New, Improved Obamacare Program Released On 35 Floppy Disks

That is silly conspiracy nonsense! Our current system is Obamacare. Our former system of healthcare was about as unstable as it could get. That is why we now have Obamacare. If Democrats really wanted single payer, they could have enacted it when they controlled both houses and the presidency (2009-2010).

 

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¿Argumentum ad passiones?

Another Day, Another Fallacy?

There are all sorts of interesting things about this one that are out of the control of our neighbors, such as the right-wing blog with odd linking policies (yeah, really, we know why you don't want to link out to the opposition argument, guys) but in the end, what's going on here is that people are jumping to political arguments and then hoping nobody calls it out. The idea, of course, being that nobody will tell a cancer patient she's wrong.

Right?

Wrong.

Sundby shouldn't blame reform — United Healthcare dropped her coverage because they've struggled to compete in California's individual health care market for years and didn't want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby.

The company, which only had 8,000 individual policy holders in California out of the two million who participate in the market, announced (along with a second insurer, Aetna) that it would be pulling out of the individual market in May. The company could not compete with Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente, who control more than 80 percent of the individual market. "Over the years, it has become more difficult to administer these plans in a cost-effective way for our members," UnitedHealth spokeswoman Cheryl Randolph explained. "We will continue to keep a major presence in California, focusing instead on large and small employers."

The two insurers were also operating at a tax disadvantage in the state. As California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones explained, "One of the factors I believe contributed to this decision ....is the special tax break that California law gives to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which has allowed and continues to allow those two companies to avoid paying $100 million in state taxes a year." "Aetna and United Healthcare don't get the special tax break provided to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and so they faced a major competitive disadvantage in California."

And then there is the company's own justification for leaving. "The company's plans reflect its concern that the first wave of newly insured customers under the law may be the costliest," UHC Chief Executive Officer Stephen Helmsley told investors last October. "UnitedHealth will watch and see how the exchanges evolve and expects the first enrollees will have ‘a pent-up appetite' for medical care. We are approaching them with some degree of caution because of that."

Get that? The company packed its bags and dumped its beneficiaries because it wants its competitors to swallow the first wave of sicker enrollees only to re-enter the market later and profit from the healthy people who still haven't signed up for coverage.

Sundby is losing her coverage and her doctors because of a business decision her insurer made within the competitive dynamics of California's health care market.

(Volsky)​

The funny thing about BizPac Review's attempt to sleight the counterpoint is that it still points us to the answer; they're just hoping people won't follow through if they can't simply one-click it. (No, really, when I blog, I do the same thing; since WordPress doesn't integrate well with the Twitter embed, you cap it, cut it, upload it, and serve it; the choice to not link the image is up to the writer and editor—being confident in my sources, I always link those images. There really is no excuse for such willful omissions, except, of course, that they're conservatives, so, you know, it's okay.)

In the end what we're dealing with comes back to a juxtaposition arising all too frequently in conservative politics; it is one thing to acknowledge human frailty, another to pin your success on the exploitation thereof.

This is the sort of thing that keeps happening. As Jonathan Cohn noted, of Obamacare horror story victim Dianne Barchette, featured in a CBS News report:

I'm not the first person to examine her situation. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post called her shortly after the CBS article appeared. Nancy Metcalf of Consumer Reports examined her case and provided a detailed breakdown of what insurance she has today versus what she could buy for next year. What follows builds on their work—and that of other writers, like Tommy Christopher of Mediaite, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times and Paul Waldman of the American Prospect, who have examined similar stories.

Barrette's story isn't a stand-in for everybody losing existing coverage—a group that represents a tiny proportion of the population, yet still numbers in the millions. Even so, Barrette's tale provides a good window into some of the primary changes taking place as a result of Obamacare. Those changes are way more complicated than the initial media coverage suggested.

The policy Barrette has today is called the Go Blue Plan 91. It is not what most people would consider real insurance. Its coverage of doctor visits and tests, such as MRI scans, consists of paying $50 and then letting Barrette pay the remaining balance. Drug coverage works more or less in the same way, only the plan pays $15 per prescription—which is enough to cover generics, but not many name-brands. And hospitalization? The plan pays nothing at all. As Wemple put it, "it's a pray-that-you-don't-really-get-sick 'plan.'" Barrette doesn't really disagree—but this plan, she says, was all she could afford. "Most everyone I talked to said they were paying thousands more to get hospital coverage," she told me, "so I took my chances with what I have now."​

Right now, the problem Barrette faces is the Healthcare.gov site—

When I gave her a broad description of the plans available, she seemed interested. I noted that she'd be paying $100 or $150 extra a month for policies that still had high cost-sharing, so that she would still be a lot of money out of her own pocket. (I also made very clear that I'm not an insurance agent or broker—that, when she finally goes shopping for insurance, she should talk to a real expert for advice.) Here was her response: "I would jump at it," she said. "With my age, things can happen. I don't want to have bills that could make me bankrupt. I don't want to lose my house."

Barrette can't be sure until she sees the numbers for herself. And so far she hasn't been able to do so, thanks to the technological problems at healthcare.gov. But as she's become more aware of her options, she said, she's no longer aghast at losing her plan—and curious to see what alternatives are available. "Maybe," she told me, "it's a blessing in disguise."​

—and, well, that, at least, is on the government, both the administration responsible for the policy and the congressional opposition that has blocked attempts to fix known problems in the law.

But we are well into the wolf-cry phase of the chicken little apocalypse. At this point, the horror stories are the assertions requiring extraordinary support.

And Brian Ross makes an interesting point that seems to get overlooked:

Shopping for plans took a couple of hours, but that was due to the the dozens of complex plans. Most came from Blue Cross of Florida, which seems to take the three-card-monte approach to selling health insurance by producing tons of plans with such subtle nuances that they could hang them up next to the Matisse paintings in a museum as works of bureaucratic art.

Freelance writers are definitely individual buyers. We have been victims of the very costly and very arbitrary system for those without employer umbrellas to protect them.

For my family of seven people, four currently in college, in senior citizen-laden Florida, my pre-ACA Blue Cross of Florida policy that we have held for the last three years has made lots of changes to our insurance:

• Our pre-ACA rates doubled since 2009
• Big Blue, without spelling out that they could make these radical changes to the plan that I bought, shifted us from a 2,000 per person per year deductible, where they would pay claims after each person crossed that $2,000 line, to whopping $14,000 AGGREGATE annual deductible.
• The out of pocket cost rose from a manageable $5,000 to a crushing $25,000 per year.
• They collect a 25 percent surcharge for allergies, even though they never pay a nickel for them, as the $1,800 cost of my medicine a year comes nowhere near their $14,000 deductible.
• Health insurers don't like keeping my four college students on a family plan. Single plans cost more, and make them more, so you pay for the privilege of keeping your kids on your plan.
• Over the last few years we've been forced off of plans with good deductibles and benefits because Blue Cross of Florida has changed the terms of those policies, usually on pharmacy benefits, to make staying on them untenable.​

The "insurance" card became a discount card. We received "discounts" from Blue Cross that knocked down what I owed providers, with that $14,000 always a number that thankfully we did not cross.

The good news for individuals like us is that, effective January 1, the ACA will end the insurers' ability to impose lifetime caps, "surcharges" for pre-existing conditions, and end the loopholes that companies have used to radically change terms of existing insurance to force customers on to more expensive plans with fewer benefits. Deductibles and out of pocket costs have dropped too.

The bad news?

The private insurers' Byzantine websites are awful. The plans are complex, and the rates are still too high.​

This is something I see a lot; people get upset at the idea of "government", but seem a lot more willing to bless the private sector for behaving just as "badly" or even "worse".

How much of what you paid for a product today went to the people who manufacture, deliver, and sell the product to you? How much of that goes to the executives? How much goes to advertising? How much goes to questionable "R&D" intended to keep money in the company and out of the tax loop? How much goes to lobbying? How many people who routinely whine about taxes actually care how much the private sector inflates prices for nonessential reasons?

Or in this case, if the government is so horrible because insurance plans deliberately crafted to be insufficient are being forced to change, why are these complainers so complacent with private-sector gouging?

All of these issues get swept aside with the deceptive calls to panic.
____________________

Notes:

Dorstewitz, Michael. "WH shameful excuses why cancer victim lost plan; blame victim". Biz Pac Review. November 5, 2013. BizPacReview.com. November 5, 2013. http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/11...hy-cancer-victim-lost-plan-blame-victim-86569

Volsky, Igor. "The Real Reason That The Cancer Patient Writing In Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance". ThinkProgress. November 4, 2013. ThinkProgress.com. November 5, 2013. http://thinkprogress.org/health/201...or-story-cancer-patient-losing-doctors-wrong/

Cohn, Jonathan. "'I Would Jump At It'". The New Republic. November 3, 2013. NewRepublic.com. November 5, 2013. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115457/obamacare-victim-florida-happy-she-can-get-real-coverage

Ross, Brian. "Obamacare, the Game: The Exchange Isn't the Problem, It's the Insurance Companies". The Huffington Post. November 1, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. November 1, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-ross/obamacare-the-game_b_4177062.html

 

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LOL, logic, fact and reason may be gibberish to you, and I guess that explains your Libertarian ideology. You created a false choice argument. You said there were only two choices to solve the corruption and those choices were less government, less regulation or less free speech. That is not only clearly wrong and illogical, it is farcical. Your inability to make reasoned logical decisions Michael is what makes you an ideologue. Facts, reason and logic don’t matter to you.

The unpleasant fact were discussing Michael is your hypocritical position on corruption. On the one hand you like to rail about corruption and on the other you are steadfastly opposed to doing anything that might stop or reduce corruption in government.

And now you are obfuscating by moving the goal posts and throwing in unrelated pseudo issues like, “sound money “and property rights. And we already have both of those, sound money and property rights.

Either you have not been paying attention over the years or you are deliberately setting up a straw man…one of your many illogical arguments again. I have clearly said government cannot solve all of our problems on many occasions. But that doesn’t means government cannot solve some of our problems.

You seem not to understand what government is Michael. It is us. It is all of us together acting collectively. Yes we can solve our problems working together and we work together through this thing called government.

Through the course of our many online discussions over the years it has become very apparent you are unable to define in any meaningful what you mean by big government or what is “big government”. You routinely sling around terms like big government which you cannot define in any meaningful way. It makes for great demagoguery, but it is of little substance.

Making government less corrupt doesn’t make for bigger government. Making government more democratic doesn’t make government larger. It just makes government work more effectively and efficiently. Requiring more openness in our government and holding our elected representatives accountable to the people who elected them rather than the special interests who fund their campaigns doesn’t make for larger government. It makes government more accountable and it makes us, the people to whom are government is accountable better informed.

And your machinations about drones, the Korean War, are just more right wing Libertarian demagogic gibberish….manna for the true believers and endlessly repeated.

So your solution is to give the rich an open checkbook and license to do whatever whenever they want without restraint. The only thing the little guy has to protect his/her interests is the government.

Oh boy you must be desperate, you invoked Godwin's law. Demagoguery and fear mongering are the life blood of the American conservative movement, Republicans, Libertarians, but it is just that demagoguery. They are not factual, they are not reasoned. They are not logical.

 

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That is very spot on.

 

You may wish I was joking Michael, but I am not. I again challenge you to produce one credible source to back up your clearly incorrect accusations.

 

LOL, so it is ok if a privately employed thug beats you up or kills your family members, friends and yourself but if government does it, it is wrong? The point is Michael authority will be used, be it by private enterprise or government. Authority will be used. You don't eliminate authority if you eliminate government. You just put the authority into the hands of others who unlike government are not subject to public scrutiny and the public has no say in how that authority is exercised. I would much rather have a say about how that authority is exercised than not. You on the other hand want to give all of that authority to private individuals who can exercise that authority behind closed doors and without restraint.

Unfortunately for you and your fellow Libertarian ideologues, the robber barons were real. And most people don’t want to revisit that era.

 

The Casino Metaphor Was Too Messy

It's a social contract thing. There are many in our society who believe the social contract merely entitles them to ... er ... I don't know, whatever. The point being that any suggestion of responsibilities on our part as people within the society seems rather quite offensive to them.

When it comes to being one's brother's keeper, it should never be to the benefit of the brother, but the desire of the one to punish and harm that brother.

Watch closely, you'll see it over and over in conservative politics, and not just among the extremist hardliners like Michael.

Think of it like capitalism: They want a high return on minimal investment with absolutely no risk.

And that's all it is, sublimated greed.

 

Really Joe with all the news from all sources that people losing their insurances that Obama said they could keep, and you
still say he did not lie!!!!

Wow just wow!!!

 

Well of course it did not, welfare recipients are not effected!!

 

Really? I didn't know that. How long have you been sucking the public tit Ghostwriter?

 

Nice comeback!! I have to admit I left myself open to that one. Nice!!

Although, what you are failing to understand is that we all are going to be sucking the public tit.

 

No. No we're not. All that happens is that all citizens of the US are entitled to health care. Sort of like Armageddon to your ilk, right?

 

Throwing out the shot at the end, you better review the basics of your statement!!!

 

Ok, let's review the basics. Which part of that statement do you disagree with? Make sure you back up your assertions with citations. Can't wait...

 

Ah yeah, because he didn't lie. All those noncompliant Obamacare insurance contracts were grandfathered into Obamacare. If insurance companies change those so called insurance policies and they do not meet the new requirements, then they lose their noncompliance exemption. You should be blaming the insurance companies and not Obama or the Democrats.

It's really kind of funny. On one hand Republicans like yourself rant about Obama taking over healthcare and acting like a tyrant and then on the other complain because Obama isn't preventing insurance companies from changing their health insurance policies and raising premiums. The reality is as I have said many times before Obamacare sets minimum insurance requirements for insurance companies and it mandates that a minimum of 80% of premium dollars be spent on healthcare expenses.

Am I surprised to see hyperbole and yellow journalism? No not really. Unfortunately, it's pretty much the norm for the fourth estate. The truth is boring. Hype sells and that is what the press is all about making money.

 

One of the many things you don’t understand is that you were born sucking at the public teat. Wither you realize it or not, every day of your life you receive numerous benefits from your government. You may not receive a check from the government every day, but you receive a host of benefits. The physicians you treat you and your family was trained with public dollars. The prescription drugs you and your family use were first developed in government funded laboratories. The people who work in those laboratories were trained by the government.

If you and your family are not paying 12k dollars per year per person in federal income taxes every year, then you are not paying your fair share of the federal tax burden. You are sucking at the public teat. You are getting the benefits of our security, banking systems, economy, food safety, drug safety, public health services, police & fire services, educational systems and much more. I live in a Red State. We have a 15 billion dollar annual state budget. More than half of the state’s revenues come directly from the federal government. So even your state, especially if you live in Red State, is sucking on the federal teat.

 

And what is kind of funny is, most of these guys don't realize they are the ones being kept. They are the ones benefiting from someone else's dollar. It’s reminiscent of the Tea Partiers out there demanding an end to entitlements….except their entitlements (e.g. Social Security and Medicare) or the federal pensioner demanding an end to entitlements except for his/her federal pension and benefits.

 

I will back up my assertions when you back up yours!!

We are not entitled to health care. When you start thinking entitlement you get what we have now. I do not expect you to understand, but its okay.

Where does it say anywhere that we are entitled? I can't wait for your response. Oh and make sure you back them assertions up with citations.

Yeah, I understand that this is science forum and many times it is good. But at what point are the citations, you and some others here are, plagiarized

 

Okay so that "public money", which is not always the case, but I will play along for a bit. That public money is not paid back in the form of a student loan???????? Thus making it private money to be spent on the education that each person decides is their career choice.

Oh okay, I will check to see where all the drug companies get their money. I won't deny that there may be cases and time when they get government money, but..... pretty sure most of their money is from profit from sales and not the government. Now, they may have to put up with bullshit regulation which drives up prices, but I think the more proper term is that the drug companies give money to the government in the form of "kick backs" like FDA approval on certain things. Kinda like fascism!!

Where do you think the government gets its money??? Why would my family have to pay 12k a year in taxes when we are paying all year at every turn of our existence? Why Joe, so the government can rob me more legally?????????

This is so much poppy cock Joe. Do you really believe all this drivel?

 

Well, that's something we're going to have to change then, isn't it.

We're the people holding this entire civilization up, and we should get the benefits.