable solution, we have run out of time to meet the deadline for a January 1 effective date,” said Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. “We remain committed to a viable, competitive insurance industry in Maryland.”

This action will force 6,000 customers serviced by the co-op to be automatically enrolled in new plans. The co-op was awarded $65.5 million in taxpayer-funded loans in 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assuming the incoming Congress repeals ObamaCare, it will be a much bigger story that ruthless Republicans put the remaining co-ops out of business — and never mind that 18 others did little more than suck up tax dollars before going broke all on their own.

[Tiberius]

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/more-6-million-sign-obamacare-n698841

 

 

Nearly 6.4 million people have signed up for 2017 Obamacare coverage on the federal exchanges — 400,000 more than last year — the federal government said Wednesday.

The administration has been pushing the marketplace hard in the last few weeks before Obama leaves office and puts his signature health reform legislation in the hands of Republicans who have promised to repeal it.

 

[B-Man]

Obamacare Attempt to Force Abortion Coverage

by Wesley J. Smith

 

A primary reason Donald Trump won the election, in my amateur’s opinion, was because members of faith communities voted for him as a means of self-defense.

 

Most particularly, making Trump president was seen by these communities as the only way to prevent Hillary Clinton continuing the Obama administration’s unremitting war against faith-based institutions practicing what their churches preach.

 

Obamacare was used by rampaging bureaucrats as the assault troops in that effort, such as attempting to force Catholic nuns to cover contraceptives.

 

Here’s another one which I hadn’t heard about. Apparently a regulation was promulgated that would have required abortion (and transgender issues) coverage as a means of preventing “sex discrimination.”

 

Now a judge has enjoined enforcement under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. From the Reuters story: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obamacare-idUSKBN14L0OP

 

A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a court order barring enforcement of an Obama administration policy seeking to extend anti-discrimination protections under the Affordable Care Act to transgender health and abortion-related services.

 

The decision sides with Texas, seven other states and three Christian-affiliated healthcare groups challenging a rule that, according to the judge, defines sex bias to include “discrimination on the basis of gender identity and termination of pregnancy.”

 

Denying abortion coverage is sex discrimination? That kind of blatant term redefinitionism (if you will) is one of the Left’s favorite weapons in the culture war they never cease waging.

 

Had Clinton become POTUS, these efforts to force faith communities to embrace liberal secular values in the operation of their community institutions would have been pursued even more energetically.

 

And once the Supreme Court was in their hands, the cultural hegemons would have prevailed.

 

That self-defense vote will work, I think. Whatever policies Donald Trump pursues as POTUS, he won’t wage political war against religious institutions.

 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

[B-Man]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that the ball is in the GOP's court when it comes to replacing ObamaCare, according to reports.

Pelosi didn’t necessarily rule out working with the GOP on replacing President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement after it is repealed, but said the responsibility to do so will ultimately fall in their laps.

"The ball is in their court," Pelosi said during a Democratic conference call on Monday, according to ABC’s Rick Klein. "You break it, you own it."

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...

Thank you dems, for re-electing Nancy to be seen as your face in Washington DC

Edited January 2, 2017 by B-Man

[Chef Jim]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that the ball is in the GOP's court when it comes to replacing ObamaCare, according to reports.

Pelosi didnt necessarily rule out working with the GOP on replacing President Obamas signature domestic policy achievement after it is repealed, but said the responsibility to do so will ultimately fall in their laps.

"The ball is in their court," Pelosi said during a Democratic conference call on Monday, according to ABCs Rick Klein. "You break it, you own it."

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...

Thank you dems, for re-electing Nancy to be seen as your face in Washington DC

"You break it you own it!" How about "you built you own it!"

[DC Tom]

"You break it you own it!" How about "you built you own it!"

 

"You didn't build that, somebody else made it happen."

[unbillievable]

We have to break it, to find out what's in it.

[Doc]

"You didn't build that, but if it breaks, it's your fault."

[B-Man]

Nancy "doubles down" on her stupidity (and projection)............good, the GOP could always use more seats.

 

Thanks again House dems...

 

 

 

Nancy Pelosi

✔ @NancyPelosi

The GOP wants to dismantle ACA & consequently increase costs. It's wrong. It will have an major impact on hardworking families & raise taxes

1:29 PM - 2 Jan 2017

 

 

Nancy Pelosi

✔ @NancyPelosi

Republicans will leave millions of Americans without health insurance -- and worsen the coverage of many more. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/politics/house-democrats-obamacare-repeal/ …

 

 

 

Washington (CNN)House Democrats who ushered President Barack Obama's health care reforms into law say they failed to sell it from the start.

 

Now, as congressional Republicans prepare to repeal the law, Democrats are asking voters to "take a second look."

On a call Monday with top Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one thing she would have done differently on health care reform from the start was "message it in a much stronger way."

.

Edited January 3, 2017 by B-Man

[Nanker]

 

Nancy "doubles down" on her stupidity (and projection)............good, the GOP could always use more seats.

 

Thanks again House dems...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Washington (CNN)House Democrats who ushered President Barack Obama's health care reforms into law say they failed to sell it from the start.

 

Now, as congressional Republicans prepare to repeal the law, Democrats are asking voters to "take a second look."

On a call Monday with top Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one thing she would have done differently on health care reform from the start was "message it in a much stronger way."

.

 

She sounds just like gator.

[Tiberius]

She sounds just like gator.

Thanks

 

20 million got health insurance, GOP to take that away, very stupid!

[DC Tom]

Thanks

 

20 million got health insurance, GOP to take that away, very stupid!

[This is an automated response.]

 

You're an idiot.

 

Created by DC Tom-bot, beta version 0.4.

[Deranged Rhino]

[This is an automated response.]

 

You're an idiot.

 

Created by DC Tom-bot, beta version 0.4.

 

While I cannot confirm this yet, I hear rumors that version 0.5 will include lasers...

[DC Tom]

 

While I cannot confirm this yet, I hear rumors that version 0.5 will include lasers...

 

Wasn't planning on it...but I can't dismiss the idea entirely.

 

I cannot express how much of a time saver the DC-Tom-bot is. I have so much more time to partake in other forms of goofing off now...

[B-Man]

LIVE BY RECONCILIATION, DIE BY RECONCILIATION:

 

Senate Republicans just introduced an Obamacare repeal plan Democrats can’t stop.

 

Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.

 

That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.

 

To

be c

lear, passing the budget resolutions does not itself repeal Obamacare. But it’s the necessary first step if Republicans are to do that this year, a

nd unless three or more Republican senators defect (or 24 House members do), it’ll be smooth sailing for the repeal effort from there on out.

 

 

First day of business, too.

 

Updated with this flashback: “Reid: Dems will use 50-vote tactic to finish healthcare in 60 days.”

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuter-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown’s ® special election victory in Massachusetts.

 

 

 

 

ADDED: For obvious (hilarious) reasons

 

CNN Politics

✔@CNNPolitics

Sen. Chuck Schumer: I wish we hadn't triggered the "nuclear option" http://cnn.it/2i6L7K1

1:03 PM - 3 Jan 2017

 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by B-Man

[Nanker]

Yes, when the shoe's on the other foot and it's your ox getting gored, it's a horse of a different color. Isn't it Chuckie?

[Doc]

Payback's a female canine, idn't it?

[/dev/null]

 

Wasn't planning on it...but I can't dismiss the idea entirely.

 

I cannot express how much of a time saver the DC-Tom-bot is. I have so much more time to partake in other forms of goofing off now...

if the laser sharks don't make into version 0.5, there's talk on github about forking off into version 0.5a

[B-Man]

The Health-Care Double Bind

by Kevin D Williamson

Republicans have begun the process of repealing the grievously misnamed and soon-to-be-unlamented Affordable Care Act through the process of budget reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver the Democrats had threatened to use to pass the ACA over minority Republican opposition. (In the end, it was not needed, though significant changes to the law were made via subsequent reconciliation bills.) As with President Barack Obama’s pen-and-phone aggrandizement of presidential power and Senate Democrats’ weakening of the filibuster, Chuck Schumer’s party is going to regret a great deal of what Harry Reid’s party did.

It is not the case, as Democrats insist, that Republicans are simply repealing Obamacare without having given sufficient thought to what ought to replace it. Congressional Republicans finally seem to have learned that their prior strategy — simply insisting that a set of incoherent policies causing a great deal of stress and uncertainty constituted “the greatest health-care system in the world” and doing nothing more — was a mistake, a critical one.

But there is a problem.

There are two big, important pieces of the Affordable Care Act that will be of concern as Republicans go about replacing it. The first is the so-called individual mandate, which actually isn’t all that much of a mandate but which theoretically requires the great majority of American adults to purchase a federally defined minimum level of health insurance. The second is the rule requiring that insurance companies cover “preexisting conditions,” which mandates that U.S. insurance companies participate in the fantasy that we can insure against events that already have happened.

{snip}

The way to cut this Gordian knot is to treat insurance like insurance.

Insurance is not a way to pre-pay for health care, though we insist on treating it as though it is.

Properly understood, insurance is not a health-care product at all: It is a financial product, the purpose of which is to mitigate the risk of incurring large and unexpected costs, whether that is damage to an automobile (your car insurance does not pay for oil changes) or health-care costs. It is necessarily prospective, which is to say, forward-looking. No one can say whether you’ll have a heart attack tomorrow or get brain cancer in 20 years, though our actuaries are really very good at determining how many people out of a million will have a problem like that in any given year, and what it will cost to treat them. But we insist on trying to bend insurance into a retrospective product, as though it were possible to play the odds on something that already has happened. So long as we try to push off the obligation for paying for preexisting conditions onto financial firms — which is what insurance companies are — we are simply using those companies to launder health-care benefits that are in reality publicly financed, in part or in total.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443502/republicans-obamacare-repeal-plan-preexisting-coverage-problem

Edited January 4, 2017 by B-Man

[Tiberius]

Yes, when the shoe's on the other foot and it's your ox getting gored, it's a horse of a different color. Isn't it Chuckie?

So true! Republicans better get ready to put on the health care shoe, because they will own it! I love hearing the Republicans say it will be better and more affordable to get health care after they kill health care for 20 million people.

[Azalin]

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

[DC Tom]

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

 

Why do they have to urge people to sign up for something that's mandated?

[Azalin]

 

Why do they have to urge people to sign up for something that's mandated?

 

Good question. I'd imagine it's probably the same reason that we still need to get people around here to actually get their mandated drivers license and mandated green cards.

[boyst]

so, whats the bet that this all comes down to still getting kicked in the nuts when it comes time for filing your taxes and paying a fine for not having insurance? cuz, ya know... taxes are too good to take away!

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

want to know what is really fun about obamacare? once you're enrolled you stay enrolled. i signed up for it during an impending layoff until the next job began, at that time it had just came out and was much cheaper using this option than just buying my own healthcare and was so basic that i only paid a small amount more for coverage for 4 months than i would have in fine.

 

either way, because of that i stay enrolled in the affordable care act disirregardless of me using insurance through the system or not. I only know this because the year after I kept getting emails and logged in and talked to a "live assistant" chat who told me I would remain enrolled. That was about 4 years ago?

 

of course, i prefer to have insurance due to having the whole farm thing. just last week i landed on barbwire and sliced my eye lid open requiring 8 or 9 stitches.

[Azalin]

so, whats the bet that this all comes down to still getting kicked in the nuts when it comes time for filing your taxes and paying a fine for not having insurance? cuz, ya know... taxes are too good to take away!

want to know what is really fun about obamacare? once you're enrolled you stay enrolled. i signed up for it during an impending layoff until the next job began, at that time it had just came out and was much cheaper using this option than just buying my own healthcare and was so basic that i only paid a small amount more for coverage for 4 months than i would have in fine.

 

either way, because of that i stay enrolled in the affordable care act disirregardless of me using insurance through the system or not. I only know this because the year after I kept getting emails and logged in and talked to a "live assistant" chat who told me I would remain enrolled. That was about 4 years ago?

 

of course, i prefer to have insurance due to having the whole farm thing. just last week i landed on barbwire and sliced my eye lid open requiring 8 or 9 stitches.

 

I had wondered about the tax implications too, but I imagine that a portion of the demographic these signs were aimed at view their tax status as being reflective of their benefit status. I think it's free for some as part of medicaid, but I don't know. If so, then there wouldn't be a tax penalty for them - unless they have to actually sign up for the free version and then they don't follow through.

 

But yeah, I know a few people in food service who were really pissed when they were penalized on their 2015 tax return for not having any health coverage. I'm just waiting for the feds to start counting my employer-provided insurance as additional taxable income before I go ballistic.