Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

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?

latest way ACA is ruining america is by increasing americans' disposable income. socialism!

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/03/obamacare-effects-account-for-most-of-income-spending-increases/

Has anyone on this board successfully signed up? I know one person who signed up, but she signed up in December and was able to go through the whole process in one go.

*raises hand* I still have to actually go out and use it, though.

there was a glitch in my application to oregon's expanded medicaid program, so i didn't receive my introductory packet for a long time. however, whoever runs the twitter account for the oregon exchange was basically telling people "email me if you're having problems and i'll figure it out," so i did and they did! they also sent me a copy of the entire email chain generated by my request, like four different people all in communication with each other trying to pinpoint the source of the error. it was pretty cool.

Cool i hope they send me a packet i have given them my address three time now.

Apparently you can now keep your insurance for another two years if you want.

In other words, Obama is afeared that there will be blowback in the midterms.

Another proud moment in US politics.

All of the voters that were angry about Obamacare will now vote for democrats because of the extension. Brilliant political move, at least a dozen dimensions of chess right there, these guys are in charge for a good reason!

btw I haven't actually read any conformation on this so I'm trusting that dandydonweiner's account is 100% accurate

I signed up via the exchange but didn't have any kind of subsidy.

ah, here we go: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/us/politics/obama-extends-renewal-period-for-noncompliant-insurance-policies.html?hp&_r=0

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it would allow consumers to renew health insurance policies that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act for two more years.

The action helps Democrats in tight midterm election races because it avoids the cancellation of insurance policies that would otherwise have occurred at the height of the political campaign season this fall.

it's really weird that the second sentence is stated as a fact

so the masterfully executed strategy was

1. have obama repeatedly say "if you like your policy, you can keep it"
2. get absolutely destroyed in the media for many months because it turned out that in many cases, no, you couldn't keep your policy if it was non-compliant, no matter how much you liked it.
3. wait patiently until the firestorm of criticism over 1 and 2 has successfully angered every single voter who would ever hear about it and care one way or another
4. go ahead and let people keep their policy if they like it

can I start a get-rich quick scheme by making new policies that don't conform, or is it only ones that are grandfathered in?

I think a bunch of them are of the format: "send us $20 per month, and if you have a catastrophic injury, we'll pay up to $10,000 after you satisfy the $9500 deductible"

tbh I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this latest laffer

it's all over now, baby soetero

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/031214-693001-latest-obama-mandate-exemption-change-guarantees-obamacare-failure.htm

I think weakening the mandate is a bad thing, but

Another easy out: Just fail to pay a utility bill until a shut-off notice arrives. Send that in and — poof! — hardship exemption.

wtf dude

"I'll just have my power shut off! It'll be fun! Easy peasy!"

That's something you do after deciding to have more children to scam extra food stamps.

i've seen today apoplectic stories that the white-house has fatally undermined obamacare by compromising on the individual-mandate, and stories from aca-focused journalists saying it's no big deal. anyone know what's happening here, in a sentence?

i prefer to be apoplectic, honestly. c'est cathartique !

It continues to boggle my mind that people who work in and around health care blame every new change on "Obamacare." I worked with a transport person today who was convinced that the "government" is behind the (often absurd) pilot projects and studies at my place of employment. How does anyone who knows anything not realize that it's about insurance exchanges, not about doctors and administrators doing studies that (while sometimes absurd) do impact medical and nursing practices?

can I start a get-rich quick scheme by making new policies that don't conform, or is it only ones that are grandfathered in?

only grandfathered policies

;_;