800,000 Using HealthCare.gov Were Sent Incorrect Tax Data

mpicpp sends this report from the NY Times: About 800,000 taxpayers who enrolled in insurance policies through HealthCare.gov received erroneous tax information from the government, and were urged on Friday to hold off on filing tax returns until the error could be corrected. The Obama administration, under heavy pressure from congressional Democrats, also announced that it would give several million people more time to buy health insurance so they could comply with federal law and avoid tax penalties. The incorrect insurance information is used in computing taxes. Consumers can expect to receive corrected data in the first week of March. With the new data, officials warned, some taxpayers will owe more and some will owe less. Officials said they did not know why the error had occurred.

Comments

thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank, Obama!

Re:thanks

[cayenne8]

Thank, Obama!

You know, I used to warn people against the Govt being so involved with our healthcare. I likened it to putting the DMV in charge of you if you got the flu. The long wait times, the surly and non-helpful govt employees there staring more at the clock than worried about you getting new plates.

But hell, I will at least admit the DMV does tend to get its mailings out on time and in proper fashion.

I know its a pipe dream, but I wish we could move the govt (especially the Feds) back more to their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. At the very least, my dealing with them could and should pretty much only be once a year.

1. Tell me how much tax to pay (simplify this).

2. Leave me the fuck alone.

I'd be 101% supportive of my federal overlords if they could just get to this point in their interactions with me. I'll be fine on my own to haggle and negotiate for my jobs, and my bill rates. I'l be happy to manage my own health care, and know what is important to save for (retirement, routine health needs, medical insurance for catastrophic needs, etc).

I seriously don't need you to play nanny state with me, I don't need you to suck up so much of my money and waste it.

I don't need you spying on me.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is forcing an insurance company to be involved with your healthcare, idiot. Actually, now they are as a result of Obamacare.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Force" is just a choice where the alternative is unbearable.

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[Jawnn]

You are clearly no student of history (like most of the Rand fanboys here on /.) . You have not a clue as to how much better your lot is because of the many things "the government" regulates. No longer can someone sell you "medicine" that is not only ineffective but would stand good chance of hurting or killing you. No longer do a large number of our fellow citizens suffer from food-borne diseases because of shoddy processing and storage practices. And if you think you can negotiate on your own for effective health care coverage, you are clearly ignorant of the realities of that marketplace.

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[Talderas]

Self-insurance is a concept.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, switching to a cash basis and forcing full and complete disclosure of pricing would likely cause healthcare costs to drop drastically.

Weird how that works.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You are clearly no student of reality. Bad drugs are sold everyday, have you not noticed all the 'call now if you've taken X medicine' commercials for law firms. Have you not seen food recalls and video of some of the filthy bacteria ridden food processing plants? Have you got your head so far up your ass that you'll defend your party line no matter what? As a student of history did you not learn socialism always fails because on a large scale it go against human nature. No one is saying get rid of all things Government, we just want a minimal amount if intrusion in our lives and a fiscal policy that supports what Government we do have. This policy of spending money that doesn't exist is quickly leading to a collapse or is basic math something else you don't understand?

Re:thanks

[LWATCDR]

Actually I am a student of history and I am not a Rand fanboy but I did like Fountianhead but I also know that it is fiction.
Like most things in life it is all a matter or degree.
The goal of government is to put in just enough regulation to keep a free competitive marketplace that works but so much regulation that it makes doing business a nightmare.
For example why is crap like Airborne "cold medicine" allowed to be for sale when the label says it does nothing. On the flipside when one of the military services wanted to buy a piece of software I worked on the "bid" came in a 50 pound box.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

But by saying those things, you are admitting that you believe the lies that there were errors made. There were not. Believing a liar makes you a liar. As the President said, there were no known errors. The 800,000 number was a Republican lie.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in the post does it say "force"?

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[Anonymous Coward]

You could have got off your ass and requested a new one earlier.

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[Bengie]

The average person can't manage their own healthcare. The do so at the detriment of all others. It costs more to not have people on insurance. Ideally, we'd have a national insurance that covered everyone via taxes, but we have a hybrid system. The biggest issues with ideals is that they're not always practical.

No matter what, we benefit by having more people with quality insurance. Just with the number of reduced trips to the ER for preventable issues, it will pay itself back in spades. Trips to the ER are magnitudes more expensive than going to the doctor for a scheduled appointment.

the other big issue is that people are worth more than they get paid. A person making $40k/year may be worth over $100k/year to the economy as a whole. If people got paid what their actual value was, there wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Re:thanks

[VGPowerlord]

No clue about Seattle, but where I live (Michigan), I can't even renew my driver's license until they send me the renewal thing approximately a month prior to my birthdate.

Not even online, because that requires a code number from the form they send you (because, you know, someone might randomly log in using the number off my driver's license and pay it for me or something).

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

We now have a government program that insures about 9 million people at a cost of about $1 Trillion. Yep, thats about $100K per person to insure those on Obamacare that were not insured before, that is cheaper?

Lets not go into the cost of the website, the problems, the excessivly high costs of the plans, the illegal changes to the law without it going through Congress again, them refusing to answer Congress on how the program is running, and on and on.

Just because your a fanboi doesn't mean the program is effective or affordable.

Re:thanks

[gtall]

Really? How about Grandma? She can come and live with you, right? She doesn't need no stinking government sending her SS checks or taking SS out of your pay to pay her. BTW, she'd like a ground floor suite and she'll be needing some live in help to get through the day and put her to bed at night...change her diapers. Unless...hey, you could do that. Hint, the safety pins go on the outside of the diaper.

Hmmm...come to think of it, Bert's Drug and Fishbait Shop has some magic pills they'd like to sell to members of your family. They're probably safe so there's no need for FDA oversight...since you won't pay for that. Your family wouldn't mistakenly buy these on the buy-one-get-one-free sale down at the local pharmacy...but if they do and have a bad reaction, they can live with you and Grandma.

You brother would also like a room, recall he's the one injured on the job and can no longer work. But it is okay, he'll take a second floor suite.

Your Aunt Essie was recently divorced from her alcoholic husband and has no current work skills and will be out on the street unless you give her a room too.

Hey, this is really just like old times with the extended family all looking to you to provide for them. Please be generous, they are your family, ya know.

Re:thanks

[blackraven14250]

What's weird to me is that insurance companies aren't at all incentivized to reduce costs. In fact, they're blatantly incentivized towards raising costs. It really doesn't matter whether they're capped at 20% profit - their profit scales with larger overall numbers, so they're incentivized to keep costs high and push them higher in all situations. If healthcare costs rise 10%, they can push their insurance prices up 10%, and have a 10% increase in profit, even under the same percentage cap. Doctors like it too, since they'd make an extra 10% on the same procedure. Even the patients, in most cases, care far more about quality care than about the cost of care.

Auto insurance and repair has plain old economics going for it - as spare parts become more available later in a car's production run, the costs drop. Home/flood insurance seems like it would be subject to the same upward incentive in home prices as health insurance, with the caveat that housing prices usually remain relatively stagnant outside of a bubble and there's not much the insurance companies can do to affect pricing anyway.

Healthcare, though, becomes a problematic outlier relative to other types of insurance - how do you lower costs when almost all the players have a tangible incentive to help costs rise and the ability to do so, and even the consumer has an ambivalence to cost as long as quality is maintained/improved and the cost burden doesn't reach a certain (unknown) untenable threshold for a large enough percentage?

That's the problem the US is attempting to deal with in healthcare, at its' core. It's probably the most complicated economic and policy problem possible - how do you regulate a market that has almost nothing providing natural balancing factors? Supply and demand are effectively nonexistent, healthcare isn't optional (and never really was, even before the ACA), and all the players are rewarded for pushing on the same side of the scale.

Re:thanks

[Miguelito]

But hell, I will at least admit the DMV does tend to get its mailings out on time and in proper fashion.

Here in CA, especially around the LA area, this hasn't been so true this year. There have been a few news reports about how people are finding that they can't even get an appointment inside the (usually) 3 month window the mailer gives them, because the DMV is so overloaded. So, to make the deadline (what I saw reported was for license renewals) people have to go in without an appointment and usually waste an entire day. I had to get mine renewed (birthday 1/26) and my appointment made online (mid December) was about 3 weeks out. Even then the place was packed on a Saturday, and it took about 90 minutes (no test, just redo thumbprint, eye check, new pic).

Some won't directly say it, but it's basically due to the massive increase in requests for new licenses, since the new rule kicked in to give licenses to illegal aliens in CA.

Re:thanks

[circletimessquare]

so you want people to live shorter more painful lives and the system to cost 10-100x more than countries that handle healthcare responsibly

the simple truth is healthcare and healthcare insurance is not voluntary. it's mandatory

because you can spout eloquently all you want about independence and freedom, but you don't understand the subject matter. when you break your arm, you're not shaking it off and going on with your life, you're going to the hospital

and we're not refusing you if you can't pay, because we're not sociopaths

and when you can't pay your bill you're shafting us

being an irresponsible freeloader is the actual real life effect of your uneducated "ideology", not real freedom

Re:thanks

[eihab]

In this state, it is illegal to keep a license plate for over eight years.

It looks like that changed as of January 2015.

You're not required to replace your plates every 7 years. Instead, when a vehicle changes ownership, the new owner will need to replace the plates.

Re:thanks

[Art Challenor]

Yes, but in fact Obamacare was mostly written by the drug and insurance companies, who both win big on the deal. The party of limited regulation threw in the clause that prohibits the operation of the free market by preventing medicaid from negotiating prices with drug companies. So the drug companies get to price their drugs as they please. The "rational" for this is that they need this money for R&D (how many times have you heard this?) whereas in fact they are going back to their shareholders and explaining how they are keeping their R&D costs under control and making big, fat profit (off sick people).

Re:thanks

[level_headed_midwest]

1. There is a lot of pressure to reduce costs even in the commercial insurance world. Obamacare forced insurers to pay out a lot more in costs (through a lot of things such as birth control required to be covered with no copay) and they can pass some but not all of the costs along to the employers and individuals who buy the insurance. The Obamacare "mandate" penalty is a lot less than what insurance actually costs and the bigger the delta, the more people who will eschew insurance. Those that eschew insurance are going to be the suckers, ahem "young healthies" who have few or no expenses and subsidize the people with multiple poorly-controlled chronic diseases who cost a bundle. Therefore the insurers can't simply keep raising costs forever.

2. Medicare and Medicaid pay for something like 75% of all medical charges in the country and they absolutely are decreasing what they pay hospitals and physicians (to the point they generally pay below the actual cost of providing services, especially Medicaid.) They are highly incentivized to reduce costs because it makes the federal and state budget deficits associated with their operation smaller.

3. Physician and hospital reimbursement is largely determined by Medicare. If you participate in Medicare (nearly all doctors and facilities do), your pricing structures are essentially set by CMS's "allowable charges" as laid out in the RVBRS. The actual reimbursements paid also don't vary much as private insurers know what Medicare pays (it's public) and stick pretty close to the Medicare rates.

The really screwy thing about healthcare it's essentially a government run market and health "insurance" is a third-party prepayment system. If we wanted to decrease the out of pocket for most people, it would be in having health insurance revert to actual catastrophic insurance instead of being a prepaid system and allowing balance billing (the patient pays the difference between the charged amount and what insurance pays.) That would currently be against several laws but the only reason it's illegal is that it makes a lot of sense, and would result in a relatively small number of people in highly politically valuable groups losing a bunch of discounts, subsidies, and freebies.

Re:thanks

[laird]

Keep in perspective that the "too low" Medicare and Medicaid payment schedule that the hospitals and doctors claim they can't survive on is still much higher than is paid by any healthcare system in any other country on the planet. So why is it that doctors and hospitals in the US charge more than in Japan, Germany, France, the UK, etc., while at the same time delivering inferior medical outcomes? Are they stupider or more wasteful? Or do they just have a higher profit margin? As a patient, I want to pay for healthcare, not profit margins.

Re:thanks

[level_headed_midwest]

It's not even comparable as the entire setup here is different compared to a fully socialized system. There simply is nothing like the Medicare and Medicaid payment schedule in those countries as the government directly owns, administers, and runs the healthcare system rather than using independent contractors as in the U.S. The "cash price" that one might encounter in such a system as a foreigner is going to be a lot different than the cash price here because ironically that actually is a free market, while our "cash prices" are directly controlled by the government.

One huge reason that things cost so much more here is regulatory compliance. That is fairly minimal in directly government-run systems as the government isn't very interested in grossly running up its own costs in a fully socialized sytem. But with independent contractors, sure, make them document everything in quadruplicate and check 187 checkboxes in a very clunky inefficient mandated electronic medical record system for every patient visit and spend billions and billions of dollars in complying with arcane HIPAA, JCAHO and CMS regulations. (Note that the one fully socialized system in the U.S., the VA, is exempt from all of that.) And then fine them/reduce their reimbursements if they don't jump through all of the hoops properly. It saves the government a little money but costs the healthcare system as a whole a fortune.

The whole bit about "poorer outcomes" is mainly a combination of cherry-picked facts and factors well outside of the control of the healthcare system. For example, infant mortality in the U.S. as reported by the "socialized medicine is teh awesome" crowd is higher than most European countries. Why? We have a very different method of counting what a live birth is than Europe (they count a lot of extremely preterm births as "nonviable stillbirths," we do not), and when we use the same metrics as they do, our stats suddenly look a bunch better. Our survival rate for extremely preterm births is #1 in the world and also cancer mortality is very low as well. You don't see them touting those stats though. We do have some issues with certain populations essentially ignoring their health (such as having a higher smoking rate than most of Europe) but that is a cultural issue and has remained very resistant to even massive interventions by the healthcare field. You can't blame the healthcare field in the U.S. for that.

Re: thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Your accounting is wrong. You are charging a small number of people now covered to the entire cost analysis of the ACA.

In reality, that cost analysis includes effects of the entire law which is basically everyone in the country.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

It did not change. I got a ticket for that this on Sunday. The cop impounded my car, and I had to let the tow truck driver keep it because I couldn't come up with the $550 within the 120 hours that WA law allows, so the driver got to keep my car. IIRC, the ticket was $529. So, because I wasn't able to successfully fight to get a replacement plate, I lost my car and another $500+. WA takes this seriously. As the cop pointed out, the reflective coating on the license plate wears out so they take this crime very seriously. He was very angry.

Re:thanks

[lsatenstein]

Thank, Obama!

You know, I used to warn people against the Govt being so involved with our healthcare. I likened it to putting the DMV in charge of you if you got the flu. The long wait times, the surly and non-helpful govt employees there staring more at the clock than worried about you getting new plates.

But hell, I will at least admit the DMV does tend to get its mailings out on time and in proper fashion.

I know its a pipe dream, but I wish we could move the govt (especially the Feds) back more to their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. At the very least, my dealing with them could and should pretty much only be once a year.

1. Tell me how much tax to pay (simplify this).

2. Leave me the fuck alone.

I'd be 101% supportive of my federal overlords if they could just get to this point in their interactions with me. I'll be fine on my own to haggle and negotiate for my jobs, and my bill rates. I'l be happy to manage my own health care, and know what is important to save for (retirement, routine health needs, medical insurance for catastrophic needs, etc).

I seriously don't need you to play nanny state with me, I don't need you to suck up so much of my money and waste it.

I don't need you spying on me.

I live in Quebec Canada and I love our system. It is one reason I would never relocate to the USA. My health care costs me about $100/mo each for my wife and I. My daughter and her husband pay about three thousand in taxes for the two of them and their three kids. And we have a drug plan too. I could go private or public, and chose public. Our plan will never bankrupt me or require me to choose between drugs or food.

Drugs
It costs me about $15/mo each for my wife and I plus I get my prescribed drugs at 20% of cost. I can elect to chose generics, if they are available and I do so because it saves me some money. And we have a ceiling on what our drug expenses are, before our copay pay becomes zero.

My daugher has MS and her drugs are $30,000 per year (not a typo, 30k). Her out of pocket drug cost is the rate / month with $2k per year ceiling, for life.
Our doctor visits are free, as are prescribed mri scans, xrays, hospital stays. In other words, medicare (single payer system) works.

We include free ambulance service. And no, unlike the negative antagonistic thinking against affordiable care, people in Canada do not abuse either the medicare, drug plan or ambulance services.

Dentistry is excluded for children under the age of 8, as are eye exams. Free eye exams and some lenses for seniors who are 65+.

I will be needing hearing aids within 5 years. Some of my older friends have pacemakers. I believe I have an allowance of $2k for hearing aids. Re pacemakers, the doctor chooses from a list of pacemakers. It and the installation costs the patient a big zero. Included in our public insurance are things like wheel chairs, installation of in-home stair elevators (for those whose bedrooms are on a second floor, and other things that would allow an person/couple to remain autonomous.)

By the way, more or less the same plan is provided in Europe, Russia, Australia, Mexico, Cuba, Israel, and other places. I know not about your medicaid. Is it similar?

Lets hope your opting out is worth it. With the rapid changes in technology today and in the future, there is not guarantee you will have a steady job after age 55. There is no guarantee your employer will provide a comprehensive a medical plan if your enrolment in the government plan will cost less for the business. Your life expectancy is today, beyond age 80.

     

Re:thanks

[cayenne8]

The average person can't manage their own healthcare.

Even so..when did it become the Fed govt.'s responsibility to protect the stupid from themselves?

Re: thanks

[Jawnn]

Yes, I have noticed that bad drugs reach the market. I've also noticed why - a steady erosion of the effectiveness of the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. That erosion is paid for by that industry.
I have noticed the food recalls, too. Who do you think issued the recalls, you moron? That's right - government regulatory agencies. Without them fare more people would sickened or killed every year.

News

[Orgasmatron]

I'm tired of all this bad news about Obamacare. Could we maybe just all agree not to talk about it any more until there is some good news to report?

Re: News

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, repealing the fucking thing would be start. How's that for good news?

Re:News

[Dan667]

all these people using Obamacare are not being screwed by private healthcare. How's that?

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically we're just going to stop talking about it forever?

Re:News

[halivar]

Oh, no. There were tons of us saying our government could not be trusted with shit this important, and we were right. "But Europe!" they said. Well, we don't have a European government. We have an American government, with all the heft and agility of the Titanic. Crony-capitalism under a veneer of pretend-socialism and you have a recipe for guaranteed disaster. Now, is it the end of the world? Not really, just for the poor marks that bought Marketplace insurance plans.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

If Obamacare had anything actually good to report, that'd be fine, but think of those people who have this erroneous tax data given them by the government, who (BTW) have NOT been contacted by the government to tell them it is wrong, but rather are seeing this article as their first notice of this mistake (my fiancé for example!)

Re:News

[halivar]

Technically, they are. Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion. Crony-capitalism at its finest.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

all these people using Obamacare are not being screwed by private healthcare. How's that?

It still is private health insurance. You'll get screwed whether you buy it or not. And if you already had health insurance and liked your health insurance, now you're really screwed.

Re:News

[halivar]

I just don't understand how Slashdot can be flooded with stories of US government incompetence and malfeasance at every level, and at everything, and yet people swear up and down they can be trusted with healthcare. No, they cannot. Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people. CYA. The US government does not have your back. Ever.

Re:News

[hondo77]

Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people.

Unlike the private sector?

Re:News

[Bartles]

Either that, or Slashdot is filled with bad and/or stupid people.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people.

Unlike the private sector?

It's harder to fire govt employees, even if they do stuff like this: http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Re:News

[rubycodez]

You are so funny, my friends working for small and mid sized companies had their premiums more than double thanks to obamacare.

Re:News

[digsbo]

You should be modded insightful. The main source of bias in the press is not what's reported, but what's not reported.

Re:News

[g0bshiTe]

Private sector can be punished for improper dealings, politicians can not.

Think Lerner emails, in the private sector during let's say an audit what would happen if emails were requested and they mysteriously were destroyed due to "hardware failure" of the users drive no less.

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

Technically, they are. Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion. Crony-capitalism at its finest.

But here's the thing.

Other countries are somehow managing to give their citizen's healthcare. And Beelzabub hasn't risen to claim their souls.

We were in a death spiral, positive feedback loop regarding health insurance. As people fell off the bottom rung of the ladder, their healthcare was being provided by the Government anyhow. Small employers health insurance costs were occasionally doubling every year. And if you had a pre-existing condition, you were fucked - and not in th ehappy fun way either. But that's what happens when a lot of people use Emergency Rooms as basic healthcare - it gets billed back to insurers through billiong magic, and we pay for it, but eventually the system collapses as all positive feeback loops do.

The scary part for those who can't handle the idea of universal healthcare is that this cockamamie system we've implemented is just good enough to work, but tweaking it leads to the inescapable.

Re:News

[BarbaraHudson]

Unfortunately, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Now, "filled" doesn't mean a majority, but enough to make a sizable impression - so this probably applies to all human activities involving a large more-or-less heterogeneous group. Now this is a good thing, because it implies that there are probably good and/or smart people in the groups as well.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

Its even harder to fire CEOs.

They walk in, trash a company, exit with a pile of money and already have another job lined up where they will do the same thing.

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

I just don't understand how Slashdot can be flooded with stories of US government incompetence and malfeasance at every level, and at everything, and yet people swear up and down they can be trusted with healthcare. No, they cannot. Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people. CYA. The US government does not have your back. Ever.

The private sector is where you will find true integrity. Christ that is some powerful Koolaid you've been drinking.

It's people dude, and the evul guvmint is made up of people who are just like the people in your mission from God, true sinless angels (genuflect)- the Private Sector. (remain on your knees for 5 seconds, then rise)

Re:News

[Albanach]

their premiums more than double thanks to obamacare

Do you ave any evidence to cite that justifies this as the reason for the increase? Or is it possible their employer saw an opportunity to screw the workforce and blame the President?

Obamacare did little to change most employer plans, so unless your friends had extremely limited insurance coverage, a > 100% increase seems implausible.

Re:News

[Jawnn]

I just don't understand how Slashdot can be flooded with stories of US government incompetence and malfeasance at every level, and at everything, and yet people swear up and down they can be trusted with healthcare. No, they cannot. Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people. CYA. The US government does not have your back. Ever.

Right, because the private sector is all about looking out for the consumer. The free market will take care of everything. Do you have any fucking idea how stupid that sounds?

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the private sector contractors that built healthcare.gov for the lowest bid? Nawwwww

Re:News

[halivar]

In the free market, I am allowed to not purchase products from companies I cannot trust. Or, at least, I could.

Re:News

[halivar]

Other countries are somehow managing to give their citizen's healthcare. And Beelzabub hasn't risen to claim their souls.

Why do you trust the US government as much as their governments? That's madness.

Re:News

[bondsbw]

Whoa there. Just because we don't want the government running every little detail about our health care, doesn't mean we want anarchy.

I'll put it the way a friend put it to me: "Regulations aren't bad. Bad regulations are bad." The ACA is a regulation that has good parts but where the bad outweighs the good.

Not only is it bad, but it's not likely to get better. It was passed in such a polarizing fashion that nobody wants to fix it; the Republicans want nothing except to repeal it completely, and the Democrats feel it is so sacred that it should not be touched.

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

Why do you trust the US government as much as their governments? That's madness.

I do not "trust" any government - I know people well enough.

But that doesn't mean that we are supposed to turn into Somalia.

Since people are involved, there will be fraud. But that holds true whether it is Government, or the Private sector.

Our Private sector solutino was failing, and failing fast. Regardless - other countries manage. If our system is bad, it's our fault, not theirs.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a 5-10 thousand person firm. My premiums did not "more than double". They continued to tick up at the same rate, maybe 10 or 20 dollars increase per year?

You can't say "my friends this and that" and expect to be taken seriously.

Re:News

[eepok]

In what universe is this an "insightful" comment. Let's just take it apart:

"I just don't understand how Slashdot can be flooded with stories of US government incompetence and malfeasance at every level"

-- That's called bias. Slashdot can be flooded with stories about anything as biased by story submitters. There is no implication that the frequency of stories is directly correlated with the truth or severity of an event. Moreover, can you show that Slashdot is actually "flooded" with stories of government incompetence? How does the frequency of those stories compare to the stories of government competence. Or are stories ever really written about government competence?

"yet people swear up and down they can be trusted with healthcare"

-- But they're not entrusted with providing healthcare. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not a healthcare system. It is not a set of hospitals. It does not train or employ doctors or nurses. It's a set of laws that requires actual insurance providers (who in turn employ healthcare providers) to abide by certain standards and creates a mandate that all citizens be enrolled in a qualifying healthcare plan or pay a fine (equal to the cost of enrolling in a qualifying healthcare plan). Setting health and safety standards and fining people for not meeting those standards is directly in line with the role of the US government.

"Our government is filled with bad and/or stupid people"

-- Really? And how did you come to that conclusion? Survey? Records analysis? Extreme bias? Who is "our government"? Are you considering just elected and appointed officials? What about day-to-day employees? Secretaries, analysts, programmers, coders, engineers, etc. Are they all bad and stupid as well?

"The US government does not have your back. Ever."

-- That's funny, because the various levels of US government has provided me with roads, plumbing, housing, access to safe water, electricity, dial-up and then high-speed internet. The US government made sure I had schooling, food in my belly, a roof over my head, and sufficient health care as a child. The US government paid for a major portion of my college education and made sure that I paid minimal interest on the loans I needed to fill the gap. The US government will also (eventually) help me buy my first home and provide the standards that will require the person selling me the home guarantee the safety of said home. Chances are that it has done all of the same for you.

If someone fires a gun at my home, guess who will show up to assist in the capture of that person. A government employee.
If I ever get thrown in jail and need representation despite having no money to pay for representation, guess who will try to protect my rights. A government employee.
If I find out that a neighbor's child is being abused and I need to get that kid to safety, guess who will be there to help me do so. A government employee.
If I want to travel from Los Angeles to New York in 5 hours with a near 100% guarantee of my safe transportation, guess who will make that possible. A crap ton of government employees partnering with private industry.

You say that the US government does not have "your" back. I assert that the only reason most of us have the opportunity to to read or write such comments online so frivolously is the effort of a massive amount of government employees.

Yes, the US government, from the president to the lowest municipal worker, is massive. Yes, it hemorrhages money at many points because bad people get employed (everywhere). But the only reason that our government is so massive is because you want such an extremely luxurious life and aren't willing to put in all the effort to sort it out yourself.

Want to try it? Go ahead. Don't use ANY public services. No running water. No roads. No products affected by safety standards or food grown/raised with government-based safety standards. See how long you live and how happy your life is.

Re:News

[halivar]

-- That's funny, because the various levels of US government has provided me with roads, plumbing, housing, access to safe water, electricity, dial-up and then high-speed internet.

Do you understand the differences between state, municipal, and federal government?

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

I have looked at the numbers. My cost AND my employers cost both doubled (in fact they took on more of it and gave me a lower raise). This is not some little mom and pop shop either. How do I know this? They make a big deal every year how much they spend. With websites and nice charts all nicely laid out.

The previous company I worked for dropped their 100% plan for upper management. Because obamacare forbade it. The new costs were also well laid out what was going to happen. It was in line to be double for me and my previous employer. They had some of the best health care plans money could buy (5% co-pay was not uncommon if you paid a little extra for it, full 100% coverage if you got above a certain level in the company). I then switched companies and kept an eye on the numbers. ~2x to 3x is what I am hearing out of everyone. Including contractors.

Re:News

[rubycodez]

that is neither a small nor medium business, that is large. pay attention before spewing, dumbfuck

Re:News

[HBI]

You're failing to account for the lost coverage. My PPO policy pre-Obamacare was about the same price as my current policy - $1200/month, but the deductible was nonexistent. Now the D is $1400 individual/2800 family. Then, the prescription plan increased cost across the board, so my meds, which used to run about $1k/yr, now cost more like $4k/yr. Then there are the reductions in coverage. I'm glad my wife got her surgery last year, because this year the policy won't cover bariatric surgery.

So yeah, we got pretty well fucked. Note the plan is what it is because my employer chose not to absorb any more cost than they previously had, so basically they got the best deal they could get for the same money. So yeah, everything went up. A lot.

Re:News

[nobuddy]

11.7M people who were uninsured now have healthcare coverage.

Goodbye doughnut hole. Medicare drug plans (Part D of Medicare) stop providing insurance to people after their claims for covered drugs hit a certain level ($2,970 in 2013), and coverage doesn't resume until spending hits another level ($4,750 in 2013). Health care reform is closing this doughnut hole in annual stages, and it will be totally closed by 2020. Savings to Medicare beneficiaries will be in the tens of billions of dollars.

Free Medicare preventive services. Health care reform greatly expanded the menu of free preventive services to Medicare consumers.

Free preventive services to all women. Health insurance plans have added eight women's health benefits because of the law, in areas including breastfeeding, contraception, domestic violence, gestational diabetes, HIV screening and counseling, sexual diseases and wellness visits. These benefits are free, meaning they involve no co-payment or co-insurance, and women don't need to meet their plan deductibles to use these free services.

Pre-existing conditions. No one can be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing medical condition.

Premium equity. Insurers can't gouge people with pre-existing conditions by forcing them to pay unreasonably high premiums. The law also limits insurers' ability to impose age-related premium increases for private coverage.

End of pre-existing restrictions on children's access to health insurance. The law has ended insurance denials based on pre-existing conditions for the roughly 20 million children under age 19.

Adult dependent insurance coverage. Adult children up to age 26 can now continue to get health insurance on their parent's policies.

Insurance payout limits. The law will end lifetime limits on insurance payouts. It also has been phasing out annual coverage limits, and these are completely outlawed for insurance plans.

9. Minimum medical loss ratio for insurers. Health insurers must spend at least 85 percent of their premium dollars on health care (80 percent for smaller group plans) or rebate shortfalls to consumers.

10. New consumer health coverage reports. Consumers have begun receiving a standardized report explaining their health insurance. This seemingly modest accomplishment is actually a big deal. For the first time, different health insurance plans have to present their coverage details in the same format, using the same language. Consumers can now accurately compare different health insurance plans.

There ya go. The good stuff that the GOP does not want you to know about.

Re:News

[TheGratefulNet]

fallacy of omission, right there.

probably a few of them would not be ABLE to get ANY healthcare if they had 'pre-existing' conditions. at least they did get rid of that big problem!

I have a PEC that made it (past tense!) very hard to get private insurance, so this is an issue near and dear to my heart. I know I won't have a low price on my insurance, but I will at least be able to GET SOME AT ALL.

for those that don't have PEC's, you will never know the pain of being rejected, for no fault of your own, simply because you were unlucky.

Re: News

[nobuddy]

I never understood why so many people are in favor of pre-existing conditions, price gouging, coverage caps, and all the reforms in this law.

the parts the GOP propaganda mill tell you are bad are the things they invented in the first place. the insurance mandate, medicare reform, and subsidies. (With raging irony that the people that wrote all that- the Heritage Foundation, are now the ones tagged with trying to repeal it) What they really hate are the reforms, but they can't tell you that because it exposes how evil they really are.

Re:News

[nobuddy]

Let us all look at this and note-
THE EMPLOYER MANDATE HAS NOT GONE IN TO EFFECT YET.

Oops. Looks like your employer decided to screw you and blame it on Obamacare. This has happened a lot. Time to confront your boss, eh?

Re:News

[nobuddy]

the employer mandate has not gone in to effect yet.

Who's the dumbfuck, again?

Re:News

[XxtraLarGe]

But that doesn't mean that we are supposed to turn into Somalia.

I love how the idea of reducing the size of the federal government is always compared to Somalia. Guess what? In addition to a federal government, most people are also under a state, county, and city/township government. Removing power from the federal government isn't going to result in bands of roving warlords and pirates. It would simply shift the balance of services provided from a bloated federal government back to the state & local level, where they belong and people have more opportunity to provide input.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, mine has more than doubled too in the past two years, in a company where there is a 90/10 payment share. It has nothing to do with the employer mandate, since we all had full coverage long before Obama was elected.

Re:News

[Minwee]

I just don't understand how Slashdot can be flooded with stories of US corporate incompetence and malfeasance at every level, and at everything, and yet people swear up and down they can be trusted with healthcare. No, they cannot. The private sector is filled with bad and/or stupid people. CYA. The US private sector does not have your back. Ever.

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

Re:News

[Minwee]

-- That's funny, because the various levels of US government has provided me with roads, plumbing, housing, access to safe water, electricity, dial-up and then high-speed internet.

Do you understand the differences between state, municipal, and federal government?

Do you understand how that is relevant to this conversation? If so, please share it with the rest of us.

Re:News

[ganjadude]

no/..... never???

Re:News

[Maltheus]

We're not other countries. Our government is the most corrupt institution on the planet.

Why would you think a government, that couldn't roll out a website, after spending over $2 billion, could effectively manage something far more complex?

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

the amish are quite happy. Your statements are biased as well.

Re:News

[ganjadude]

it only had nothing to do with obamacare if you dont take into consideration the insurance companies making the changes to come into complience with obamacare.

Just because they dont have to yet, it made more sense to get there sooner instead of later

Re:News

[Tablizer]

Tell me private insurance plans never F'd up billing etc?

And then there are intentional games. Telecoms sneak goofy fees into our bills all the time. Why do their "mistakes" always add fees instead of remove them?

Republicans are just drama queens with O-care. "They made a tax boo boo, the sky is falling! Gov't is Beelzebub! Arm yourself with garlic bullets!"

Re:News

[Tablizer]

It is true that people who die of curable illnesses can't frown

Re:News

[thieh]

It's not like all the president has no bad news. Every last one of them got some dirt on their representative work.

Re:News

[ganjadude]

you dont have to do business with companies you dont like (well, until obamacare mandated you buy insurance that is)

Re:News

[ganjadude]

very stupid, its a great strawman you build up because no one but you said such a thing

Re:News

[ganjadude]

and the only one on that list that is worth anything is the pre-existing conditions. Why could they have not passed a 1 page law that says :"insurance companies cannot discriminate based on medical history"

thats it, would have cost next to nothing to the people, and would accomplish the only good thing that obamacare has going for it. The rest of your list is fluff

Re:News

[halivar]

All the things he listed were due to local and state, not federal government.

Re:News

[srichard25]

Obamacare REQUIRED insurance policies to cover conditions that were not previously required (ex: maternity care for a 60 year old woman). It also forced insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions that weren't covered before. It also forced insurance companies to cover young adults on their parents' policies. All of these policies HAVE gone into effect and have increased premiums.

Re:News

[Jane Q. Public]

I'm tired of all this bad news about Obamacare. Could we maybe just all agree not to talk about it any more until there is some good news to report?

I, for one, do not want to take a lifetime vow of silence.

Re:News

[srichard25]

Walmart can't haul me out of my bed in the middle of the night for questioning. Amazon can't use a drone to kill me without due process. Microsoft would get shut down if they spied on people as much as the NSA.

The government has power over a person's freedom, privacy, and very life. Therefore, they MUST be drastically limited in power and completely transparent in all that they do. The people who founded this country understood that concept.

Re:News

[Jane Q. Public]

It would simply shift the balance of services provided from a bloated federal government back to the state & local level, where they belong and people have more opportunity to provide input.

Correction: It IS shifting services back to state and local level. The number of State bills to nullify overreaching Federal laws just so far this year is amazing. Many of them passed. And it's only just now really getting started.

Check out TenthAmendmentCenter.com's bill tracking pages if you haven't already.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone who wanted you to take a lifetime vow of silence pooled their money together, how much would it take?

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

You're funny, that's worked out extremely well for Michigan. States left to their own devices can,will, and have done some pretty looney things.

A balance indeed needs to be struck but this idea that local people know best how to govern themselves is not based in reality. Otherwise we would never have had a civil war over such things.

Re:News

[KermodeBear]

It is an attack they use all the time. Someone will say, "The government is too big, it is too invasive," and the immediate response is, "You are stupid, you don't want government, you're an anarchist!"

Is that what the first person said? No, it isn't.

These attacks are infantile and they speak volumes about the person making them.

Re:News

[Rockoon]

probably a few of them would not be ABLE to get ANY healthcare if they had 'pre-existing' conditions.

How come the supporters of PelosiCare don't know the difference between health insurance and health care?

I'm asking you because you appear to be an expert at not knowing the difference.

Re:News

[frank_adrian314159]

Because then the insurers couldn't make money and the system would have collapsed. Anything that you did to the system would have had to be balanced by other players in the system, lest it collapse. This means a complicated law.

Want a simple law? Here's one: Everyone gets Medicare and the government surcharges your taxes x% to pay for it. That's a simple law - no muss, no fuss, and done. No, all of the complication comes from the fact that we have this fu'ed system with a bunch of asshats sitting in the middle trying to make a living off it. A free market does not work for an essential good and, Libertarian protests notwithstanding, our own self-interest, if not our interest in those we love, together with the randomness of and our vulnerability to death and disease, makes healthcare, in many cases, a necessity, not a luxury.

Re:News

[Rockoon]

thats it, would have cost next to nothing to the people, and would accomplish the only good thing that obamacare has going for it.

..and is something many States already had a law for. It is unbelievable how many people point to the pre-existing conditions rule completely unaware that they were already living under such a law. It just goes to show that uninformed idiots are deciding things, and then defending those things, while commiting logical fallacies all the way through.

Re:News

[rubycodez]

Already small and mid business employees hurt hugely by Obamacare because of added costs to insurance companies. They didn't get to keep their doctors or their plans, and their premiums have been jacked up.

In 2016 things will get even worse, especially as the assumed number of healthy young people to float Obamacare of course aren't and won't be there.

So the answer to your question is, you are.

Re:News

[DNS-and-BIND]

The US government also brought you the NSA. Hurray for the government!

I feel dirty saying that, even as a joke.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

You said government not federal government. The comment by eepok is general and applies to all branches and levels of government. I think he had made an extremely important point, sure our governing bodies could be better, but I'd much rather they be there than not.

Re: News

[Oonushi]

Obamacare REQUIRED insurance policies to cover conditions that were not previously required (ex: maternity care for a 60 year old woman).

Can you explain how this actually makes insurance cost more? Do lots of 60 year olds file insurance claims for maternity related bills?

It seems like an silly excuse for insurance to cost more, and I think a lot of people are buying it since I've heard this repeated often.

Insurance costs are way out of hand. I can't afford to even use my coverage because I can't even begin to afford the deductible plus co-insurance BS in the first place. If I had something happen to me that forced me to use my full deductible I would be force to file for bankruptcy.

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

In the free market, I am allowed to not purchase products from companies I cannot trust. Or, at least, I could.

Well, first, there is no such thing as a free market. And never will be. As soon as a business in a marketplace gets big enough, the last thing it wants is a free market, it wants the entire market.

So unless there are checks and balances a free market will destroy itself. But checks and balances are regulations and denial of freedom, so that means the market wasn't free. A paradox for sure.

Re:News

[rsborg]

thats it, would have cost next to nothing to the people, and would accomplish the only good thing that obamacare has going for it.

..and is something many States already had a law for. It is unbelievable how many people point to the pre-existing conditions rule completely unaware that they were already living under such a law. It just goes to show that uninformed idiots are deciding things, and then defending those things, while commiting logical fallacies all the way through.

[cite needed]

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to try it? Go ahead. Don't use ANY public services. No running water. No roads. No products affected by safety standards or food grown/raised with government-based safety standards. See how long you live and how happy your life is.

Perhaps if we had a free market system he could, but unfortunately the government has a monopoly over those services, so really he can't. But it is a logical fallacy, one typical of fervent government worshipers, to assume that just because the government provides those services, doesn't mean non-government entities couldn't also provide those services. After all, the free market is able to provide all other products and services just fine.

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

Because all the privately done websites are perfect?

I do note that you just made an excuse for private enterprise corruption,

Re:News

[Ol Olsoc]

Walmart can't haul me out of my bed in the middle of the night for questioning.

Amazon can't use a drone to kill me without due process.

You must not Know about the Homestead Strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... when Private security agents (Pinkerton) were making war. Or the Battle of Blair Mountain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

And to directly reply to your statement: Union organizer Frank Little was pulled from his bed and lynched in 1917 because of his union activities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

In 1903 there was a company called Corporations Auxiliary Company.

This might be the earliest Astroturfer group, as well as working at sabotaging unios for company purposes.

This isn't the only examples, it is just that it is easier to find Union based examples - I'm neither promoting them, or speaking againse them, only that businesses indeed did practice violence against employees. Microsoft would get shut down if they spied on people as much as the NSA.

That you know of.

The government has power over a person's freedom, privacy, and very life. Therefore, they MUST be drastically limited in power and completely transparent in all that they do. The people who founded this country understood that concept.

Okay, but that leads me to my paradox. If Government's power over us is limited to your extent, it would be very similar to the late 1800's, early 1900's, when you very damn well could be hauled out of bed and hung if the corporation felt you were againt against them or the stockholders. Or shot and killed. It has already happened and it is documented

The only reason that Walmart - Or other company around today - hasn't taken out anyone and lynched them lately is because they are prevented from doing it by the evul Guvment.

Re: News

[Anonymous Coward]

The Heritage Foundation didn't write it. In a series of articles written after the Hillary Care debacle HF writers discussed alternatives. That's it.

Re:News

[laird]

In reality, of course, the reason that the web site had problems is that it's an absurdly complex integration of hundreds of back-end systems driven by the perverse insistence that we avoid the simple, efficient solution (let everyone buy into Medicare, a one sentence change to the law requiring no new technology) in order to create more opportunity for state-level corruption and political sabotage.

Re:News

[laird]

Of course, all of the "nullification" laws get thrown out by the courts, but it gives the state legislatures a chance to grandstand for their dumber voters.

Note also that in reality the state and local governments are less competent and more corrupt (on average) than the federal government. Because there's _way_ less oversight the more local the government is.

Re: News

[level_headed_midwest]

The reason policies cost more is that now we all are paying for everybody's everything instead of the people who were likely to run up certain costs largely being made to pay for them in higher premiums. The insurance costs pre-Obamacare for a healthy 25 year old woman compared to a healthy 25 year old male were relatively similar if the woman did not get maternity coverage. If she got that coverage, it was many times higher because a 25 year old woman is very likely to run up maternity costs. Now what's happened is the 25 year old male's rates shot up many fold because now maternity care has to be covered there is little differential pricing allowed (unless you smoke) under Obamacare.

So, while a 60 year old woman may not be running up maternity costs, others are and she is paying for it indirectly.

Re:News

[laird]

And, on the flip side, 10m people are insured that weren't before. And lots of people's coverage is a lot better than it was before. And, on average, insurance rates only went up 2-5%, when it went up 6-10% annually pre-ACA. So from what I can see, insurance coverage is better, and costs are going up more slowly than ever in my lifetime. Not a bad deal.

Re:News

[laird]

"the assumed number of healthy young people to float Obamacare of course aren't and won't be there"

In reality, of course, the number of health, young people buying through the exchanges is more than was predicted.

Re:News

[laird]

If you didn't notice any of the hundreds of good effects of ACA, perhaps silence is best.

Re:News

[Ksevio]

How does "maternity care for a 60 year old woman" increase premiums? That seems like a very small market

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

All the things he listed were due to local and state, not federal government.

Um, the Food and Drug administration (the guys who set the standards for food labeling, and in some cases minimum food quality) is a Administration under the Federal Government.

The Interstate Highway system (all those roads that have an I-(number) designation are funded and maintained by the Federal Government.

That I can see two examples without even looking up anything, and you can't is a good indicator of your lack of ability to see facts in light of your disagreement. Don't start glossing over the facts, as those are important in your quest to make sure you don't disconnect from reality and start making personal policies based on, well, whatever replaces facts.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

Walmart can't haul me out of my bed in the middle of the night for questioning.

You're right, if you have to deal with Walmart, and they want to question you, YOU will voluntarily walk into their store where they will keep you waiting. Then after (as a Walmart employee) you wait till the manager has time to service their own request for questioning, you will voluntarily answer their questions to the best of your ability because you are (generally) not prepared at that moment to be employed elsewhere.

Unless you have another job in your pocket, you will lose something of value (even if it's not the best job in the world, it is more valuable than nothing). So you will comply with a lot of hassling issues until you can find better. In this sense the only difference is that you _WANT_ to comply with Walmart, but you don't want to comply with your government? You need to think about that long and hard. Something seems odd about taking such a position, even if I'm likely to take a similar one too. Perhaps we should both reconsidered a few of the details and be better citizens.

Amazon can't use a drone to kill me without due process.

Actually, if they use drones, they probably will inadverntently kill someone in the process. The workplace is not free of accident. What you probably meant was that Amazon can't purposfully kill you with a drone without due process. That's another odd position to take. You see, Amazon doesn't have a _due process_, so of course due process isn't something that Amazon is hampered with. So it boils down to Amanzon can't purposefully kill you. Again, we have examples of companies doing exactly that both unintentionally and intentionally. If you are unaware of the latter, look into (not very popular due to government interference) corporate life insurance scams, where the corporation hires people with the intent of insuring them heavily and killing them. Also, consider the entire Ford Pinto cover up where the corporation condoned killing a portion of their customers by purposefully allowing a severe safety defect to go unfixed as their projected legal costs against the small portion who would sue was smaller. Again look at the entire Ford Explorer "purposeful tire under inflation" issue instead of redesigning their most popular car to not be susceptible to roll over. We have lots of examples in the automotive industry because of regulatory reporting traditions set up by Ralph Nader; but, there are probably tons of similar issues elsewhere too.

Microsoft would get shut down if they spied on people as much as the NSA.

I doubt it. Odds are they can legally mic a room they own if they have a corporate policy stating their facilities are meant for business purposes. If you are in a corporate environment, they already can _legally_ read your email without any oversight. They can take your work computer and go through it without any kind of subpoena, and if they mess up the analysis, they can still fire you without any kind of counter check.

They own the interoffice phones, so they can do whatever they want for calls that originate, terminate, and only travel through their equipment.

The government has power over a person's freedom, privacy, and very life. Therefore, they MUST be drastically limited in power and completely transparent in all that they do. The people who founded this country understood that concept.

Freedom is what the government provides us today. If it provided less, then we probably would become subjugated to some extra form of tyranny. What we complain about today is that the government is enforcing freedoms that we personally don't care about _at that moment_.

To make a simple example, we all know that in nearly every city in the USA cars routinely exceed the speed limit. The masses do it because there isn't enough law enforcement to catch them 99% of the time. The masses also know that law

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely disagree with your entire post. Just how do you think the Executive gets away with things like Fast and Furious? They are hiding behind the highest powers in the land. Below that level you can always find someone to investigate them, if the higher level isn't already corrupt as hell.

The state legislatures aren't simply grandstanding, they are proving points - you can whine all you want, but until you show a visible trail of evidence, anyone can claim you don't know what you're talking about. They are making the visible trail of evidence that even the left-wing (mo govmint) media can't ignore. The fed is overreaching, and the states are showing the people just how much power is being stripped away from them. Pretty soon we'll be much more akin to Russia than our loose federation that was once accountable to the people.

Re:News

[Jane Q. Public]

If you didn't notice any of the hundreds of good effects of ACA, perhaps silence is best.

It's not a matter of not noticing. It's a matter of balancing the good effects against the bad. Too many people see ONLY the good intent, and wear blinders when it comes to the bad effects or unintended consequences. ACA has had some enormous bad effects, and the potential for others is even more enormous.

Not to mention the government already illegally ignoring its own HIPAA laws, and in fact violating the actual ACA itself. I could go on for a long time.

Re:News

[Jane Q. Public]

Of course, all of the "nullification" laws get thrown out by the courts, but it gives the state legislatures a chance to grandstand for their dumber voters.

You are obviously completely ignorant of the history of your own country. No, they seldom if ever get thrown out. Because in most cases they are perfectly legal.

Do you see state medical marijuana laws being thrown out, even though they are directly contrary to Federal law? No, you don't. Why not? Because the Federal law is unconstitutional and the States and Feds both know it.

In response, the Feds are finally caving in to State pressure, and backing off. Two bills have been introduced in Congress to repeal Federal marijuana laws.

Nullification has a long and SUCCESSFUL history in the United States.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer single-payer UHC, but done carefully. Things to be included would be prescription drug patent reform and having the government negotiate the prices down wherever possible.

Re:News

[rubycodez]

Nope, reality is only 6.5 actually even paid their premiums in 2014 that's 5 million enrollees that don't matter / don't count. about 38% of them "young" people, 2.5 million. Not enough to float the boat.

Re:News

[rubycodez]

that's 6.5 million, well maybe 2015 will be better for enrollment who actually pay and stay with the program

Re:News

[gzuckier]

Technically, they are. Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion. Crony-capitalism at its finest.

true. but the way insurance works, of course, the more people in your risk pool the better it performs, so in that way the increased enrollment is good for everybody. not to mention the people who now have coverage and previously didn't.

Re:News

[gzuckier]

We're not other countries. Our government is the most corrupt institution on the planet.

Why would you think a government, that couldn't roll out a website, after spending over $2 billion, could effectively manage something far more complex?

yeah, that makes perfect sense. our government is more corrupt than, say Putin's? the PLO? any oil company?
and you know what they say, if you can't make your unbelievably complex website run perfectly on the first day, then you're probably too subhuman to earn your salary,
so, let's be honest and stop the incompetent and corrupt government from wielding great military power abroad, and the power of life and death via the legal system domestically, right?

Re:News

[gzuckier]

But that doesn't mean that we are supposed to turn into Somalia.

I love how the idea of reducing the size of the federal government is always compared to Somalia. Guess what? In addition to a federal government, most people are also under a state, county, and city/township government. Removing power from the federal government isn't going to result in bands of roving warlords and pirates. It would simply shift the balance of services provided from a bloated federal government back to the state & local level, where they belong and people have more opportunity to provide input.

sure. just like the red state governors have decided not to extend medicaid to their citizens too poor to afford to buy insurance on the exchanges even with a subsidy, even though that medicaid would be covered by the federal government. That's the kind of caring for their fellow citizens we can look forward to on the state level.
"Opposition to the ACA is an article of political faith among those who oppose President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Many conservatives have run their federal political races on a pledge to repeal “Obamacare.”[118] In addition, refusing Medicaid funds is part of a two-pronged strategy of some conservative leaders to undermine the ACA at the state level[119]—the other being to cede to the federal government the authority to establish insurance exchanges and regulate local insurance markets.[120] Opponents urge these sacrificial tactics because the ACA is President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, and so undermining “Obamacare” at any cost is seen as a prime strategy to weaken his political standing.[121] State-level Republicans see political advantage in aligning with these national opposition forces, or they fear the political costs of helping to implement any part of this new national law.[122] Aside from crass political motivation (that some might think is racially tinged), obstinate ideology is the only other possible justification for the stubborn refusal of federal funds in the face of compelling evidence that Medicaid expansion will cost states little or nothing. Despite the potential to improve health for millions, conservative leaders simply object in principle to accepting more federal funds with any strings attached. As Patrick Henry reminded us, points of principle certainly can be worth dying for, or allowing others to die for, but is state autonomy over Medicaid one such do-or-die principle? If not, spiteful refusal of federal funds in order to undermine the ACA is at least callous, if not reprehensible." http://www.nclawreview.org/201...

Re:News

[gzuckier]

You can buy a congressman for a couple of grand but you can buy a state legislator for a couple of hundred. That's why until the Southern Strategy turned things upside down, the wealthy big money Republicans owned the federal government, while the small business Democrats owned the states and cities.

Re:News

[Anonymous Coward]

The mandate may not be in effect, but go ahead and try to negotiate the same price for your company that you paid before Obamacare. The cost went up for employers that voluntarily are providing health care for their employees. They did not drop their employee coverage just because Obama changed his mind about forcing employers to provide the insurance for now.

Unfortunately you are a typical democrat that spews hate toward anyone that doesn't accept your world view.

Re: News

[Anonymous Coward]

Heritage indeed did write the GOP 1992 healthcare proposal that all of these provisions came from.

Covering your ears and crying does not make that fact go away.

Re:News

[nobuddy]

Some states had limited the period they can look back, and the bulk of those were . Not a single one outlawed the practice entirely for individual plans. 3 did it for group plans. most look-back periods were in years and as such useless for someone with a chronic condition.

Re:News

[srichard25]

Obama promised (many times) that the "Affordable" Care Act was supposed to LOWER the premiums of the average household by $2500. If the goal was to force everyone to have more coverage and pay higher premiums, then that could have been done with a much much more simple law.

Amended Returns

[dunnomattic]

I fear this will not end well for those who happened to already file. I have previously dealt directly with the IRS for three filings, two of which were multi-month-long processes. In the worst case, I spent the better part of 13 months corresponding via phone and U.S. Mail regarding an amended return -- they owed me money.

I'm not sure what percentage of filers end up owing taxes versus owed refunds. I imagine the number is fewer, so perhaps less than 400,000 people were even motivated to file early. But for those that were, I could see the amendment process dragging on until 2016.

Re:Amended Returns

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you filed a 1040X? What's so hard?

Re:Amended Returns

[dunnomattic]

...and was then asked to supply supporting documentation, as the original chain of supplied documents was found to be insufficient. The interdepartmental transfer of documents did not happen smoothly, and some of my documents ended up on one clerk's desk while the rest were in another official's catalog. In this instance, poor document control procedures were clearly at fault. However, at each step of the process, I was told to wait 8 - 12 weeks to allow for an official reply. In the end, I submitted a 5-page letter that sounded more like a court briefing than a business letter outlining the chronology, duration, and content of every phone call and letter. This finally drew an IRS investigators attention and it was resolved within 3 weeks. Inefficiency and unreliability are already.

The flow of information into and out of federal beurocracies is already torturous enough without the government supplying faulty information that we turn around and feed-back. My concern is for the taxpayers who made an effort to be responsible with their withholding and punctual in their filing. I suspect the government will be even less likely to address this queue of corrections since the only reason I can fathom people wish to file early is to get a refund sooner rather than later.

Methinks healthcare.gov may need some new staff

[NotDrWho]

They seem to be having some difficulties.

Re:Methinks healthcare.gov may need some new staff

[rubycodez]

methinks .gov needs to get some new staff, the two-party bitches of mega-corps seem to be having some difficulties

Re:Methinks healthcare.gov may need some new staff

[Anonymous Coward]

"Move fast and break things."

IRS + medical

[YrWrstNtmr]

Why the FUCK does the IRS need to know anything about the state of my medical insurance?
(we can go into why other entities (twitter/google/etc) need to know, but that was a previous slashdot article)

Re:IRS + medical

[rubycodez]

watch it, sounds like Joe Stack / Timothy McVeigh talk there

Re:IRS + medical

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Obama said so and he is infallible! Fall in line! The IRS can't make sure they are letting you keep too much money the government so generously gives you! If you don't have insurance, they have to take some of that money they so generously hand out! C'mon, think like a liberal!

Re:IRS + medical

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there exists a tax in the US depending on the state of your medical insurance?

If there was a tax on the length of your eyebrows, they would request information about eyebrow length. It's called doing their job.

Re:IRS + medical

[cdrudge]

Because you get tax credits based on your income level and healthcare situation. That's how the whole "government subsidizing the poor's healthcare" happens.

Re:IRS + medical

[jratcliffe]

It doesn't, but if you're going to get federal tax credits that subsidize your insurance, and those credits are income-based, then it does.

You could sign up at healthcare.gov without involving the IRS at all, but you'd have to forego the opportunity to get any subsidy.

Re:IRS + medical

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You are also forgetting about the fine/fee/tax (pick your wording as it seems to be some sort of quantum superposition of them) that is assessed if you do not carry health insurance or the right kind of health insurance.

Re:IRS + medical

[jratcliffe]

Yup, there's that too. Still, however, if you get your health insurance without any subsidy, the IRS only need to know that you have it.

Re:IRS + medical

[YrWrstNtmr]

And again, why does the IRS have anything to do with it? I have health insurance. Why do they need to know this?

I know the reason, but good grief.....how far do we allow multiple departments to intrude into other areas?

Re:IRS + medical

[Rockoon]

Yup, there's that too. Still, however, if you get your health insurance without any subsidy, the IRS only need to know that you have it.

Why didnt you address the part in his post which refutes what you are now saying? Seems like you large amount of intellectual dishonesty on your part. (why so dishonest? is it that you are uninformed and don't realize just how dishonest you are being?) You have to have the right kind of health insurance. Many people had plans much more responsible than so called qualified plans, that dont qualify.

When I was growing up the plans were called Major Medical, and later on they were re-tokened High Deductible. They are cheaper and cover more of the things that insurance is for, which is preventing a financial catastrophe. They exclude the middle man from routine expenses like yearly physicals and teeth cleanings, making those activities cheaper as well.

But no... you want to dishonestly defend the ACA like its a good thing when clearly a good thing would encourage Major Medical, rather than declare it unqualified.

Re:IRS + medical

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Simple answer is that they need to know if you have the right kind of health insurance since they are the government agency that was designated by law to collect the fine/fee/tax (pick your wording as it seems to be some sort of quantum superposition of them) that is assessed if you are found to be lacking. Why that agency was chosen was beyond me since apart from the law stating that the IRS collects it the IRS really has no relationship to the purchase of individual health insurance.

good news

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good news that signup issues have been fixed. What's worrisome is that no one knows what happened with the tax mail-outs. You cannot fix if you don't know what the problem is.

Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the tax system is beyond "human" logic?

I've dealt with complex tax systems here in Finland, and they are near impossible to get right, because of all the exceptions in the rules.

It's mostly not because they would be hard to implement, it's because their documentation isn't very clear.

Give these people an automatic extension.

[lasermike026]

Give these people and automatic extension. Make there tax date June 15th.

My personal feeling is that The Affordable Healthcare Act didn't go far enough. We need to go to single payer or something else. The current system is not functioning for most Americans and the costs are too high. Americans are in trouble. I have difficultly understanding the why folks oppose reforming the health system. There are a bunch of other systems that need reform too.

Re:Give these people an automatic extension.

[g0bshiTe]

I'd be for the type healthcare other govs have Canada for example, I realize what they have is more like single payer, I'd be for that vs this colluded crap bomb we have now.

Re:Give these people an automatic extension.

[rubycodez]

That's the point, they talked of single payer and robust public option, but instead delivered....what? another layer to insurance, healthcare chain and big insurance cycle? And claimed it would be payed for by a certain quota of young people signing up, which hasn't happened either (so the thing will not sustain itself).

I laugh at people who somehow imagined this would be a European style socialized medicine, ha as if!

Re:End of Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of a tax deduction do you get for tin foil?

Oh darn...

[DarkOx]

Obama administration, under heavy pressure from congressional Democrats, also announced that it would give several million people more time to buy health insurance so they could comply with federal law and avoid tax penalties.

I really hope the King v. Burwell case goes against the government. The executive branch needs to learn they implement the law congress passes not the one they wish congress passes. If Obama and lefties suddenly are not allowed to continue to make up the rules as they go along maybe the other half of America will realize this law for the ill considered, abusive over reach of authority and corporate give away that it is.

Re:Oh darn...

[jratcliffe]

"The executive branch needs to learn they implement the law congress passes not the one they wish congress passes"

Except they ARE implementing the law congress passed. Nobody without a prior axe to grind, looking at the law as written, in the context of how and when it was passed, could reach the conclusion that the passage was designed to do what the plaintiffs claim it was. In cases of ambiguity in a specific phrase, the courts are obliged to look at the legislation as a whole and at the context in which it was passed in order to resolve the ambiguity.

Re:Oh darn...

[Orgasmatron]

By context, would you perhaps be talking about all of the quotes and video clips of the bill's authors, consultants and supporters in congress saying the exact opposite?

Re:Oh darn...

[jratcliffe]

I'm aware of the one Gruber comment. Counterbalancing that is the weight of comments by all the key drafters and authors that this is not what they intended. It's poorly written, no doubt, but it's an incredible stretch to argue that the authors and backers of the law clearly intended to hide away a time bomb within it. Absent clear evidence that they did, the IRS's interpretation of the law looks entirely reasonable and in line with Congressional intent.

Re:Oh darn...

[sithkhan]

Bump parent up mod up +1 Like it upboat whatever - If you are going to enforce a law, enforce the entire law, not just the parts that make you feel magnanimous and beneficent. Liberal socialists seem to think that THIS TIME THEY WILL GET IT RIGHT AND MAKE IT WORK.

single payer yes, but baby steps...

[Ionized]

I surely hope that we make it to a single payer system in my lifetime, but there is no way in hell that you could have gotten something like that passed out of the blue.

think of obamacare as a road towards single payer. a shitty road perhaps, one filled with potholes, but one that i am happy to take nonetheless.

Re:single payer yes, but baby steps...

[Anonymous Coward]

So step 1 is to pass something that will take a large amount of money from those who have it, to give to those who don't.

Single payer is really just having people indirectly paying for health insurance. You FEEL as if its free, but everything you buy will cost more to pay for a single payer health insurance. And like Canada, if there is lack of funds, you have to wait or travel to another country to get treatment you need, paying out of your own pocket.

Enjoy the free money from others to help pay for YOUR medical bills. All that subsidy money you get, was taken from someone else who worked for it.

Re: single payer yes, but baby steps...

[Ionized]

Oh noes, socialism!

Sign me up. We are the only first world country WITHOUT single payer, and we have the most fucked health care. I don't think that is a coincidence.

The big picture

[sjbe]

Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion.

It's a private plan with regulations to keep the price reasonable because it wouldn't be otherwise. Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment. No one should lose health insurance just because they lost a job. Criticize the details all you want but that part of the ACA is unequivocally a Good Thing.

Crony-capitalism at its finest.

Since these insurance companies wouldn't insure millions of people at a reasonable price until the government forced the issue it eludes me how this is "crony capitalism". It's not as if the insurance companies were lobbying in favor of insuring poor people.

Re:The big picture

[SuperKendall]

It's a private plan with regulations to keep the price reasonable because it wouldn't be otherwise.

Right, that's why a lot of middle class families are now paying more for worse insurance than they were before Obamacare...

Nice revisionist history there.

Re:The big picture

[jratcliffe]

Since these insurance companies wouldn't insure millions of people at a reasonable price until the government forced the issue

Also, the government introduced the insurance mandate, thereby sharply reducing the adverse selection problem associated with the individual insurance market.

Re:The big picture

[TheGratefulNet]

prices go up and obamacare is NOT there to stop or help with that.

how can it? with this near-religion we have about bowing down to 'free markets', the gov won't ever force the HC companies to have reasonable prices and limit the price increases. they SHOULD step in, but the republicans would throw yet another fit and since they're mostly in control now, we won't get anything else out of this system until a new guard comes in.

of course, you are IGNORING the fact that every single year, prices of HC go up and this was before obama was even in office.

perhaps that's why you are marked TROLL. people realize that 'costs going up' is nothing that any president can do anything about. especially with the blockades that stand in his way of doing ANYTHING for the regular common people of america.

Re:The big picture

[Major Blud]

"Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment"

Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?

Re:The big picture

[Anonymous Coward]

B$. My family of 5 coverage was $160 per month, $35 copay, no deductible. Here comes Osamabinladencare, one adult person is now $1200 per month for almost the same coverage, kids are forced to take medi-cal, which is free but will recoup any/all medical bills from my estate. No choice on this, it's this or pay the full outside price which is 10X what it was.

Re:The big picture

[Major Blud]

"people are getting better coverage cheaper than before"

a lot of people are making this claim too......can you back it up? :-)

Re:The big picture

[ganjadude]

prices go up and obamacare is NOT there to stop or help with that.

we were told that the avg family would see 2500 a YEAR in savings. when the trust is they are spending about that much more.

Re:The big picture

[tompaulco]

It's a private plan with regulations to keep the price reasonable because it wouldn't be otherwise.

Right, because my insurance was going up by 10-15% each year, severely outpacing inflation. But thankfully, Obama put a stop to that with the Obamacare plan, which only made it go up 400% the first year and 25% the next year. Those are the only two years of data points so far. I admit there is every possibility that next year, my insurance could drop by a factor of 6 putting it in line with what my insurance formerly was trending.

Re:The big picture

[radarjd]

Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?

I think that the argument was that you could leave your job and become self-employed or join a small business without a company plan. I did that. I left my job to start my own business, and I insure myself and my family through the marketplace.

It has not been a particularly pleasant experience. While yes, I am able to get insurance, the marketplace has an extremely limited number of options. For 2014, I had 3 choices in my state. For 2015, it's better and bigger, but choice basically amounts to "choose your hospital system."

The worst part, though, has been the repeated bureaucratic barriers the system puts into place. First, I had to prove the citizenship of me, my wife, and my children. Our birth certificates were not initially accepted as proof. After a back and forth with the Marketplace, I eventually convinced them that we were, in fact, citizens of the US. I should note that for at least four generations from me and my wife, our ancestors were born in the US. It's probably more than four.

The issue we continue to battle, though, is "proof of income." My income decreased dramatically -- it was to be expected as I went from a dependable salary to starting my own business. Every few months, I get a request from the marketplace to submit a W-2. After getting on the phone and explaining that I'm self-employed, I get asked to submit an income ledger. As I am an attorney, many of my financial transactions are legally privileged and I am not permitted to disclose them except in a general sense. The first several times I submitted my self-employment ledger, it was rejected on the grounds that it did not contain sufficient information. Additional calls followed, and I have some small hope that my most recent submission (done this month) will be accepted without further objection.

In any case, someone who says that it's easier to start your own business now than before may be technically correct (the best kind of correct), but it's no cakewalk now.

Re:The big picture

[Art Challenor]

Since these insurance companies wouldn't insure millions of people at a reasonable price until the government forced the issue it eludes me how this is "crony capitalism". It's not as if the insurance companies were lobbying in favor of insuring poor people.

Actually, the insurance companies wrote much of the bill and are estatic about insuring anyone, especially when the government is paying them. Effective compeitition (a pubic option) or allowing medicaid to negotiate drug prices with the drug companies might have helped with cost control, but those were both nix'd extremely early in the process.

Re:The big picture

[laird]

Healthcare costs have always gone up every year. The reality is that healthcare costs have gone up under ACA at half the rate of the pre-ACA increases (3-4% under ACA, vs. the 6-10% annual increases every year for decades!). That's better.

As for worse insurance, that's unlikely. For example, the insurance companies aren't allowed to waste more than 15% of what they are paid, when previously there was no limit. And they were allowed to take insurance away from people that had been paying for it, if they became sick and required expensive coverage. And they were allowed to refuse to insure people with "pre-existing conditions" so people could lose coverage if they switched jobs. And they could sell insurance that turned out to be worthless. And the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US was medical bills to PEOPLE WITH INSURANCE who were driven into bankruptcy by their insurance companies. All those practices are illegal, making everyone's insurance (and lives) better.

And hospitals don't have to lose a fortune on providing services to uninsured people, which they covered by inflating the charges on the insured patients. So because the uninsured rate at hospitals has dropped dramatically, hospitals can stop having to cover the loss. Which is one of the many reasons that healthcare costs have stopped skyrocketing.

And 10m people have insurance that didn't, and will therefore lead healthier lives, which is an ethical improvement. If you care about people.

Re:The big picture

[laird]

Interesting anecdote.

On average, healthcare costs were going up 6-10% a year every year for decades, and 3-5% a year since ACA. So as a public policy it's working.

So why is your insurance deal so much worse than what everyone else is getting? What's so different about your personal situation to drive your prices dramatically up with millions of people are seeing the opposite?

Re:The big picture

[BradMajors]

Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment. No one should lose health insurance just because they lost a job. Criticize the details all you want but that part of the ACA is unequivocally a Good Thing

ACA is doing the exact opposite, it is tying health insurance even more closely with employment. And, no one lost health insurance because they lost a job before ACA.

Re:The big picture

[BradMajors]

If you don't qualify for a subsidy there is no reason to use the government website. I assume very few attorneys will qualify for a subsidy.

Re:The big picture

[Anonymous Coward]

One odd aspect of insurance being offered back in just post WW2 as an incentive to work for my company over another was that when you switch jobs (which has become more frequent due to an unwillingness to match the cost of living by incremental wage increases) you switch insurance plans. So even though you might still be employed in the general sense, there are plenty of opportunities to effectively lose insurance.

Also, many people (not all) find that when they lose an older job (one they have had for many years), the plans being offered in the newer job is not equivalent to the plans (which are contracts) written many years ago. In short, employers are trying to keep costs down by reducing coverage, and this is not fully the employer's fault as the employee pays a portion of the insurance costs and would like less money out of their pocket.

These issues came to a point when (in the recent downturn) the time between jobs became so great that the standard post-employment insurance coverage (I think it's three months or less) started expiring as people remained unemployed for nine months. These were not lower class people, but people firmly in the middle class. For example, I knew a loan originator for the corporate sector who was out for nearly 18 months, but could "survive" as he had rental property income. Of course, these are not (by my definition) the rich, as he had to erode his savings and seek reemployment (rental income isn't generally great enough to escape the standard workforce).

Re:The big picture

[tompaulco]

So why is your insurance deal so much worse than what everyone else is getting? What's so different about your personal situation to drive your prices dramatically up with millions of people are seeing the opposite?

Well, I am not aware of anyone whose insurance is only going up 3-5% per year and am not aware of anyone for whom their insurance didn't got up by at least 30% when Obamacare happened. And I know a lot of people for whom it doubled or tripled and one case where it went up by a factor of 5.
My situation was that I had a perfectly good Major Medical plan, and then when Obamacare happened, I was no longer able to get that plan, and they put me into a plan which was still Major Medical, but the coverage was not as good and the deductibles were higher, and it cost 4 times as much. I was able to eventually find the cheapest available plan, which was only a little over twice as much as the pre-Obama plan, but it also went up by about 25% the next year.

Re:The big picture

[gzuckier]

Those free market enthusiasts should be first in line to praise Obamacare for lowering costs; since now, the average family has a choice of several plans offered by several companies, in several grades (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, whatever) with equivalently reasonable mandated minimum benefits, rather than a take it or leave it deal from their employer, with a cost that depends mostly on what their employer wants to kick in. free market invisible hand theory suggests that consumers will flock to the most cost effective plans. I'm not a free market enthusiast, but even I can't see why they wouldn't.
That does leave the general overall tendency of costs to go up every year as they have for decades now. The reasons for this have been hashed over and over in the literature and the word Obama never comes up as a cause.

Re:The big picture

[gzuckier]

B$. My family of 5 coverage was $160 per month, $35 copay, no deductible. Here comes Osamabinladencare, one adult person is now $1200 per month for almost the same coverage, kids are forced to take medi-cal, which is free but will recoup any/all medical bills from my estate. No choice on this, it's this or pay the full outside price which is 10X what it was.

One person, $1200 a month? not including subsidies?
http://money.cnn.com/infograph...

Re:The big picture

[sjbe]

ACA is doing the exact opposite, it is tying health insurance even more closely with employment.

Bullshit. You can buy health insurance now regardless of job status and without worrying about pre-existing conditions. If your income is low then you can get subsidies. You also do not lose your health insurance if you lose your job so long as you can find some way to pay the premiums. NONE of that was true prior to the ACA.

And, no one lost health insurance because they lost a job before ACA.

That could not be more incorrect. Prior to 2014 if you lost your job you were IMMEDIATELY bounced out of your company health plan in almost all cases. You could get COBRA for a short time afterwards in some cases but only for a short time.

Re:The big picture

[nobuddy]

It is easy to lie as an AC. You don;t have to back up your words.

Does not make you any less the liar though.

Re:The big picture

[nobuddy]

Easily
http://obamacarefacts.com/obam...

Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

The more complex the law, the more it costs to adminster, both in dollars and authoritative power -- and the bigger the precedent for the next expansion of government.

Regulatory discretion

[sjbe]

The executive branch needs to learn they implement the law congress passes not the one they wish congress passes.

If Congress isn't specific in their statutes then it is to the discretion of the administration how they handle the regulations. Very few laws are passed with enough specificity that the executive branch doesn't have considerable discretion in the interpretation of the statutes.

If Obama and lefties suddenly are not allowed to continue to make up the rules as they go along maybe the other half of America will realize this law for the ill considered, abusive over reach of authority and corporate give away that it is.

You're accusing the left of corporate giveaways? Methinks you have the left and right mixed up. Abusive overreach of authority? I direct your attention to the actions of the previous administration, particularly post 9/11.

Re:Regulatory discretion

[Anonymous Coward]

If Congress isn't specific in their statutes then it is to the discretion of the administration how they handle the regulations. Very few laws are passed with enough specificity that the executive branch doesn't have considerable discretion in the interpretation of the statutes.

Congress was very specific. There are several dates specified in the written law that was passed by Congress and signed by Obama. Obama is ignoring the law as it is written and changing the implementation of the law. This is 1) unconstitutional 2) confusing as hell since there aren't any legal documents to guide the citizens on the changes

Re:Regulatory discretion

[DarkOx]

You're accusing the left of corporate giveaways? Methinks you have the left and right mixed up.

No I don't have my left and right confused. I dare say most the GOP is confused about being on the right. Almost all regulation is a form of corporate give away. If it has no other effects, one certain effect is it creates a new barrier to entry in some way. Its a give away to the existing players because it keeps other out.

Think about this. Do you think it would be easier to setup a new health insurance company in 2015 than it was in 2009? I am not suggesting it was easy in 2009 but its certainly harder now. Who is that good for? -- existing insurers.

Re:Regulatory discretion

[jratcliffe]

Definitely easier to launch an insurer now, given that you had multiple new entrants to the insurance marketplace when Obamacare was launched (often associated with local health care providers/hospital groups).

Don't have Gov Employees Pay Income Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we go through the process of taxing government employees? Why not just pay them proportionately and not have the IRS process them? This would accomplish several things:

1) It would save the non-government taxpayer a significant amount of money every year.
2) We could get rid of a large portion of the IRS staff.
3) It would remind government employees that they make less than the rest of us because their paychecks have to come out of someone elses.

Re:Don't have Gov Employees Pay Income Tax

[ganjadude]

thats actually not a bad idea.

Re:Don't have Gov Employees Pay Income Tax

[nedlohs]

Because you can't determine taxes from merely one income source.

A government employee who also owns a rental property that they get an income from might pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than one who has no source of income outside their employment. So you can't "pay them proportionately".

A government employee who is the only source of income for a family of five is going to have a different proportion to one who is married to an investment banker and has no kids.

So you'll need to duplicate the IRS in every other government entity that handles paying people. Which doesn't sound like it will save money.

good grief, think about what you're saying!

[Thud457]

tinfoil is a homeopathic treatment and therefore is disallowed.

Re:good grief, think about what you're saying!

[Minwee]

Look closely at the "tin foil" which the government allows you to buy in stores.

There is _no_tin_ in it. Anywhere.

What are they afraid of?

Re:good grief, think about what you're saying!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know. Just what are you planning on doing with tin, anyway? You shouldn't need any tin. There are few legitimate reasons why you would possibly need tin, citizen. You may be hearing more from us.

oh, and...

[HBI]

Bad form, replying to myself, but the same PPO policy cost $800/month to COBRA in 2008. As a data point.

I know why the error occured!

[reboot246]

Because they're all fucking incompetent idiots!

Government is the perfect example of the Peter Principle in action -- and since it doesn't take any of them very long to reach their level of incompetence, we're stuck with them for years until they leave the job and are enjoying their lavish retirements.

Cut government (bureaucrats) by 90% and you'll have a good start on fixing what's wrong with this country.

Moderators are all Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they lie and moderate anyone that compliments Microsoft NBC just like the post above. They hate the truth and lie lie lie lie. This site is now a CONservative playground where rational people are not allowed. They are all xians that want nonxians to die and go to hell. They want us to go to hell. That is the way of their kind.

No, MSNBC did not

[ClickOnThis]

Check the last paragraph in this article.

Re:No, MSNBC did not

[Anonymous Coward]

That is from a third-party even though it is hosted on their site. This is not their content. Rachael Madcow has covered how you people are lying about this. Believing a liar makes you a liar.

Re:No, MSNBC did not

[ClickOnThis]

Several ACs here have misunderstood my post. Rather than responding to each of them, I'm responding to my own to cover each of them. No offense intended.

First of all, I'm far from a Republican shill. I happen to like MSNBC. And although she's obviously biased, I think Rachel Maddow is an insightful commentator and I enjoy watching her show.

My point was that MSNBC has not done what greenwow claims. I can find no evidence that MSNBC "exposed" as a "lie" the report of 800,000 healthcare.gov users receiving false tax information. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Give FIXES, not gripes

[Tablizer]

The reality of healthcare politics is that a majority have and still do want some kind of gov't managed insurance to pool risk. Only about 1/4 want to go back to the way things were before ACA (link below).

IF a political entity rants to change or repeal it, they need to first specify in detail what to replace it with or change.

Every known non-trivial change will sock it to one group of people in order to benefit another, and thus wouldn't be an easy sell.

Griping is easy; presenting viable alternatives is not.

And each state CAN run it's own exchange site if it doesn't like the federal one.

http://politicalticker.blogs.c...

Moderators are Republican cocksuckers

[Anonymous Coward]

> This lie gets voted to a +2 and the truth is marked as a -1 troll.

The truth, and Microsoft's NBC admits, is that there were no known errors. The 800,000 number is a lie, and the President has confirmed it. People like this SuckOnThis asswipe are simply racists. The make-up garbage like this because they can't stand the fact that we have a black ruler.

SuckOnThis, you are a liar

[Anonymous Coward]

And anyone that believes you is also a liar. Believing a liar makes you a liar. The Republicans are piling up journalists like cordwood in Gitmo. Of course they're republishing this Republican lie. You must read between the lines to find the truth. The truth is that this did not happen. All intelligent people know that.

Stop believing the GOPper propaganda.

Cost Increasing Requirements Have Gone Into Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost increasing requirements have already gone into effect, even prior to 2016 mandate. Already we have forced coverage of people previously not in the insurance pools. That's why people lost their plans, can't keep their doctors, and have rates and deductibles jacked.

Not really easier

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tomfernandez28.com/2015...

This article is an example of a start-up health insurer a woman picked from the market place that received all sorts of federal funding to be a start-up and the insurer still went under. I think that if she had not gone shopping at healthcare.gov, she would have ended up with a more well known provider in the first place.

I'm not saying that more competition is bad, but when it is artificially controlled through a government program that is not working -- that is very bad.

Although actually, had obamacare never been passed, it is still arguable she'd still have the insurance she wanted in the first place.

wrong century. Democrats control Seattle 80 years

[raymorris]

Seattle hasn't had a Republican mayor for about 80 years. The city council is all Democrats except for the one socialist.

If you don't like the government there - surprise you don't actually like Democrats, regardless of what your govrrnment-school teacher told you.

Denying ecomic reality

[sjbe]

Right, that's why a lot of middle class families are now paying more for worse insurance than they were before Obamacare...

Prices have been going up by huge (often double digit) percentages every year for a long time and that started LONG before the ACA was passed. I run a company so I have seen it first hand for years. Those cost increases cannot be endlessly absorbed by employers. If costs go up faster than the population then sooner or later some people are going to end up with either more expensive coverage or worse coverage or both. To pretend that we can have both rising costs but not have people pay more is to be in denial of economic reality.

The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk and the cost. The health care system in the US had to change and any change you make is going to benefit some and cost others. To deny some people access to health insurance to keep rates lower for others is immoral and wrong. To tie one's ability to get health coverage to having a job is even more immoral and wrong. Your employment should have nothing to do with your access to health insurance.

Nice revisionist history there.

I didn't state anything that isn't a fact. Prior to 2014 it was literally impossible for millions of people to get insurance for reasonable rates unless they had access to a group plan through an employer. If you had a pre-existing condition you were screwed.

Speaking for myself and my staff, we dropped our health plan at our company and sent everyone to the exchanges. Everyone in our company found coverage that was roughly comparable to what they had before for similar or less money or in a few cases they picked high deductible plans. In rough numbers our health plan before 2014 cost about $600/person/month and the company picked up half of that amount. Post 2014, most people are paying between $150-250/month out of pocket and the company doesn't pay a dime. This has allowed us to hire extra staff and buy some equipment we couldn't previously justify. Speaking for myself I went from a HMO to a PPO with an HSA which is better coverage for the same money. Best of all, if I were to change jobs or the company were to fold, every one of those people would still have health coverage.

Lying Anonymously

[sjbe]

My family of 5 coverage was $160 per month, $35 copay, no deductible. Here comes Osamabinladencare, one adult person is now $1200 per month for almost the same coverage

Oh bullshit. Either you had a ludicrously good deal or you are lying and I'm pretty sure you are lying. $160/month to cover a family of 5? I run a company an have been looking at health plans for years and have NEVER seen a plan like that. There isn't an insurance company out there that could make a dime underwriting coverage for a family that size at that rate.

It's about ACCESS to insurance

[sjbe]

Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?

Might be tough but the important bit is that you have the OPTION to maintain your coverage which you didn't have before. The point you missed is that it used to be that if you lost your job you IMMEDIATELY lost your health insurance and you had ZERO alternative options except for maybe COBRA which is only a stop gap and an expensive one at that. Borrow the money, dip into savings or get another job but you can take your insurance with you. Even if you can't pay for it you can still sign up again at a later date when you can afford it regardless of your job situation. Got a pre-existing condition? Prior to 2014 you were screwed because no company would insure that condition for any amount of money. Prior to 2014, anyone who was self employed had very few options and they were almost universally shitty with huge deductibles.

You haven't really looked

[sjbe]

Well, I am not aware of anyone whose insurance is only going up 3-5% per year and am not aware of anyone for whom their insurance didn't got up by at least 30% when Obamacare happened.

Then you haven't looked. I run a small company and we closed our company sponsored plan in 2014 because it was double the price of the plans available through the exchanges. Price increases in 2015 were low single digit percentages for most of our employees including myself. I'm intimately aware of the prices both before and after 2014 and on the average.

Personally I got coverage that was better than our company plan for roughly the same amount of money out of pocket plus I now have an HSA on top of that. Some folks in our company are paying much less per month. A few are paying more, mostly those who are very close to retirement age and smoke.

Furthermore because we dropped the company sponsored plan we save about $250 per month per employee so we were able to hire more people.

Re:You haven't really looked

[tompaulco]

That's probably the difference then. I had an individual plan prior to Obamacare because coverage through the company was too expensive. I paid about 1/3 of what I would have paid through my company insurance for my family. People used to complain that you couldn't get affordable insurance except through a company, but I think that was a rumor spread by the corporations to keep people from leaving them.
Unfortunately, when Obamacare came along, my previously affordable insurance went about by a factor of 4 or 5. It was still cheaper than my company's insurance plan, which also went up by about 50%, so I stayed with my individual plan, but I had to switch to a different individual plan to get it down to only 3 times the previous year's plan.