Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

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.

obamacare horror stories: "at some point it’s worth asking whether the apparent difficulty conservatives have finding them suggests that maybe the law isn’t wreaking all the devastation they want you to believe it is"

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/21/are_republicans_even_trying_another_obamacare_horror_story_bites_the_dust/

my job-tied health insurer has turned down my one-year-cancer-anniversary PET scan TWICE now; ACA not really relevant to me w/ this shit.

The letter i got says "you have not been undergoing treatment" (balls).

Do you have a friend or family member who can help fight for you on that stuff? When my mom was being treated for leukemia, her insurance tried to deny her coverage for a CAT scan during treatment by claiming for some crazy reason that it was nondiagnostic in nature. Luckily my sister worked at the time in a doctor's office and was able to harangue the insurer over the coding on the bill.

ACOOOOOOOOOORN!!!!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/obamacare-enrollment-hits-4-million

Shit so I am trying to finish enrollment but I forgot my password and every time I try to login and change it, it fails and says I either got the security questions wrong (which I didn't) or that I was unable to come up with a new password. Does anyone have advice?

it's OK, the insurer OK'd my scan on the THIRD try

Ok so i called the number and talked w a very helpful person over the phone pretty much instantly. I have to start a new account w a new email address.

Thank god they added IT hassles to our fucked up health care system eh

Apparently my credit history is too light to do the normal verification, so I have to go through some extra hoops and call an extra number. If I was a good American, I would have credit cards and car loans.

"The only good American is an indebted American."

-- Bob Marley --

Ended up just having a nice helper fill in my form for me over the phone, and yay I'm eligible for stuff! Time to do research!

happy to hear it dr. m

very glad to hear that, dr. m.

this is my shocked face -- florida "restaurant" chain charging "obamacare" fee isn't paying for "obamacare"

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/blogs/gone-viral/os-gators-dockside-obamacare-fee,0,7464589.post

I was on the phone the other day w two more people, the first was the official service that verifies your identity before you can sign up. They were unable to do so and asked me if I had a car loan or a house loan or a credit card or SOMETHING because they were looking at my credit history and there was nothing there. I guess years of paying utility bills means nada because I'm not actively incurring debt.

So they told me to call _this_ number, which turned out to be the regular Healthcare.gov help number. I talked to a helpful lady, probably a volunteer, who was really nice but had no idea why the verification company sent me back to her. So she filled out my form over the phone and it went really well and eventually she got to where my options for the different plans were, etc. so I asked her if I could now login and check these out for myself, and she said yes. She was really nice.

Of course, later, I login, and get the same "You must verify your identity" crap. WTF? If I can call this third person up over the phone, and they can just enter the info in themselves, why can't I just do it myself? Again, WTF?