Slashdot Mirror
Statisticians Study Who Was Helped Most By Obamacare
HughPickens.com writes We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act but until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.
Despite many Republican voters' disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
Despite many Republican voters' disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
For most visits, you should be paying in cash. A doctor's visit should not require a full time staffer processing insurance paperwork just for a visit and a prescription or two. Heck, even most basic hospital operations (like lab work, fixing broken bones and such) should be payable in cash by anyone who has been mildly responsible with their savings and paychecks.
Price gouging, fraud and EMTALA are the main culprits. My favorite example of price gouging here is a snake anti-venom that costs $100 to make and is sold to patients in hospitals for as much as $30k. If the state is going to prosecute people who charge a 100%-200% markup for a generator after a hurricane, what possible excuse do they not have to prosecute people for a 3000% markup on a drug that is absolutely necessary to the patient's immediate survival? Fraud? How about the trending practice of having one doctor in network and one out of network so that the in-network partner can use the out of network partner to deceptively rape the assets of the patient? Or drive by doctoring at hospitals?
This is a target-rich environment for massive law enforcement clean up. Enforcing the laws combined with efforts to increase access to medical school and some other subsidies on the supply side would force the market to act like a real market, not a state-protected industry.
Bingo! I would not have been able to do multiple start-ups and freelance in banking and writing if tied to a job by health insurance given that I have had imperfect health.
Score one for the UK NHS, even though also imperfect, for giving me mobility.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
I stopped at the very first line of TFA.
"After a year fully in place, ..." I call BULLSHIT!! right there.
So, why bother? It's a sales pitch.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
They're driving us out
We're closing up shop
Lonely is the mom-and-pop
Where are the protestors?
Where are their slogans and signs?
This will be a swift decline
Actually, quite the opposite is happening. My best friends father is basically despises Obama to the core. He runs his own insurance resale shop. He complained that Obamacare was going to destroy him. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Because the law made the old policies illegal, the insurance companies had to create new policies and everyone had to re-sign up for their health insurance. He gets a commission on every single one of those changes and is making a fortune. He still doesn't like Obama but he certainly loves the government teat.
ACA does not get "free" until you are pretty heavy out of pocket on expenses or have been unemployed for some time. Also thanks to the stipulations in the ACA if you move to another State guess what does NOT follow you there, that's right your insurance, because now you have to join an insurance provider in that State. Yours in most cases will not be waiting for you there.
If anything it binds you even tighter to a job and location.
It is, only in that it redistributes money from the healthy to the insurance companies. Saying that "these people are better off because they now have insurance" is misleading. They now have to pay for that insurance, and the cost of insurance has skyrocketed since the law was passed. Furthermore, they can only be said to have benefited from having insurance if they get sick, or if they were already sick and would have been denied coverage.
And by "never supported", you mean were dictated their position following their party line after the GOP chose to make the ACA a wedge issue.
And Romney wasn't just some RINO rebel GOP governor in a backwater state that the GOP could write off as being a product of a liberal constituent... he was who the GOP chose to be the shining star and face of their party to combat the derivative of the very plan Romney pushed for in his home state.
You had to put some powerful spin to make that jive in your red worldview.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Plenty of people honestly. Whether through cancellation of plans due to lack of mandated coverages, or in my own personal case, being forced to a plan with weaker benefits because my wife's employer was going to be penalized for offering a "Cadillac" plan to their employee's. For those that don't know what that is, it's a mandated 40% excise tax placed on plans that offer premium coverage.
So now we pay about the same amount as before and have a deductible and coinsurance that we didn't have before. Thanks ever so much for that. Considering now we have to be concerned for up to 4800 dollars more a year in expenses. In an environment with looming inflation, and stagnant income growth. Hurray for Obama. Thanks so much for causing millions of Americans into the threat of financial instability.
If the 10 million people now being covered are primarily from poor and rural areas, you could have easily covered them by modifying existing options like medicare to better suite the needs of those unable to properly insure themselves. And probably at a lesser expense.
So yeah, lots of people have reason to hate the ACA, and the people who shoved it down our throats.
That could've been accomplished without messing with my private insurance.
I know this is a personal anecdote, but since I work for large aerospace corporations, this is a personal anecdote for a significant number of people. Before the provisions of Obamacare went into effect, my healthcare premiums rose 20% to 33% per year since 2008. From 2013 to 2014, when all the major provisions went into effect, my deductible went up 20%, but my premium stayed the same (and I never hit the old deductible limit anyway). I changed jobs this year, and in 2015, my premiums and coverage are both staying the same.
I have no idea if Obamacare is responsible for this state of affairs or if it's just coincidence, but it's a damn sight better than what was happening before it came along.
Another anecdote: Heath care rates for me went down significantly, and I'm a small business owner.
I'm probably paying for some geriatric coverage that I'll never use until I'm 60. Just like I pay to maintain roads that I'll probably never use. Welcome to society.
It's true that part of the O-care strategy was to get younger, otherwise under-insured, people to subsidize the pool. It's reasonable to disagree with this, but young people got some benefits too. They can stay on their parents plan longer and medicaid was expanded.
I don't believe Obama purposely deceived you as you make it sound. It's true he said you could keep your plan, and he shouldn't have, but political speaches don't lend themselves to asterisks. What he should have said (and probably meant) was that if you like your plan you can keep it if:
A) The insurance company continues selling it (he can't control this)
B) It meets the new minimum coverage guidlines (most will)
Instead of getting so easily upset over progress you should take a look the problems and try to constructively shape the solution. O-care isn't *that* great, but nothing would have changed without it and we needed a change in our health care system.