Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

where's Al Qaeda when ya need em

From a piece on a "conservative Georgia district" encouraging their reps to dig in against O-care... Single-payer is a nonstarter? People understand shit-all about it and don't know what they want.

Mr. Tripcony, the surveyor, said he underwent heart surgery not long ago without health insurance, “a bad blow.” He has been making payments against the cost. He had heard of the online marketplace for insurance that opened on Oct. 1 under the Affordable Care Act.

“I just don’t trust it,” said Mr. Tripcony, who has an equal distrust of President Obama. “I don’t like him, and I don’t feel comfortable with anything he’s got to do with.”

Mr. Tripcony said he had a better idea for a system to provide health care at a fair price. “I think it should be the same for everybody,” he said. “One big company, whether owned by the government or private.”

Informed that he had described the single-payer system that Mr. Obama abandoned when Republican critics called it socialized medicine, he said, “Yeah, I know, it’s crazy.”

He said he might eventually seek health insurance under the new system. “In a couple of months, when they get the Web sites working, I may do it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/conservative-georgia-district-urges-gop-to-keep-up-the-fight.html

this is what i wanted to know:

To determine eligibility for a subsidy, the government uses modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI. To get this figure, start with the line labeled adjusted gross income on your tax return (it's the last line on the first page of Form 1040). Then add in non-taxable Social Security benefits, tax-exempt interest and foreign earned income, and housing expenses for Americans living abroad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/politics/from-the-start-signs-of-trouble-at-health-portal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

so basically you can subtract student loan interest, IRA contributions and other deductions, and it isn't just your total income.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/politics/from-the-start-signs-of-trouble-at-health-portal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

― balls, Sunday, October 13, 2013 8:43 PM (1 hour ago

yeah it's a disaster on so many levels

the coincidence of the government shutdown and the disastrous obamacare rollout is just that?

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what is using the marketplace phone number like? can they sign you up entirely over the phone?

i'd love to know. leery of calling. i tried again through the website and got all the way through creating an account, password, security questions, and preliminary address info . . . but then stalled at "Who are you applying for health coverage for?"

apparently you can apply by mail

"Unable to advance the customers’ applications by phone, navigators handed them paper applications. According to Lucchesi and Sands, navigators urged: Go home, fill them out and then in a few days, set up a meeting with one of us. We’ll input your information because online sign-up still will be faster than mailing it in."

wonder how much the glitchy ramp up is due to sabotage patrol on the norquists, kochs, and o'keefes of the world

"The number of visitors to the federal government's HealthCare.gov website plummeted 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/10/15/analysis-obamacare-glitches-scare-off-many-web-site-users/

That's accounted for by 100s of unpaid cable news interns moving on to the next time kill boondoggle.

the heritage foundation doesn't like the national implementation of its early '90s health care plan

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/10/enrollment-in-obamacare-exchanges-how-will-your-health-insurance-fare

it seems to be working in NYS now

Well that's good. Though, I mean, nobody is defending the shitty rollout really. It's clear that volume came in well above projection (they estimated that traffic was about 50x larger than it was when Medicare D rolled out), but it's still fairly pathetic that they still don't have all of the kinks worked out. Liberal friends of mine that want insurance are pissed.

But it's humorous watching conservatives get overexcited that this is proof that the act is a failure. As Alfred posted upthread, Medicare D was actually worse in some ways because it didn't even go live the day that was promised, and it had a much smaller volume of folks in the first week attempting to access the site. And now, Med D is an afterthought.

Some asshole I was arguing with the other day went as far as to say there are few signs that this will be improved and suggested this could be Obama's "Iraq". gtfo.

i thought that ACA insurance policies don't go into effect until January, or am I getting confused with just the tax issues part

http://acasuccessstories.tumblr.com/

As the start date for the new regulations looms at January 1, most of [the 14 million people in the individual-insurance market] are receiving cancellation notices. That is a terrifying experience in a country where the cancellation of health insurance has been a disastrous life event roughly on par with losing a job. They are receiving those notices because the regulations Obama promised, and which were the most popular parts of his plan — ending the lifetime caps, the preexisting condition discriminations, and other risk winnowing — ended the individual-insurance market as we know it.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/you-like-your-plan-you-can-keep-it-sort-of.html

Are you serious, what you just said!? Are you really serious!? After what we’ve gone through and what we’ve gone through in the last three and a half years? Have you — you can sit there and say, that you had a legitimate alternative after these years? We’ve gone through 44 votes, 48 votes now, of you trying to dismantle the legislation. You call that cooperation? I don’t!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9owwg1LALxk

i thought that ACA insurance policies don't go into effect until January, or am I getting confused with just the tax issues part

earliest effective date is Jan 1, but you can enroll now

I answer questions from insurance agents as part of work, and my god it's scary how little they even know about ACA. I'm still getting questions about what xtra charge someone with such and such condition should expect...

Yeah. The Corner is ablaze with protestations of doom.

So is The Blaze for that matter

I answer questions from insurance agents as part of work, and my god it's scary how little they even know about ACA. I'm still getting questions about what xtra charge someone with such and such condition should expect...

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my girlfriend got a letter from her new employer insurance company that literally was written as if the ACA didn't exist. She had to call them and remind them that things are changing on January 1st.

I have a question -- I have an individual plan that if I do nothing will just renew into a different plan where I'll be paying a lower premium but have slightly higher costs for co-pays, prescriptions, deductibles, etc. But, I am eligible for financial assistance if I go through the marketplace. Can I just go to the marketplace and sign up for the same plan that way?

HealthCare.gov: How political fear was pitted against technical needs

“They were running the biggest start-up in the world, and they didn’t have anyone who had run a start-up, or even run a business,” said David Cutler, a Harvard professor and health adviser to Obama’s 2008 campaign, who was not the individual who provided the memo to The Washington Post but confirmed he was the author. “It’s very hard to think of a situation where the people best at getting legislation passed are best at implementing it. They are a different set of skills.”

Every project ever.

good luck, lolmerica

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/BYA1XZfCEAAZdEi.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBlEurEYHTM#t=15

i guess people like their catastrophic only, high deductible, limited doctor visit, no copay plans more than the president bargained for?

it never fails to blow my mind how much people WHO HAVE insurance have to pay

like, ON TOP OF the premium

i thought the point of insurance was that you pay the premium and then if the thing you're insured for happens, you don't have to pay. does any other kind of insurance work like this? like yeah, i've got car insurance except that i have to pay the first $5000 of repairs. how is that insurance???

like yeah, i've got theft and damage insurance for my phone except i have to pay the first $200 of the replacement cost. THAT'S NOT INSURANCE.

Car insurance only covers accident repairs. You still have to pay for everything.

Insurance is like getting a phone with subsidized cost with a mobile plan. Or not. You can't get fun games with insurance.

lol is iphone insurance the only kind of insurance you've had tracer?

also you might want to examine yr phone insurance, it probably doesn't cover what you think it covers.

so did anyone read this? The "you" in the headline seems to openly address the quiddities stockbroker readership.

Tom Scully, 56, is slightly taller than average and has tousled graying hair, an athletic build and a lopsided smile. He typically projects a combination of confidence and bemusement, but on this rainy September afternoon, he was frenzied. Scully was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at an event hosted by the Potomac Research Group, a Beltway firm that advises large investors on government policy (tag line: “Washington to Wall Street”)....

Before he even began his speech, one attendee said he feared that only three million new patients, far fewer than estimated, would be signing up for insurance. “No way,” Scully said. “Way more — way more. At least 15 million, maybe 20 million. The Democrats have a huge incentive to make this work.” Another asked if Scully was worried about Congressional repeal. “It’s just not going to happen,” he said. “Don’t pay attention to Rush Limbaugh.” When Scully finally began his speech, he noted that the prevailing narrative among Republicans — assuming that many in the room were, like him, Republican — was incorrect. “It’s not a government takeover of medicine,” he told the crowd. “It’s the privatization of health care.” In fact, Obamacare, he said, was largely based on past Republican initiatives. “If you took George H. W. Bush’s health plan and removed the label, you’d think it was Obamacare.”

Scully then segued to his main point, one he has been making in similarly handsome dining rooms across the country: No matter what investors thought about Obamacare politically — and surely many there did not think much of it — the law was going to make some people very rich. The Affordable Care Act, he said, wasn’t simply a law that mandated insurance for the uninsured. Instead, it would fundamentally transform the basic business model of medicine. With the right understanding of the industry, private-sector markets and bureaucratic rules, savvy investors could help underwrite innovative companies specifically designed to profit from the law. Billions could flow from Washington to Wall Street, indeed.

Scully, who has spent the last 30-some years oscillating between government and the private sector, is hoping to be his own best proof of the Obamacare gold mine. As a principal health policy adviser under President George H. W. Bush, he helped formulate many of those past Republican initiatives... During the past three years, as other Republicans have tried to overturn Obamacare, Scully searched for a way to make a killing from it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/the-president-wants-you-to-get-rich-on-obamacare.html

lol is iphone insurance the only kind of insurance you've had tracer?

rumbled

actually i have renter's insurance too but that's it

did read it but if the point is that obamacare created a new generally for profit utility then yes, i was awake in 2009 also

didn't rather

i guess people like their catastrophic only, high deductible, limited doctor visit, no copay plans more than the president bargained for?

Stepping up to a plan that wasn't absolutely terrible, even w/ tax credit subsidy, would have cost me about 40% of what I spend on rent per month.

I'll pay the fine, fuck it. The plans I could afford would have done almost nothing for me in the event of an emergency - I can't pay $5k any more than I can pay $15k.

:-/

no offense but that sounds kind of short sighted

does any other kind of insurance work like this? like yeah, i've got car insurance except that i have to pay the first $5000 of repairs. how is that insurance???

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, November 6, 2013 4:31 AM (7 hours ago)

actually yes! And it depends on what kind of car you have and how old it is. Unless I get hit by someone with insurance and their insurance company agrees they are at fault, all repairs to my car are out of pocket for me because my car is almost 25 years old. However, applying the concept of "salvage value" and "totalling" to a human life would be pretty "small o underscore capital o"

Possibly, but I see no upside to paying $125/month (I think) for a high deductible, shit co-pay plan for my two doctor visits/year that I average.

Going to $250-260/month got co-pays in the realm of $30 and deductibles down to $2500-3000 - but, again, I go to a doc in a box twice a year at the most.

It just doesn't make financial sense for me. If I needed a long hospital stay or a major surgery I'd be fucked in any case, so I'll just go to the county hospital and they can try to squeeze the money out of me.