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Can the ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers Be Believed?
An anonymous reader writes "When the Obama administration announced on April 1 that an estimated 7.1 million had signed up for ObamaCare by the end of March, it seemed a nearly impossible achievement. To reach 7.1 million, sign-ups had to rocket up by 67% in just one month. That's astounding enough, but an IBD review of existing ObamaCare enrollment data shows that the mathematical challenge of reaching 7.1 million sign-ups was even tougher."
...if you like your 7.1 million sign-ups, you can keep your 7.1 million sign-ups.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
This shit is so unconstitutional. How dare you fine me for not buying your services.
Money is speech according to the Supreme Court, and so I say no to Obama care.
I'm making use of my first amendment by not giving my money to this system.
To reach the number of Christmas gifts said to be bought for Christmas, gift purchases would have had to rocket up by 67% in December alone...
You really expect to believe the numbers coming out of Washington? Gullible aren't we?
Sure, this is the worst administration for lies in our lifetime, but even before this one, they still fudged numbers. It's just the way the game is played out there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Like most numbers that come out of government, it takes a bit of creative license. Both major parties have mastered this deception. The real question is... Are we better off now that this law is in place? To which I have to think, probably not.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I don't care how accurate the numbers are; I care about the sloppy language. What they mean is that 7.1 million people have applied for coverage through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace.
I'm really fed up with this lazy language. It's ended up confusing millions of people who are just looking for some healthcare coverage. A lot of people seem to think that "Obamacare" is now some federal version of Medicaid, or young-people version of Medicare--a government program that pays medical expenses.
I don't care whether the Republicrats or Democans started the confusing talk; let's all be part of stopping it.
.. and all that. It'll be interesting to see their justification for the number because it does seem to buck the trends we were seeing. I'm sure it's more of a Spock-ish exaggeration rather than an outright lie. For example, they may have moved people on an existing program like Medicaid to Obamacare enrollments, which would be valid but not exactly a measure of success (I am just speculating, I don't know if they're even allowed to do that).
Or it could be true. Many people wait to the last minute; hell I haven't done my taxes and its' 4/10 already.
How dare you questions the Federal Government.
There were, as Obama claimed, 42 million uninsured Americans before the ACA was passed. The ACA was supposed to insure all Americans.
Here we are 4 years after it passed.
What happened?
I expect the numbers are right, but the question is what all is included. This wouldn't be just the federal web site. They're almost certainly counting those who signed up through state exchanges. They're also going to count anyone who signed up on paper. All of that is fine, as this is a measure of the program, not of the web site.
But does it include those who signed up for expanded Medicare? Those are people who weren't insured before, and now are thanks to the new law, but it's not what most people think of when they say "Obamacare."
ObamaCare numbers aren't relatively more dishonest than anything else we've heard from the no-talent rodeo clown these last 5 godforsaken years.
..Is this "News for Nerds"? It must be a slow news day, I guess.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
President Obama personally signed up for health care 4 million times to pump up the numbers.
You heard it here first, I hope. Seems like an "At Midnight" sort of joke.
My first reaction was, the 7.1 million number is about as credible as anything else this administration says about the policies it wants to promote. Then I remembered that this particular subject is the President's legacy achievement, so it's probably less credible than usual.
Is this news for nerds? Is this directly nerd related stuff? Please, don't bring that political discussion here! It is pointless to really discuss anything was polarized as Obamacare, usually no one can discuss such subject in a clear technical objective way...
No
According to Betteridge's law of headlines the answer is "no.", but I feel it's a trap.
California's exchange is well capable of providing a mere 7 Million registrations and was not ever having problems while the Federal site was the subject of so much news controversy.
I am celebrating this event because This is the first time that Bruce Perens can get insurance coverage! I operate my own company and have previously only had access to insurance through my wife's employer. All of my family, my wife, my son, and I, have each individually been rejected by private insurers for what was esentially medical trivia. In my son's case, it was because he took a test they didn't like even though he passed it.
Not everyone understands the B.S. that private insurers were permitted to put people through.
Bruce Perens.
It's amazing what technical accomplishments people can achieve when they get together, concentrate, and fire crooked ass contractors who don't know what the fuck they're doing.
There was a deadline. People put stuff off to the deadline, especially when it means it's going to cost them money.
For comparison, this page has a graph of tax-related Google queries. Big shock: they spike right before deadlines in January and April. (That's a proxy for tax filings, for which I couldn't find a decent source. I suspect that tax filings are probably even more spread out, since many people get money back and would rather do it early.)
Combined with problems that would have caused people who tried earlier to fail, it doesn't seem at all likely that numbers would go up by a factor of 2/3. If you'd told me it was an order of magnitude, I might have been surprised. IBD has a history of a negative view of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and so I'm not especially inclined to see their incredulity is anything other than ideology.
To reach 7.1 million, sign-ups had to rocket up by 67% in just one month. That's astounding enough.
A very very large number of people, myself included, tend to wait until the last minute to do things, especially if it's not something they particularly want to do. Especially if it's something they don't especially NEED right now, and will have to pay by the month for.
Just ask the IRS for a graph of how many people self-file their taxes in April as opposed to Jan/Feb. At least there there is the motivation for getting a refund earlier. There may be some people who have conditions that need to be treated now, but I'm willing to bet that the list of healthier people who never got insurance is much larger.
Casual observation suggests, Republicans would find it very hard to believe and the Democrats would find it totally within the realm of possibilities. My brother is consultant for PeopleSoft benefits management module. According to him, about 10% of the employees enroll as soon as the period opens. After that spike there is a lull, and about 50% of the employees enroll in the last week (of a typical 4 week open period), and about 25% enroll on the last day. About 1 in 1000 miss the deadline and send despo emails and come up with sob stories why they missed it and beg to change their options. About 1 in 10000 realize they have missed the enrollment period only when they show up at a doctors offices and the friendly receptionist tells them, "Sorry Mrs McGillacady, the card is not going through". Based on that, I would say the profile of surging enrollment in the last few days/weeks seems to be consistent.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So the 'evidence' is someone who doesn't like the program in the first place, scratching his head and saying I don't believe you could sign up that many people that close to a deadline.
That's like saying, I don't believe that xxx million did their taxes because only a small percentage had completed them in early March. People procrastinate until the last minute, end of story.
Actual summary of article:
"It seems really unlikely the enrollment numbers got met because that would have meant a lot of last minute sign-ups *shrugs*"
"Oh and by the way even if the enrollment numbers got met, it probably doesn't count because if you haven't paid your first month's premium you don't count as an enrollment number for some reason because we said so"
If you play with the definition of things then you can make the numbers be whatever you want. Read a report last week that more than 1/3 of those were people that were dropped at the beginning of the year (which means there's very little real gain in number of people insured), and 1/4 hadn't actually paid. So the number is just a topical headline that they feed the media so they can pat their backs, but breaks down under serious scrutiny. Like "we've deported more illegal immigrants than the previous administration". Truth is they changed the definition of "deported" to count people who were stopped at the border and turned around, which had never been counted as a deportation before. Meanwhile the Border Patrolman's union is complaining that the administration and DHS/ICE are making their job nearly impossible, but the media won't cover them, and they actually kicked the leader of the union out of congressional hearings.
But they're the most transparent EVER!
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Until there is solid evidence of malversation, rants of the calibre of "Gee ... those numbers are big ... so can they be true" cannot be taken seriously.
Oh, and have you filed your demand to see Obama's birth certificate yet? Be sure to demand that he proves he's got a pulse too. And demand that he be doused with Holy Water too ... just in case, eh?
Just look at when they announced these numbers!
"Ahhhh, hahaha, GOTCHA!" -Obama
Plus a huge number of enrollees have not actually made an insurance premium payment so they are not really signed up and insured. What was the percentage being reported, something like 15% to 20%?
Say it ain't so! Why Obama would NEVER dissemble, twist, or distort the facts, especially on something as politically important as his pet insurance-for-all scheme!
In 2016 California will become a battleground state because of Obamacare...
This solely a political piece of flame bait. If you are against AFA you'll believe any evidence that appears to support it, if you do support AFA you won't believe it. Then there is everyone else who just doesn't f'n care anymore. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, It doesn't matter you're all self identified idealogues.
Give me apathy, or you know, whatever I don't care.
Sure, you can believe them that 7.5 million have enrolled. It comes down to how you define 'enrolled', which the government defines as "someone put an insurance choice in their electronic kart." That would be like CDW saying they sold 100,000 LaserJet printers, just because someone placed one into their basket. The reality is that that majority of the insurance plans placed into the insurance basket was never completed. And of those that did complete the process, many never paid their first premium, which ultimately gives us a much smaller number of ACTUALLY INSURED people via ObamaCare.
And how many are actually paying and thus covered? Less than 1 million.
Bearded Dragon
In the first year of Obamacare we will still have more uninsured than in the last year of the Bush administration
7.1 million sign ups out of over 300 million people for a "mandatory" participation program is truly pathetic regardless whether it is above or below what was expected. Yes yes, I know the number of uninsured was closer to 60 million, so basically you are getting adoption among the intended uninsured population of just 12%. Just 12% of uninsured people are choosing Obamacare/ACA, that is what is remarkable.
Regardless of how you feel about the fact they decided to use a regressive fine on middle class taxpayers in order to force people to buy insurance... it simply ain't working.
Sure that meager adoption rate will go up over the next two years as the fines for not having insurance go up, but that is basically it. We are still left with millions and millions of uninsured.
Is the way it should be. No one should have to pay for your runny nose or whatever. Set aside the money like any normal and prudent person would do and use it for that. If the SHTF, the catastrophic insurance has you covered.
People will pay $60 to get their hair done once a month but think paying $60 for an office visit is robbery. Crazy. Have your hair dresser prescribe the antibiotics then.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
and this article brought to you by the same people that stated Stephen Hawking would never have survived his illness if he lived in the UK and had to deal with their medical system.
https://www.google.com/search?...
Weren't something like 6 million people kicked out of their existing health plans and had to enroll in a new one?
So 7.1 million enrollments less the 6 million who already had health plans makes 1.1 fresh enrollments. Those numbers seem right in that case.
"The numbers turned out *much* higher than Fox News predicted, and I *know* that many people couldn't possibly want health insurance, because that brochure from the Heritage Foundation said so. It must be a conspiracy..."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...
Back in the nineties, I broke my leg while I was between jobs. I was uninsured. A US Federal Government program (Medicaid) picked up the freight, paying to get my right knee rebuilt. I'd suffered a torn lateral meniscus, a broken tibia and a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament. I'd be crippled to this day had not an already existing Federal program been there to provide medical care for low-income people such as I was then.
Now, of course, I am required by law to buy insurance. The fact that the insurance premium is paid by a tax credit means nothing; except that now I'm at the mercy of an insurance company which feels that they are being forced to carry the burden of insuring me (I'm between jobs again - *sigh*). Incidentally, my deductable is over five thousand dollars.
Medicaid sure helped me a lot more than Affordable Healthcare does now; but with mandatory participation, I can certainly believe the numbers being reported. What I want to know is how many of us would have chosen AHCA over Medicaid, had we been given a choice?
Are you sure that's the right comparison? There are over 300 million people in the US, but you only have to apply for "Obamacare" if you don't have employer-provided health care, you aren't covered by your parents, you aren't qualified to draw on Medicare or Medicaid, and your obligation is waived for religious or moral reasons. This remainder only comes out to about 20-30 million.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Is it really that hard to believe? While I think the way the program was implemented was shitty I think half of the problem was the republican nut jobs. Not that the democrats would have probably done a substantially better job otherwise... but...
What we should have had was a law that allowed people to write off health care costs on there taxes. And I mean if you owed $10,000 in taxes and your health insurance and health care costs came to $3,600 then you would only pay $6,400 in taxes. Would taxes go up? Yes. But it wouldn't be nearly as bad as forcing everybody to get health insurance who were so adamant about not having coverage. For those whose taxes are below a certain threshold you could maintain a government program to cover those which aren't paying into it via other peoples tax dollars. This way it guarantees everybody gets coverage who doesn't have a moral objection to it. Nobody would be forced to get coverage, but essentially everybody would be covered if they wanted coverage.
Then the government should have setup a non-profit to reduce health care costs. Let the for-profit insurance companies compete with a non-profit insurance company. One other thing the government should have done is set a minimum level of coverage that was substantial.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know which numbers include children/dependents and which ones don't. That is an important bit of information. If the 60 million is individuals and the 7.1 million is plans, which is how it reads then the total coverage could be significantly higher. If it's the other way around then it is significantly worse.
I say this due to the fact of just how untrustworthy the Federal Government be come. And that's in all ways, not just with this new tax.
As a side note I'd really like to see real information on how many people have actually BOUGHT this new mandatory insurance. Last time I looked into it they were still keeping that under their proverbial hat. Wouldn't be surprised it was half... or even less.
Editor posts story from anonymous troll regurgitating punditry talking points (that were refuted last week BTW) and it headlines on Slashdot. Stats only lie if you misrepresent the context:
http://wonkette.com/545324/latest-awesome-fox-chart-unskews-obamacare-enrollment-thanks-fox
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
1. A lot of late signups. - People waiting for the individual mandate being delayed.
2. Cancelled plans. Remember "if you like your plan, you can keep it" except you can't. All those people who lost their plan were insured are now uninsured and that greatly enlarged the number of people seeking. So you can't compare before and after numbers.
3. Some companies dropped plans entirely and let their employees get their own. My company was on the verge of doing that but elected not to at the last minute.
4. The combined numbers of 2 and 3 is estimated at 6 million. So backing that out, we only got aout 1 million more insured. Which is important, but not anything to brag about.
5. I'm not entirely convinced that the 7.1M number is actual people being insured. Maybe that many logins were created but a login is not insurance.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Recognize that you are supporting slavery in a minor form by forcing someone to do something preemptively.
I mean it. I don't want you to pay for my hospital bills unless you want to. Hospitals should not be required to provide healthcare.
I will die if I must, but the abolishment of all forms of slavery will indeed be complete.
Give me liberty or give me death. Really, I welcome it.
Is it a Lie? Well lets do an impromtu survey...
There's 313 million people in the US.
7 million signed up.
So that's 2% of the country.
I know exactly 0 people that have signed up for it, and I live in a poor neighborhood.
I visited the site myself and couldn't navigate it well enough to find coverage...
So... how many people do you know that have signed up? Any?
Um.. most of US population is already covered though their employers/family plan. They're talking about the 40 million or so Americans who cannot get affordable coverage due to preexisting conditions, income restraints, and the like.
I'm sure they do have that many people signed up.
How many of them actually paid to be on it and wanted to be on it?
I'm assuming somewhere between none and 5.
But they've given to a lot of people for free and forced a lot of people into it.
So they have that going for them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Figures never lie, but lairs figure....
One of the hallmarks of "excessive figuring" is using numbers that have unnecessary precision. 7.1 Million is just slightly above the 7 Million target, (which was lowered from the 42 Million) which was the number of people who LOST their coverage because of Obamacare. It has more digits than we need and certainly more digits than they have been willing/able to report up until this point. Tells me they made it up.
They INVENTED this number, likely by adding up uncertain sums, in order to be able to throw a party. "Yea! Success! Ra Ra" This was all for political show.
Don't get me started about how nebulous they are on what this number actually represents... Visitors to HealthCare.gov? Actual policies being selected? Actual premiums paid? We don't know and they are not saying, because if they do they know somebody will call them on it.
Finally, I'm quite gratified that the number really doesn't matter... That's not really what the debate is about... But, even as a matter of LAW with fines involved, you can only get 7.1 million out of 20 million to sign up, something is desperately wrong...
Obama needed to land on an aircraft carrier to celebrate the 7 million signups, with a big banner reading "7.1 Million", but I guess the GOP wouldn't get the irony.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Didn't they find that the penalty was legal only as a tax? (even though the administration says it isn't)
Are you able to show us the terms of your plan? The reason I ask is that I was offered what turned out to be a "trash plan", and the sort of things that aren't being grandfathered are rejected because they don't meet a minimum standard of care. In my case, a catastrophic injury such as in an auto wreck would not have been covered significantly.
The lady who famously confronted Obama on this issue had a plan that limited its payout to a few hundred dollars.
Bruce Perens.
Are you sure that's the right comparison?
Like I said 60 million is the better comparison. So, 7.1 million would just be 12% of the uninsured. Or 23% if you exclude a bunch of groups like you would.
But really a lot of those 7.1 million people were previously insured last year. Bottom line is that Obamacare hasn't really addressed the uninsured problem, let alone actually made structural reforms to the health care system. It is a band-aid on the current HMO/health insurance system in order to stem the tide of people dropping overly expensive insurance plans. We still are left with a system which is the most expensive in the world with poorer health outcomes.
Some of the initial proposals in what ultimate became Obamacare actually did include expanding Medicaid coverage far upward of where it is, or allowing early buy-ins of Medicare. Those ideas were swiftly rejected because, you know, socialism and stuff. And the private insurance industry would be shut out of the sweet sweet profits and we couldn't have that, no, nuh-uh.
Thus, the idea was nixed, and we're stuck with what we have for now. Thankfully, what we have is better in many ways.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Yes, that is the correct number. So our rulers are telling us that 7 million out of 40 million is great.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Um.. most of US population is already covered though their employers/family plan. They're talking about the 40 million or so Americans who cannot get affordable coverage due to preexisting conditions, income restraints, and the like.
And apparently most of those people still can't get affordable coverage
Just think, you could have had universal healthcare, single payer, provided by the government, like Canada and every other industrialized nation on earth, but the moment that was proposed by Obama, the GOP had a cow, the Tea Party starting bringing guns to Town Hall meetings and Fox News screamed bloody murder that Obama was denying insurance companies their god-given right to make a profit at the expense of the American people, and the democrats caved in and let the heritage foundation proposed Romney-Care become the model for Obamacare. Wow that was a long sentence.
So you can thank Republicans for the current state of Obamacare, a plan they championed as a replacement for the original proposal, and then right after it passed into law, attempted to repeal it 51 times.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Take your hands off the keyboard, take a deep breath, and start posting again when you can express yourself without being offensive.
If you tried to predict how many people would hand in term papers by looking at the numbers up to the last day before the paper is due, you'd surely conclude that there was no chance of nearly everybody handing in a term paper. But that's nothing on concluding how many people would file their tax return by the April due-date by looking at the submissions up to mid-March.
I mean, HONESTLY, it takes a few hours for most people to sign-up and everybody puts everything off until they have to.
Weird article, it seems to be claiming that there is some mathematical law that prevents sign-up's by increasing by 90%
I can increase any number you give me by 90%, what's the difficulty.
200000 -----> 380000
Gosh that was hard...
Unfortunately, it doesn't help the people in GOP states that refuse to expand Medicaid to cover those who cannot afford Obamacare... they're just left to die.
http://www.thewire.com/politic...
I've been following the debate, and the projections of how much of a "surge" could be expected in the last weeks that were coming from conservative anti-ACA sources were all stupidly, shockingly, low. As though people do not put things off. Now that their utterly ridiculous estimates have been blown out of the water, they just cannot believe how wrong they were. Nothing surprising about that.
How many of these people are newly-insured, how many will actually pay, how many will keep paying the whole year, how many will actually be helped by having insurancee, whether the provisions in ACA intended to control health-care costs work at all--these are all questions that will take more time to answer. But one thing you can bet on, the guesses being thrown around by the rabid ACA opponents will turn out to be wildly wrong, again.
I'm between jobs again. I'm enrolled for insurance under the AHCA. I'm getting bills from my primary care physician's office because (despite what I was led to believe) I'm subject to a $5,200 individual deductable - and that was the BEST plan I saw offered under the AHCA. Incidentally, I'm not planning to pay that bill; at least, not until I find my next job.
(PERSONAL OPINION FOLLOWS)
I'll say this, though - as a mechanism to keep me in financial servitude, the AHCA is right up there with debtor's prison and serfdom as a model. I can reasonably foresee ending up a lifetime servant of the medical industry if I don't find myself a better way to pay for health care. Medicaid still exists, but there's no way to qualify for it now without facing a hefty fine. Either way, economic serfdom. Karl Marx would indeed be proud of the AHCA as a mechanism to propel a free enterprise society towards a socialist state.
7.1+ million is the number of PRIVATE insurance policies through federal/state exchanges. That doesn't count the under 26 on parent's plans, the expanded medicaid people, the previously eligible but never-enrolled medicaid families, the directly enrolled with insurance company policies, and anyone who decided to pay for their employer plan who previously didn't. Oh, and let's not forget the 5+ million blocked by Republican run states from expanded medicaid! You can't trot out a 60 million number and then only count one aspect of the law and compute a percentage off that. That makes no sense.
In 2-3 years the number uninsured will drop much farther. The penalties for not enrolling keep going up for the next few years so it will make more sense to get insurance than pay the penalty for some people and the employer mandates start kicking in as well.
Unfortunately it will be 5-8 years before we can see if the rate of growth in health care expenditures for the country as a whole goes down. If the cost curve bends downwards at all it will be a huge success in the face of the baby boomers retiring and going onto medicare. That's the WHOLE POINT of Obamacare actually. To bend the cost curve downwards before it totally wrecks the budget beyond all repair. I can't figure out the Republican plan for the future. On the one hand they want to cover the really sick by setting up high risk pools (which I'm sure after being setup they won't actually fund at any reasonable level) to cover people the insurance companies won't cover, and keep raising the medicare age to "control" costs (just check out their latest 10 year plan!). Those middle class blue-collar workers sure are going to love paying HUGE premiums after they retire but before medicare would kick in if they keep raising the age requirement.
One last comment... I'm sure the next argument will be that rates will go up next year. My god, it's like nobody ever made a chart of rate increases for the last 10 years. When haven't they gone up? Often by huge amounts. Companies charge more while reducing benefits and raising deductibles every year. The good news is the law already protects you! They HAVE to spend 80% of premiums on healthcare for their customers or cut you a check for the difference! If they raise their rates too much you get a rebate. Oh, and even the increases can be adjusted before they go into effect by state auditors if it looks like they are trying to gouge customers.
The only people who really have anything to complain about are young people. The 3:1 old-to-young insurance rate means they are subsidizing older people to some extent. 4:1 might have been fairer in my opinion.
Isn't medicaid expansion part of the plan?
Though the thought strikes - why not just have medicaid cover the whole population? What is the logic of tying medical insurance to a job anyway. I'm probably more likely to be sick when I'm not working!
Fixed that for you.
Plus a huge number of enrollees have not actually made an insurance premium payment so they are not really signed up and insured. What was the percentage being reported, something like 15% to 20%?
Straight out of the GOP talking points. Read the LA Times, they have article explaining it for the mentally challenged.
Are you sure that you are not the one with the political blinders on?
...
...
... "I think people are enrolling in multiple places,” he said in a conference call. “They are shopping. And what happens is that they never really get back on HealthCare.gov to disenroll from plans they prior enrolled in" ...
...
...
..."
Clue: Politicians don't have to lie when the facts coincidentally happen to be on their side. A talking point is not inherently erroneous.
That said I am not a reader of the GOP talking points, I recalled the stats from traditional media. From the liberal New York Times:
"WASHINGTON — One in five people who signed up for health insurance under the new health care law failed to pay their premiums on time and therefore did not receive coverage in January, insurance companies and industry experts say. Paying the first month’s premium is the final step in completing an enrollment. Under federal rules, people must pay the initial premium to have coverage take effect
Lindy Wagner, a spokeswoman for Blue Shield of California, said that 80 percent of those who signed up for its plans had paid by the due date
Matthew N. Wiggin, a spokesman for Aetna, said that about 70 percent of people who signed up for its health plans paid their premiums
Kristin E. Binns, a vice president of WellPoint, said that 76 percent of people selecting its health plans on an exchange had paid their share of the first month’s premium
One big company, Humana, said it had received 200,000 applications for insurance through the exchanges. “About 75 percent of the people paid, and 25 percent did not pay,”
Greg Thompson, a spokesman for the Health Care Service Corporation, which offers Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Texas and three other states, said that “around 80 percent” of people choosing those plans had paid their first month’s premium
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
"Except I can CHOOSE to not own a car, and I don't need insurance at that point.
Call me when I can CHOOSE to not carry health insurance."
That's not quite an accurate analog (although partial points for continuing the car analogy.)
More accurate is "I can CHOOSE not to live, and I don't need insurance at that point."
Not to me, it isn't. Now, I can't even fall back onto Medicaid without incurring hefty fines. The result is that now I have medical bills which ain't gettin' paid (at least, not until I get my next job).
Other important questions: how many of those 7.1 million have actually paid for the policies, and how many just went through the web site? Also, how many of these policies are insuring the previously uninsured, and how many are insuring people who lost their previous insurance due to the ACA?
I don't have those numbers. Nobody seems to have those numbers... Kathleen Sebelius has said "we don't know that" (see YouTube link below).
I have a suspicion that if the numbers were good, somehow they would have the numbers.
The DailyMail article says that a RAND Corporation study estimates that the number of previously uninsured people who have actually paid for their policies is: 858,000 (well under a million!). I haven't found a source for this. I believe they computed this number themselves, by reading the RAND report and by using the percentages in that report.
Avik Roy read the same report, and reports the number as 1.4 million +/- 0.7 million, i.e. 700,000 people to 2.1 million people, 95% confidence.
I believe this is the RAND Corporation study being discussed: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR600/RR656/RAND_RR656.pdf
References:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2594309/President-plans-victory-lap-strong-Obamacare-enrollment-Sebelius-faces-unpopular-law-blank-stare-tough-questions-remain-whos-signing-up.html
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/30/news/economy/obamacare-premiums/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDdmRaJy2c
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/04/09/rand-comes-clean-obamacares-exchanges-enrolled-only-1-4-million-previously-uninsured-individuals/
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Fact 1) 7.1 million were the number that signed up using exchange. NOT all the people that got insurance, just the number that signed up.
Fact 2) It did not include the people that were told they were approved for Medicaid.
Fact 3) It did not include the people that picked their own insurance not on the exchanges.
Fact 4)It did not included the young people now signed up on their parents plans.
You need to compare apples to apples. That is, 60 million without insurance before hand vs ??? million without insurance after hand. Trying to do 7.1/60 just demonstrates your complete inability to do honest math.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
They know full well that there are not 7.1 million newly insured people who are previously uninsured, which is basically what Carney claimed in a press conference yesterday.
About 5 million of those people are those who had their policies canceled, and about 2 million are previously-uninsured/uninsurable people who signed up. The number of people who have actually paid, out of these 7 million, remains a closely-guarded secret.
You're right about the 7.1 million. It's actually closer to a net gain of 9 million according to a RAND estimate:
http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/survey-estimates-net-gain-of-9-3-million-american-adults.html
See also this Urban Insititute study:
http://hrms.urban.org/quicktakes/changeInUninsurance.html
Sorry - this is just an effort to redistribute the wealth, while providing the illusion that it is making health care affordable. I'm already getting bills for daring to see a physician while between jobs - bills which I can't pay. Just saying - I was a lot better off before AHCA became the law of the land.
Yes, but you try getting a proper single payer healthcare system through Congress. Senators are already bought and sold by the healthcare middlemen, there's no political will to fix the problem.
I read the internet for the articles.
The worst part is, they removed the single payer option in order to bring over some Republican votes, and in the end no Republicans voted for it. IMHO, they should have put the single payer option back in there if Republicans weren't going to go for it anyway. What would they do, vote to repeal it a 52nd time?
I read the internet for the articles.
Such as the smokers, the obese, alcoholics and drug users who can continue with their merry lifestyles, safe and secure in the knowledge everyone else is forced to hand over their money so they don't have to take personal responsibility for their actions, right?
Healthcare concerns shouldn't force lifestyle changes on people. This will lead to people living their lives indoors in plastic bubbles because we can't risk them getting sick, ill, or even sunburned.
If smoking, alcoholism, etc. are a burden on the healthcare system, perhaps we should have some sort of tax on the purchase of tobacco and alcohol, and then use that tax to cover the costs of healthcare.
And every smoker, alcoholic, drug user, etc. does indeed have to take personal responsibility for their actions. No matter how good the health care system is or gets, they are paying with premature death.
They're talking about the 40 million or so Americans who cannot get affordable coverage due to preexisting conditions, income restraints, and the like.
The problem is that they are talking about them and not actually offering people affordable insurance.
It's absolutely stunning that 7.1 million people "signed up for Obamacare" since that isn't actually a thing that exists. They're signing up for an ACA-compliant plan through a private, third party insurance agency.
in March from what I heard of the issue. They still have many more to go (about 3% of the American population) - but it's also going to be one of the biggest drains on the enrollment figures long-term. A complete case of short term gains in publicity for long-term consequences in the form of expenses. Pretty much typical Obama procedure.
with as much confidence as you can believe in electronic voting results.
The cost for the treatment you received in the 90s probably doubled or tripled by now, so it's questionable how long Medicaid would be sustainable
It's nice that the ACA gives everyone health insurance. However, it does little of anything to address the fact that health care in this country costs far more than it should (3 times as much by some comparisons to other first world countries). People need to stop interchanging "health insurance" and "healthcare". They are not the same thing.
every time they bring up obamacare there are almost instantly stories of private health insurance refusing to insure people or grossly overcharging families. The gop appear to be out of touch with what is important to people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
citing Al Gore on global warming, or Dick Cheney on "enhanced interrogations" .. hardly un-biased
We know that between 5 and 6 million Americans were kicked-off their insurance policies (this was well documented, all you had to do was add-up the numbers as they were reported in each state (many states have laws requiring filings for mass-layoffs, or mass insurance policy cancellations, or other things that can impact a state economy)) and we know that the Obama administration claims 7.1 million signed-up (but they claim they are unable to say how many have paid, or how many were just seeking policies to replace cancelled policies). The insurance companies are reporting that about 1/5th of the new signers have not paid any premiums. We also know that several (mostly Democrat-run) states signed-up prison inmates both to drive-up the numbers and to shift costs for prison inmate care onto the federal taxpayer. These are things we know.
There are many more, and arguably more-important things we do NOT know. For example, if you are currently uninsured you are in a place unique in American history thanks to a clause in the ACA legislation: you have no legal way to buy insurance during the next 7 months (unless you marry, or change jobs). Before 2014, any American could shop for a product like insurance on any business day of the year ... we simply do not know what the impact of new policies like this will be. We also do not know the costs of the employer mandate, because the President illegally extended the illegal exemption he gave them until after this fall's elections. (and before somebode rants about my use of the term "illegal", let me remind you that there is no law giving him that authority and the proper legal way to do it would have been to go to congress and ask for a law giving him the authority to act, which was good enough for all previous presidents). We also do not know what the 2015 rates will be, though all the insurance companies say (and the Obama administration itself admits) that they will be "significantly higher" (NOBODY's projections of "how much higher" should be believed at this time). The degree of increase might be driven-up more than expected by the president's many unilateral changes to the law (because insurance companies will have to make allowances for future potential changes) but again we cannot know the magnitude of this effect.
We need to stick to the facts and leave the extreme partisans like Limbaugh and Krugman out of it. Both supporters and critics need to face the fact that nobody is able to generate solid numbers on this stuff yet. It turns out that not only do we need to pass this law before we can know what's in it... we probably have to live under it fore several years to even see honest solid numbers.
don't any of you recall, just a few days ago, news photos showing long long long lines of people signing up at the last minute
more total right wing FUD
every single person on this site, except for young healthy people and rich people (~ 15% of the population) is better off
why ?
cause if you have employer health insurance, and have or get a pre existing condition, you no longer have to live in fear of loosing your employer insurance
if you don't have employer insurance, you can now get it at a reasonable price (all the horror storys i know of are false; lie after lie after lie from the srw)
Now that Obamacare IS the system and it IS the problem, then maybe on one side of the isle we can talk about fixing Obamacare and on the other we can talk about replacing.... and mean the same thing.
But seriously, on the left I think we/they should be happy with a compromise that sees an expansion of medicaid and some sort of very basic universal healthcare paid for with a broad base progressive tax. Not single payer for everything, just emergency medicine for all and a few sick visits. Figure another 2% on top of the medicare tax.
And for conservatives, introduce an option to opt out of the insurance market and not get fined under the individual mandate. Instead of an Insurance mandate, give people an option for a savings mandate. So you have to save up to 5% of your income every year until you have saved a certain amount of money, say $50k or $100k (indexed to inflation).
Treat the savings option like a Traditional/Roth IRA where you can invest the savings however you like, but only take it out tax free for medical expenses until retirement age. But then at retirement make it tax free up to a certain amount. Encouraging more savings and investment should also help with a retirement savings problem that we have in this country.
Situation 1) No law requiring people to buy healthcare, no law blocking insurance companies from denying you healthcare for pre-existing situations. They can even deny you healthcare for brain cancer because you have diabetes. (or worse, accept you, then deny coverage because you failed to disclose you had diabetes). People that get screwed: a) anyone that is not 100% healthy and also b) anyone that risks going without insurance but ends up needing it.
Situations 2) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, but no law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Insurance companies, as people wait till after they get sick to buy insurance. Then after insurance companies all go bankrupt, everyone gets screwed.
Situation 3) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and also a law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Anyone that wanted to risk going without good insurance and would have been lucky enough not to need it.
The first situation was what we used to have. The second situation is what we tried to avoid. The third situation is what we have now. Please note it only screw up assholes that tried to take ridiculous gambles and happened to be lucky enough to win the gamble.
We had a choice - screw over the sick, screw over insurance companies (which would have eventually led to a truly government controlled healthcare), or require everyone to buy insurance. We wisely made the best possible decision.
P.S.I am employed and have good healthcare - which I desperately need because I got sick (nasty virus) in college and my kidneys have slowly been dying over the past 20 years, despite the fact that I don't drink, etc. I have maybe 5 more years till I need a transplant and am clearly one of the people that will very much benefit from Obamacare.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
On The Media just put out some audio on this topic. They came to the conclusion that politicians on both sides (Democrat and Republican) are using some really questionable numbers. Harry Reid (Democrat) claimed 10 million, while John Boehner (Republican) was claiming that there was a *decline* in the number of people with health insurance over the past three months. http://www.onthemedia.org/stor... (7 minutes)
I love people that talk up universal healthcare in other countries but have never had to live under it. After living with it in 3 countries, I will take quality of the healthcare here rather than the crap you have to go through in elsewhere.
Obamacare is a bunch of crap that was thrown together in a few months. You can thank both parties for this mess and it should be repealed, and if a workable model can be designed and rolled out then so be it. But Democrats want the rich to pay for anything and everything, and the Republicans do not want to pay anything so you are left with two worthless parties all the way to the top. From the president on down should all be replaced, they are all failures and for the most part self serving.
Yes, this is a personal experience, not a documented wide-ranging issue. But . . . I'm not an edge case, I'm part of a fairly large group. I don't believe my experiences are unique in this regard. The Affordable Health Care Act is not providing me with affordable health care, but rather the opposite.
Incidentally, Medicaid has existed since the sixties. Many people then said it would be unsustainable, yet it continued to work just fine until last year. SO . . . how long until the AHCA becomes unsustainable? It's already essentially unusable to me, but a lot of insurance companies are making money providing an insanely low level of protection.
70% of Canadian health care costs are covered by private insurance.
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I signed up 4 times before I got it to work. My buddy had a family so he signed up 7 and counting.
I'm sure with a headline like this, we will all have an intelligent, objective discussion.
In the first year of Obamacare we will still have more uninsured than in the last year of the Bush administration
Bullshit. Best estimate I've seen is that right now, today, the number of uninsured has been decreased by about 25%.
7.1 million sign ups out of over 300 million people for a "mandatory" participation program is truly pathetic regardless whether it is above or below what was expected. Yes yes, I know the number of uninsured was closer to 60 million, so basically you are getting adoption among the intended uninsured population of just 12%. Just 12% of uninsured people are choosing Obamacare/ACA, that is what is remarkable.
Your comment is complete fucking nonsense. 1) Of course, as you sort of admit, out of 330 million people, there are about 300 million with some form of health insurance. 2) There were 40 million without health insurance, not 60 million. 3) In addition to whatever fraction of the 7.1 million were previously uninsured, several million more have been added by the Medicaid expansion. 4) In addition to whatever fraction of the 7.1 million were previously uninsured, several million more have been added to employer-sponsored programs.
Or they would keep that money and say "you are free to try and find another employer that will give you money". Which is much more likely to happen. It is why the employer mandate is supposed to be there because too many Wal-Marts and Fast Food companies are doing just that...
Excuse me? That whole post made no sense whatsoever! How did you get health care without insurance or a very large wallet? And don't hand me that crap about ER coverage being "free". It's not! Once you leave the hospital, you're going to have to make a detour through the business office where you'll get a full walletectomy before you can leave, and if you don't have cash, you'll have the collection agency knocking at your door.
Yes, that is the correct number. So our rulers are telling us that 7 million out of 40 million is great.
Over a period of six months??? It's fucking fantastic!!! This is a problem that has been seemingly intractable for DECADES, and now we see an 18% reduction in SIX MONTHS!!!
Also, it's probably more like 9 million out of 40 million. (Subtract from the 7.1 those who previously had insurance, then add in the newly-insured from Medicaid and employer-sponsored programs.)
Weren't something like 6 million people kicked out of their existing health plans and had to enroll in a new one?
Probably more like 5 million. Then in addition to the 2.1 million, you need to add in the expansion in Medicaid coverage and in employer-sponsored programs.
Anyone that doesn't believe this is possible has never filed taxes on April 15th. Just try to call the IRS anytime over the next five days and see what you get. People push everything off to the last possible moment. The same is true in registering to vote, getting a haircut, homework, work projects, etc. If you have a week to do it, no one does it on day one. The vast majority do it on the final day. Just the nature of people.
Actual summary of article: "It seems really unlikely the enrollment numbers got met because that would have meant a lot of last minute sign-ups *shrugs*"
"Oh and by the way even if the enrollment numbers got met, it probably doesn't count because if you haven't paid your first month's premium you don't count as an enrollment number for some reason because we said so"
Payment is the final step in the enrollment process. No payment, no enrollment. Its pretty simple, if you haven't paid you haven't bought anything.
... "I think people are enrolling in multiple places,” he said in a conference call. “They are shopping. And what happens is that they never really get back on HealthCare.gov to disenroll from plans they prior enrolled in"
"Matthew N. Wiggin, a spokesman for Aetna, said that about 70 percent of people who signed up for its health plans paid their premiums
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Can ANY number be believed?
After all the Bible-literalist 6-day creationists don't believe that Pi = 3.1415926535.....
Because it says in the Bible that it is 3
At least when you do get a new job, if it doesn't have employer-based insurance, the exchanges can't prevent you from getting insurance because of your pre-existing condition.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
"I've been getting all my news from sources telling me that this was going to be a disaster and that goals would never be reached. None of my friends signed up, so based on my anecdotal evidence there must be a conspiracy here."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS DOING ON SLASHDOT?!?
You want to spread whiny, partisan, maliciously misleading horseshit? Go to RedState or Breitbart; that's their stock in trade. It doesn't fscking belong here. Get this garbage off Slashdot now.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
NO
Not just because it's Obama. It's because it's coming from a politician and all politicians lie. Try to name one who doesn't.
Just think, you could have had universal healthcare, single payer, provided by the government
Except that Australia (at least) is backing away from that as fast as it can because of the mounting costs. Heck; you get penalties for NOT having private health insurance.
"Provided by the Government" means "provided by taxpayers".
Well, if the first deadline was coming up, wouldn't it make sense that enrollment numbers jumped up? I'm pretty sure that there are a lot more tax returns filed in the first two weeks of April than the first two weeks of February...
I'm not interested. Wake me when fair is fair and we all have equal access to a single-payer system that has no profit built in. Until the capitalists are thrown out of the system, it's soiled.
So 7 states get 590,000 and you find it hard to believe that 29 states could reach 2m? I think the mathematically challenged person is the author. 590,000/7=84,286 people per state, rounded up to the nearest person. If we apply that to the other 29 states we get 2,444,286 people signed up from those 29 states, which blows that prediction out of the water..
Apparently the possibility that people might take advantage of the "no pre-existing condition" clause of the ACA to get insurance when something catastrophic happens disturbs the insurance companies' bottom line deeply.
I'm still in disbelief that an idea that bad was able to become law. Especially when there's a similar idea that makes far more sense and solves many of the same problems: coverage for post-existing conditions.
We'd always hear stories of someone getting cancer and being unable to work during their treatment and therefore unable to pay the premiums for their insurance. Why they hell did they have to pay those premiums? They got cancer while they were paying for coverage, so that coverage should cover the treatment of that cancer no matter how long it takes regardless of whether they continue to pay or not.
Strangely, I never heard anyone debate that idea. Indeed, I've had essentially no success getting anyone on the internet to even understand what I'm talking about. I've made analogies to homeowners insurance and your house burning down, but people seem unable to comprehend that you buy insurance to cover the cost of illness, not the cost of doctor bills, and so once the illness occurs, the insurance company should pay up, even if you decide to switch to a different insurer during your treatment. ...and, naturally, the new insurer then wouldn't care about your pre-existing condition because your previous insurer, the one you were paying when you acquired the illness, would be the one paying for its treatment.
Not that I don't think single payer makes more sense, but if we're going to attempt a free market solution, we should at least attempt one that actually makes sense. Require coverage for post-existing conditions and require up-front pricing for all medical procedures. The free market's functionality is caused by consumers shopping around for the best price. If they aren't doing that, it's obviously going to fail to control prices. For that reason, flat copays (you pay $20 no matter what the visit costs) must also be illegal, and instead copays must always be a percentage of the final bill, to encourage consumers to continue to look for lower prices even if they aren't paying most of the bill. If you lower the cost of insurance to a point where people can afford it, and regulate it well enough that people know that they'll actually get what they think they're paying for (since otherwise the simple desire to not get screwed will deter people from buying insurance), all it would take would be a few well-designed ad campaigns to the effect of "even 18-year-olds can get cancer" to get everyone to buy some insurance.
Of course, that still ignores the question of whether we want a future where adults with chronic illness are unable to get insurance because their parents didn't have coverage on them before they were born, but the only solution to that is single-payer, and we've ruled that out for some fucking reason. Apparently there are people out there who would honestly rather just keep their money and just die if they get cancer, I guess, much like how there are people who'd rather not pay for the police and just get shot if someone doesn't like them. I guess we can't infringe on the rights of the insane by making them pay for things they don't want but would probably use anyway if they needed to.
So you aren't eligible for Medicaid? I did you check? The Medicaid rules vary by state, but the Feds did expand Medicaid coverage as part of the ACA. But you may live in a state that rejected the expansion in order to make the ACA more painful for people like you, so YMMV.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
ObamaCare's numbers are wrong just like Evolution is wrong and Global Warming is wrong. All these are just cunning ploys to distract us from the fact that they want to take away our guns.
Are you saying that after your $5K deductible is covered, you won't get any coverage from your private in surance? Or that $5K is permanent financial destitution? How does this scenario really play out?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
How many do things at the last minute? Homework, tax returns, bill pays, website traffic, contract signings, same thing goes for sign-ups. If demand were linear jobs would be easier, but instead it's lumpy. Given a deadline a great majority will wait until the last minute so it doesn't shock me whatsoever. Anyone who thinks the number of folks wouldn't spike hard ahead of a set deadline has never had to deal with demand.
that still ignores the question of whether we want a future where adults with chronic illness are unable to get insurance because their parents didn't have coverage on them before they were born, but the only solution to that is single-payer
I didn't explain that clearly. What I meant to say was, like, say someone's born with cerebral palsy, but their parents didn't have coverage for them at the time. That's a pre-existing condition for that person's entire life, even though that person couldn't have planned ahead and obtained coverage for it before they were even born. So my post-existing coverage idea doesn't help them out at all, nor does it help with any childhood illness which the parents similarly didn't have coverage for. I suppose some people are OK with allowing children to suffer just because their parents are idiots, but it doesn't sit well with a lot of people who realize that they could just as easily have found themselves in the same position. When you allow people to suffer because of situations outside of their control, you're saying it's OK for people to allow you to suffer for reasons outside of your control. A lot of people think it's a good trade to help those people out if it means they'll similarly be helped out if they're in need. The big issue here is that this is being argued by adults, who already know they're not one of those unlucky children, and so they don't care that it could have happened to them because it didn't happen to them and there's no risk that it's going to.
With that in mind, since the whole point of insurance is that people pay into it before the risk is realized, it makes sense that people should be covered even before they're born since there's risk from the moment of conception. ...but an individual can't control what coverage they have until they're old enough to work and buy that coverage themselves. It's not really fair to just tell someone "you're fucked because your parents suck," especially when it's a problem that disappears when you acknowledge that no sane person really wants to not have health insurance, and so it makes sense to just provide it for everyone from the moment of conception and let them pay for it later in life via taxes, much like how our children pay for child services keeping them safe from abusive parents by paying for it for other people's children when they're old enough to pay taxes.
I signed up on the last day myself. Waited as long as possible in the hope that the Congress or Senate would get rid of it, but no joy. I would rather sign up and have medical coverage than not sign up and have to pay a penalty while getting nothing in return.
Kathleen Sebelius just announced her resignation. It's likely tied to the HealthCare.gov debacle although she is merely a scapegoat. Perhaps it also has to do with the supposedly funny numbers.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I'm employed, mostly pretty healthy, and have had no catastrophic injuries or other issues in my history, and have a pretty decent plan through my employer, but I pay through the nose for that. And; doctor choice in my county is VERY limited: they don't seem to like my provider. If I had the choice, I think I'd consider medicaid, and pocket the difference. But I am gainfully employed, so fuck me, right?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I didn't sign up.
I won't sign up.
They can't MAKE ME sign up.
If they attempt to seize my assets and make me a criminal for doing NOTHING on my part, there is going to be trouble.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
ACA among other things expands the Medicaid program you are so fond of. Except in states where Republican governors play politics with people's health. Imagine you were earning just enough not to qualify for Medicaid.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
you sir, are a complete retard.
yeah, those fatsoes sit on their couches, eating their pizza, and may cost loads in healthcare.
and then theres you, you are a prime example of health, you go out running, you go out hiking, you bicycle, and you like to drive cars as a proper american.
now theres a very nonpatriotic american, not driving a car, but instead has a big property, and stays healthy same as you, but does not expose himself to traffic.
how DARE YOU MAKE HIM PAY FOR YOUR INCREASED RISK DUE TO TRAFFIC?
where the fuck do you draw the line?
this is why fatsoes can be covered by a fair system where EVERYONE INSURES EVERYONE, and you can be covered while doing your sports, and such.
Beyond that, there's the impact on my credit rating. A poor credit rating can even be cited as a reason for not hiring a person, making it doubly hard to overcome.
Oh, well - a cane is a reasonably cheap object. I could even make one myself for free, if needed.
But what's the actual out of pocket maximum, reasonably speaking? It should be listed on your plan. I mean, being out several thousand dollars is bad, but if we're talking about a catastrophic injury that could potentially cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's a pretty good outcome--one that shouldn't financially cripple anybody as long as they eventually get a job again. We'd all love to have zero-deductible free insurance, but it's just not mathematically possible.
The fact that you have to stick with your own insurance rather than dropping onto Medicaid is a function of your state's Medicaid rules. Being unemployed, you may well have qualified for Medicaid in a different state. If your state rejected the Medicaid expansion and that cost you the opportunity to get subsidized care, it would be good to have a chat with your state representatives, because they're sticking it to you intentionally in order to make the ACA look like it's not working.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You are about to be schooled becasue I am really tired of the meme the south has been trying to shove down everyone's throat.
Here are some excerpts from the Declaration of Causes of Secession. Its all about slavery.
The real question is, can you accept new factual data and change you view? That is something only a thinking person can accomplish, so I have my doubts.
Georgia:
" For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."
Mississippi: Note the sue of the term 'products'
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin"
South Carolina:
"But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."
texas
She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-w...
Those aren't even the most disturbing parts of the declarations of secession
Consider yourself schooled and I look forward to your apology and forming an actual fact based opinion.
Or digging you heals in and rebutting the the brilliant rebuttal of 'Nu-uh'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's all a big Pres Obozo lie.
News is out that HHS Field Marshal Kathleen Sebelius is TOAST as she has resigned effective immediately.
Big questions 1) Money. The back end of ObozoCare has never worked so where did the money go, i.e. in whose online checking account ?
2) Who will go to Federal Prison ? Those who signed up to ObozoCare plus the 200 million others who do not want to pay for some one else's
health care !
3) Does Sebelius ouster mean that Pres Obozo can dump Michelle and marry Sebelius before Obozo leaves office ?
Ha ha
People do not scale. What you can do in Singapore is NOT what you can do in the US.
The Progressives have successfully re-enacted the Tower of Babel.
Now let's just put a bow on this turd and get on with reform.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The great thing about this debate, is that at some point we will get a definitive answer. Probably not from the administration, they claim they don't keep track of those metrics. But we'll find out some how.
Remember the back half of the HealthCare.gov website that hadn't been started when the whole thing was supposed to be done, that's the part that keeps track of people's enrollments, movement from one plan to another, pays the government's part of their premium, etc. That is where the real numbers will come from.
The administration's "we don't keep track of those metrics" line may be code for "the backend of HealthCare.gov is working yet".
not just for most people, but also for the system; it encourages people to save money, and price-shop, and not get care they do not really need. The Republicans have REPEATEDLY offered that as a national plan only to see the Democrats refuse to vote on it and then run to the cameras to tell the American people that the GOP has no ideas and no plans and offered nothing. The GOP plans have almost always included HSA accounts that each individual owns, can roll-over from year-to-year, and can even pass-on the money from as inheritance for their survivors when they die. Some GOP plans for Health Savings Accounts even proposed having the government pre-load the account for any child when its born, so the average American (who rarely needs much care in the first half of life) would accrue a VERY large balance in their account by the time they got out of college. For all your day-to-day stuff like immunizations you pay out of pocket or from your HSA, and for really bad stuff like multiple busted bones, appendicitis, heart attacks, cancer, etc you use the high-deductible insurance (getting the "deductible" from your HSA).
Just look at the quality, convenience, and costs for things like LASIK to see what happens when government backs-off from controlling an area of medicine and leaves consumers and market forces to work their magic. Dentistry is another area where consumers shop, often with their own money rather than a 3rd party payer, and the quality and options have skyrocketed while competition has flourished. You can go to any reasonable-sized city in the US and get excellent dental care with little or no waiting at prices not much higher than a decade ago. Dentists are everywhere.
What we have now is a mess. It was a mess before Obamacare, and it's worse now. The government FORCES hospitals to treat everybody even if they cannot pay. The government promises to provide free or low-cost care for the poor (Medicaid) and low-cost care for the elderly (Medicare) but when the care is provided, the government short-changes the doctors and hospitals often paying them only half. As a result, all the unpaid and government-mandated costs get shifted onto the bills of the private "consumers" which causes the "sticker price" for health care to rise, and drives private insurance rates higher. Governments and big insurers then negotiate special rates (but the providers are not stupid, so thier "costs" rise and the sticker prices rise too). Rinse. Recycle. Repeat.
is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure.
Now that Obamacare IS the system and it IS the problem
So it is the system, even if nobody is using it?
The "best" solution would be lowering Medicare enrolement age to birth. It would require a re-work of some of the rules, but a single payer by the largest "insurance" group in the country would be better than current (and previous). Given the numbers I've seen, it'd be much cheaper and with better coverage.
Learn to love Alaska
It doesn't matter how many signed up for this. Answer this, how many times have you put an item in your online shopping cart and logged off without buying it?
Same with enrollment. Just because you sign up doesn't mean you're going to pay for it.
And don't forget that out of this 7 million, how many of these lost their insurance because of ObamaScare (over 1 million). And how many are getting it only because it's another nearly-free hand out by the government? And don't forget how many of these are inmates in our prison systems. And how many are those that died and are still signing up for it, along with voting.
And the beat goes on...
There's some reasons anonymous cowards don't put their name... they're usually trolls or lying sacks of shit. In the case of this article, it's both.... and all the other trolls come out to play.
/. i've been a reader here for ten years now (or so). You have a small faction of radical conservatives/anarchists/fascists who routinely derail discussions with their political bullshit, demean the people around them, and routinely try to censor posts through moderation abuse. I expect more of you than to have bullshit stories based on some fucking delusional dumbass unwillingness to live in reality, and hatred for their fellow humans... especially ones so blatant as this. Are you news for nerds, or some radical fascist conservative propaganda rag?
Republicans and teabaggers have waged a 5 year war against a program (the ACA) that is fundamentally conservative, having been written by a conservative think tank, and already implemented in one state as a conservative program. THE only reason they're against it now is because of Obama. It shows that on the street the people who are against Obamacare think that the ACA is much better (because they've fallen for all the outright lies by conservatives) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and http://pollingmatters.gallup.c...
Republicans have deluded people into believing their bullshit, and now when the program is actually living up to what was expected, the anonymous cowards who are so deluded into believing their own bullshith they can't understand why their lies and misbegotten fantasies aren't matching up with reality. Look on this thread. Al there are are a bunch of whiny little bitches who can't accept that the program is working. Why do all these people HATE their fellow countrymen so much? Have we bred so many sociopaths that this type of behavior is now considered normal?
When the hell did complete stupidity become something to strive for?
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I'm a software contractor, and insurance was too expensive for me (~1200/month to cover me and my spouse). I got on the exchanges and found a gold plan that was half the cost. So now I'm insured. I feel secure for the first time in years. I am using preventative care. I don't worry about what will happen if I change jobs.
On top of that, while I was uninsured, my daughters were on Medicare because their mother (my ex-spouse) has a relatively low income. So now they're covered and not leaning on the taxpayers for it.
I would rather have had single-payer, because I believe it would have driven down costs better. But I am overjoyed that this law happened.
It's crazy all the faux "news" types that are here. I put you in the same bucket of shit as the birthers and the chemtrail conspiracy theorists
You might be interested to know that in 1792, a Congress chock full of members of the founding generation, passed a law to implement the 2nd amendment, the first sentence of which reads "A well regulated militia being necessary to the national defense", mandating that every able bodied person (they meant men) to own or acquire a gun and provide powder and shot for it and to present it for inspection by militia leaders on demand. So, the founders, who had just gotten finished ratifying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, were quite OK with mandating that the citizens buy or do something that they might not ordinarily do or want to do. Given the requirements of defense in 1792 and the requirements to not, for instance, leave folks on the road after an automobile accident if they can't prove they can pay for treatment, I don't think the founders would disagree much with a mandate to have health health insurance one way or another.
In the rest of the world we debate how to keep the health care system going and everyone to get access. The complaints about the Affordable Healthcare Act fit a pattern.
Only in America do you have debates about
Healthcare - we should run the most expensive system or try to get costs inline.
Guns - everyone else controls them and less people die from them. The debate gets no where but you do kill 25,000 people a year with them.
Politics - it cost a billion dollars to run for president, millions to run for a federal or state office, but money doesn't pollute your political system. Its seems hard to find politicians that aren't on the take.
The economy - Thanks for the global financial crash of 2008, and not bringing one bank guy to justice for the trillions of dollars US citizens and the rest of the world lost.
So yes after the 2008 bullshit i got my bank to move all of my investments out of America. They have tripled since then and im about to retire early.
The rest of us are just going to sit back and watch you burn.
P.S. the news will never give you any real answers since they are obsessed with the false need to have both side of every argument, even if one side is stark raving nutz. But you can watch CNN and find out that the only thing happening in the world today is a plane crash in the Indian ocean. And bigfoot/aliens/ the muslin-terrorist-obama conspiracy is to blame for the plane crash.
It doesn't matter if the federal gov't is lying about the number of people enrolled. The federal gov't lies to its citizens all the time, for political perception management. And we've never seen Republicans lie about what the gov't has done and not done. /s
The key thing to realize is that the federal gov't is not going to be able lie to the actuaries who set policy premiums. And after business health insurance pools sets its rates later this year, and states/businesses opt in, or drop out, we'll know by 2015 if the ACA seems to be working, or was a bald faced lie.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Sorry to rain on your parade, but no way is the ACA a "long term" solution to the health insurance problem in the US. Politicians will be back to the drawing board at some point before 2030.
The other problem is that the ACA will only marginally control health care costs (according to the CBO). Overall, health care costs are going up, regardless. What the ACA really addresses is the health insurance collapse the country would have been headed towards if it didn't change the status quo in 2009.
But your perspective is much more accurate, compared to a Republican partisan. I hope there isn't huge bad news on this front before November, this year.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I really don't understand you guys. I really, REALLY don't. I mean, how can anyone believe that a for-profit healthcare can be both better, cheaper and more fair than something run by society? But as soon as anybody opens their mouth to challenge this view, they get 1) modded down, and 2) called 'socialist' or 'communists'. I can only assume that this is an expression of what goes for 'faith': the ability to reject clear facts in order to avoid having to change your mind.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett - there are certain people who one one hand wouldn't believe it if a high Priest told them the sky was blue, and could show them signed affidavits to that effect from any number of people of good standing, but on the other hand are perfectly willing to bet their lives on the word of a stranger they've met in the pub.
Now, to my mind, and you can call me socialist or worse - and I shall wear that title with pride - that mindset is exactly why America is no longer the greatest nation in the world. You seem to have closed you minds, so how could it be any other way?
The cost has doubled and tripled because gov't has been regulating all aspects of the medical industry before the PPACA, and its aided pharmaceutical companies and hospitals (and doctors) to gouge the crap out of customers. In every other developed country, they all get medical care, while sufficiently containing costs. The US has the most inefficient health care system in the world. That means we pay 2.5x more money for the same treatment as other countries. But its the greatest system in the world, if you're rich.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
What is this AHCA you're talking about? There's the PPACA, or ACA. Are you talking about your screwed up Florida system of health insurance?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
More than I have.
Sorry - I mean't under the Affordable Health Care Act. I figured /.'ers would be able to handle an acronym.
I got health care by going to a hospital. Medicare paid for it.
If the same thing happens to me today, you're right. I'll be on the hook for a $5,200 deductable plus a considerably higher balance of unpaid expenses (the "walletectomy" you described.
At the end of the day, all I know is that under the Affordable Health Care Act I have no access to medical care unless I'm prepared to accept and cover both a large deductable and a significant portion of the overall bill. I suppose that being between jobs right now, I shouldn't worry bills I can't pay and money I don't have, but I'm not planning to remain unemployed and broke forever.
NO! democrats lie, cheat and steal! Just look at the kennedy family! They probably had the seiu members sign up and not pay! Just like they are cooking the books by having criminals in jail and prison sign up and not pay!
Do I hear idiot, moron, socialist, pin-headed, liars, cheating, stealing, democrats among us?
A sudden increase in enrollments just before a deadline, that is just ridiculous. People don't wait for the last minute to do something, that is against human nature.
Obviously, Obama must be lying. You know how those people are.
>>If you truly cannot afford it, the federal credit kicks in to defray the monthly cost. We, the conservatives, don't want our too hard to earn dollars being taken from us by generational theft and GIVEN to those we would not choose to give to!! The ILLEGAL ALIENS!!! >And hospitals having to write off expenses from uninsured ER visits costs many billions of dollars each year -- which get passed on to the premiums of everyone who does pay for insurance. Isn't that a bit unfair? Yet another reason to STOP providing FREE care and FREE anything to ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!
So the question is, did the ACA screw you, or did your state screw you by rejecting the Medicaid provisions of the ACA that were designed to cover people with low income? It's quite possible that you should be on Medicaid right now according to the way the law was originally written. Your anger may well be misdirected.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I used to subscribe to IBD but stopped because their political news is all far right wing to the point of absurdity. It carries as much credibility as Fox News
Um... wow. Way to not understand the law and the insurance markets. I love it when people trot out the 300 million number because it shows just how obviously un/misinformed they are about the thing they are criticizing.
No, I'm genuinely curious about this. It may be more than you have, but is it a crazy unreasonable amount? Are we talking $10K? $100K? $1M? Because the plan you have should have a reasonable out-of-pocket maximum for a serious problem, and it should be far, far below the actual medical bill. For a Bronze Plan, your individual yearly out pocket maximum for a debilitating injury would be $6,350. That's bad news for anyone, but it's a lot better than being stuck with the bill for getting your hip or knee surgically reconstructed, as you problably know better than the rest of us.
The reason I'm pushing this is because every time somebody has become the "Joe the Plumber" face of getting screwed by the ACA in the national news, it has turned out that they actually had very good (often better than before the ACA!) options available to them. The only exception to that is people who fall below the income level for the normal ACA markets and who should have been covered by Medicaid but aren't because their states decided to screw them in order to score political points. It sounds like you're probably one of those people.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
As a personal side note, when did the GOP bring up a bill to force all insurance companies to offer medical coverage to *all*, and not refuse due to "pre-existing conditions"? Did I miss that?
Did they also have, in the same bill that I missed, where > 80% (or is it > 90%) of the insurance money was to be spent on healthcare, and 10% on "administrative costs" (including CEO's bonuses)?
mark, in the home of the cowards and suckers
None of my GP doctors charge less than $120 for an office visit. Then there is the cost of drugs and blood tests. I cut my own hair so I don't have to pay $12 to go to a hairdresser. The whole point of insurance is to distribute the cost of care amongst those subscribed so it was affordable to all. What it ended up doing was driving up the cost of care for everyone. Now we have government involved so the quality of care is going to go down while the cost is going to skyrocket. In the end, the only people who will end up benefiting are the politicians.
1. PPACA sets up a tax liability for all and a tax credit for those who gets health insurance.
2. Congress has the power to levy taxes (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 and amongst other places in Article I, Section 8 as well as the 16th Amendment)
3. Constitution does not forbid congress to pass legislation that enables citizens to receive tax credits. And the congress did that by the creation of an agency to help people get health insurance. "Federal and State Exchanges"
4. Therefore, PPACA is well within the power of congress according to the constitution.
The Supreme Court found this to be the case so if you think it's unconstitutional, you'll have to take it up with the Supreme Court. Although, they are highly unlikely to want to hear the case again.
You may think Obamacare is bad, in reality, insurance premiums are high because hospitals have to make up for its huge amounts of bad debt from treating people without insurance and can't play for their treatment. And since hospitals can't refuse emergency room patients, they take a huge loss. Not to mention, it clogs up the Emergency Room so that someone who absolutely needs Emergency Care may not receive it in time. To make up for that, the hospitals charge insurers a huge amount and provides really bad service. The wait time at certain hospital ERs are 4 to 6 hours. To fix the problem. you need to keep people out of the ER, make hospitals charge less.
The PPACA attempts to do that by: 1. Encouraging people to get insurance. It's ok if you don't, you'll just have to pay some more taxes.
2. If you have insurance, you go get seen by a doctor before you have to go to the ER. This reduces the stress on ER and ensures that the hospital's bad debt is reduced.
3. Hospitals are put on a new plan to get paid. Instead of a set fee for providing a service, they are now paid to manage the health of an individual. Before the incentive was to do as many tests and treatments with the patient as possible since the government paid up for each one. Now the hospital is paid a set fee to provide care towards 1 patient per month at a certain standard of care. If they do too many tests, that will eat into their margins. If they do too few tests and the patient gets really sick, then they fail the quality of care test and they get penalized on the payment. Either way, the hospitals will be incentivized to provide good quality of care without going overboard. And this will reduce the cost of care overall, which will in turn reduce healthcare insurance premiums.
Full disclosure: I work for a major pharmaceutical company on the impact of PPACA on their ability to access physicians and sell their products.
Apparently you can't read to the next sentence?
In 2-3 years the number uninsured will drop much farther.
Ya, no shit. Because the fine will go up more people will be compelled to buy the insurance. Still doesn't mean it is "affordable" or sustainable. This is a band-aid solution to prop up the health insurance system with more unwilling participants.
"In the U.S., the uninsured rate dipped to 15.6% in the first quarter of 2014, a 1.5-percentage-point decline from the fourth quarter of 2013. The uninsured rate is now at the lowest level recorded since late 2008." Yippie we are almost back to 2008!
A single payer healthcare system does not equal zero competition. Medicare is single payer and there are many medical providers competing for Medicare customers, as evidenced by the plethora of ads during the enrollment period at years end. Single provider systems are (close to) zero competition. The VA system is an example of this
What I can't believe is the deafening silence about the fundamental legal ethics issue inherent to ObamaCare.
Are people so used to abusive legal practices, in our "Land of the Lawsuit" that they think that nothing can be done about them?
A right to ethical practice of law certainly arises under the 9th Amendment, as a right retained by the people. Even the appearance of ethical conflict of interest must be avoided whenever possible.
If the federal government has some role in health care, does it really need a law of over two thousand pages to accomplish that role?
Shouldn't a law of, say, ten or twenty pages suffice? Something that ordinary people can read and understand.
For the legal professionals in Congress (both elected and staff), and the legal professional in the Executive Office, and the legal professionals in the judiciary, all to combine together to write, approve, and uphold a law of this enormous size and complexity goes far beyond any reasonable exercise of government authority.
It can only be presumed that the law was padded out to create future demand for the legal professionals writing it. Doubtless they will have all kinds of consulting opportunities down the road. Perhaps the Bar associations made some "campaign contributions" as well, or promised other forms of support to various key participants, to make this law happen.
The US legal profession clearly understands basic economics: create an artificial demand for the services of a profession, and the members of that profession can demand more for their services.
This isn't just a problem with health care: every time the legal profession pulls one of these scams and adds lots of unnecessary complexity to the legal system, it makes it that much harder to fight this kind of thing down the road. Further, every time we let the government getting away with violating rights reasonably asserted under the 9th Amendment, it makes it that much harder to assert rights under that amendment in the future (this creates a contradiction in the legal system, which in turn helps create artificial demand for the services of legal professionals, since contradictions by their very nature make things harder to understand).
Given that the Obamacare law clearly violates the right to ethical practice of law, it violates the Bill of Rights (and every legal professional involved in implementing it violated their oath to uphold that Bill of Rights). The law needs to be pared down to a reasonable size, without propaganda, and clearly written to allow the typical educated adult to understand it.
The principle that the government that governs best, governs least is not just about government, it's also a fundamental to ethical practice of law.
You can choose not to buy health insurance under Obamacare. If you make this choice you will pay more in taxes (the individual mandate tax). Just like if you choose not to buy a house, you will pay more in taxes (no mortgage interest deduction).
that's what's really at issue here.
There is no need for obamacare, there is no need for 80% of the 'health care crisis" bullshit.
The Only Reason we have a 'healthcare crisis" is because of agencies like the FDA that allow public poisoning and the 'modern' medical information that's killing people.
Get smart, stay away from 'Doctors's seek out Naturapaths for true health.
The population of the US is around 313 million. Why is it so hard to believe that 7 million signed up? Have people been lying about not having health insurance all this time? Yes, it was "odd" that the number spiked at the "last minute", but don't you think the people who couldn't access the site were waiting...trying...and then signed up when the site finally got fixed? Common sense.