Slashdot Mirror
Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Healthcare.gov Rollout
An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight "damning emails" that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website.
The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, "Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout," the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. "Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks," the report says. "There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view."
Writes the submitter: "The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence."
Someone didn't do their job.
But it really isn't a surprise those responsible are now in CYA and finger pointing mode.
If you think it's limited to government, you must be very, very young.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Exactly. BUT I will say with a company a person can quit or stop purchasing the companies products. Government? Not so much.
I feel sorry for Rollo. He seems to get all the blame ever since he stated working for that website project.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Making the ACA website work is not insanely difficult if given enough time and money. The more difficult part is getting continuous support from the House, Senate and Presidency. So, yes, the website PR is more important than the actual website, in particular for the 2014 senate elections. If the Republicans get enough of the Senate, all that work will be for nothing.
US politics at its finest. We select the most popular people around to lead, and then act surprised when it turns out that they're not necessarily the best leaders...
There is no failure to see here - move (on) along - the websites have brilliantly served their purposes - they've managed to transfer $5 billion so far from taxpayers to the carefully selected chosen ones - who will carefully contribute to the next group of chosen ones. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...
I have not read the report but won't defend the ObamaCare websites. The DC one is beyond awful. For the record, I favor a single-payer system so we wouldn't need all these websites to sign up.
As former congressional staff and longtime DC guy, I urge everyone to be skeptical of anything issued by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Led by Chairman Issa, the Committee issues deliberately deceptive reports to grab a headline. They've doctored emails, etc. It used to be a good committee and probably will be again someday. For the record, I'm a political independent fed up with both parties.
$197 billion for a web site? "Really?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
to Islamization of America
I don't see how much has happened as far as Islamization of America. Islam is still a super-small minority in America, right? I'd bet the Hindu population is growing faster, and even that's small.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So what you're saying is that: 1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context. 2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground. I see.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yup, just no clue. I mean, in 2014 alone twelve million Americans who did not previously have health insurance were covered, adding to the estimated 20 million who have obtained some form of insurance benefit and access to health care since the law took effect in 2011. Plus pre-existing condition coverage, lowering overall national spending on health, etc. Horrible, horrible stuff.
In your foaming response, please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act. Discuss the 12 million previously uninsured Americans who were able to obtain health insurance and health care in 2014 and what you believe should happen to them. If you were extended on your parents' plan for at least a year post-2011 state how many additional years on your parents' plan you used. If you have corporate health insurance, describe exactly how the ACA affected your coverage. If your response is that premiums went up, you had to change doctors, etc list how many times that happened to you in the 10 years prior to the ACA being passed.
sPh
1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context.
That is correct. The administration did not force anybody to use the website at all during the period it was non-functional. There were alternative ways of signing up, and the enrollment periods were extended to allow time to use the system once it was in better shape.
2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground.
I'm sure that not all security concerns have been addressed. I'm sure that 20 years from now they won't be addressed. In fact, I doubt there is a single government or corporate website functioning anywhere where all security concerns are addressed.
I think the issue here is unrealistic expectations. This is an incredibly large undertaking, and problems with large undertakings are fairly common.
If it were up to me I'd greatly simplify the whole mess which would make rollout much less complex. I'd start by simplifying medicare so that there is just one deductible, coinsurance rate, and out of pocket limit for everything. Then I'd just start ratcheting down the eligibility age a few years at a time until everybody is eligible from birth. No new systems to deal with, etc. Then I'd start fixing the provisioning of healthcare services (start opening public providers and gradually transition the system to one where the coverage network is government-run). But, the various vested interests don't want to buy into something like that, so we end up with the affordable care act instead of a system like one of those that has already been tried and tested elsewhere.
To be fair... I have worked on many software projects in my life and have also worked with government software projects. A simple fact of life is that government funded software projects are only given to blood sucking leeches that intentionally underbid and lie their asses off about delivery schedules. Legitimate software houses who actually can plan projects and meet schedules are never evaluated.
From what I can tell, the site is up and running "mostly" only a year late and not nearly as over budget as I expected. What do you expect from a project initiated by uneducated people like politicians and sales people. They of course ask "computer experts" for help, but let's be honest... Politicians wouldn't know a qualified computer programmer from a Barbie doll.
I support ObamaCare aka ACA on a federal level simply because it requires one big ass database system to be made by one company with a whole nation of people to kick the crap out of the company making it. And let's be honest... Whether the system is for all of America or just a state, the system is almost the same.
Imagine if a state like Mississippi or Oklahoma had to get a system made? They'd hire a guy named Jom Bob from church to do it. They'd piss away the entire budget before they even found Jim Bob. They'd run it on index cards and toilet paper in type writers with no correction ink.
Is there anyone dumb enough on Slashdot to think :
A) a government sponsored software project can be done without corruption, delays and major budget problems?
B) all 50 states in America could actually manage to get a system up and running at a state level... Why not ask Florida about their prepaid college project and how bad that for screwed up. I worked at the company writing that one and that project was doomed to fail before it even started. They built the damn thing on Tandem computers with Thomas Conrad ArcNet and had a total of one guy who even knew how to boot the machine.
This was not an incredibly large undertaking. The functionality is not complex. Nothing about it is complex or incredible large.
It has to:
1. Allow you to create an account;
2. Verify your identify;
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
4. Let you select one;
5. Help you pay for it.
In its basic form, this is something that a group of college kids could whip up in a week or so.
The only thing even approaching complex is scaling to handle a ton of load during the registration periods - and those are problems that have been solved at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and any other high traffic site.
Maybe you like this health care system, and that's okay. We can disagree on that point. What I cannot allow is for you to tell me that this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
Love sees no species.
In my city, one company owes 80% of the hospitals and doctors. The other 20% are owned by another company. The 80% company is now not letting the 20% insurance plans to use their facilities, to drive that one out of town. So in fact, if you want good health care choices, you have no real choice which insurance plan you use.
Also, 30% of the city has an ISP choice between fiber and cable; the rest has DSL or cable. Get a bit outside of town and DSL goes away. So there is almost no choice in ISPs, and when they have horrible policies they don't care at all what I say.
On the other hand, with government I can vote to change the people and policies. It's not perfect, and it doesn't always work (especially when most people whine about the govt but don't vote), but it often does work. We've gotten rid of a senator who ran on religious bigotry and hatred, for example.
There are hundreds of EDI-type transactions behind every one of those "simple" actions. Plus verification, cross-matching with multiple insurance carriers (each with their own system), testing all the interconnections. Just to scratch the surface.
sPh
You're a fucking socialist. Don't doctor your party affiliation and say your "independent"
How sad to be inoculated like this, locked inside your own brain, unable to accept that maybe your side might be the ones who are evil from time to time. It's an evidence-proof worldview, and it's depressingly popular.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A site intended to serve up to 30 million people execute complex financial changes in a 90-day window was three months late, went live at ~80% capability, and will probably be close to 95% capability at the beginning of its second year of operation is a "disaster"? Perhaps you don't remember the early days of, say, Amazon?
sPh
Cover up, incompetence, and Government. Why am I not surprised at all.
and somehow twist it to interpret it as making the claim that it's limited to government?
You must be very very dumb.
Liberty.
More people would have joined up
if they got free Rollo chocolates
In a similar way, around here they are trying to promote the annual flu shot.
You get a free Klondike Bar with your flu shot.
I think a Klondike bar is something that used to be called an "Eskimo Pie" until some PC folks thought the Inuit tribe would be upset.
Pretty sure it's from the non-partisan GAO, not the "Republican house". Anyhow, why would the source matter, what matters is if it is true or not. It seems that's not something you even considered.
Good thing the health care fairy provided all that coverage for free, or else we'd have to talk about the costs of all that new coverage, which you conveniently ignored.
> BTW, this is emblematic of the Obama administration
It's emblematic of EVERY administration going back thousands of years. Right wing present that this is something new but their world view seems to be completely uninfluenced by an appreciation of human nature or history.
For example:
Augustus was a shrewd and effective manager of his own public image. Itâ(TM)s now easy to take for granted that images of political leaders decorate our currency â" Augustus was among the first rulers to widely disseminate images of his own face on coins.
Itâ(TM)s hard to imagine even the most ardent Democrats supporting the literal deification of Barack Obama or erecting small shrines in his honor throughout Washington DC. By contrast, after Julius Caesar was posthumously declared a god, Augustus, as his adopted son, became known as the son of god. Along with the other gods, he received dedications at small crossroads shrines throughout Rome.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books...
Democrats helped the House, the Senate, for years under Obama - what is your excuses for those years?
The GOP is hindering the bankrupting and distraction of civil rights in America... Yes they are. They tried to block Obamacare, but failed to by one vote. If only Ted, (A blond in every pond) Kennedy had died a little bit earlier, it would have never seen the light of day.
It's the oppositions job to hinder a radical partisan agenda. Obamacare didn't get a single GOP vote. If the GOP were to shove through unpopular legislation without 'bi-partisan support', they would be condemned. Your cognitive bias is showing.
Someone who can blame Obamacare on Republicans is someone who can blame anything on them.
I'm sure Republicans are responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened. Like say the Black Death, Microsoft Bob, and Brittany Spears.
The Roman government (both Republic and Empire) built roads, aqueducts, and sewers some of which are still in use today 2000 years later. But you know, governments never accomplish anything.
sPh
If you were slightly more perceptive, you'd know that it was implied.
If you're as young as s/he, perhaps there's hope yet.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
There seems to be cities in which are somewhat majority muslim. Dearborn Michigan I think is one of them. Youtube that and you will see a lot of videos posted by people protesting it.
But I think the original poster is thinking of the mosque that the boston bombers attended has produced many radicalized muslims and keeps being investigated but ignored by the FBI.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro...
The Affordable Care Act is working extremely well, with 12 million Americans who previously had essentially no access to health care having been covered this year alone, so I'm not sure where "blame" comes from in your post. Projection perhaps? The ACA's basic design was the Heritage Foundation plan of 1993 which was claimed at that time by Republicans to be a 'free market-based' alternative to the Clinton health care reform proposals. Between 1993 and 2014 it suddenly stopped being free-market? Huh.
sPh
Let's assume that 12 million estimate is correct, that due to Obamacare, 12 million people who weren't insured before are now insured. Of course, other people give different estimates, but let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
The net cost of Obamacare to the federal taxpayers is $1.3 trillion (CBO). $1.3 trillion / 12 million people covered = $11.3 million per person.
I don't think we got a good deal.
The $11 million per person covered is of course just the direct cost to the federal government. In 2013, we saw the following rate increases due to Obamacare:
Connecticut: 37% average rate increase
Florida: 42% average rate increase
Illinois: 33% average rate increase
Michigan: 39% average rate increase
Minnesota: 35% average rate increase
The trend accelerates in 2014:
Delaware 100%
New Hampshire 90%
Indiana 54%
California 53%
Connecticut 45%
Michigan 36%
Florida 37%
Georgia 29%
Kentucky 29%
Pennsylvania 28%
So there's another trillion dollars it cost average Americans, in the form of much higher premiums. A couple TRILLION dollars to (maybe) cover $12 million people. At a cost of around $20 million per person covered, I don't think I'd trumpet that as a victory if I were a Democrat. (And in fact Democrat most candidates are distancing themselves from the mess.)
My complaint? My family health cost has tripled. That's 3 times what it did cost. Oh yeah, the level of service we get for that extra is not only missing but the quality has gone down dramatically. I suppose you cold say my problem is with the Education Department, somehow they forgot to teach people about the failures, corruption and down right misery of socialism.
Umm.. The numbers are not even close to 12 million.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/th...
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
Obamacare seems to have only helped a little under 3% of the people who did not have coverage previously. Even now, there are still problems with it as one of the largest insurance companies in Minnesota is pulling out of the exchange.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
Now before you get all pissy, this isn't a swipe at obamacare, it's the facts surrounding it that you seem to have missed and evidence of the GP's statement that "they simply do not have any clue to anything that they are involved with". Evidently, neither do you unless you were listening to them.
My mother's deductibles wouldn't change if she switched to one of the 'ObamaCare' plans. They're already in the triple or quadruple digits (depending on what services she's needing.) It's actually so bad that both my parents have decided to sit on their hands until their SSI/Medicare kicks in within the next year or two. And this is coming from people who had 150/mo and no more than 300 dollar deductibles at the turn of the millenium. THAT is how fucked up the current medical situation is in the US.
Their provider was Kaiser btw.
This is par for the course of many software projects I have been on in the private sector. SSDE, Same *&^% Different Employer.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
2. Verify your identify;
And how do you propose to do that?
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
Unless the list is 100% based on geography, this is not a straightforward problem. Also, where does this list come from? What data describes a plan for comparison purposes?
5. Help you pay for it.
How much does it cost? I imagine that has a bunch of rules behind it.
The problem is that the website itself could be relatively simple, but there are layers and layers of systems behind it, and those cost a lot more to build.
Yeah the /. department the article is filed under immediately tipped me off to the bias in the article.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The Dems only held the House 2 of the past 6 years. Possibly longer.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's hard to imagine even the most ardent Democrats supporting the literal deification of Barack Obama or erecting small shrines in his honor throughout Washington DC. By contrast, after Julius Caesar was posthumously declared a god, Augustus, as his adopted son, became known as the son of god. Along with the other gods, he received dedications at small crossroads shrines throughout Rome.
What about Ronald Reagan? He was a God, right?
http://www.ronaldreaganlegacyp...
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was started in 1997 by Grover G. Norquist.
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is committed to preserving the legacy of one of America’s greatest presidents throughout the nation and abroad.
One of the ways we work to further the legacy of Reagan is by asking the governor of every state in the nation to make a proclamation declaring February 6th, "Ronald Reagan Day." An average of 30 governors a year over the last few years have made such a proclamation, choosing to honor character over partisanship.
In addition to ensuring that every February 6th is known as “Ronald Reagan Day,” we work to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after Ronald Wilson Reagan. We continue compiling a list of Reagan dedications that remind American society of the life and legacy of President Reagan. Each one of these dedications serve as a teaching moment for those who were not yet alive during his presidency or to grant those who remember him with the opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments. Whether it be the Ronald Reagan Parkway in Indianapolis, IN or Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, VA; each and every dedication will serve as a teaching moment for generations to come. Our goal is to eventually see a statue, park, or road named after Reagan in all 3,140 counties in the United States. The first project that RRLP worked to name after Ronald Reagan was National Airport, in 1998 renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.
Google broken for you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
http://council.brandeis.edu/
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo...
We don't care about the millions of people who's coverage premiums tripled so that drug addicted prostitute with a pre-existing STD could get coverage. The fact that next year half of those people will BE drug addicted prostitutes just means libs will have more constituents.
Politics? Darn, I should have read the article - I thought this was about http://obamacare.com/
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/defau...
Forbes? Really? REALLY?
sPh
You really don't believe me? Wow.
Pittsburgh. UPMC has decided that Highmark (and thus all Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurers) can no longer use their facilities because Highmark is threatening UPMC's near-monopoly status in Western PA. UPMC is trying to crush all competition in this area.
If you think being able to vote for the people and policies in government is worthwhile, why does your city have the problems you have described?
So you dislike the government but believe that it should be used to solve every company-vs-company dispute? Huh. No, the local government is finally trying to clean the mess up but they can't really do much to interfere with private contracts between companies. Turns out that anti-competitive behavior is mostly legal, and the state and federal governments haven't gotten involved.
These problems exist because being anti-competitive is a good way to make money. Seriously, you are blaming a company-vs-company problem on the government... how does that make any sense? If I get mugged, I should blame the police and not blame the mugger?
hatchet job using cherry picked emails to smear political opponents over now solved problems. nothing to see here, move along.
So you are ALSO saying that the information presented is incorrect ... that the people at HHS had NO idea that the site wasn't full of holes in terms of security and functionality. That the "cherry-picked" emails that show the administration knew the site was a train wreck are referring to something else, because the site wasn't a train wreck when it went live. Right? I see. So if that's incorrect, then what you're saying is that the administration did NOT know that the site was a train wreck. Which makes them stupefyingly incompetent.
So your idea of "nothing to see here" is either:
1) The administration knew exactly what a train wreck the thing was, but lied about it. Or...
2) The administration, at every level, was so foolish and incompetent that it had no idea whether or not the system was useless, and in lacking any sort of knowledge one way or the other, just assumed it was fine.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Politics? Darn, I should have read the article - I thought this was about http://obamacare.com/
My point is that democracy doesn't put competent people in charge most of the time. That's just the nature of the beast.
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare? Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either. The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
I just can't imagine the level of cognitive dissonance involved in Mr. Anti-Government Norquist leading a campaign to have government-built and operated facilities throughout the land named after St. Ronald Reagan.
this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
It depends on what the purpose of the website was. If the purpose was to create employment for contractors, and make the health insurance programme look bad, then the requirements would need to be more complex.
Why do your figures leave out the increases before the ACA was passed?
You are welcome on my lawn.
So there's another trillion dollars it cost average Americans, in the form of much higher premiums. A couple TRILLION dollars to (maybe) cover $12 million people. At a cost of around $20 million per person covered, I don't think I'd trumpet that as a victory if I were a Democrat. (And in fact Democrat most candidates are distancing themselves from the mess.)
Your math doesn't work out. Care to show your work?
And nobody liked Obamacare. That is why it was able to be made into a law. The US political system isn't capable of enacting solutions that actually work.
What solution that provides universal coverage would you advocate? Or, are you more in favor of a system where you generally do well if your parents did well?
That's not true. We were already paying for those people, it's just that we were paying for them by way of charity care. So, they'd be using the very expensive ER visits rather than the much less expensive office visits.
And BTW, I was uninsurable in most states. I'm not really that sick, but I have enough minor dings that the insurance companies wouldn't provide coverage. You might want to do some actual research about this before you make up such outrageous claims. The list of people that were uninsurable includes mostly people that you'd never think were uninsurable. Sure, there are drug addicted prostitutes, but they're hardly representative of the group in general.
That's a fundamental characteristic of all human endeavors in which diverse viewpoints are summarized into (conceptually) binary action choices. People disagree on stuff. We need to take actions in some areas where we disagree. "Everyone equally unhappy" is just the other half of the Pareto walnut.
sPh
I just want to point out that all of your citations are from before the enrollment deadline. I think your latest post was from April.
How about something a little more recent?
In fact, if you follow the website attacks on Obamacare based on the number of people enrolled, you will find a deluge of articles leading up to April of 2014 and then...silence. You'll still find other attacks, but none based on the number of newly enrolled. Then, in May, you see a lot of articles saying, "Well, OK, a lot of people enrolled, but how many actually paid?". And then, based on insurance company data, it turned out that the people signing up for exchanges actually paid at a higher rate than the general population signing up for health insurance.
There are good reasons to criticize the ACA, but the number of people who have gotten coverage for the first time because of the law is not one of them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You haven't worked much as a developer. Having built systems used by tens of millions of users I guarantee you that every time Amazon rolls out an update to the store or cloud software there's an ops person biting their nails hoping the system doesn't die. When Google released Gmail they only allowed each user to invite a certain number of friends in order to slowly ramp up the system. Writing any software that is made to have millions of users on day one is really fucking hard.
On top of that steps 2 and 3 require interacting with external systems who may also not be able to handle load well, and probably use a combination of buggy and poorly documented interfaces, and step 5 requires reading a bill so long that the people who voted for it didn't bother to read it. You're grossly trivializing the problem.
Unless you happen to want to connect to the Internet and you hate the one company in your location that offers broadband connectivity. Oligopolies are the order of the day.
You are welcome on my lawn.
shocked that there's incompetence and coverup in government run bussiness.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
They are all from april 3 or later. The only deadline they were before is the unofficial expansion Obama gave to april 15 because of the failures in the rollout.
Here is something a little more recent but the open enrollment window is lapsed so your emphasis of more recent is a but misleading.
That is likely because the open enrollment window closed officially march 31 but was extended to april 15 or something like that for people who started to enroll but didn't finish on time because of the roll-out problems. I would assume the reason for a rash of articles discussing the coverage numbers would be relevant more around the time the enrollment window ended and not 5 months later when you have to either lose coverage otherwise obtained or turn a certain age requiring coverage.
Yes, it is funny how people progress their questioning along the time lines of something in order to reflect the current timeline and complaints get brought up as they appear in the time lines. Go figure.
Umm.. I never criticized the PPACA in these posts. I corrected a deluded person who didn't buy into reality. The numbers themselves seems to be what you think is criticism. I seriously think that any other president than Obama, and this entire situation would have had 10 times better of an outcome.
vs.
In standard usage, "paying for X" means "paying in full" (try telling your mortgage company that you are "paying your monthly payment" when you are only paying 50% of the required payment and see if the agree with your assessment that you are "paying your monthly payment").
People do love free stuff of course and most don't care if some other person is forced to pay for what they get for free. We could, for example, increase homeownership (something that some think is good) simply by buying a house for everyone and only making them pay 20% (or whatever) of their income on mortgage, insurance and taxes while the American taxpayers pick up the remainder.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I don't know what the AC's situation is, but some plans that were once available are not. Some people can afford to have what Obama considered "junk plans" but can no longer get them and must pay higher rates for plans they don't want or including coverage for events that can't happen to them. What does a woman who has had her tubes tied (and would happily have an abortion if somehow the operation wasn't really successful) or a post-menopausal woman want with coverage for pregnancy?
It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg? No, because you can easily absorb the cost of replacing it OR, perhaps, you only expect to be using it a few weeks by which time you are pretty sure you will accidentally leave it in a rental car or at a Starbucks by accident so you just don need long term protection.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
What I find ironic is that supposedly one big reason for Obama's electoral success was due to his team's deep understanding of technology, the internet, and social media compared to Republicans and yet they couldn't get a website running properly nor did they have the smarts to hire an industry leader to develop it.
And that is simply a problem with the law or hospitals not being willing to say "no". When someone presents with the types of problems that result in "very expensive ER visits rather than the much less expensive office visits", the ER should simply tell them to leave (and have them arrested for trespassing if they refuse) because they are not emergencies - if I call 911 because I want a pizza, they won't deliver it and I may well get in trouble if I keep calling with that request.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Governments can accomplish a lot.
That's not the point here. It's a fact that governments always do their best to cover up their mistakes and self-aggrandize.
Holding up whatever public administration is in place at the current time in scorn for doing that is political gamesmanship at best, and demagoguery at worst.
It's inherent in the system (cf Monty Python).
Think back to High School.
Remember the people who were popular?
What did you think about them?
Yep, that's what we have now.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ronald Reagan would not be the first President to be deified.
Look at the monuments in Washington DC to various Presidents. Washington (Obelisk), Jefferson (Pantheon), Lincoln (Parthenon).
All of these are designs used by previous cultures in the worship of their Gods.
We just don't call it that because most of our citizens are nominally monotheistic.
Is 12 million the number this week? You can never tell. It goes up and down willy nilly depending on the talking head.
I bet the reality is they have NO CLUE how many people signed up, paid, or used it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Dearborn is supposedly the most Arab and muslim 'city' in the US (pop 100k, not much of a city). It's only 40% arab, and some percent of that group are Lebanese Christians (the earliest Arab immigrants to the area). Suppose there are some non-arab muslims though. I can't seem to find decent religious demographics in a quick search.
Canada has been sending a few anglo islam converts to go die in arabia lately. I have no idea what would inspire someone who grew up in Calgary or Winnipeg and got a proper first world education to go martyr themselves for Allah in the third world, but nonetheless it does happen on occasion. The amount is so minuscule it's lost in the noise though.
I suppose the same deal happens in the US on occasion.
Sent from my PDP-11
My numbers don't work. Now I'm not sure how I got that number. Perhaps I should use paper and pencil when calculating Obama-sized costs.
I'm going to show my work like this is fourth grade, so if I blew it again someone can easily point it out.
Direct federal cost: 1 300 000 000 000
people covered: 12 000 000
(roughly double the cost once you include premium increases, but let's start with just the cost we'll pay as federal taxes).
Cost:
1 300 000 000 000
_______________
12 000 000
Start dropping zeroes from both to get reasonable sized numbers for numerator and denominator:
1 300 000 000 000 dollars to cover
_______________
12 000 000 people
1 300 000 000 dollars to cover
___________
12 000
1 300 000 dollars to cover
________
12 people
108 333 dollars to cover
______
1 person
With premium increases, maybe $200,000 per person. So that's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as I had first calculated.
Let's assume
Instead of your napkin calculations, maybe you should look for legitimate estimates.
Here's the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45231
If you dig around some more, you'll find plenty of other people who have actually run the numbers and explained their forecasts.
In 2013, we saw the following rate increases due to Obamacare:
And if the insurance company doesn't spend 80% or 85% of those premiums on healthcare, they have to cut a check and return the excess to their customers.
Thanks Obama!
Also, here's a fact check for your numbers: http://www.factcheck.org/2014/04/how-not-to-use-a-survey/
There's a link to the original survey in there.
Four of fifty states had a sample size of 8 or greater.
The other 46 states had sample sizes of 6 or less.
There's either fuck all for competition in 46/50 states,
or maybe the numbers you quoted aren't very useful for drawing conclusions.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just the fact that your ridiculously stupid comment is getting upvotes only goes to prove what a shithole slashdot has become over the years.
Any halfwit technically oriented person shouldn't take more that 5 seconds to realize there is no fucking way that Obamacare could cost $11.3 million a person. $11.3 million would be more than enough to give someone not just health care, but housing, food and an upper middle class lifestyle for their entire life, cradle to grave, with money left over to spare for bureaucracy. It's a far far greater number than our per capita debt. Could that possibly be true? No. Think about the massive absurdity of such numbers before you go throwing them around. Don't try to do back-of-the-envelope calculations if you have no fucking ability to distinguish basic orders of magnitude. Or if you're going to let your right-wing bias blind you to the obvious.
Google would tell you in a second that $1.3 trillion / 12 million = $109,000. Yeah that's still a large number, but you see how that's at least in the ballpark of common sense? Yes, you see how you got schooled in elementary arithmetic by an anonymous coward?
Government makes a mess of a program
Government make s a website that touts the success of that program.
Do you see where I'm going here?
After all the lies (go ahead...deny they told us lies) do you really have faith that the stuff they are telling you now is true?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
While this administration has no innocence, this behavior is not new or unique. In my opinion this administration may be more blatant, but not necessarily worse about foreign policy than previous administrations.
This is the hegelian dialectic in action. People behind the scenes own the candidates placed on the ballots, Americans have not had a real choice in politicians for decades (Ross Perot was the last and a fluke).
Make no mistake, this administration knows what they are doing with all of these foreign policy decisions. Just like Bush knew damn well what he was doing. The "dumb guy" routine should be obvious by this point, but people still fall for it. Politicians are not stupid, they have the best educations money can buy and have massive think tanks helping them with policies. One person does not generate the policies, they just push them along. In other words, even if GW was not the brightest bulb in the box he did not create things like the Patriot act or war policy for the Middle East. He just executed them.
The Middle East has been intentionally destabilized. I'm sure that you have heard the phrase "Ordo ab chao", and the only way to reorder things is to make it a chaotic mess.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They have repaved the road in front of my subdivision 3 fucking times in the last ten years.
The water Department has torn up the street in front of my house twice trying to fix a water leak.
Every time there is a thunderstorm the power goes out.
Where is Augustus when you need him?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I used the CBO estimate of $1.3 trillion. You linked to their revised estimate of $1.38 trillion. Yes, you're right, it'll be 6% more expensive than the estimate I used. :rolleyes:
I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.
In my home town, the one hospital demanded that another not be opened up in the townships surrounding it citing they would be unable to maintain a profit and have to close down. The second hospital was to be placed near a busy highway about 25 minutes from the original hospital and the through was that it could shave 20 minutes off the transport time and save lives.
Anyways, the other hospital was defeated and the zoning board wouldn't let them build. So the local hospital decided it needed to expand and promptly purchased all the property on the block and started building on to the hospital. The issue about the travel time came up again and another hospital from out of town wanted to open one. Well, the main hospital kicked up a storm again until the outside hospital agreed to only be an emergency room and outpatient surgery hospital and somehow, the two ended up going in as partners. But they located it a little further out but still near the busy highway so transport is still quicker from the highway but you are basically looking at another 30 minutes or so if you drive by the old hospital in order to go to the new one.
This was about 15 years ago. People in government has changed since then but I think this type of protectionism will still happen today if someone wanted to open another hospital. The new one had been expanded as part of the old one since it's inception.
I'll support a small shrine to Obama just as soon as he is dead, like Reagan.
Can we start next week?
Hey, remember the whole "War on Women" bit? That was all Darrell Issa's fault, the chairman of that committee. He's the richest member of the house, and he is interested in finger-pointing because he's operating as a political animal.
Why does slashdot listen to these blowhards? It's a web site, and it was done badly, and that's the tech discussion. Eight damning emails a politician uses to say that people care about the press coverage (in order to get those politicians their own press coverage) is not worth anyone's time.
ERs generally cannot turn away emergency patients or deny them care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Even if it appears that they have shown up in a non-emergency state, they still have to be assessed, and they are sometimes turned away for minor things, or at least given prescriptions that they have to pay for and which the hospital is not required to provide. The goal was to combat patient dumping that hospitals were doing for patients that couldn't pay even though they had been severely wounded or were in the midst of labor.
The issue the AC was talking about it a bit different, though. People with insurance (or some other means to pay) can generally go to a doctor when symptoms start to arise instead of only going to the ER when it becomes an emergency situation. This isn't someone who has a sore throat for a few days, but people who have cancer or other illnesses, and by the time the ER becomes a viable option, they're often too far along to treat, and can't pay for the emergency care they do get to stabilize them, which can require ICU or CCU. That cost then gets absorbed by the hospital and passed on to everyone else instead of a much lower cost being covered earlier on when early access might have saved the patient at lower cost.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If a hospital ever turns someone away for what is perceived to be a non-emergency, and then that person ends up having complications from said issue and loses life or limb, you can bet that someone is going to own their ass in a lawsuit. The alternative is for the hospital to do enough of an evaluation to make an adequate diagnosis, by which point, they might as well just complete the treatment and evaluation.
But undoubtedly not bigger than Beyonce. Nothing is.
~theCzar
The NBC News article says that 5 million people had insurance who did not have it before. If that's only 3% of the people who didn't have insurance, it would require that approximately 166 million people--half of the country--not have insurance before.
What happened was there was a drop in the uninsured rate of about 3% from around 15% to around 12%. That's about 20% of the people who did not have insurance before now having it. As the penalties go up, the uninsured rate is expected to go down even further.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Fingerpointing is more important than solutions. This is a common and deep-rooted problem in politics, one that crosses party lines without pause. We have to stop this incompetence... What's the best way to accomplish this? I know! Let's start bickering about whether the Democrats or Republicans are at fault!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
So what you're saying is they should delay care until it becomes an emergency? Or are you saying if they don't get treated the problem will go away?
What you really want to say is that they don't deserve to be treated and should rot in the streets. Go on, let it out.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
You forgot to include the economic boost from the people now able to return to work faster/not dying/getting preventative care so they never get sick. Also the lowered cost of care for people who now can get treated before it becomes an emergency. Most of the cost of Obamacare is recognizing costs that were, until now, hidden.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It is not only the Obamacare - everything else, from Syria to ISIL to Afghanistan to Europe to Islamization of America to you name it - everything that Obama has touched on it turned into a mess
I'm sure there are lots of valid criticisms of the Obama presidency but I'm not sure his foreign policy is so easy to fault. I mean, what exactly would he have been better of doing in any of those places?
What exactly was he meant to do in Iraq/Syria? Undo the decision to invade Iraq? Fix hundreds of years of tribal and religious divisions, which had already torn appart other neighbouring countires? Pump weapons and cash to some different assuredly better rebel group in Syria?
Building a coalition of local forces and providing aerial support / special forces support seems to be about the only sane path that doesn't get America (and its partners) even deeper into a massive mess.
Ditto for Ukraine. What should he have done? Or to put it differently what actions should he have taken to better suit the national interest of the United States - a very powerful but still very limited player? The reality is the problems have existed since long before Obama became president and he is ultimately as powerless to influence events as his predecessor was to influence events in Georgia. He has actually come out far more forcefully than Bush did in 2008. Current American sanctions are actually damaging to Russia and America has managed to lead an unwilling Europe into sanctioning Russia as well.
Then there is Afghanistan. What would you consider the right path there? The original objectives of the war - kill Osama and neuter Al Qaida had been achieved and he chose to withdraw. Was this the wrong decision? If now was the wrong time then when would have been the right time?
so you want the people who are really sick to use the jail / prison system to take care of them at an even higher cost to us all?
Well, when you consider that, by law, people were required to use this website to sign up for a health care plan before the government deadline, anything less than 100% is failure.
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered. Does that look right so far, or did I fat-finger the calculation? That's US trillion, which is different from UK trillion, I believe.
As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.
Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45...
They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.
For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).
On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.
You forgot to include the economic costs of people having their hours cut so they no longer qualify for benefits and end up working two part time jobs without benefits to make ends meet. You left out the costs of businesses cutting jobs and locations, and refusing to expand, to avoid the fines, penalties, and costs associated with Obamacare. You left out the costs of people that had benefits but lost them due to companies being forced to drop benefits due to the unnecessary costs forced on them if they offer healthcare due to Obamacare. You left out the stifling of innovation due to the punitive costs and structure of the medical device tax. You forgot to include the cost of trying to force people to violate their conscience as Obamacare is doing.
And perhaps most important, you forgot to include the dangerous precedent of allowing the Federal government to directly force nearly everyone to go buy a very expensive service specified at the whim of the government and its bureaucrats.
What will you have to say if the next administration decides to enforce the militia clause by requiring every adult not convicted of a felony to purchase a $800 rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition and keep it locked in their homes, available for yearly inspection? Not much different than Obamacare, which is now enforced by the IRS. Well, actually that is probably a lot cheaper than most people's Obamacare bill.
. Most of the cost of Obamacare is recognizing costs that were, until now, hidden.
Obamacare is creating plenty of new costs all by itself. It is been a debacle and it has barely started. It will be inflicting plenty more damage on the economy and society in the years to come baring a repeal.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
My point is that Government doesn't put competent people in charge most of the time. That's just the nature of the beast.
FTFY
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Why are you acting like the ppaca is a good law? Like HHS did a good job of enacting the law. Like the administration has done a good job marketing the law. Are you nuts? This law and everything about it is utter shit. This law hurts people. It hurt me. Please. Move to Canada.
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered.
Does that look right so far, or did I fat-finger the calculation? That's US trillion, which is different from UK trillion, I believe.
As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.
Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45...
They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.
For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).
On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.
Also to be factored into those long term costs is the proportion of people in the population who will be coming of the age where they need to purchase healthcare - currently circa 15-20 million or so. Factor that they're distributed along the same demography and that's a 800,000 people a year who can be expected to directly benefit (i.e. have health insurance, where they previously wouldn't) each year over the next 10 years, not accounting for people who are likely to benefit from increased competition etc. via other mechanisms (of which the healthcare.gov website is one of them).
Few trillion here, few trillion there... starts to add up to real money.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Forbes? Really? REALLY?
It's called "journalism." Maybe you've heard of it? There's a whole amendment to the Constitution devoted to protecting it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I wouldn't worry about it. Once a Republican is back in the Oval Office the MSM will be interested in journalism again so there will be more places to find corroborating stories. Besides, the MSM won't have much choice, they'll need a break - carrying all that water wears on the arms and Obama has called for more than most. If only his presidency had turned out as well as Jimmy Carters. If only ...
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Because of the political dynamics in the House (Republicans who are critical of the ACA outnumber democrats), be sure to take what is written with a canister of salt.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either
Obama is hands down the worst president so far in my lifetime. Even Jimmy Carter was better and that's saying something.
The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
What a lame excuse. President Obama is a pompous, preening and vainglorious windbag, in the best Harvard tradition, who doesn't know a damned thing about how to run anything, least of all the United States. The only bright spot is that the people who voted for him are still taking it on the chin economically while the rest of us enjoy our stock profits. Maybe they'll learn their lesson this time and think more carefully about it before they vote in 2016, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, the working class seem to be suckers for self imposed economic punishment with their recent election choices.
That the F-35 isn't a perfect warplane is well established. On the other hand the "Affordable Care Act" is absolutely useless against the latest Russian and Chinese combat aircraft. Even the elderly Iranian air force is more than a match for the ACA.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And then... you vote for them again, and AGAIN! Is this a face palm moment or not?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's the magic 97% consensus. Because 99% would be too obvious.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Only if he wears short skirts and dances provocatively.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
"War on Women" is a Democrat campaign scam - the Obama administration itself (and the Democrats in congress too) have been caught paying their female staffers less than their male staffers.
As for Issa's wealth... and whether it's "bad", let's see here:
Issa built his own wealth by starting and running businesses BEFORE going to Washington
The Kennedys (beloved by Democrats) all inherited their vast fortunes from their prohibition-era alchohol smuggler patriarch (whether you like that law or not, Joe senior was a criminal and the family fortune was built on crime dollars). This would be like somebody today building a financial empire on drug money, then after drug legalization pretending that the money was "clean" without regard to all the crime and dead bodies that contributed to the stash.
former Senator John Kerry (now SecState) got rich by marrying a rich widow.
Senator John McCain got rich by marrying a girl rich with inherited wealth
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) inherited a MOUNTAIN of money from a so-called "robber-baron" and then, in one of the planet's most hypocritical acts, struts around pontificating against the wealthy (while hanging-onto that inherited wealth and all the power it bought him).
Politics is an expensive game, so more and more of the members go there already wealthy, but most politicians who go to Washington NOT rich, (and spend MILLIONS on campaigns for jobs that pay $174K per year) somehow amazingly end-up quite wealthy after only several years. There are many ways this happens; members of congress, for one example, are exempt from "insider trading" laws (they can hear things about companies and markets, even in closed-door meetings, and then call their investors and place orders). Many of them sit on comittees where they direct taxpayer funds... and direct those funds to companies run by their relatives, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is an example, Former Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) (Who both have rich husbands who are investors - remember that insider trading exemption??).
A single payer system like Medicare/Medicaid?
...get out the big-grained salt shaker.
Table-ized A.I.
You forgot your faggy little "sPh" sig.
Wow, yourself. You presented a plausible scenario with essentially no information, it is less than anecdotal evidence, indistinguishable from fantasy. With a city and the parties identified, it actually becomes meaningful and verifiable (or disprovable).
I didn't say government should be involved in any dispute between companies, so where do you come off claiming I advocate its involvement in all such disputes? You're trying to paint me as being extreme, and I may be, but on the other side from that you accuse me of being.
You paint UPMC as the villain, but I do not accept your contention. I think you've been watching too many Highmark commercials that have been attacking UPMC. What I see is two companies which are each involved in activities they should have been barred from by state (not federal) regulators. UPMC has been a healthcare provider for a long time, in 1998 it was allowed to offer healthcare insurance, Highmark has been a healthcare insurer for a long time and last year purchased West Penn Allegheny (which had sued both Highmark and UPMC for acting together to stifle hospital competition) to became a healthcare provider. I see two governmental agencies, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department and the Division of Acute and Ambulatory Care, failing to represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania by failing to prevent the obvious conflict of interest involved in allowing integrated delivery system providers (particularly in companies which already dominated one aspect of that system). The solution is for government to take actions to eliminate its need for further involvement, and the state went the other way, reminiscent of our" too big to fail" banks.
You portray UPMC as the bully using its position to dominate the market for healthcare when Highmark is a much bigger company in both revenues and profits that dominates the region in providing health insurance, which purchased the plaintiff in the antitrust suit against it to kill the suit, and is in the catbird seat as it has the revenue up front and can direct business to itself for its customers who would have little choice while UPMC can merely cut off its nose to spite its face by not accepting Highmark insurance thereby turning away business, I hardly think that is the abusive position you suggest. It was not the local government that dealt with the mess, it was the Pennsylvania Insurance Department which should have prevented the issue 26 years ago.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Let's have some perspective here: this is the first time a website of this magnitude and complexity has been created on the federal level, at least any that had to be completed within a relatively short time-frame.
Table-ized A.I.
F-35 did at least one thing right: didn't depend on a big website.
Table-ized A.I.
That's not the point here. It's a fact that governments always do their best to cover up their mistakes and self-aggrandize.
As opposed to companies which self aggrandize and do their best to cover up their mistakes?
Seriously you can generalize that to:
PEOPLE do their best to self aggrandize a corollary of which is covering up mistakes.
Singling out the goverment (made of people, just like Soylent Green) as opposed to companies (also Soylent Green) makes it look like you have an axe to grind. Do you?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I work for the fed govt. Affirmative action/racial preferences is why fed govt cannot do anything. Blacks are way way overrepresented in fed govt employees, and many if not most of them do not do as much work as whites because the managers are afraid of racial discrimination complaints. Same goes for contractors.
What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars?
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Also, the "economic mess" at the end of Bush's term was in large part due to the collapse of securities based on bad mortgages that were encouraged by Democrat members of Congress, in particular Barney Frank. In particular, they wanted to call it racist to deny loans to people who clearly had no ability to pay them off, using the race card by claiming it was "redlining". And it is also possible that they expected the timing of these loans imploding to happen at the end of Bush's term. While you can blame Bush for our presence in the mid-east because he was actively leading that, it's a much farther stretch to blame the economy on him. However, I do put the blame that we are still in such a bad economy almost six years later on Obama's policies. And now he wants his own "illegal wars".
Politics sabotaged it. Representatives on both sides added as many ear marks as possible and otherwise too many cooks spoiled the soup.
If you look at the original proposal, it wasn't nearly this bad. In fact, most of the current issues with the system weren't likely to have been issues with the original system. Instead of ditching and and saying "fuck it", the administration got a system in place that hopefully can be patched and fixed in the future. I have little faith in that.
Obama's mistake wasn't that he wanted people to be healthy and he wanted everyone to have to pay instead if just giving free healthcare to anyone who couldn't afford it (how it was before). His mistake was not bullying back.
I hope whoever is next... Republican or democrat can show more strength and say "this isn't working... We're going to fix it. Anyone who argues with me, I'll destroy in the press".
1) Leave the private health insurance market completely alone.
2) Lower the age of eligibility of Medicare to zero. Do that gradually (five years per year, for instance) if politics require such a compromise. Raise Medicare taxes as required to cover the increased number of people.
Change Medicaid eligibility so that anyone under 18 is eligible, until such time as they're eligible for Medicare (see caveat previous para.).
Done. Net effect should dramatically lower the cost of private health insurance, since Medicare would cover most (if not all) common problems, leaving private health insurance for edge cases.
Adjust Medicare taxes as required to pay the bills.
Note that this isn't quite a National Healthcare System (see UK), but it could easily transition into one later if it works reasonably well.
Done. Simple law, expanding existing program, so unlikely to meet as much opposition from fanatics. No odd cases like "he makes $XX, so he gets 80% subsidy on his health insurance, she makes $XX-1, so she has to pay 100% cost of her health insurance.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
ERs generally cannot turn away emergency patients
Bull shit. ERs turn away emergency patients all the time, then they drive them from hospital to hospital until they die. Since I live in bumfuck, if that happens here, I'll almost certainly be dead.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No argument from me. But, this is exactly the sort of sensible reform that is impossible to turn into a law, because it steps on the toes of a bunch of special interests.
While I was at it I'd fix up the patchwork of medicare laws and just have one premium/deductible/coinsurnace/limit for everything, instead of the maze of gaps, per-incident deductibles, and all that stuff that we have today.
To get a law passed you need to spend $5 on the problem you want to spend, and another $10 in handouts to people that won't do anything to solve the problem but who have a financial stake in maintaining the status quo.
> Your math doesn't work out. Care to show your work?
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered.
That is just repeating yourself. Showing your work means showing where you got the two numbers, not repeating yourself.
How about this. You earn $100 trillion (US). There are only 300 million people in the US. So, you can afford to just write everybody a check for $300k and they can just buy their own insurance. Do you need me to show my work? If I did you would discover that I obtained your earnings by multiplying $10/hr by 40 hrs/wk by 52 wks/yr by 5 billion years, which is about how long you'll have to work before the sun burns out to pay for that one-time payment.
Incidentally, that is the same error you made in taking point-in-time figures and cost-over-long-periods-of-time figures and combining them.
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Great, then count yourself among the very small minority of people in industrialized nations who think that not having a universal system of health insurance is a good idea. The issue is that people complain about the execution of Obamacare, when in reality they objected to having any kind of solution to the healthcare problem at all.
Read 'em and weep. Then look up epistemic closure.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/defau...
The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
So, let's make them even bigger and more powerful so that they are even less responsive to the will of the people? That seems to be the approach the current Administration is taking, "The government is too large and powerful for the President to hold it accountable (or for the President to be held accountable) for its misdeeds, therefore we should make it larger and more powerful."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Unfortunately, having health insurance is not the same as actually having access to health care (or being able to afford it when one does have access).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There's a whole amendment to the Constitution devoted to protecting it.
Actually, that is not true. The piece that has been misconstrued as protecting journalism** is only part of the First Amendment and is does not protect the "press" as we use the term today (to refer to the news media). When the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,..." it very intentionally links the right to say what you want to the right to publish what you want. The "freedom of the press" is not a right for journalists, but a right for every citizen to publish, if they have the means, whatever they wish (with the edge cases of slander and libel, although even there the original understanding was that the person slandered or libeled could not prevent you from publishing, they could merely receive punitive recompense if they could prove that it was slander or libel). **the misconstrued part is that it is ABOUT journalism, not that it protects it. It does protect journalism, but only as a side-effect of protecting everyone's right to publish.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I didn't say government should be involved in any dispute between companies, so where do you come off claiming I advocate its involvement in all such disputes?
The solution is for government to take actions to eliminate its need for further involvement, .... It was not the local government that dealt with the mess, it was the Pennsylvania Insurance Department which should have prevented the issue 26 years ago.
I'm very confused about whether or not you believe government should get involved here? Or maybe you are saying that it should be involved in THIS dispute but not any other?
Regardless, the point I was replying to was the contention that you could avoid a corporation which misbehaved, but not government. The UPMC-vs-Highmark is a clear example that anyone with BCBS insurance in western PA (I have Anthem BCBS through my employer) is disadvantaged by UPMC. I can affect my government (a little bit and sometimes); I can have no effect on UPMC (even though my wife works for them). Government is led by people that I help elect; UPMC is led by the people who make it the most money and they make more money by behaving IMO badly.
So, just to be clear, you have nothing of substance to say, because if you were to address the actual topic at hand, you'd have to actually answer the question:
Was the administration to incompetent that it thought the ACA web site was secure and functional before it launched, or were they simply willing to lie about it, since they knew it wasn't? It's one of those two. You just can't bring yourself around to admitting it because you're exactly the partisan whiner that you're accusing someone else of being. Typical response, though, from Obama's apologists on this: pretend everything was fine, and that the people who point out the incompetence of the administration's project (we don't even have to get into the law itself) are lying. Here's the problem with that tactic: millions of people know the web site didn't work and all sorts of third party security reviews show that it was and still is a security nightmare.
Nice attempt to change the subject, though. Probably worked really well on fellow twelve year olds.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah, it's great, healthcare, YAY! I mean, unless you were one of the people that had a healthcare plan from blue cross that covered your entire family at $400/month, and then were told by blue cross that the government has mandated that policies have to change and include things that you don't even care about, and now it will raise the price to $800/month, and you cannot afford it. So you get with healthcare.org folks, get your tax break, and have a blue cross plan that only covers you and your wife, while your kids now have to be on medicaid, where no doctors will see them.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Welcome to the club of non-perfect-people! I think that, like you, Obama had a good intention, but somewhere down the line, shit went south. But unlike you, he didn't not correct the problem once he noticed that it was wrong.
At some point it went from "You will be able to keep your current plan" to "Oopsies!" But he didn't stop and do anything to correct his mistake.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
You mean the health care coverage businesses used to provide years ago, but scrapped in favor of a stock dividend and other profits?
That would be the health care coverage that was in place when "Obamacare" was deemed passed (remember that one?). Just kidding about the "deemed" part, it actually did pass on a party line vote. When a business fails the problem is even worse. Then there is no health insurance and no job.
And why we should not hold these businesses in moral contempt for callously skirting around the law so they can continue to abuse their employees?
Because it was the Democrats that passed Obamacare and forced bad choices on everyone?
If new "costs" are being incurred: It's because Life and the Pursuit of Happiness are expendable to American business.
Your life and pursuit of happiness (note: pursuit) are your responsibility, not your boss's.
Hard to have either when you're dying from lack of preventable treatment or sick.
I wouldn't worry too much about that, Obamacare is preventing a growing amount of treatment.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Your not agreeing with a President's actions didn't make them incompetent.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The Obama administration chose to publish the ten-year cost number, because that makes them look better than any other choice. Too short and the startup costs aren't amortized much, too long and you get into the time period where we're scheduled to actually pay for much of it. Those 12 million people wil need insurance for the next ten years, so it's perfectly appropriate to talk about what it will cost to cover them for ten years. 12 million isn't a one-time number, as if they only needed coverage for one day. The number of previously uninsured people may covered may fluctuate a bit, but not by order of magnitude or anything like that.
No, that's not a mistake I made. I made a much simpler mistake, though - I lost track of the number of zeros ehile trying to calculate trillions in my head.
Your not agreeing with a President's actions didn't make them incompetent.
When did I claim to not agree with any president's actions?
The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
So, let's make them even bigger and more powerful so that they are even less responsive to the will of the people?
Uh, the will of the people is half the problem here. I was in no way intending to imply that the will of the people wasn't one of the forces that moves the nation.
Romneycare is not Obamacare. State solutions would be entirely acceptable to Republicans, since state have substantial powers under our Constitution. Article 10.
My first objection to the ACA is that it is unconstitutional. States have regulated insurance of all types, and the federal government even administers Medicaid on a state level.
Comparing the U.S. to other nations should be an exercise in misdiagnosis. States have seen their powers and authority diminished, in return for federal money and diminished responsibility. The cost of this is central control and failed programs. Has the ACA improved healthcare access in America in measurable way? Really?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yes, but the affordable care act affects far more than 12 million people, or it certainly is intended to do so. It really is just a stopgap measure - I never thought it would work in the long-term. However, I think people needed to be convinced that the current mess of the status quo just wasn't tenable before they'd be willing to move onto something more sane, like a single-payer system.
No known organizational model puts competent people in charge most of the time. Even the strickests of meroticracies are subject to the Peter Principle, even if they somehow fail to promote people who are best at promoting themselves. Democracy is superior because it lets outright lunatics to be constrained and removed as well as succession handled without bloodshed.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Campers: Unlike everyone commenting here, my wife and I actually have an ACA policy we signed up for through Covered California. No problem whatsoever in the sign up. We kept the same doctors we'd always had. Our premiums went from about $11,000/year on an income of $33,000 -- and an out of pocket max of $5,200 -- to $1,000/year and $2,200 out of pocket. While many of you rant about subsidized health care for us poor and unwashed, I've not noticed any other solutions to the problem offered here other than stepping over the sick and injured on the way to your tech job that has a health care plan. I'm sure we'll now see bankruptcies as a result of health care debt go down as well as other benefits to society. Think of it as a new federal highway system or disaster relief -- both government programs that work incredibly well. I also notice a lot of grousing that somehow the critical number of ACA signups is to reduce the numbers of uninsured. That's definitely important and the number of uninsured is clearly going down. But the other benefit are people, like my wife and I, who can finally afford health care. That's the overall idea and it's working. Move on people.
This is rare. However, if that's a concern for enough women in the market for insurance, insurance companies could offer, if it were not for PPACA rules, pregnancy coverage for women who have had a (potentially unsuccessful) tubal litigation at a vastly reduced rate (a few dollars a year would cover it given how rare such pregnancies are).
This is not unlike, for some strange reason, PPACA rules allow charging a additional premium for smokers - or put another way, a discount for not smoking. Why can't insurance companies offer similar discounts for those who take steps to avoid other conditions such as pregnancy by having a tubal litigation? Note that non-smokers still get lung cancer (much more likely I suspect than women who have undergone a tubal litigation getting pregnant).
Why not allow insurance companies to charge more for people who engage in "extreme" sports - their odds of getting expensive injuries at a young age are much higher than someone who doesn't engage in them.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg?
No, but that's a useless analogy. There is NO medical equivalent of the USB cable I buy from NewEgg. Readily available, universally applicable, and most of all, cheap. There is nothing whatsoever in the US healthcare system that qualifies as cheap. Anywhere. Even the most trivial of routine checkups required by law (e.g. college admissions) has a cash price of hundreds of dollars. It only costs less than that if you (or your employer) has paid money into the protection racket called health "insurance." Which a) is not insurance and; b) serves as nothing other than a profit-taking gatekeeper to the services you actually want.
The Affordable Care Act, better known as RomneyCare, because that's the closest system that had previously been enacted in the US, is indeed a travesty. It's a giant giveaway to an industry that does not provide health care! The insurance industry. It's crony capitalism at its finest, sold to the American people with the carrot dangled by the Democratic party and the stick wielded by the Republican party. Only in America can a population of 300 million be fooled into paying so incredibly much for so very little.
If we were a civilized nation, we'd have enacted single-payer when Canada did in 1966 and we wouldn't be having this conversation. But we're not. We're blind and stupid and consistently vote against our own interests by voting for the interests of oligarchs.
The clear comparison would be RomneyCare. While certainly smaller, it was more more successful, at least in terms of administrative snafus, etc. The high costs of RomneyCare are very similar however. One obvious difference was that RomneyCare has a higher level of bi-partisan support, thought it is difficult to see how this would account for the difference in administrative competence.The other differences are that Romney has proved competence in a few executive roles and was probably a lot more focused than Obama -- presidents have to wear a lot of hats being at least part of the problem. ObamaCare is arguably a larger structural change that involved more fiefdoms.
And, that's a problem with our laws that should be fixed. If a competent PCP would not have referred the person to an ER, the ER doctor/PA/NP should be able to tell the person that their condition is not a medical emergency and advise them to see their primary care provider and the ER should suffer no more risk than the PCP would have. It should also be a crime to misrepresent your medical condition at an ER in order to get preferred or priority treatment (yes, this would rarely be prosecuted, but the occasional prosecution would deter people from doing it).
There is a good social reason for NOT completing treatment and diagnosis after evaluation determines the problem not to be an emergency -- the next time that person (and their friends and family) probably will not clog up the ER with what is obviously a cold or minor sprain that can be dealt with during normal business hours by their primary care provider.
The system, expectations, and culture is broken -- requiring ERs to act as PCPs is not the answer and the liability laws should reflect that.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Thanks for the correction. I worded it badlybut didn't realize just how bad until i read your reply.
Hey now. Remember Jimmy Carter was the one who had the foreign embassy taken over, and all those people take hostage. It can't get worse than that, can it?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Back in 2008, I only expected Obama to be as bad as Jimmy Carter. He surprised me by having all the badness of Bush (Dubya), Carter, and Nixon.
If Obama completes his two terms, then Richard Nixon should get an apology. Watergate would rank pretty low on the list of scandals if it happened now.
Incompetence happens, but arrogance, cowardice, and an overwhelming desire to escape blame transforms simple incompetence into an epic failure. Poll everyone involved in healthcare.gov from the lowest to highest and few will admit any personal responsibility. Some will confess helplessness, just following orders. Some will point fingers at others, the "real" culprits. Some will just say that software is hard, normal people just don't understand. It is in our nature to reach beyond our grasp and that aspect of our character is noble and inspiring. Perhaps, deceit and treachery are also in our nature, but that aspect of our character is anything but noble and to be shunned. Simple honesty and humility can contain a great deal of the damage that incompetence would otherwise create.
What I see in this administration is a epic combination of hubris and incompetence that has left us with a president that has checked out because he is disappointed with us as a people and a nation. I honestly believe the president thinks we have failed him. Is Healthcare.gov just another testament to our failure as a people in the mind of President Obama?
What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars?
is the answer "What did Bush start and fail to finish, leaving Obama holding the bag?"
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
All kidding aside, Obama inherited an incredibly horrible situation from arguably the worst administration in history. But I think we can all agree we're better off now than in 2009.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Most of them are pretty successful. One is even a Republican representative. *shrug* Good leaders are people who know how to take advantage of people smarter than them and build a grounds up organization with pragmatic decision making from top based on good data. That doesn't always happen because not everyone believes in the same end goal. That's the hard part.
The only bright spot is that the people who voted for him are still taking it on the chin economically while the rest of us enjoy our stock profits.
I don't understand. You think he's responsible for the stock market increases? If so, wouldn't that indicate competence of some sort?
I remember reading a few years ago during the "great recession" that someone was going all-in shorting the market thinking there was going to be another 1929. I wonder how that worked out for him. Guess it wasn't you, but if you think he's so bad ... why DID you go long?
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Good, because it seems Obamacare is working and getting public support. So, fairly happy that Republicans get no credit. Of course, nothing is stopping some Republican senators taking credit for the American Healthcare Act, but not that evil Obamacare. Funny that.
The supreme court (the one that leans conservative mind you) did not rule ACA unconstitutional. So, I think you're wrong there. That's why there was an entire legal battle over it and it is decided.
Drug addicted prostitute was probably on Medicaid to begin with. At least now she can get free birth control.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Hey everyone is happy. They get their jollies going against the powers and the western powers gets to get rid of one troublemaker. If some idiot wants to go fight in a war, and spend his life in heat, no running water, and what not.. more power to them. They aren't going to get much respect from anyone who wants a stable life.
Of course, jail is always the best... it's what they are willing to spend all their taxes on rather than social programs. It doesn't matter that it costs more under prison system or ER.. sigh.
Also the fact that people are actually mobile and can move from job to job because quitting would mean that they might not be covered because of pre-existing conditions.
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I didn't say that SCOTUS did find ACA unconstitutional. They could it, among other things, permitted as a 'tax'.
My complaint is that I believe it is unconstitutional. Yes, I believe most of SCOTUS got it wrong.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Unless, of course, your very ideology is to make the gap between rich and poor as wide as possible. Then it makes perfect sense that you'd be upset that everyone can afford medical care. And you can always explain away any attacks of conscience by claiming you simply want everyone to be personally responsible for themselves, even as your policies take away the means to do so from the majority of people.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think you need to put the bong down and stay away from it for a while. It is rotting your mind to the point you might actually believe these delusions.
despite clear evidence that Obamacare has actually caused full time people to become part time and most of the hiring for unskilled labor (the working poor) has been part time, what exactly benefits companies doing this as you think they are?
You see, reality doesn't seem to match your misconceptions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The only reason companies hire part time instead of full time is to control costs. They have no direct impact on the economy or for the most part intent to manipulate it outside of being able to sell their goods and services for a profit.
Bullshit. Insurance is one of the heaviest regulated industries in the country before and after Obamacare. If these fly by night operations actually existed, the states would have arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned the scam artists behind it. And yes, it's pretty easy to track them down because there always has to be a place to send the payments and then collect them else they don't benefit from the scam.
What are flagpoles but shrines?
It's important to remember that our concept of divine is very different from a Roman's concept. Any fool could all but feel the omnipresent might of Rome, a pattern behind all the roads and aqueducts and legions and whatever. The Emperor was an easily identifiable focus point, giving name and face to something indescribable. But make no mistake, while we don't call them as such we too treat our nations the same way, waving flags, swearing allegiance and if called for, killing or dying for our gods.
So no, people don't deify Barack Obama personally. They deify his position. Power rests in the system itself, and Obama is simply the human currently most closely associated with it, hence any problems in said system get blamed on him. It's actually quite fascinating, the way our institutions take on lives of their own, escape from their founder's control, and all too often display a very human tendency towards megalomania and petty cruelty. And unless we learn to keep them focused on human good, rather than their own self-aggrandizement, and fast, I fear we'll meet the Great Filter.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Wow - a very large attack of hard right wing hide raters today.
http://www.vox.com/cards/obama...
Americans who purchased coverage are paying for it (payment rates running a bit higher than privately-placed insurance, so yes "they paid for it"). Americans who could not previously afford any health insurance and therefore were essentially locked out from most health care are now being subsidized at a level about 40% of all the US' G8 peers. With that subsidy they are able to obtain reasonably-priced basic medical service thus greatly enriching their lives and - it is believed by 97.3% of health care economists - lowering the overall cost of medical care to the entire nation.
Your complaint is?
sPh
The War in Iraq was something Obama wanted to end. It wasn't a war we were supposed to be in in the first place. I'd state that it hasn't ended yet but the hostilities were largely under control. Still a turd from the Bush/Cheney era, and started by the British, but that's another tale. However the current problem isn't Iraq so much as it is the spillover of the nutbags from Syria taking advantage of the weakened state of Iraq.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
People complain because it failed to meet any of it's goals
That is certainly false. One of its goals was to require coverage for pre-existing conditions. That goal was met.
Another goal was to provide an affordable insurance option to everybody, and I'd say that was met even if many didn't sign up. The reason for that was that the penalty for not signing up was lower than the cost of signing up, which is one of the reasons I think the law will have to be amended before nobody wants to participate in the exchanges any longer. You can't require coverage for pre-existing conditions without providing coverage to everybody - it just isn't sustainable. If they charged a penalty of $5k/yr for anybody without insurance then that problem would go away, since it is cheaper than that to just buy insurance. Of course, it would be far less regressive to just give everybody insurance for free, and then recover the costs in income taxes.
That number of 12 million is totally wrong. On Aug 15 the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the first set number and that was about 7.3 million people.
I wish I'd written that.
It's sort of like claiming your view represents the majority while trying to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of legal voters.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=852...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most of these people have nothing to do with Obama. They'd still be there if the republicans won.
Incompetence is incompetence, its not limited to a single political side.
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
So you're telling me we wouldn't be at war now if only we hadn't ended the war? It's not enough that my friends did 5-10 tours? How many more did you want us to do?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Setting aside that the Republicans controlled all three branches of government from 2001 - 2006, this narrative assumes that the federally backed loan buyers (Fannie and Freddie) were the drivers of the speculative bubble, but they weren't--the wall street firms were way out in the lead on this and Fannie and Freddie were just following along after the party was most of the way over.
Name one worse than watergate.
Is that 12million before or after subtracting the millions of people who got cancellation letters and booted from their existing plans?
/mo (or $21,000 per year) (far more than the $800/mo when I originally signed up for less than 10 years ago).
Or what about the millions of people who had a plan "and liked their doctor/plan" but couldn't keep it, and got switched to more expensive plans, or plans with less coverage than they had before?
As someone who foots the full bill for my own insurance coverage, I have a great HMO plan, abeit expensive. Luckily I've had this plan for a while and because it met the minimum requirements under the new law, I was grandfathered in (albeit at an additional higher cost in order to keep it). However, because it's now a "grandfathered" plan, I cannot make any changes to it, move up or down in coverage without completely loosing it altogether, and I'd never be able to get it back. I consider myself lucky on one hand that I got to keep it, but not so fortunate that it's now even more expensive than it was, and I face the possibility of loosing if I make any changes to it. I feel like it's the same situation that I'm in with my cell phone data plan, grandfathered unlimited data. It's more than I need, but I pay the high rate because it's not an option that is available anymore, and I need to hang on to it, or loose it forever. The only difference is my cell data plan is $30/mo where my current full HMO coverage runs me about $1800
Actually, you usually get better rates at clinics and small family doctors if you self-pay, or pay cash rather than insurance. Yes, most big hospitals will print out those invoices for hundred's or even thousands when an insurance company is involved, because they can, but at smaller offices, if you are un-insured, you can get routine visits for a fairly affordable price. Before you call BS on me, I have done this before, as me and my family went without insurance for a year or two when I was getting my own business going. We couldn't afford insurance, and self-paid when we needed doctors. Now for big disasters, you should probably have some catastrophic coverage to help cover the cost in the case of something like a car accident, or other big injury, but routine exams were not that bad. Same with the dentist offices around town, many of those would give us the lowest rates they charged, and would help make it cost affordable. The upside to them was they didn't have to bicker with the insurance company and fill out all the paperwork to get re-imbursed for these visits, so it was less of a head-ache for them by having the person pay them in full on the spot at a discount rate.
The problem, is that for many big hospitals, their overhead is so much, they have vastly higher rates than family doctors, and in many poorer neighborhoods, there are too many people that come in that get classified as "self-pay" due to no insurance, but which really means "no-pay". They don't expect the person who claims to want to self-pay to actually pay their bill because in the majority of cases, they don't have any intention to pay their medical bill.
I agree with you to a point, at least on the surface, however I don't want to have to tell my doctor/insurance company everything I do activity wise and have a $$$ sign attached to it. Not great for privacy being the first thing I can think of.
To answer the second part of the question, as a smoker, the reason why other activites don't get penalized like smoking is because currently smoking is considered "out" and the powers that be are trying to regulate it into oblivion. From all angles, the shame smokers to quit, they tax smokers to quit, and they penalize smokers with higher premiums for life ins. and health insurance. Society accepts it, because "it's for their own good". The last step will be to outlaw it in all public places similar to what San Francisco has tried to do for several years now.
I'm sure these same people who like to butt into other people's business will eventually move on to other groups of people after they have "conquered" and beaten down the smoker group. Just give it enough time, you may get what you asked for. They've already been asking about gun ownership in doctors visits for awhile, so I'm sure that will be their next target to raise premiums or deny coverage for possibly.
...but at smaller offices, if you are un-insured, you can get routine visits for a fairly affordable price. Before you call BS on me, I have done this before, as me and my family went without insurance for a year or two when I was getting my own business going.
I know you can, if you're quite lucky, find a cheap primary care physician, especially pediatricians. I heavily emphasized cheapness, but "readily available" and "universally applicable" were also in there, and your post is full of exactly how neither of those apply.
USB, it ain't. It's a travesty is what it is.
the point I was replying to was the contention that you could avoid a corporation which misbehaved, but not government.
I made no such broad statement. I didn't say we could avoid a corporation that misbehaved or that government couldn't behave properly, only that government hadn't behaved properly in those cases.
It is interesting that you think UPMC is led by people who behave badly, yet you want their services, and you seem to give a pass to Highmark which makes much more money. Highmark has already demonstrated in central PA that it does not treat other hospitals on an equal basis with its own. Highmark has higher deductibles and copays for Geisinger Health System, and would undoubtedly do the same with UPMC. One of the factors that contributed to the bankruptcy of West Penn Allegheny was Highmark's reduced payment scales to it, so Highmark hasn't demonstrated any concern for sustained healthcare availability in the region, nobody else would buy WPA because they would have to deal with Highmark on its terms and suffer a similar fate. UPMC simply chose not to be the victim back in 2009 or after the WPA acquisition. You were disadvantaged by Highmark.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Considering that I already explained the price, and payment method, I don't know how cash payment isn't considered "readily available" nor "universally applicable". I would have to say, when you self-pay, you actually have MORE options available to you, than if you have insurance. My super expensive HMO insurance that I have now, doesn't let me go to anyone I want.
how would you define "readily available"? or is your code word for "FREE"? In which case, no I did not describe how to get routine visits for free.
Also, to add to my post, for routine visits, there is also a new startup company that is employing doctors and webcams that for a nominal fee ($30-50 I can't remember the exact amount), they will perform a video conference (like skype type session) with you and diagnose you for basic ailments etc and I believe can prescribe basic medication to you if needed (like antibiotics, etc.). This would be something considered affordable, and readily available. I will admit that services like this are for basic needs, and limited in scope, they can be utilized by anyone, and it could cut down a person's overall cost of needing a full insurance package. If you combined this type of service, along with self paying for mid-sized needs, along with catastrophic insurance for the "major accidents", you'd have a fairly affordable healthcare "package" for fairly cheap. Not perfect for all, but neither are these "Silver", "Bronze" and "Gold" packages people are getting forced into either.
I think what he's saying is that you should be trying to affect the portion of your government called the "Pennsylvania Insurance Department."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, 90 days late is a disaster! How is it ever not?!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
First of all, Obamacare is the Republicans' fault. You can tell because A) they liked it when it was called Romneycare, and B) it's a shit solution (compared to "single payor" where said payor is either the government (i.e., a socialist solution) or the individual patient (i.e., a libertarian solution)) that only serves to entrench and enrich the middlemen. The Democrats would have designed a much more socialist program had they not been trying to appease the Republicans.
Second, your claim is a fallacy. There is absolutely no reason why, just because Obamacare is legitimately the Republicans' fault, that any of the other stupid shit Obama and/or the Democrats have done could be also. For example, here's a partial list of things for which the Republicans can not be blamed:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Why yes I do. I also seem to be in the small minority of people with intelligence and common sense. First of all, universal health insurance is a scam. Insurance is a shared risk pool so putting people with preexisting conditions into that pool to be covered just hurts everyone else. If you want the government to treat people with preexisting conditions go ahead and do so, but don't bring in an additional layer of bureaucracy for no good reason.
Furthermore, people seem to not understand healthcare is a scarce resource. That means not everyone can be treated for everything. The resources need to be divided amongst the population. Socialized medicine puts control of this decision into the hands of politicians. I'll tell you how that plays out: first, politicians get the best healthcare because "good of the country" or some such excuse; second, constituents of the loudest politicians get the next best care, because they need their supporters to live long healthy lives.
Our system is already corrupt and in need of a good overhaul. Unfortunately, socialized medicine was the wrong move as it will just lead to more corruption.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
First of all, universal health insurance is a scam. Insurance is a shared risk pool so putting people with preexisting conditions into that pool to be covered just hurts everyone else. If you want the government to treat people with preexisting conditions go ahead and do so, but don't bring in an additional layer of bureaucracy for no good reason.
Coverage of pre-existing conditions without universal coverage certainly can't work, because that isn't insurance. People have the incentive to not sign up until they're sick, and then drop coverage once they're healthy again, which bankrupts the insurance system.
However, with universal coverage there is no such thing as a "pre-existing condition" other than during a transition period. If somebody is insured from the moment they are conceived, then no condition can pre-exist conception.
Of course, universal coverage isn't really "insurance" as much as a socialized benefit. And I'll certainly agree that the ACA as it currently stands doesn't achieve universal coverage.
Furthermore, people seem to not understand healthcare is a scarce resource. That means not everyone can be treated for everything. The resources need to be divided amongst the population. Socialized medicine puts control of this decision into the hands of politicians.
No argument with any of that. However, EVERY insurance system puts control over coverage in the hands of somebody. For most in the US it basically resides with your employer, without a great deal of visibility into how decisions get made. One of the advantages of a government-run plan is that the decision logic can be subject to the democratic process. As you point out, that can also be a disadvantage. I have no illusions that the well-connected will get the same care as the average person under any system.
I don't have an objection to people with money paying for their own services. However, the way the US system really doesn't make this a real option for all but the most wealthy for any problem of any significance. From hospital bills I've seen the list prices for serious procedures often work out to upwards of $100k, with insurance companies paying 8-9% of that, and individuals paying 1-2% of that, and the hospital discounting the other 90%. If you pay cash they'll offer you a "nice" deal of maybe 50-70% off and then bankrupt you, and most people think they were getting a good deal when this happens.
Actually, I was disappointed in Obama for not pulling out earlier.
How long were we supposed to be sending US soldiers to prop up a weak Iraqi regime? What would have changed if we'd decided to stay as occupiers for another five years?
Iraq, like the economy, is a real mess that he inherited from the Bush administration. I'm not real impressed with some of the things he's done, but he really stepped into a bad situation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We've been working on a very involved website redo, including service oriented architecture, RESTful interfaces, responsive design on the front end, a number of integrated Hadoop clusters on the back end, etc., and it's been nearly two years, and it still isn't done.
One of our directors said, "I just hope when we finally get this thing open for business, it's at least as good as Healthcare.gov".
He wasn't being ironic.
Slashdot has gone terribly downhill. Apparently instead of software engineers, it's filled with partisan morons who only know how to cut-and-paste spin and blatant falsehoods cribbed from FOX, or on the other side, absurd cynicism because their radical-left vision of unicorns and rainbows isn't possible in the real world. Neither seems to have any appreciation, or intellectual capability, to understand the complexities of large-scale architecture and systems design, much less able to offer any cogent commentary on it.
1. there is no fast and furious gun running blame on anything but lax gun laws. Were there laws that allowed one to jail suspected gun runners, they would have been enforced, but law enforcement don't waste their time when they know they can't get a conviction. The real fast and furious debacle is on the gun lobby that keeps those laws lax.
2. The notion that the President of the United States (and I mean any President) would appoint an ambassador to another nation and then intentionally bring harm upon them is insane. You would, at a minimum, need some sort of motive here to get me interested enough to research this.
3. I didn't see any indication that Obama or even the WH had anything to do with this, instructed this to happen, or that it wasn't a rogue employee / office. Plus, in the end here, you're talking about tax exempt status being on the line. How could that possibly raise to the level of Watergate?
As for watergate, you are correct, it was far from the worst thing Nixon did--but it is still 100 times worse than the worst Obama has done.
Don't get me wrong, Nixon did some great things (creating of the EPA among them). But he and Johnson really abused the power of the presidency and both continued a war purely for political gain at an enormous cost in lives. I mean, you're worried about a delayed tax exempt status while Johnson / Nixon had the NSA spying on MLK.
But how many paiiiiiiid???
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
7.2 million, a higher conversion percentage than private industry expects. Call the whambulence for the hard radical right.
sPh
Did Obama end us being at war in Iraq? Apparently not...
Giving up and removing U.S. forces isn't the same thing as ending a war. The other guys were still in the neighborhood waiting for our announced removal.
Who looks really stupid now? The Iraqis who trusted the U.S. after we took down Saddam's government. They have a pretty good gripe about our government making promises to them and then not supporting them.
We ended the war against Germany and Japan in such a way that it didn't start back up again a few years later. That took time and leaving troops behind to maintain security and help rebuild the countries in a self-sustainable way so they're good friends of ours now and positive influences on the rest of the world.
Iraq? Not so much...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
And someday (perhaps after he's out of office?), Obama will start being held responsible for his own actions by those who supported him. It's what, only been almost 6 years now? That's longer than many presidents serve in office. Obama's off to a really fast start, isn't he?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Good summary by Ezra Klein, who has been tracking health care reform since at least 2008:
In conservative media, Obamacare is a disaster. In the real world, it’s working.
"On the whole, though, costs are lower than expected, enrollment is higher than expected, the number of insurers participating in the exchanges is increasing, and more states are joining the Medicaid expansion. Millions of people have insurance who didn't have it before. The law is working. But a lot of the people who are convinced Obamacare is a disaster will never know that, because the voices they trust will never tell them"