This one’s from 12/3, but it’s a hoot
“Decent”. Millions have seen their health insurance dropped, Team Obama’s mid-range estimate is that 93 million will ultimately lose their plans, health care networks are being restricted, premiums and deductibles have gone through the roof, fewer people are actually eligible for subsidies, and many of those subsidies are tiny, etc and so on, and we haven’t even gotten to the point where people are going to attempt to use the insurance.
As the problems with HealthCare.gov, the website marketplace for individual health insurance for people in states which opted not to run their own health care exchanges, begin to fade, we will have more of an opportunity to examine the deeper flaws in the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. (snip)
The best feature of Obamacare with respect to affordability is its expansion of Medicaid, at least for states which have decided to accept the additional federal funding for the program. Individuals with incomes of up to 133% of the federal poverty level will be able to sign up for Medicaid, and will be notified of this option if they attempt to shop for insurance plans through the federal or eligible state health insurance exchanges.
If that’s the best feature, then we are in much worse trouble than we thought. More people moved directly under the government banner.
And the cheapest plans are cheaper for a reason. Their coverage is not nearly generous enough, with higher copays and deductibles. Those who have these plans and who experience an adverse health event due sudden illness or accident will likely still find themselves faced with an unaffordable bill.
Yeah, but it’s “decent”!
But all of these problems with Obamacare are really just problems with our current system of private health insurance. Before Obamacare, it was expensive. There were junk policies that offered little real coverage to people, and even supposedly “good” insurance policies had holes in them. Those fortunate enough to have high quality employer-provided health insurance have had decent enough affordable coverage, but very few on the individual market — basically just high income people without pre-existing conditions — did.
So Obamacare increases costs for negligible benefits while reducing networks, and let’s not forget the “death panels”, ie, Independent Payment Advisory Board. Can’t wait to see what the holes in O-care plans are.
Duncan Black writes the blog Eschaton under the pseudonym of Atrios and is a fellow at Media Matters for America.
If Black, a big time far left liberal writer, who writes for the aforementioned unhinged Media Matters, can’t provide much in the way of positive support for O-care, then it must be pretty darned bad. This is a law that affects 1/6th of our economy and will touch the lives of every single American, few in a good way. If we’re lucky, the law ends up affecting most of us neutrally. I think it needs to be a bit more than “decent”.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
You haven’t even begun to see what is coming with this law. The law did not correct any of the issue with US medical care, it only worsened them.
Right on David. And added more problems and routes for corruption and fraud.
Yes, let’s expand one of the most over-bloated red-tape filled, cost-expanding measure of our Socialist gov’t ever. Yeah, that will solve it.
But, weren’t we told that this was for those people who could not get insurance for pre-existing conditions or are too poor?
Why are people above the poverty line getting subsidies and being moved to Medi*? But then, that was really the point, wasn’t it?
There are actually two “points”:
1. More than 10% of our citizens do not have access to affordable, quality healthcare. This is a moral as well as economic failing.
2. As a nation, per person, we spend twice as much on healthcare as other advanced nations. This is a largely unseen $1 trillion tax (accruing to docs, insurers, pharma, lawyers, hospitals etc) on everyday Americans and a projected budget buster.
Obviously, instituting a single payer system similar to Medicare would have been a more efficient path, but was politically unfeasible. The conservative plan to do nothing was immoral.
As response to Jeffy,
1) This is factually wrong. Many people chose not to enter the health insurance market. No one was ever denied health care. Furthermore, the estimates on citizens who did not have health care as in the 24 million range, which is not 10% of the population.
2) Conservatives did propose other remedies that were dismissed and ignored by liberals. This cannot be denied and Jeffy’s lie saying otherwise shows the lack of integrity he has as person.
What we are seeing is that the President and Democrats lied to the American people. Jeffy bemoaned the 24 million people without health insurance and instead supports a program that will mean 80 – 100 million will lose their health care and for most people, will mean an increase in costs to the people as well as an huge increase to the national debt.
Liberals hate facts.
baggy,
You can’t help yourself can you? Nothing you said is true.
I’ll put my personal integrity up against a dishonest and ignorant teabagger hack like you any day.
I did not say people were denied healthcare. But clearly, people showing up at the ER as a last resort is no way to run a healthcare system is it, baggy? Besides adding billions to our costs, it is not good for the health of our citizen is it, baggy. No screening, no prenatal care, no preventive care…
So tell my baggy, what are all those great conservative ideas for healthcare? More competition for insurance companies? Done by the ACA. Did conservatives have any other ideas for getting insurance coverage for the poor? Healthcare vouchers? Is that much different from the insurance marketplaces and subsidies?
Baggy, in addition, far rightists, like the Pirate, feel the previous system, paying twice as much per person than other advanced nations, and missing some 10% of our citizens was OK and would be improved by cutting taxes of the wealthy who would build more factories and put more poor people in high-paying jobs so they could afford insurance. Well, baggy, we’ve been cutting taxes since the 1960s and our rich people have a lot more money, and we have fewer factories and the working classes are making less money.
Conservative policies made the America we live in today.
I’m always stunned by the right’s disdain for the poor and unfortunate.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It’s whether we provide enough for those who have too little.â€
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Sorry, but that is completely wrong. And if so, that is no reason to kill the insurance to the other 100’s of millions. Many of those small numbers chose not to get insurance, but no one is denied Health Care. And living in USA, everyone has access to the world’s best quality Care. Your argument is invalid on its face.
What the hell are you blathering on about?? So, our spending on our health care is a tax upon those providing us the service?!? I am happy that we still have the freedom to pay for the quality and near instant world-quality of Care. And that costs money.
I’d be more worried if I were you about why the other nations don’t spend so much on quality of care for their citizens. Instead of being proud that we do what it takes to heal our citiznes, you want to cut that back to levels similar to Socialist nations like Cuba and Russia. Instead of complaining, why not just go there where many more share your political and religious beliefs.
Why create a new system at all when, like you say, we already have a system set up and capable of handing those few who could not get insurance due to pre-existing?
We had a plan. It just wasn’t as Socialist take-over of America type plan like you Socialists want. Our plan would have had all the parts that many of the Dems claim they want. But because it was put forth by Repubs, the Dems refused to give it any vote.
You can whine and cry all you want about how our health insurance and health care was set up before ObamaCare destroyed it (like you said), but you are the one still pushing for even more Socialist dogma and control and taxation.
If you want the gov’t to have more tax dollars, then you are more than free to give more of your millions.
Well, nothing except for the entire post.
Ah yes. Here we go. Confronted with the facts, Jeffy puts up his absent integrity and backs it up with an insult.
Just more liberal tolerance and hypocrisy on display.
By the way, when you put your (lack of) integrity on top of a plan which was proposed on the idea that “you won’t lose your health care,” “you can keep your doctor” and “costs will go down,” – all of which are undeniably a lie – your “integrity” is not worth anything.
There is no competition when the government is telling people what they must sell and what they must buy, Jeffy.
But Conservatives did offer increased competition by eliminating the prohibition against selling insurance across state lines. Such a prohibition reduces the pool of insured people which lowers costs. (Democrats rejected that plan.) Conservatives offered increased prosecution of Medicare fraud – the results of which would have paid for all the uninsured people in the country without affecting others. (Democrats rejected that plan.) Conservatives offered tax credits to those who purchased health care plans. (Democrats rejected that plan because they don’t want people to keep their own money.)
These are just some of the ideas put forth Jeffy. Liberals hated them all because they don’t want people to make their own decisions but instead be holding to the government masters.
Democrats were and are the party of slavery.
As for the Roosevelt comment, I hope you are aware that you are quoting a person who got slapped down for trying the pack the Supreme Court, whose policies extended the Depression and whose policies, if continued through WWII, would have never built what was called the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Finally, it is liberals who hate the poor and minorities as they feel they are their “betters” and are compelled to tell them what they must do. Instead of trying to be self reliant, liberal treat the poor and minorities as puppies who need to be sheltered because they are incompetent of being mature human beings.
As I said, you hate facts.