Affordable Care Act Timeline, or...

ObamaCare Myth: You Can Keep Your Doctor

No section of the Affordable Care Act (check out our summary of every provision in the PPACA) says you cannot keep your doctor, however your network isn't something that is determined by the new healthcare law. It is up to your provider to determine the network of doctors and hospitals you have access to. So if your insurance company changes your plan or offers you a new one there is no guarantee that you can keep your doctor.

 

1200+ posts of Spam-Bot Maggie cutting & pasting from healthcare.gov

"establishment, establishment, you always know what's best....."

Can someone please reprogram Spam-Bot Maggie to regurgitate something more useful than Obama propaganda? I mean, based on her usual repertoire of responses, she's little more than a magic 8 ball anyway.

 

Another new poster? Weren't you saying this place was dying?

A Quick Summary of Obamacare's Benefits, Rights, and Protections

ObamaCare offers you and your family many new benefits rights and protections on all new plans. Health plans that started after 2010 will have to switch you over to a plan that offers these benefits in 2014.

Plans signed before 2010 may have grandfathered status. Learn more about Grandfathered Health Plans. Here is a quick overview of the different benefits, rights and protections which are all covered in detail below and discussed in-depth on the site.

• New Health Insurance Marketplaces (AKA Exchanges) allow shoppers to compare Health Plans that include all new benefits, rights and protections.
• Cost assistance to individuals, families and small businesses through the marketplace.
• No annual or lifetime limits on healthcare.
• Insurance companies can't drop you when you are sick or for making a mistake on your application.
• You can't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. Learn More About Healthcare and Pre-existing Conditions.
• You have the right to quickly appeal any health insurance company decision.
• You have the right to get an easy-to-understand summary about a health plan’s benefits and coverage.
• Young Adults can stay on their parent's plan until 26.
• A large improvement to women's health services.
• Reforms to the healthcare industry to cut wasteful spending.
• Better care and protections for seniors.
• New preventative Services at no-out-of pocket costs.
• Essential health benefits like emergency care, hospitalization, prescription drugs, and maternity and newborn care must be included on all non-grandfathered plans at no out-of-pocket limit.
• You can't be charged more based on health status or gender.

 

I see this thread is still goose-stepping along nicely.

 

Look, I've done my best. But at this point, I say fuckin' forget it. Nothing is gonna get her lips off Obama's swarthy fucking nipple.

 

This is one of my favorites:

ObamaCare Myth: ObamaCare implants a "CHIP" in you when you get health care... The Mark of the Beast.

We have received multiple letters from concerned readers who believe that they will have a mandatory RFID chip planted in them due to ObamaCare. While an early version of the Affordable Care Act did mention data collection from RFID implants, there was never any mention of a mandatory implant and the current version of the law doesn't even contain wording about data collection.

The following is an example of the ObamaCare implant myth (and is left grammatically intact the way we found it):

"I don't think it is right for president to decide to put chips in the citizens of American hands or anybody else we as Americans have the right to decided if we want the chip its the mark of the BEAST People wake up its in the bible"

The idea that ObamaCare will force Americans to be implanted with RFID chips is a myth. We read the bill and did a search for (this part of the chain email):

The Obama Health care bill under Class II (Paragraph 1, Section B) specifically includes ‘‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable." Then on page 1004 it describes what the term "data" means in paragraph 1, section B:

14 "(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘data’ refers to in
15 formation respecting a device described in paragraph (1),
16 including claims data, patient survey data, standardized
17 analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of
18 data from disparate data environments, electronic health
19 records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the
20 Secretary"

 

The Facts on the ObamaCare Chip Myth

The quoted part of the law is about better data collecting for the purposes of improving the quality of medical devices. The devices described in paragraph (1) are referring to class II devices which include both life support devices as well as RFID chips. There is no mandate about the insertion of any type of class II device.

The only time "CHIP" in mentioned in the 2,000 plus page bill is as an acronym for "Children's Health Insurance Plan". CHIP provides funds to states in order to cover children in families that do not qualify for Medicaid, but still have modest incomes. CHIP provides insurance to more than 5 million kids. It's part of ObamaCare helping to ensure that all Children have health coverage.

The debate about centralized data collection, RFID chips and how it relates to the affordable care act will become more important as we move into the next decade. Learn more about RFID chips and the ObamaCare Micro Chip Implant Rumor.

 

This could be the ultimate end to attempts to kill Obamacare. The end of the line could be near for attempts to paint Obamacare as the end of free enterprise and the beginning of the ruination of the U.S. economy. U.S. corporations are seeing the possibility of saving staggering amounts of $ by decoupling health insurance from their employee benefits packages. People used to having a paternalistic employer choose a one-size fits all health plan for them may not like the idea of having to choose and pay for their own plan, but a lot will like the idea of deciding for themselves what to pay for which plan.

 

"Oh, noes! You mean I actually have to read a health insurance policy and make the same kinds of decisions I make for my my life insurance, my auto insurance, my homeowners' insurance, etc. all by my own self?"

 

The anti-ACA crowd, guys like John Castle, are terrified of losing the workplace nanny. Personal responsibility frightens these jokers.

 

Who was the douchebag who was absolutely outraged that he was going to have to make a health care decision instead of letting the company do it? I'm sure it was someone who was totally against the nanny state in all it's forms.

 

Don't know if we're thinking about the same person, but one guy in this forum was bitching because he'd been carried on his wife's policy since forever, and it was "cancelled."

I pointed him toward the exchange in his state so he could compare policies and see if he could get as good or better a deal.

Don't know if he ever bothered to check, because we haven't heard "boo" from him on the topic since.

But, yeah, he's been known to sling the term "nanny state" around from time to time.

Daddy Corporation is cool, though.

 

Obamacare Truthers Get Caught in a Lie on Delinquency Rate

First, the Obamacare Truthers—the Republicans and conservatives who insist that every piece of remotely positive news about the health-care law’s impact has to be a filthy lie—lost the battle of the enrollment figures. The issue here isn’t whether the Obama administration is telling the complete truth when it says 8 million. The issue is that the Truthers predicted 3 million, 2 million, 1 million, 0 million, a death spiral. And whether the administration is gilding the lily and the real number is 8 or 7.7 or 7.4 million, the hard fact is the Truthers were just crazy wrong.

Having lost that battle, they’ve now opened fire on a second front. Maybe the enrollment numbers are wrong, maybe they’re right, the Truthers say, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the percentage of people who actually pay their premiums.

. . . .

So in some ways the “percentage paying” number is even more important than the raw enrollment number. It is, after all, the real enrollment number, the number of people actually getting and keeping health coverage. And so the second the Truthers lost the enrollment fight, they moved to the percentage battle. This will prove that Obamacare can’t work.

On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee put out a report looking at enrollment (“report” is overdoing it; it’s one page). It was methodologically pretty simple. They collected data from every insurer participating in what’s called the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) and looked at who’d signed up for coverage and who’d paid a first premium by April 15. The House panel’s answer was 67 percent.

Now, 67 percent doesn’t sound half bad to me, but the GOP spun it as yet another Obamacare disaster—it would push the “real enrollment” number down near 5 million and mean that one in three people who’d signed up for health-care coverage was already delinquent. They didn’t quite say that, but it was obviously the whole point of the report. “Tired of receiving incomplete pictures of enrollment in the health-care law, we went right to the source and found that the administration’s recent declarations of success may be unfounded,” said committee chairman Fred Upton of Michigan.

The committee got what it wanted: Headlines saying only 67 percent of ACA enrollees were paying. I’m sure there was ample coverage on Fox News, and it blasted out across the talk-radio waves. They have a talking point now, and a number, and it’s low enough that they can spin it as a lousy number.

The only problem is, it’s a wrong number.

The Democratic minority on the committee released a memorandum slicing the majority’s logic to pieces in a matter of three paragraphs. Actually, it can be done in one sentence: Lots of enrollees’ first premiums weren’t even due by April 15!

Here’s a little language from the Democratic memo that lays it out a bit more fully: “As of April 15, premiums had only come due for individuals who had signed up for coverage before March 15. Five million individuals had enrolled in coverage through the marketplaces as of March 17. On April 17, the president announced that 8 million Americans had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces. That means that more than 3 million enrollees—or nearly 40 percent of all enrollees—did not have premiums due by April 15 and therefore were not required to have paid them by that point.”

In other words, people who didn’t even have premiums due yet, and who account for 37.5 percent of all enrollees, are counted in this GOP report as part of the delinquent third.

If you don’t want to take it from Democrats, take it from the insurance officials themselves. They dispute the GOP numbers. Karen Ignani of AHIP, a large group of providers, said the pay-up rate so far in her realm has been 85 percent. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield group says 80 to 85 percent of enrollees have been paying. And WellPoint announced, on the very day of the GOP report, that its figure was 90 percent.

. . . .
----------------
Busted!

That's a seriously pathetic lie by the House Republicans, counting people whose premiums aren't even due yet as delinquent. And this is the pretty much the best effort they've made to try to discredit the PPACA.

 

U.S. says Obamacare enrollment points to stable costs

 

Less Than Half of the States Met their Obamacare Enrollment Targets
http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/02/less-than-half-of-the-states-met-their-o

 

Whoo Boy! Let's move those goalposts! Yee haw! Anyway, it's interesting how many states where the Republicans have tried their best to sabotage the ACA enrollments actually exceeded target goals.

 

The Obamacare enrollment figures are giving the corporate media heartburn. Six million, seven million, eight million, and climbing. They hate those figures because they represent actual data that can be fact-checked. The media's conventional wisdom is getting turned on its head yet again. Sort of like how the media told us Mitt Romney would surge to victory after the first debate.

 

Kinda makes the paranoid part of one's brain think reality is as planned out as wrestling most times.

 

The One Chart That Shows Obamacare Is Working Exactly as Intended

 

And now for some Romneycare news:
----------------
Massachusetts Death Rate Fell After Overhaul

BOSTON — The death rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after it adopted mandatory health care coverage in 2006, a study released Monday found, offering evidence that the country’s first experiment with universal coverage — and the model for crucial parts of President Obama’s health care law — has saved lives, health economists say.

The study tallied deaths in Massachusetts from 2001 to 2010 and found that the mortality rate — the number of deaths per 100,000 people — fell by about 3 percent in the four years after the law went into effect. The decline was steepest in counties with the highest proportions of poor and uninsured people. In contrast, the mortality rate in a control group of counties similar to Massachusetts in other states was largely unchanged.

A national 3 percent decline in mortality among adults under 65 would mean about 17,000 fewer deaths a year.

“It’s big,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on life expectancy. Professor Preston, who was not involved in the study, called the study “careful and thoughtful,” and said it added to a growing body of evidence that people with health insurance could reap the ultimate benefit — longer life.

 

Aiming Higher: Results from a Scorecard on State Health System Performance, 2014




An interactive version of the map can be found at the link above.

 

Wow, New England looks quite good by this criteria. The South looks like, well, the South. Fucking Obama!

 

Why G.O.P. Will Shift to Talking About Fixing the Heath-Care Law

In response to polling data showing that the Affordable Care Act has become more popular, a prominent Republican pollster said that he expected Republicans to change how they talked about the law.

“After the primaries, expect a shift in Republican candidates’ rhetoric against Obamacare,” said Bill McInturff, a partner in Public Opinion Strategies. “Only few want to repeal the law; most want to fix and keep it,” he added.

Mr. McInturff, speaking at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Anaheim, Calif., was referring to results from survey work his firm does with Hart Research Associates for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal.

 

Cue the shrieks of "RINO!" from the crowd that has no interest in crafting effective policy.

 

Look at the response to the RNC's own autopsy.

I don't think we'll see much change until after '22 or '24. Until then Rs will still win midterms and through gerrymandering not get slaughtered during presidential elections. After 2020 when redistricting takes place after a presidential election (less gerrymandering) and as their base continues to die off and constitute a smaller and % portion of the electorate, only then will they have to deal with reality. Until then it'll be more of the same from the Rs.

 

ER visits, uninsured patients down at most Arkansas hospitals

 

Indiana's Governor is taking positive action by taking advantage of Obamacare rules that allow states a lot of latitude on how to comply with the law. LINK

 

From your article:

So, as usual, factions in the Real World come to their senses before WF's Keyboard Kommandos.

 

Somehow I have a little more hope than you, either a split of the Republican party or a valid moderate party. I'd rather not see what the Democrats do with such a large vacuum--although I agree with them when faced with Republican candidates, I don't think a single party would be good for us.