7.1 million

[Denny Crane]

Sick people are ruining our healthcare system. If we could eliminate that problem we wouldn't need something like Obamacare.

Death Squads. ObamaCare has it covered.

 

[Denny Crane]

By the way, if folks really want to complain about insurance, it's the insurance companies that are screwing folks, not the government.

Not only that, they had the ability to "persuade" Obama and Democrats in Congress (no republican votes) to enact a law requiring people to buy insurance. Who benefits?

 

[PapaG]

By the way, if folks really want to complain about insurance, it's the insurance companies that are screwing folks, not the government.

Bull fucking shit.

 

[riverman]

Bull fucking shit.

spoken like a true insurance agent or GOP hardliner. Don't like Obama care, I get it. Don't like the current administration, I get it. Way to discuss a topic with civility

 

[MarAzul]

spoken like a true insurance agent or GOP hardliner. Don't like Obama care, I get it. Don't like the current administration, I get it. Way to discuss a topic with civility

Think about it. I think somewhere around 60 percent of the population that had health insurance
coverage recieve their coverage from Self Insured employers. That means the Insurance Companies where not selling those plans, where not making a profit on those plans.
Now some of those self insured employers hire an insurance company to administer their plan for a fee but that is the extent of insurance companies involvement.

This ACR is much about eliminating that system to force all those people to BUY insurance on the
Insurance Company market. To buy the plans that OBama an the Democrats want people to buy.

One hell of a boon to the Insurance companies, they will have the entire population under the government stick that you must BUY this insurance now sold only buy Insurance Companies.

The tax on Self Insured Employers will continue except for Labor Unions which Obama under his personal steam ruled they were to be excepted this Tax. But Corporations will continue to be forced to pay the tax, or drop the insurance coverage. The can do this without pain for retirees and dependents and many have done so. They will have to pay a fine if they do not cover active employees, but that is much less than cost than providing the health care coverage.

It appears to me that 60% of the population is being misused and abused for the benefit of the insurance companies and Democrat control of their lives, making them beholding to Democrat Representatives that will give them Better Health Care. Shit! Wait until you see the cost cutting begin on the medical care that you receive!! If the insurance companies don't make money in this system, the US government is obligated to reimburse the Insurance company!
See the Oregon Plan on how to save costs on healthcare. They have discovered that it is much cheaper to let a Cancer patient die than to extend the persons life with treatment. Wonderful hey!! You have heard of the death panel, and it has been poo poohed big time. Well Oregon has that panel and so does the ACR legislation and that panel is to be unencumbered by oversight of Congress.

I fail to see how a sane person could ever vote for a Democrat again, remember Not One Republican voted for this atrocity.

 

[riverman]

man...of the 7.1 million only 800k are new to being insured. Of those, the majority are being merged into the state medicare ranks while a large portion on the remainder are subsidized by tax payers.

the only winners will be the hospitals and the insurance companies.

more often than not, poor folks don't answer the door when pollsters compile these stats. Some don't have doors or telephones or computers.

 

[riverman]

My last gasp on this topic. One thing I've encountered or rather my wife and son have encountered in Oregon are doctors or clinics not accepting the insurance they now have and the docs who do are booked up. This needs to be addressed, doctors should not be allowed to refuse care because of the company providing it. I've never been a partisan member of any political party, for most of my adult life there haven't been candidates I wanted in office so I'd vote against a candidate instead of for one. That's sad. I'm pissed at Congress more than any govt branch. There's a lot of spin in the debate that is not founded in humanitarian need, but in making the other guys look bad. I've had enough, I vote and voice my opinion but have no real faith in politicians to work for the people. Fact is we don't personally know these guys, we just have the news articles and media spin to make our cases. We make choices but as Americans need to stop talking at each other and start talking with each other. If you really feel strongly about something, go out and do something about it. Write your representatives, get an orange crate, express your own truth and more power to you. Just please don't assume everyone is bipartisan or even politically affiliated. Many democracies in the world have socialized medicine and public services yet are still capatilistic cultures. These things can and do coexist.

 

[Mediocre Man]

It's amazing how many people you can get to sign up when you force them to

 

[Denny Crane]

It's amazing how many people you can get to sign up when you force them to

Gee, why was there that last second rush to sign up?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...s_wise_to_flee_the_coming_tsunami_122190.html

It’s clear, now, that every promise Democrats made about Obamacare was false. You can’t always keep your doctor if you want to. Health insurance premiums for many people have gone way up, not down. So has government spending on health care. Many of the uninsured don’t like Obamacare and don’t plan to buy it.

And it’s clear, too, that this administration couldn’t organize a two-car funeral.

The assumption Democrats made that, once implemented, Obamacare would be popular ranks up there with Custer’s assumption there were only a few Indians at the Little Big Horn. In an AP/​GFK poll March 28 in which 30 percent of respondents were Democrats, Obamacare drew support from just 26 percent.

Soon, Democrats may look back wistfully on that poll as a high water mark. When they wrote the Obamacare law, they front-loaded what they thought were the goodies and postponed the pain. So they should know better than anyone what’s coming down the pike.

 

[blazerboy30]

Not a lot of sympathy on this board. Obviously some people don't like Obamacare and it has impacted some/many negatively, and I feel bad for those people. But at the same time we have heard some heart warming stories from posters we associate with on a daily basis. To say Obamacare doesn't help anyone just isn't true. I understand there needs to be a balance and the jury is still out (at least for me) if this is good legislation for the country overall.

But good god people, to just ignore the good it does (people with pre-existing conditions having no coverage before is one of them) seems so callous. if anyone thinks they have it bad having to pay more money, how would someone feel if they had a serious illness or condition living in US and unable to get treated because they don't have health care.

The state of healthcare is not a win/win situation right now. Many people who need medical care can't afford it. Regardless of whose fault it is, in a super nation like ours, you got take your the sick.

And you're ignoring all of the "heart warming" stories that took place before obamacare existed. People have been helping others who are sick for ages. It doesn't take a terrible Federal government mandate to get people to help others.

The mandate is a terrible attempt to fix a problem and the people pushing it through aren't doing it for the reasons you would like to believe.

 

[blazerboy30]

My last gasp on this topic. One thing I've encountered or rather my wife and son have encountered in Oregon are doctors or clinics not accepting the insurance they now have and the docs who do are booked up. This needs to be addressed, doctors should not be allowed to refuse care because of the company providing it.

This is such a ridiculous point of view I stopped reading here. You want to have great medical doctors, who put 12 years of their life into schooling and rack up huge amounts of debt... and then be able to tell them who / where and when they can work? That they HAVE to have certain clients? Good luck with that.

This is why intelligent discussions can't be had on this topic.

 

[Cryptkeeper]

This is such a ridiculous point of view I stopped reading here. You want to have great medical doctors, who put 12 years of their life into schooling and rack up huge amounts of debt... and then be able to tell them who / where and when they can work? That they HAVE to have certain clients? Good luck with that.

This is why intelligent discussions can't be had on this topic.

Riverman said that doctors shouldn't deny someone based on who that person receives insurance from. (As long as the doctors office receives the money that they were due, why should they care who the insurance is?)

He didn't say anything as drastic as you suggested.

You are correct about this being the reason we can't hold a discussion on this topic; people keep over-dramatizing what others say.

 

[BlazerWookee]

By the way, if folks really want to complain about insurance, it's the insurance companies that are screwing folks, not the government.

The government isn't doing the screwing, but it's holding people down so the insurance companies can screw much harder with far less effort...

 

[The_Lillard_King]

And you're ignoring all of the "heart warming" stories that took place before obamacare existed. People have been helping others who are sick for ages. It doesn't take a terrible Federal government mandate to get people to help others.

The mandate is a terrible attempt to fix a problem and the people pushing it through aren't doing it for the reasons you would like to believe.

I don't claim to know what all of this is about, but I'm convinced you don't know much better.

I've seen your predictions right after Obama was elected and nothing has panned out the way you said it would. And you think you know what Obamacare is all about and what's behind it all and are going to let me know it's not for the reasons I would like to believe . . . okey dokey

 

[PapaG]

And you're ignoring all of the "heart warming" stories that took place before obamacare existed. People have been helping others who are sick for ages. It doesn't take a terrible Federal government mandate to get people to help others.

The mandate is a terrible attempt to fix a problem and the people pushing it through aren't doing it for the reasons you would like to believe.

The Koch brothers spent $100 million to build a new medical center that was completed earlier this year, and the insane union liberals actually protested it and called for a boycott.

$100 million for a new ambulatory care center at New York Presbyterian Hospital. This donation actually triggered an outbreak of mental illness among leftists who decried Koch’s nine-digit check.

“Quality care, not Koch care!” unionized nurses screamed outside Koch’s Park Avenue apartment. Never mind that his contributions create work for unionized nurses.

http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2014/03/20/evil-koch-brothers-spread-wealth/6660393/

Here is what Harry Reid and his own billionaire donor have to say about these men.

“These two brothers,” Reid said last month on the Senate floor “are about as un-American as anyone that I can imagine.”

Hedge fund billionaire and Democrat campaign contributor Tom Steyer told this month’s Men’s Journal that David Koch is “just a famously evil person!”

“They make up the heart and the thinking in the minds of those who would belong to the Ku Klux Klan,” singer/activist Harry Belafonte fumed last November. “They are white supremacists. They are men of evil. They have names…The Koch brothers — that’s their name.”

What the fuck has Harry Reid done with his own money, other than make millions of dollars while simultaneously serving in the Senate?

 

[PapaG]

I've seen your predictions right after Obama was elected and nothing has panned out the way you said it would. And you think you know what Obamacare is all about and what's behind it all and are going to let me know it's not for the reasons I would like to believe . . . okey dokey

Expand on this, please. I know I predicted that the stock market would lessen in value, but then again, I didn't think even Obama was dumb enough to have 3 rounds of QE while the job force continued to shrink. He rails against the 1%, yet the rich have never had it better. At some point, you can't keep printing money, but I imagine Barry will keep kicking the can down the road for the next President to take the blame for his failed fiscal policies.

 

[PapaG]

More on the Koch brothers, and their contributions to just the health care marketplace alone.

David Koch survived a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people, including everyone else in first class. He soon was diagnosed with, and then endured, prostate cancer. These challenges reinforced his passion for medical philanthropy. Among $506 million in such gifts, his major grants include:

• $25 million to Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to eliminate genitourinary malignancies.

• $100 million for cancer research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• $100 million for a new ambulatory care center at New York Presbyterian Hospital. This donation actually triggered an outbreak of mental illness among leftists who decried Koch’s nine-digit check.

“Quality care, not Koch care!” unionized nurses screamed outside Koch’s Park Avenue apartment. Never mind that his contributions create work for unionized nurses.

David Koch alone has donated over a half-billion dollars to improve the health of his fellow citizens. For this, he gets shit on by the entire Democratic Party because the Dems can't run on their own failed ideas.

 

[PapaG]

Surprise! More delays, this time in MediCare cuts that helped score the bill under $1t according to the CBO.

How exactly is this thing being funded again? It seems as if anytime a cut or penalty comes due, it's pushed back so it doesn't hurt the Dems who voted for it.

What a great law! These idiots are running as fast as they can from it, yet I'm being told in this thread it's a smashing success.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medicare/202864-healthcare-cuts-canceled-after-dem-complaints

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.

The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.

Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.
Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.

The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on Monday said changes in the healthcare market meant it did not need to make those cuts to Medicare Advantage this year.

It cited an increase in healthy beneficiaries under Medicare, which it said has lowered projected costs for that program.

CMS separately is delaying a risk assessment proposal that was set to take affect under ObamaCare.

The announcement comes after insurers spent millions on a public relations blitz seeking to head off the cuts, and after dozens of Democrats joined Republicans in calling on the administration to keep MA rates flat to avoid cutting benefits for seniors.

Monday’s announcement is “significantly better for health plans” than the initial proposal in February, CMS administrator Jonathan Blum said in a conference call with reporters.

“The policies announced today will provide improved benefits in Medicare Advantage and the Prescription Drug Plans while keeping costs low for Medicare beneficiaries,” Blum said. “We believe that plans will continue their strong participation in the Medicare Advantage program in 2015 and beneficiaries will continue to have access to a wide array of high quality and affordable Medicare health and drug plans.”

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the nation’s largest health plans industry group, was among the most vocal critics of the proposed cuts, backing ads reminding Washington that “seniors are watching.”

The rates are also a victory for insurers and Republican lawmakers who lobbied hard to ward off any changes to MA payment rates, and for vulnerable Democrats, who flocked en masse to oppose the cuts, even though many of them have opposed the program in the past.

In February, the Obama administration argued that the proposed cuts would help strengthen the program -— an increasingly popular private alternative to traditional Medicare — and guard against waste.

White House officials had pushed back at criticism of the pending cuts, noting that Medicare Advantage’s enrollment has spiked to an all-time high since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and that premiums under the plan have fallen by 10 percent.



Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatc...s-canceled-after-dem-complaints#ixzz2yF1CkjRy
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

 

[PapaG]

“The policies announced today will provide improved benefits in Medicare Advantage and the Prescription Drug Plans while keeping costs low for Medicare beneficiaries,” Blum said.

...

"In February, the Obama administration argued that the proposed cuts would help strengthen the program -"

Focused like a laser! These clowns are just winging it at this point.

 

[Further]

David Koch survived a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people, including everyone else in first class. He soon was diagnosed with, and then endured, prostate cancer. These challenges reinforced his passion for medical philanthropy. Among $506 million in such gifts, his major grants include:

It's a good thing to give towards, but look at gates for real philanthropy. David Koch 506 mil donations over decades are equivalent to someone with a net worth of 1 mil giving less than $13,000 over those two decades. Likely just tax dodges anyway.

 

[PapaG]

It's a good thing to give towards, but look at gates for real philanthropy. David Koch 506 mil donations over decades are equivalent to someone with a net worth of 1 mil giving less than $13,000 over those two decades. Likely just tax dodges anyway.

That's just medical donations alone. Keep shitting on them, though. It's what you Dems do best ... demonize private citizens. Perhaps they should run a hedge fund, like George Soros or Tom Steyer?

The funniest part is that the Koch brothers are pro-gay marriage, want drug laws repealed, and are pro-choice on abortion. Harry Reid can't let his dumb voters know this though, because that means they may start thinking for themselves.

 

[PapaG]

Letter from Charles Schumer thanking the Kochs for their campaign contributions during his 2010 race in New York. Today, he's calling them what is wrong with America. Only idiots fall for this stuff.

 

[Denny Crane]

It's a good thing to give towards, but look at gates for real philanthropy. David Koch 506 mil donations over decades are equivalent to someone with a net worth of 1 mil giving less than $13,000 over those two decades. Likely just tax dodges anyway.

When is $506M not $506M?

 

[MarAzul]

When is $506M not $506M?

Progressive will never say, how much is enough. Further won't break the mold.

 

[maxiep]

This thread tells me why the Democrats will do much better than anticipated in the mid-term elections. #LIV4Life

 

[PapaG]

This thread tells me why the Democrats will do much better than anticipated in the mid-term elections. #LIV4Life

Sadly, you're right. Incurious lemmings who don't question what their leaders tell them. It's why the GOP is fractured right now. The Dems weeded out the non-crazies like Joe Lieberman a while ago.

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

When is $506M not $506M?

When it is really over a billion.

 

[riverman]

When is $506M not $506M?

When it's Japanese yen

 

[maxiep]

It doesn't matter how many they say have signed up. As an aside, many of these people haven't even signed up; they've just put a healthcare package in their cart. We also don't know how many people are getting subsidies, how many had insurance previously but were kicked off of their plans and most importantly what the health profile of those that signed up was.

Wait until the Federal Government writes a thirteen figure check to the insurance companies to make up for their shortfall. Just super.

 

[PapaG]

Wait until the Federal Government writes a thirteen figure check to the insurance companies to make up for their shortfall. Just super.

Obama will just delay that part of the law, too, and the insurance companies go belly-up, leaving only ObamaCare.