Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

heh. well, it's nothing to count on, that's for sure. but at least he'll have the opportunity.

His spine is IMMATERIAL. People surrender their spine, if any, before they raise a billion dollars to be Executive Puppet.

He may or may not veto. If both parties are intent on gutting the law, then a veto can be overridden.

and then we revolt.

Dems do best when they stop mewling and stop acting like "me too!" crypto-Republicans.

but that's what they aaaaaare, Blanche

thanks, Sofia.

tsk tsk, Baby Jane, not GG

Morbsbait, not trollbait

RIP

In a bid to quell a growing political crisis, the Obama administration announced Thursday that it will give health insurers new flexibility to renew existing individual health insurance policies that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act.

...The new guidance would allow insurance companies to "offer the option" of renewing non-Obamacare compliant plans to their existing customers, according to senior White House officials. The policies could be renewed for an additional year at any time through 2014. According to the White House, non-compliant plans could currently only be renewed before Dec. 31, 2013.

The administration will be "suspending enforcement of market provisions" for those existing plans, the officials said. Several million individual health insurance policy holders were expected to have their existing plans canceled because they didn't meet the minimum coverage requirements of Obamacare.

"The bottom line, insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014 and Americans whose plans had been canceled can choose to reenroll in the same kind of plan," Obama said in a statement announcing the change.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/here-s-how-the-white-house-wants-to-fix-obamacare

wow, so, uh, yeah

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I HATE THIS COUNTRY

oof. well, if it's any consolation, i (and others) will still be able to get an affordable plan soon. did some more research into my available plans and it's a lot better than I originally thought, with federal subsidies included. of course, this is because I'm both ineligible for medicaid and my employer offers no insurance. so, i'm still glad this law has some effect, for now

Despite the president’s reversal, Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that he intended to push ahead with a House vote Friday on a measure that would allow consumers to keep their canceled plans without penalty and allow others to sign up for them. Mr. Boehner said he was skeptical of the president’s proposal and that the new law needed to be overturned.

“The only way to fully protect the American people is to scrap this law once and for all,” Mr. Boehner told reporters.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, said her members were clamoring for a fix on top of what the president was offering. Many of them, she said, were those who fought hard for the law’s passage and want to see it saved.

“Nobody is as unhappy as I am,” she said, adding, “Maybe the president of the United States.”

“But the fact is we’re all of the same mind in our caucus,” she added. “We have to have a fix.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/us/politics/obama-to-offer-health-care-fix-to-keep-plans-democrat-says.html?hp&_r=0

spoiler alert

at the end of 2014, there will once again be millions of people - many of them young and healthy - who receive letters informing them that their terrible insurance is being canceled, and they will need to find better insurance.

I assume the insurance companies will try to find a way to lock people into these super turd policies for as long as they possibly can now that they have an opportunity.

At least it's better than the Senate bill and the way worse Upton house bill

The administration's guidance does not allow insurers to sell non-compliant plans to new customers. In addition, insurers must provide two pieces of information to their customers: what benefits these non-compliant plans do not offer and what options the health reform law, such as the insurance marketplaces and financial assistance, makes available to them.

Unlike a proposal from some Senate Democrats, the White House's plan would not require insurers to continue offering non-compliant coverage. The officials said it would be at the "discretion of insurers." As for people whose plans have already been canceled, they said insurers "would have the ability to reach back out to these individuals."

and as fucking usual you make what looks like a concession to the right and they just move the posts.

how about just enrolling people whose "insurance" has been "cancelled" straight into medicare or VA insurance, and saying "fuck you" to the republicans?

Digby ain't freakin' 'out, surprisingly:

Honestly, I understand why people are freaking out. You get one of these letters, as I have, and the numbers are scary. Unless you understand this new system you're going to be unnerved to say the least --- especially if you can't get the information you need from the web-site to see what the new plans are going to cost. But in my view, most people will eventually figure out what they need to do simply because the insurance bill is such a big one, even if you only have to use it for a short time.

I don't happen to think that the President's proposal to allow insurance companies to extend the shit plans for a year is the end of the world. They already "grandfathered" shit plans from before 2010 so it's not a huge deal to do the same thing for the bad plans the insurance companies wrote between then and now. Most people aren't going to keep paying for crappy coverage once they see they can do better. The problem now is that they have no way of seeing that and don't have a clear understanding of how the plan works. With a little time, they will be able to do that.

And keep in mind that nearly 50% of the people who are buying insurance on the private market are only doing it temporarily anyway. When new people come into the market they will simply go to the (hopefully working) exchange website and buy new policies without any of these concerns about these cancellations.

Most people aren't going to keep paying for crappy coverage once they see they can do better.

hope she's right, but i think in the real world short-term thinking is too powerful an influence. if you're young and not making money and you are lucky enough to not have to go the hospital too often, the temptation to spend less money per month on insurance is very strong, even if you know you could spend $40 more per month and get better coverage.

I'd like to show those ppl my insurance numbers, and how I've has probly over $500,000 covered since my lil surprise happened.

And we probably wouldn't be here if they hadn't fucked something this important up so severely. I think the shitty rollout of the ACA will go down as one of the biggest fuck ups in US history, though again, I think we'll end up in the right place eventually. So close yet so far. A travesty.

So with the reversal - does that negate stuff like a compulsion to cover people with pre-existing conditions and the like, kids on their parents' plan, all those changes made? And is there an expiration to this extension of old plans?

depressed about this mostly because you could just tell the GOP and Tea Partiers were just ready to pounce on any little problem that showed up when the ACA went live, and we gifted them this albatross.

undoing the law at this point would have more detriment than good, but the GOP is pretty much dedicated to acting like the Stupid Police Chief from 80's action films right now, so I won't be surprised if even after ACA gets to a workable state, we don't keep seeing symbolic "Repeal ACA" votes annually.

I wish I could turn Boehner's head into a tetherball

you know, from the point when the ACA was passed, in the back of mind I kind of imagined something like this happening, and that feeling nagged me more and more as the months then years went by and I realized that the administration was doing no better a job preparing people for the bill's implementation/getting them to understand what would be happening than it did as they were trying to pass the bill. but I always figured it couldn't really be that bad, that surely there would be a big sigh of relief once the new markets became accessible and people started signing up. turns out that little nagging thought was completely OTM. so depressing.

from the insurance industry:

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.”

and they have a point. it seems like the obama administration's political attempt to soothe the concerns of those whose shitty insurance no longer meets the bare minimum requirements for coverage under the new law could have financial ramifications for those who have already purchased insurance on the exchanges.

Anyone who's ever done a widespread implementation across multiple systems with competitive constituencies knew that this shitshow was going to happen. Nobody does this well--not Amazon, not Facebook, not Snapchat, not Obama, not anyone. Anyone remember this? And yet the planes keep flying.

The only thing that matters in the short term is that the ACA passed and is being implemented. It's not going anywhere. It's going to take years for people to fall in love with it or become consciously dependent on it. I'm trying to think of a government program with this kind of scope that's ever been scrapped.

Digby's right.

xp

and the state insurance regulators, singing the same song:

"This decision continues different rules for different policies and threatens to undermine the new market, and may lead to higher premiums and market disruptions in 2014 and beyond."

god, what an unforced fuckup.

clearly the Democrats don't have the stomach to wait it out until this thing is running smoothly, that's why I tend to think the whole thing is doomed

Tried to apply for assistance and shop for healthcare plans this week, since my open enrollment period at work ends tomorrow. Went through the whole assistance application, but apparently none of it applied to me and my family. But when I was finished with that, I was unable to shop for plans. I kept pressing all the buttons, signing out and back in again, refreshing pages. Nothing worked. It sucked. I tried. Oh well.

See? How can anyone ultimately complain about CYA compromises and retrofits when that is the reality people are dealing with? It's just a total, how you say? Cock up.

i assume the contractors will reimburse the federal government for their "work" on this (he says, laughing)

So with the reversal - does that negate stuff like a compulsion to cover people with pre-existing conditions and the like, kids on their parents' plan, all those changes made? And is there an expiration to this extension of old plans?

No. Yes, 1 year.
There's already been A LOT of migrating people to new plans from their current nonACA plans. Would've been nice if Obama didn't wait til nearly December to announce this shit, christ.

i know talking about messaging is an eyeroll inducer, but seriously, what's up with everyone being totally cool with calling this latest thing "the Obamacare FIX"? first, the thing that the "fix" is supposedly addressing - the fact that some people with shitty insurance have to change insurance plans to something that's not an insult - is not something that is broken or unanticipated. lawmakers knew this was coming, presumably, although i can see why they weren't jumping out of their boots to trumpet the fact to constituents. but calling it a "fix" implies that it was broken, and that's not the case. the aspect of obamacare that is broken, in the meantime - HealthCare.gov - isn't impacted by this "fix" at all.

I guess it sort of fixes the problem that these people who are losing their crappy plans can't start up a new plan. I don't know how well it fixes this problem and surely it will have other negative consequences as well, but presumably it will alleviate the fear that they will be left without insurance.

BOB's ACA vs. junk insurance. oh well

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/insurance-company-using-obamacare-scare-tactics-to-sell-crappy-insurance

After yesterday's fit I'm not gonna worry about it. It's possible the bungling will whittle the president's "capital" but that's not our problem, is it? Every day more people enroll. When the website is fixed, more will enroll. If ACA works I don't give a shit how low Obama sinks in polls.

plus there'll be the fun of HRC "distancing" herself from him

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/02/curtis.htm

I entered the Kahiki, said to be modeled after a New Guinea men's meetinghouse, between a pair of twenty-foot-high Easter Island idols with flames spouting from their heads. Inside, after crossing a low bridge and passing through a damp grotto, I wandered into a series of dining rooms filled with thatched "dining huts." The main room, a conical structure with a towering ceiling, was presided over by an eighty-foot-high tiki goddess with glowing red eyes and a fireplace for a mouth.

rip

haha wrong thread

i'd like to see hillary run on medicare for all, but who knows

medicare for all AND Tiki Bars for all

and electric car chargers to replace a gallonagas

and student loan debt jubilee!

whoa the website works for me now

let The Corner know!

i feel like i should ask you the sort of questions near death experience people get asked

when you got into the website, was there a warm feeling of glowing light? were all your old friends there waiting for you?

tbh it did feel kind of magical