Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

I'm a pretty healthy dude in my early 30s, and among my friends who I consider healthier than myself, one had to have his gall bladder removed and another was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the last couple years. Shit's random.

Health care is expensive, there's no way around it. 10% of my income towards it seems totally reasonable to me. The "I don't use health care regularly" argument...one day you're one of those people, the next you're in urgent need of really expensive health care services (I've been there myself, tho thank god it didn't arise during those years when I was uninsured). Rolling the dice when it comes to my health is something I'm no longer willing to do (having a health scare def changed my outlook on that).

xp yup. nearly everyone has something go wrong with their health at some point.

come the fuck on with that libertarian think tank piece attacking socialized healthcare - I'm comfortable assuming that a Canadian at my income level doesn't pay $3500 more in federal tax just to fund healthcare.

xp - right, but if I get diagnosed with MS I'm fucked regardless. Neither of my jobs can be performed with advancing MS, so eventually I'm turning to Medicaid anyway. If I have to get gall bladder surgery for $12k and I'm stuck with the $6500 out of pocket cap, there's really not that much difference to me. In either case I'm setting up a payment plan that won't be paid off for a very, very long time.

As discussed above, I think that people who tout catastrophic plans and the like don't take into account that many people who buy the cheapest plan can't afford the portion assigned to them under a catastrophic plan in the first place.

Y'all don't need to pretend that I'm opposed to ACA - it's shitty policy but less shitty than what came before. That doesn't mean that as a lower-middle class person I don't feel the pinch, and from a political perspective it's pretty stupid to run with "suck it up."

xpost

here's another take on it from the Canadian Institute for Health Information: https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/Lifetime_distEffects_overview_EN.pdf

they put the average costs at 6% (for lowest earning people) to 8% (for highest earners) of total income.

idk, if I had a disease that'd be exacerbated by my job I might consider a new trade

if the cheapest bronze plan is more than 8% of your income (actually modified AGI), then you are exempt from the penalty

<q>they put the average costs at 6% (for lowest earning people) to 8% (for highest earners) of total income.

― Karl Malone, Friday, 27 December 2013 21:44 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</q>

Interestingly most developed economies spend about 8% of GDP on healthcare (US runs at about 16%)

apparently that "prayer as preventative care if you're poor" thing isn't working so well

if you don't raise the price of health care, you kenyan you, we're going to force the country to default!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/paul-ryan-debt-limit-obamacare-insurer-bailout

i get that the gop wants to create conditions that will cause obamacare to fail or justify a repeal (and that's the intent behind eliminating the risk-corridor). but what's the gop's articulated policy rationale for proposing the elimination of the risk-corridor, e.g., that it's a tax on insurance companies or that it's an encroachment into business freedom?

socialism!

benghazi?

rationale?

It's not a wholesale conversion. But it's major movement given conservatives' unyielding anti-Obamacare doctrine of the last few years.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/2014-gop-candidates-medicaid-expansion

over/under on when the GOP starts going "we thought of it first, in 1994!"?

APPLICANT STATES USES ZUMBA EVERY WEEK AND WANTS
TO KNOW IF INSURANCE WILL COVER THAT.

HHS Reports $380M in Obamacare Savings

http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/hhs-reports-380m-in-obamacare-savings-20140130

not good enough! tax cuts!

Obamacare enrollees hit snags at doctor's offices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/business/cvs-plans-to-end-sales-of-tobacco-products-by-october.html?hp&_r=0

A shortage of primary care doctors and expanding access to health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act is turning drugstore chains into big players in the nation’s health care system. Consumers routinely get flu shots in drugstores, for instance, and clinics staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and offering basic care for common ailments like strep throat or pink eye are popping up everywhere from Walgreens to Walmart.

A report last year by Accenture predicted such so-called retail clinics were poised to grow at a rate of 25 to 30 percent over the next few years, which would swell the number to 2,800 in 2015, from 1,400 in 2012.

CVS’s 800 MinuteClinics already account for most of such outlets, and Mr. Merlo said the company hoped to add another 700 for a total of 1,500 by 2017. For that reason, he said, the decision to stop selling tobacco products “was really more of a discussion about how to position the company for future growth.”

Heard it on the teevee this morning. Bummer - CVS and Walgreens sold the cheapest packs.

Good. Fuck smokers.

I do.

Yeah, CVS sells cartons for $10-$12 less than gas stations or specialty shops. I keep saying I'm going to move to e-cigs, and now I guess it will be sooner rather than later.

CVS didn't carry American Spirits anyway, fuck 'em.

lol

friends of mine who didn't grow up in the u.s. would always marvel at the fact that drugstores sold cigarettes

when you think about it, it's... JUUUUUST A LITTLE BIT STRANGE

it's cool, we have hard liquor at gas stations/convenience stores now B)

they should sell cigs everywhere: big-box convenience stores, gas stations, churches, children's daycare centers.

this is america. we do what we want.

NYT editorial.

this is ridiculous. the report says there will be 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024, right? so obamacare is a job-killer. period.

as usual, everyone's assumption is that in the future the # of jobs in the U.S. will just happen to exactly equal the number of adults in the U.S. in reality machines are going to do more and more of the work, the number of full-time jobs will continue to decrease as a % of the population, and we better figure out how to provide a decent safety net for people that used to work in Amazon warehouses moving boxes around but were replaced by Move-a-Tron 4000s

I'm thinking while it was off on the population density, Soylent Green was only a decade or two off in other respects.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1828530&utm_source=Silverchair%20Information%20Systems&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JAMA%3AOnlineFirst02%2F05%2F2014

this was just e-published today, and i think it's free. i think there are some ethical problems with companies refusing to hire smokers -- about which rahm emanuel's brother, ezekiel, has written well iirc -- but i am generally strongly in favor of the rest of the antismoking public health measures. as a pharmacist (though i don't work at a CVS) i have always been strongly opposed to selling tobacco products in pharmacies (actually they're sold up in the front of the store, imo invalidating the least-unconcinving claim by advocates who say that selling them in pharmacies offers them a chance to discuss the issue with a health professional) and i think what CVS is doing is necessary and has been a long time coming

and we better figure out how to provide a decent safety net for people that used to work in Amazon warehouses moving boxes around but were replaced

lol that sure seems like an issue that's keeping your legislators and mine up all night

k3vin, is it true they're looking at getting rid of smoking cessation products, too? not that I have any idea how effective nicotine gum and patches are....

i haven't heard that, and like i said i don't work for CVS, but that wouldn't make any sense

in south florida, "vapor" cigarettes (or "e-cigarettes," or whatever they call them) are a huge thing now. they're everywhere.

are you all futuristic bounty hunters?

yes. wait, no.

i saw a commercial last night for e-cigs and the general message was 'friends don't let friends smoke cigarettes'
that seemed like a very different message than steven dorff on the beach being like "basically i just love to smoke and now i smoke this weird little blue thing"

oh god, I listened to a pop radio station last week and they kept having commercials that sounded like they were about the dangers of smoking and, yup, e-cig advertisement

f u e-cig companies

I mean, e-cigs seem like a safer option health-wise than cigarettes, but there's really been no research to tell how much safer or to confirm that fact

Opens up new marketing ideas, though:
"Eww, beer makes you all fat. Even that so-called light beer!"
"Here, try this. It doesn't have all the empty calories that beer has. It's called.... vodka"

When filtered cigs came out they were heavily marketed as a 'safer' alternative, which we now know was bollocks, but it made a lot of nervous smokers less anxious about the risk of cancer.

not much is known about their long-term health risks, and their rise (and the embrace of them by some clinicians) has provoked fierce controversy in public health circles

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1313940

CVS didn't carry American Spirits anyway, fuck 'em.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, February 5, 2014 6:56 AM (Yesterday)

Walgreen's does. It's hilarious because the auto-generated "spending statement" my bank provides categorizes all Walgreens purchases as "health" -- I love America.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-delays-health-insurance-mandate-for-medium-sized-employers-until-2016/2014/02/10/ade6b344-9279-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html?hpid=z1

As word of the delays spread Monday, many across the ideological spectrum viewed them as an effort by the White House to defuse another health-care controversy before the fall midterm elections. The new postponements won over part, but not all, of the business community. And they caught consumer advocates, usually reliable White House allies, by surprise, particularly because administration officials had already announced in July that the employer requirements would be postponed from this year until 2015.

Congressional Republicans seized on the announcement as the latest justification for scrapping the health-care law. In particular, they renewed their opposition to the law’s requirement that most Americans have insurance, saying it is unfair to delay rules for businesses and not for individuals.

not an onion headline

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-illinois-onion-obamacare-partnership-20140210,0,4949538.story

unexpected demand causes another Florida Health Choices delay. aca at work, and working.