TFA is a survivalist web site, and their main source was a story in the right-wing, Moonie Washington Times. This is right-wing anti-government hysteria.
Poor choices regarding the regulation of wood stoves can (as those regulations squeeze the availability of these stoves) result in deaths,
If you're going to talk about deaths, old-style wood-burning stoves are a major cause of indoor air pollution, and they cause a significant increase in eventually-fatal lung and heart disease. It's like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. In round numbers, it would cost you about 10 years of life expectancy.
I live in rural South Carolina where wood stoves are the only source of heat for many many people.
I did a Google search for "buy efa-compliant wood stoves" (duh) and found lots of stoves for under $1,000, some of them $6-700.
They can continue to use their old wood stoves. They just can't buy a new wood stove that isn't compliant.
There's a reason for that. Wood (and coal) stoves really are dangerous to have in your home, because of the air pollution. It's like smoking a pack a day of cigarettes. They increase the rate of lung and heart diseases significantly.
If they do buy a new stove, they won't have those pollution problems.
I'm not entirely against this rule, but I think it should be a local law not a national one. Someone in the middle of the city burning things is a pretty big asshole; someone living in a cabin in the woods isn't causing local problems and could possibly have circumstances that make the usage more understandable -- e.g., using wood that otherwise would go to waste, or using it as a back-up fuel source in case something goes wrong in the middle of winter.
An indoor stove that burns wood or coal really is dangerous, and it's most dangerous for the people inside the house. It makes you more likely to get serious, incurable lung and heart diseases.
I lived in a house with a wood-burning fireplace, and it was cool, but it got awfully smoky.
You are correct that wood stoves are a source of dangerous pollution. They're dangerous for the people outside the house, but they're even more dangerous for the people inside the house. It's about as dangerous as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, which takes about 10 years off your life expectancy.
There are some diseases, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, that pretty much affect only people who smoke, live in homes with old-style stoves, or are exposed to pollutants at work. COPD is a fairly uncomfortable way to die, not being able to breathe. Probably worse, but not as obvious, is the increase in heart disease and strokes. I could accept a heart attack, but I wouldn't want to spend the last 10 years of my life with the result of a stroke.
From those articles, it seems that people who already have noncompliant stoves can continue to use them. These regulations only affect new stoves.
It also looks like this has become a minor right-wing cause. Jack-booted thugs coming to take away your wood-burning stoves, and all that.
Here's an article that seems to say that people with low incomes can get subsidies to apply to commercial insurance, but it doesn't quite come out and say that.
I do agree with everyone who says that the ACA is needlessly complicated and that it's hard to get authoritative information on it. They seem to have said, "Yes, it is complicated, but we'll have a web site where people can figure it out." I don't defend Obama.
Recent days have made it clear that millions of Americans who bought health insurance on the individual market can't do what President Barack Obama said they could: keep their current health plan if they like it.
But some of those now-lamented plans weren't even what most people would consider insurance.
Known as "mini-meds'' or "junk insurance,'' these products often are little more than discount cards that can leave unknowing consumers with huge medical debt. Even a policy expert from the conservative Heritage Foundation, no fan of the Affordable Care Act, says they aren't worth keeping....
Indeed, Michael didn't know they qualify for a tax credit until a Times reporter entered his information into an online subsidy calculator on ehealth, a Web-based broker licensed to sell products through the federal marketplace. It estimated their credit at nearly $10,000 a year — enough to buy affordable insurance for both Palins.
"That'd be great," said Michael Palin.
Said McDonough, the Harvard professor: "Many of these people who think they are losers turn out to be winners."
I recommend you talk to someone who is not affiliated with your insurance company who knows a lot about insurance. There might be a way for you to save a lot of money.
There were a lot of people who were eligible for benefits under ACA and didn't realize it.
Employees get worker's compensation, which is limited to lost wages, and much less than they would get from a personal injury case.
Contractors can sue for personal injury, which is a lot more.
For example, if you as a programmer lost your penis and scrotum changing a light bulb, then under worker's comp you would be entitled to any lost wages for the time you were in the hospital or recuperating, but that's all. Losing your penis and scrotum wouldn't affect your future earning capacity as a programmer.
As a contractor in a personal injury case, you would be entitled to pain and suffering, and loss of consortium. That would be a lot more. You could ask a jury, "How much would it be worth to you...."
No, more like if you trip and fall down perfectly normal stairs while running down them, it's not really your employer's fault just because the stairs happened to be in their office.
No, under OSHA regulations, and under any safe workplace policies (including policies imposed by the insurance companies), the employer has an obligation to provide a safe workplace.
That includes training and supervision.
The employer has an obligation to make sure employees aren't running down stairs. Employers can fire employees who unsafely run down stairs.
But if the employer lets an employee run down stairs on his employer's time, and the employee falls and hurts himself, the employer is responsible for that injury.
That's a good way to do it, take a specific example.
IANAL but I've talked to lawyers and OSHA inspectors.
First, workplace accidents aren't personal injury cases. They're no-fault. It's like employers make a deal with employees.
When employees are injured on the job, the employer and his mandatory insurance are responsible for paying the medical costs, the lost earnings, and if there's a permanent disability, the cost of the disability in lost earnings for the rest of his life. Fault doesn't enter into it. Even if the employee was stupid and irresponsible, the employer is responsible for covering the costs of his injury.
In return, the employer doesn't have any liability to the employee for personal injury. For example, a lawyer told me about an employment case she handled where a McDonald's employee was burned severely over a large area of his skin by grease spilling on him, the first day on the job. If that were a personal injury case, the employee would have gotten a lot of money. But because it was an employment case, he was only entitled to medical expenses and lost earnings.
So not paying his medical expenses isn't an option. It doesn't matter whether he was at fault or stupid. If he was injured on the job, the employer has to pay for it. In exchange, the employee can't sue them for personal injury.
The other issue is that when you have an injury, everybody is responsible. The employee is responsible for being stupid, but the employer is responsible for not maintaining a safe workplace, which includes training and supervising their employees. But employees don't have to pay the costs of the consequences of their unsafe actions. Employers do.
I don't know the specifics of where you live or what your insurance policy is.
If your insurance company is telling you that you have to pay more for worse insurance after the ACA, then you should talk to somebody who knows a lot about health insurance, who isn't making money out of you, and who can give you objective advice about how to get insurance cheaper.
If you can't find anybody else, ask Eric Stern. https://twitter.com/_ericstern He was able to show people in your situation how to save thousands of dollars a year.
So your stance is the same as the President's: "I know I lied. I had to, so I could be reelected.
I didn't lie. I didn't vote for Obama or support him. I supported a single-payer system, which would cost half as much for the same coverage. And your choice of any doctor in the country.
You are too stupid to make your own health decisions."
That's true.
Lots of people lost the insurance that was helping them treat their preexisting conditions, like cancer.
I don't need a fact checker or foxnews to tell me that this law destroyed my ability to get quality affordable healthcare. Wake up, idiot, and listen to what people directly affected by this law are saying rather than the people that are telling you how to think.
There's only one way to answer you. I'm going to have to commit copyright infringement.
I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.
“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.
But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.
I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.
First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.
Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.
There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.
Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.
Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.
I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law
Stop telling me my good insurance is bad. It is better than anything I can get on the exchange. I'm sick and tired of ACA supporters living in denial of the fact that this law is hurting a lot of people.
I don't know what your policy is, but here's an insurance professional who actually tracked down stories like yours on Fox News of people who complained that they would be paying more under Obamacare for insurance they don't need. It turned out that they would actually be paying less under the ACA. Unless you know a lot about health insurance, and you've compared the policies, you don't know that it's better than you can get on the exchanges. Since the low-income policies are heavily subsidized, it's unlikely you could do better with an unsubsidized policy than a subsidized policy.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/ Friday, Oct 18, 2013 Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience By Eric Stern “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on....
I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy that will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
If you want to force me to pay for someone else, then sack-up and raise my taxes for that purpose - Medicare/Medicaid already exist for this exact function. Don't hide it behind "healthcare" and then systematically damage everyone's quality of healthcare in the process (which this little law will indeed do...)
Obama didn't sack-up and raise taxes for health care because, after extensive discussions with the Republicans, he concluded that the Republicans would never agree to it. He therefore had to lie and call it something else. The alternative was even worse http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 In state after state, Republican legislatures won't pay taxes for Medicaid, and the conservative Democrats aren't much better. What do you think "Taxed Enough Already" means?
A lot of liberal Democrats thought that if Obama stood up and fought the Republicans, he could have gotten a single-payer system like Canada. Too bad. The Canadian system costs about half as much for about the same outcomes. So you're going to have to pay twice as much, in premiums and taxes, for a ridiculous Republican-designed system. Too bad.
Otherwise, your first sentence shows an idiotic, greedy, and rapacious attitude towards things that are quite simply not yours.
Adam Smith said that those who have received a greater benefit from society have an obligation to contribute a proportionally greater part of their income to the costs of running that society -- in other words, progressive taxation. You benefited from society. Now pay up. I'm sorry you're not convinced that it's the right thing to do. But it's the law.
The reason they cover contraception and maternity is because it's cheaper for the insurance company (and for you) to have a simple policy that covers everything than it is to write a policy customized exactly to your needs.
Suppose you could get a policy for you and your wife for $20,000 a year. Then you told the insurance company, "Wait, my wife had a hysterectomy, we don't need contraception and maternity benefits. how much will you charge me for a policy that's identical except it doesn't have contraception and maternity benefits?" They might tell you, "$19,900 a year." Or more likely, they'd tell you, "$20,000 a year." In other words, it would cost them just about as much (or more) to write a custom policy for you as it would to issue you a standard policy.
That's because, if they issue custom policies, they'd have to hire an army of clerks to make sure you were billing them for the right expenses and they were paying the right amount.
Medicare is a simple policy. You turn 65, you're eligible, and everybody pays the same premium. It covers all major conditions. You get sick, they pay your doctor 80% of their negotiated price, you pay the rest. The administrative costs of Medicare are about 3% of revenues.
Private insurance has more options. The administrative costs of private insurance are about 40% of revenues.
A la carte health care plans were fashionable in big corporations a few years ago, but they didn't save any money so they don't do it any more. They failed in the marketplace.
Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies. Should you be in a hospital, ask the doctor how much time is lost in disputing the necessity of treatment with insurance companies, or how many patients opt for less than optimal treatment because an insurance company bureaucrat interprets a rule differently from other staff at the very same firm.
I used to interview doctors and medical office managers about their office management and billing. One office manager told me that they had 6 full-time equivalent staff, and of those 6, 1 full-time equivalent person was working on the insurance billing. I heard that a lot -- about 1/6 or 15% of their staff time is spent on billing.
That is, you have a medical office staffer talking on the phone to an insurance company staffer, trying to figure out a bill. They're both getting paid for that time. And you're paying them.
I figured it out like this: For every $1.00 you pay the insurance company, the insurance company takes 20 cents for administrative costs, and passes the remaining 80 cents on to the doctor. The doctor's office spends 15 cents of that on administrative costs, and uses the remaining 65 cents on actually delivering health care.
In contrast, Medicare spends about 3 cents out of every $1.00 on administrative costs, and doctors told me that the cost and hassle of processing Medicare was much lower. That's why most doctors accept Medicare, even though it pays less.
65 cents sounds about right. The Canadian health care system spends about 65 cents to our dollar for the same outcomes.
Nobody is going to pay more than 5% of his income for health insurance. What's your problem?
There's also the question of how much your old policy would have paid when you got a big bill. A lot of those old policies had maximum payouts, high deductibles, and all kinds of exclusions. Somebody would go to a hospital and come home with $30,000 in bills that weren't paid by the insurance. Under Obamacare, the maximum out of pocket will be $8,500 for an individual.
Obamacare is actually Romneycare, which is a bad health plan. A single payer system would have been better. The Canadians pay half as much as we do. But Obama wouldn't stand up to the Republicans, so a Republican plan is what we got. It's better than what we had before.
My wife works for the federal government (Social Security Admin). Not surprisingly, many of the folks there are big Obamacare supporters. All she has to do to "convert" them on the fly is ask, "put it to you this way: you've seen how things work here. Do you really want the same people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery?" That gets them every time.
Yet, under one method my health insurance is good and affordable. Under the other scenario my insurance costs 259% more and has higher deductibles and out of pocket costs.
The fact-checkers have been having a field day playing "gotcha" with the Fox News interviews with people claiming that their insurance will cost more under Obamacare. All they have to do is call the people up and ask them to describe their policy.
There were cheaper policies that didn't cover as much -- they had higher deductibles and out of pocket costs. People would find out, too late, that they had a $20,000 bill that their insurance didn't cover. Those policies won't qualify under Obamacare.
The Obamacare policies will cost more than some of the old policies. But they have lower out of pocket costs than the old policies.
People say, "I like my policy." That's a mistake. You don't know whether that policy is any good until you've gotten some big medical expenses, and you can see what it covers. And most people don't get big medical expenses very often.
"In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also a good idea to use a healthy dose of skepticism when you read apocalyptic predictions of disaster from government regulations.
You are correct.
TFA is a survivalist web site, and their main source was a story in the right-wing, Moonie Washington Times. This is right-wing anti-government hysteria.
Poor choices regarding the regulation of wood stoves can (as those regulations squeeze the availability of these stoves) result in deaths,
If you're going to talk about deaths, old-style wood-burning stoves are a major cause of indoor air pollution, and they cause a significant increase in eventually-fatal lung and heart disease. It's like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. In round numbers, it would cost you about 10 years of life expectancy.
That's why we have air pollution regulations. People were literally [sic] dropping dead in the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Harbin_smog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_St._Louis_smog
The boilers at that link are EPA-certified, so they have nothing to worry about.
I live in rural South Carolina where wood stoves are the only source of heat for many many people.
I did a Google search for "buy efa-compliant wood stoves" (duh) and found lots of stoves for under $1,000, some of them $6-700.
They can continue to use their old wood stoves. They just can't buy a new wood stove that isn't compliant.
There's a reason for that. Wood (and coal) stoves really are dangerous to have in your home, because of the air pollution. It's like smoking a pack a day of cigarettes. They increase the rate of lung and heart diseases significantly.
If they do buy a new stove, they won't have those pollution problems.
I'm not entirely against this rule, but I think it should be a local law not a national one. Someone in the middle of the city burning things is a pretty big asshole; someone living in a cabin in the woods isn't causing local problems and could possibly have circumstances that make the usage more understandable -- e.g., using wood that otherwise would go to waste, or using it as a back-up fuel source in case something goes wrong in the middle of winter.
An indoor stove that burns wood or coal really is dangerous, and it's most dangerous for the people inside the house. It makes you more likely to get serious, incurable lung and heart diseases.
The reason we have these rules is that people literally were dying in the streets from air pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
I lived in a house with a wood-burning fireplace, and it was cool, but it got awfully smoky.
You are correct that wood stoves are a source of dangerous pollution. They're dangerous for the people outside the house, but they're even more dangerous for the people inside the house. It's about as dangerous as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, which takes about 10 years off your life expectancy.
There are some diseases, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, that pretty much affect only people who smoke, live in homes with old-style stoves, or are exposed to pollutants at work. COPD is a fairly uncomfortable way to die, not being able to breathe. Probably worse, but not as obvious, is the increase in heart disease and strokes. I could accept a heart attack, but I wouldn't want to spend the last 10 years of my life with the result of a stroke.
From those articles, it seems that people who already have noncompliant stoves can continue to use them. These regulations only affect new stoves.
It also looks like this has become a minor right-wing cause. Jack-booted thugs coming to take away your wood-burning stoves, and all that.
Here's an article that seems to say that people with low incomes can get subsidies to apply to commercial insurance, but it doesn't quite come out and say that.
I do agree with everyone who says that the ACA is needlessly complicated and that it's hard to get authoritative information on it. They seem to have said, "Yes, it is complicated, but we'll have a web site where people can figure it out." I don't defend Obama.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/some-canceled-insurance-policies-were-junk-insurance-targeted-by-law/2151587
Some canceled insurance policies were 'junk' targeted by law
Jodie Tillman, Times Staff Writer
Friday, November 8, 2013 6:03pm
Recent days have made it clear that millions of Americans who bought health insurance on the individual market can't do what President Barack Obama said they could: keep their current health plan if they like it.
But some of those now-lamented plans weren't even what most people would consider insurance.
Known as "mini-meds'' or "junk insurance,'' these products often are little more than discount cards that can leave unknowing consumers with huge medical debt. Even a policy expert from the conservative Heritage Foundation, no fan of the Affordable Care Act, says they aren't worth keeping....
Indeed, Michael didn't know they qualify for a tax credit until a Times reporter entered his information into an online subsidy calculator on ehealth, a Web-based broker licensed to sell products through the federal marketplace. It estimated their credit at nearly $10,000 a year — enough to buy affordable insurance for both Palins.
"That'd be great," said Michael Palin.
Said McDonough, the Harvard professor: "Many of these people who think they are losers turn out to be winners."
Thanks, I didn't know about those.
I don't know what would happen in that situation.
I recommend you talk to someone who is not affiliated with your insurance company who knows a lot about insurance. There might be a way for you to save a lot of money.
There were a lot of people who were eligible for benefits under ACA and didn't realize it.
Employees get worker's compensation, which is limited to lost wages, and much less than they would get from a personal injury case.
Contractors can sue for personal injury, which is a lot more.
For example, if you as a programmer lost your penis and scrotum changing a light bulb, then under worker's comp you would be entitled to any lost wages for the time you were in the hospital or recuperating, but that's all. Losing your penis and scrotum wouldn't affect your future earning capacity as a programmer.
As a contractor in a personal injury case, you would be entitled to pain and suffering, and loss of consortium. That would be a lot more. You could ask a jury, "How much would it be worth to you ...."
No, more like if you trip and fall down perfectly normal stairs while running down them, it's not really your employer's fault just because the stairs happened to be in their office.
No, under OSHA regulations, and under any safe workplace policies (including policies imposed by the insurance companies), the employer has an obligation to provide a safe workplace.
That includes training and supervision.
The employer has an obligation to make sure employees aren't running down stairs. Employers can fire employees who unsafely run down stairs.
But if the employer lets an employee run down stairs on his employer's time, and the employee falls and hurts himself, the employer is responsible for that injury.
That's a good way to do it, take a specific example.
IANAL but I've talked to lawyers and OSHA inspectors.
First, workplace accidents aren't personal injury cases. They're no-fault. It's like employers make a deal with employees.
When employees are injured on the job, the employer and his mandatory insurance are responsible for paying the medical costs, the lost earnings, and if there's a permanent disability, the cost of the disability in lost earnings for the rest of his life. Fault doesn't enter into it. Even if the employee was stupid and irresponsible, the employer is responsible for covering the costs of his injury.
In return, the employer doesn't have any liability to the employee for personal injury. For example, a lawyer told me about an employment case she handled where a McDonald's employee was burned severely over a large area of his skin by grease spilling on him, the first day on the job. If that were a personal injury case, the employee would have gotten a lot of money. But because it was an employment case, he was only entitled to medical expenses and lost earnings.
So not paying his medical expenses isn't an option. It doesn't matter whether he was at fault or stupid. If he was injured on the job, the employer has to pay for it. In exchange, the employee can't sue them for personal injury.
The other issue is that when you have an injury, everybody is responsible. The employee is responsible for being stupid, but the employer is responsible for not maintaining a safe workplace, which includes training and supervising their employees. But employees don't have to pay the costs of the consequences of their unsafe actions. Employers do.
I don't know the specifics of where you live or what your insurance policy is.
If your insurance company is telling you that you have to pay more for worse insurance after the ACA, then you should talk to somebody who knows a lot about health insurance, who isn't making money out of you, and who can give you objective advice about how to get insurance cheaper.
If you can't find anybody else, ask Eric Stern. https://twitter.com/_ericstern He was able to show people in your situation how to save thousands of dollars a year.
Here's the Kaiser subsidy calculator. http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/
So your stance is the same as the President's: "I know I lied. I had to, so I could be reelected.
I didn't lie. I didn't vote for Obama or support him. I supported a single-payer system, which would cost half as much for the same coverage. And your choice of any doctor in the country.
You are too stupid to make your own health decisions."
That's true.
Lots of people lost the insurance that was helping them treat their preexisting conditions, like cancer.
Name one.
(Here's the fact-checking story BTW. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/ )
I don't need a fact checker or foxnews to tell me that this law destroyed my ability to get quality affordable healthcare. Wake up, idiot, and listen to what people directly affected by this law are saying rather than the people that are telling you how to think.
There's only one way to answer you. I'm going to have to commit copyright infringement.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern
I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.
“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.
But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.
I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.
First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.
Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.
There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.
Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.
Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.
I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law
Stop telling me my good insurance is bad. It is better than anything I can get on the exchange. I'm sick and tired of ACA supporters living in denial of the fact that this law is hurting a lot of people.
I don't know what your policy is, but here's an insurance professional who actually tracked down stories like yours on Fox News of people who complained that they would be paying more under Obamacare for insurance they don't need. It turned out that they would actually be paying less under the ACA. Unless you know a lot about health insurance, and you've compared the policies, you don't know that it's better than you can get on the exchanges. Since the low-income policies are heavily subsidized, it's unlikely you could do better with an unsubsidized policy than a subsidized policy.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern
“Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on....
I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy that will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
Me Me Me Me!!!!!
If you want to force me to pay for someone else, then sack-up and raise my taxes for that purpose - Medicare/Medicaid already exist for this exact function. Don't hide it behind "healthcare" and then systematically damage everyone's quality of healthcare in the process (which this little law will indeed do...)
Obama didn't sack-up and raise taxes for health care because, after extensive discussions with the Republicans, he concluded that the Republicans would never agree to it. He therefore had to lie and call it something else. The alternative was even worse http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 In state after state, Republican legislatures won't pay taxes for Medicaid, and the conservative Democrats aren't much better. What do you think "Taxed Enough Already" means?
A lot of liberal Democrats thought that if Obama stood up and fought the Republicans, he could have gotten a single-payer system like Canada. Too bad. The Canadian system costs about half as much for about the same outcomes. So you're going to have to pay twice as much, in premiums and taxes, for a ridiculous Republican-designed system. Too bad.
Otherwise, your first sentence shows an idiotic, greedy, and rapacious attitude towards things that are quite simply not yours.
Adam Smith said that those who have received a greater benefit from society have an obligation to contribute a proportionally greater part of their income to the costs of running that society -- in other words, progressive taxation. You benefited from society. Now pay up. I'm sorry you're not convinced that it's the right thing to do. But it's the law.
The reason they cover contraception and maternity is because it's cheaper for the insurance company (and for you) to have a simple policy that covers everything than it is to write a policy customized exactly to your needs.
Suppose you could get a policy for you and your wife for $20,000 a year. Then you told the insurance company, "Wait, my wife had a hysterectomy, we don't need contraception and maternity benefits. how much will you charge me for a policy that's identical except it doesn't have contraception and maternity benefits?" They might tell you, "$19,900 a year." Or more likely, they'd tell you, "$20,000 a year." In other words, it would cost them just about as much (or more) to write a custom policy for you as it would to issue you a standard policy.
That's because, if they issue custom policies, they'd have to hire an army of clerks to make sure you were billing them for the right expenses and they were paying the right amount.
Medicare is a simple policy. You turn 65, you're eligible, and everybody pays the same premium. It covers all major conditions. You get sick, they pay your doctor 80% of their negotiated price, you pay the rest. The administrative costs of Medicare are about 3% of revenues.
Private insurance has more options. The administrative costs of private insurance are about 40% of revenues.
A la carte health care plans were fashionable in big corporations a few years ago, but they didn't save any money so they don't do it any more. They failed in the marketplace.
Like Nataline Sarkisyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nataline_Sarkisyan
Michael Moore wouldn't be able to make those movies if the insurance companies didn't make it so easy for him.
Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies. Should you be in a hospital, ask the doctor how much time is lost in disputing the necessity of treatment with insurance companies, or how many patients opt for less than optimal treatment because an insurance company bureaucrat interprets a rule differently from other staff at the very same firm.
I used to interview doctors and medical office managers about their office management and billing. One office manager told me that they had 6 full-time equivalent staff, and of those 6, 1 full-time equivalent person was working on the insurance billing. I heard that a lot -- about 1/6 or 15% of their staff time is spent on billing.
That is, you have a medical office staffer talking on the phone to an insurance company staffer, trying to figure out a bill. They're both getting paid for that time. And you're paying them.
I figured it out like this: For every $1.00 you pay the insurance company, the insurance company takes 20 cents for administrative costs, and passes the remaining 80 cents on to the doctor. The doctor's office spends 15 cents of that on administrative costs, and uses the remaining 65 cents on actually delivering health care.
In contrast, Medicare spends about 3 cents out of every $1.00 on administrative costs, and doctors told me that the cost and hassle of processing Medicare was much lower. That's why most doctors accept Medicare, even though it pays less.
65 cents sounds about right. The Canadian health care system spends about 65 cents to our dollar for the same outcomes.
Nobody is going to pay more than 5% of his income for health insurance. What's your problem?
There's also the question of how much your old policy would have paid when you got a big bill. A lot of those old policies had maximum payouts, high deductibles, and all kinds of exclusions. Somebody would go to a hospital and come home with $30,000 in bills that weren't paid by the insurance. Under Obamacare, the maximum out of pocket will be $8,500 for an individual.
Obamacare is actually Romneycare, which is a bad health plan. A single payer system would have been better. The Canadians pay half as much as we do. But Obama wouldn't stand up to the Republicans, so a Republican plan is what we got. It's better than what we had before.
My wife works for the federal government (Social Security Admin). Not surprisingly, many of the folks there are big Obamacare supporters. All she has to do to "convert" them on the fly is ask, "put it to you this way: you've seen how things work here. Do you really want the same people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery?" That gets them every time.
What's the alternative? Do you want these people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nataline_Sarkisyan
Yet, under one method my health insurance is good and affordable. Under the other scenario my insurance costs 259% more and has higher deductibles and out of pocket costs.
The fact-checkers have been having a field day playing "gotcha" with the Fox News interviews with people claiming that their insurance will cost more under Obamacare. All they have to do is call the people up and ask them to describe their policy.
There were cheaper policies that didn't cover as much -- they had higher deductibles and out of pocket costs. People would find out, too late, that they had a $20,000 bill that their insurance didn't cover. Those policies won't qualify under Obamacare.
The Obamacare policies will cost more than some of the old policies. But they have lower out of pocket costs than the old policies.
People say, "I like my policy." That's a mistake. You don't know whether that policy is any good until you've gotten some big medical expenses, and you can see what it covers. And most people don't get big medical expenses very often.
Why shouldn't they trust him? He was polygraphed.
FTA:
"In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108