Here is the worst part about Obamacare (and it has a lot of really bad parts):
Obamacare does nothing to make health care less expensive.
It doesn’t even make health care insurance more affordable. By the time the Obamacare Debacle finally ends we will have lost a decade where no health care reform took place. Maybe more.
And no, the Republicans don’t have the answer either.
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Thursday befuddlement….so all of the popular and respected polls show the majority of Americans opposed to Obamacare but now both political parties support it (more or less). So what political party actually supports the sentiment of the American people? We need leaders, not politicians to get us out of this mess!!! And to be sure, we are in a political mess.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health_care_plan-1130.html
Well being elite and all the politicians of course know whats good for us and we are just too stupid to understand. (HA!)
The entire mess is about cronyism. Who benefits? Not the public, not the taxpayers, not the uninsured who thought they were going to be insured for an affordable sum. Insurers, drug companies, hospitals THOUGHT they were going to benefit but they are going to get screwed. Who benefits? Pols in states with expanded Medicaid but the taxpayers will get hosed. Companies that set up the exchanges will reap enormous fees. The few insurers who are venturing into exchanges are going to have their reputations ruined for offering shit insurance at high prices although they may make a few bucks. Bureaucracy with more and higher paid employees to run the clown circus and their unions benefit.
This has been in the works since the abomination was passed. It has been hidden from the public with the collusion of the media who kept a lid on the horror stories. Anyone who came out (businesses, economists, etc) and said this is a nightmare was shut down with name calling. Now at the 11th hour and 59th minute they cannot withhold the bizarre awfulness any longer and the public is in shock.
Isn’t that the point. Shock Doctrine. Shock (crony) capitalism. The argument that we have gone too far to turn back so we have to jump and hope we land all right. Throw more money, sweat, and blood into the pit. It ruins out economy but more people have Medicaid that doctors won’t accept. Anyone who can scrap several hundred dollars a month together can get insurance that pays half of the hospital bill. And those who get subsidies will still go bankrupt with half of the bill unpaid. Every bit of it was a lie. They are shocked that Cruz fought back and hung this dead chicken around the Dems neck.
Don’t forget the ever increasing fees per visit. I used to pay a $5 co-pay a few years ago, now my co-pay is $25 and old cheap drugs cost me only what they cost now ONLY the cheap drugs are still in their formulary and they still charge $25 per 30 day perscription . When I took my kid in to urgent care after a horrible night 2 weeks into mono (after 2 weeks of 102 fever) I had a $25 copay for urgent care, a $25 copay for Dr who was called to consult regarding extremely high white blood cell count and alarming appearance (like an ER Dr couldn’t deal with that?). $25 copay for chest xray, $25 co pay for steroids, $25 copay for hardcore pain med. and I was expected to pay that RIGHT NOW. Fortunately I could but after paying hundreds of dollars a month for 22 years with nothing more than one bout of head lice and a yearly sports check up and a few vaccinations I don’t expect a shake down when I finally need to use my insurance. I feel I am at the point where I would be better off to just have a health savings account and so would most people.
Ah, but they messed with the health FSAs too. Before Obamacare, my husband could put up to $5,000 into his FSA. After Obamacare, it was cut in half. Well, last year he needed over $4,000 in surgeries (that’s our cost, the cost before insurance was outrageous)… But we could only take out $2,500 to cover his expenses! It’s crazy. It’s an FSA, it’s our own money. It’s almost as if the goal of Obamacare is to reduce healthcare access. Apparently, they just want to kill us all off.
Well, there is a labor surplus after all. We’ve got to get rid of the extra serfs somehow.
We need to import less uppity, less powerful serfs. The ones we have are getting ornery.
When My Darling Daughter was born she was a little bit preemie and her lungs weren’t fully developed so she spent her first three weeks in the Neonatal intensive Care Unit. Her mom was in the hospital for part of three days – less than 48 hours total. My out-of-pocket cost for both of them to stay in the hospital was $15 (3 days co-pay for mom, none for MDD)
My premiums weren’t very high either – IIRC they were about $100 month for me and 3-4 dependents.
This was 1986.
We have had the same policy since 1986. It was not cheap and it was necessary because my husband works around heavy equipment at least three months out of the year. Then the rest of the time he was in labs with stuff that could blow up. We thought we were being responsible and not trying to pass off any future misfortune on others. It is a large group insurance and the costs have gone way up. Who would have guessed in 1986 we would be viewed as elitist shitbags for buying decent health insurance in 2009. The problem is that so many people do not understand the principal of risk, loss, actuaries, or much of anything else. By forcing people to buy a certain amount of risk (high deductables vs low deductibles or co-pays as they like to call them) they are making people very, very uncomfortable. Some people can take the risk of high co-pays, others cannot and prefer higher premiums which is also reflected in every insurance market in the world. It is a very individual and personal decision that is based upon an infinite number of factors specific to that person or family. At the very moment that high medical costs kick in, almost always you have a correlating drop in income which makes the high co-pays that much more onerous. It is horrible to do this to people. Only rich or elitist government jerks with cushy sick leave plans don’t know this.
Same policy for 20 years, but new changes have us paying not a flat co-pay but a co-insurance payment which is 25% of every procedure and visit. So you can’t even bank on a flat amount to pay for budgeting purposes. My annual checkup last month gave me a taste of what health services will be under Obamacare, instead of a nurse checking me out/going over prescriptions, physical therapy etc., an administrative official did. So now the administrative official knows all my health complaints but could not answer basic questions to clarify dosages plus concerns over conflicting medications and a blood work order that I already had with another doctor. As the administrative expert was herding me out of the office, refused to let me wait until the doc could answer my questions and sort out the problems, I was told to call back. I did and have been still waiting for a call back from the nurse for over a month. Its the same doc I”ve had for 20 years and so knows me real well. This never happened to me before. Plus now, every time you go in for a service they ask you the same questions about having a gun in the house or whether you have suicidal thoughts, or are suffering abuse at home and they have to enter it into their computer system. Also they will not dispense pain meds unless you get your original md to authorize it.
Obamacare is going to be a nightmare.
I have a caulking gun, self-destructive tendencies and I live with an emotionally abusive cat.
And don’t forget that the annual deductible totals have risen to $5,000 for most of these Ocare policies.
Meaning, of course, that most of the regular expenses will be out of pocket anyway.
Not quite true. Just for the affordable bronze plans.
As someone said in an earlier thread, there’s a Party Unity My Ass movement rising that crosses all party lines. The Dem party is hopeless at this point. People are glomming onto the R party not because they are traditional Republicans, but because they still have a shot at using that one as a vehicle for actual change. If it doesn’t work, third party is the only alternative, which is going to be a long hard messy slog with marginal chance of success.
Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, etc GET that the Zeitgeist in this country is utterly different than in decades past, and is at a tipping point. The old R guard is blind to it. The D guard sees it, and is terrified of it, wants to kill it in the cradle.
The People want the Power returned to their hands. Not the nanny govt, not the well-connected corporations, not the unions and the consultants and the think tanks, US. We want all those not-enumerated powers BACK.
It’s entirely possible that Ted Cruz and others are partly or even mostly self-interested here. So? I truly don’t care why pols get on board and listen to the people and stand on our side – only that they do.
Oooo, tipping applecarts! Isn’t that the very “tantrum” we are accused of? Well, it’s a tantrum kinda like Christ tossing around those moneychangers tables was a tantrum. “You have forgotten and sullied the whole point of this process and this buliding. You’ve made it a nest of vipers, a corrupt racket far far removed from its original purpose. . STOP IT. Or get the fuck out.”
http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/092613-672565-obamacare-ted-cruz-investors-business-daily-job-losses.htm
Biblical trainwreck coming head on.
Obamacare does nothing to make health care less expensive.
Hardly surprising, since the bill was written by a health insurance company lobbyist (Liz Fowler of Wellpoint).
During the 2008 campaign, Krugman pointed out that Obama was the only Democratic candidate who didn’t have a health care plan.
That’s still true in 2013.
Here’s a very nice Bill Moyers video on the subject. I only rolled my eyes a couple of times. But the talk about the revolving door of the health insurance lobby is all correct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsIcS7egnyw#t=127
Those were the good ole days when Krugman was not an Obot and before he was taken up in Airforce 1 for reprogramming.
Puppets don’t have plans. They only have strings. 🙂
BB is having a Marathon. 🙂