So here goes:
- We want to make it possible for anyone to get health insurance, even those with pre-existing conditions who have been shut out by insurance companies.
- Americans don't want the government to take control of the system any more than they already have- they want private insurance companies to continue to operate.
- So the law tells insurance companies that they must take people in their plans whom they previously rejected or charged crazy rates to- cancer survivors, old people, diabetics, etc. They also have to charge the same to everyone, so they couldn't say: "Sure, we're offering you insurance, but it will cost you $10,000 a month".
- But now that we're forcing insurance companies to take everyone, their costs are going to go up- after all, the reason they rejected people with pre-existing conditions is because they're expensive to insure. So we need to make sure that young healthy people sign up too, so the risk pool is diversified and ins cos are still viable. That's why we have the individual mandate, so young healthy people must sign up.
- Because anyone can get insurance now, we can't allow people to not get health insurance, and then sign up as soon as they get sick- they'd be freeloading on the system- another reason for the mandate.
- To make it possible for people to shop for plans intelligently, the government standardized the plans so people will know what they're buying. That way a company can't get people with a really low premium for a policy that doesn't cover hardly anything, as a lot of them used to do a lot.
- Also, if you allow a plan that covers practically nothing, more of the young healthy people would sign up for it because it would be cheap, and that would screw up the risk pools for the rest of us.
- So if you force everyone to sign up for health insurance (or get fined), then you have to subsidize poor and lower middle class people- we obviously can't tell people they must get insurance, if they can't afford it. So that's why the law includes subsidies for middle class, and expanded Medicaid for the poor.
- Some employers don't provide health insurance to their employees, leaving those people stuck. The law mandates that employers provide it to FT employees. That will keep some people off the exchanges.
- So the costs: many people are still paying for their own insurance, but now it's more affordable because of the reasons above. But the expanded Medicaid and subsidies are expensive. Those were paid for with various taxes, like the one on medical devices and on "cadillac plans". The bean counters did the Math, and calculated how much revenue they'd need for the plan, and set up the taxes to cover it.
So as you can see, it's complicated! But each piece flows from the
previous one. It won't work without the individual mandate. It won't work
without employers covering their employees. It won't without subsidies and
Medicaid expansion. It won't work if insurance companies can offer bare bones
plans to siphon off the young healthies.
As I've said a bunch of times, if you want a simple plan, we could do
that. Make Medicare available to everyone. You'd have to have way more taxes
of course, but we'd be getting something back for it. That's what Canada does.
Or you could have government do even more, paying the doctors and hospitals
directly- socialized medicine. That's what England does.
But if you want to keep the current system of insurance companies and
employer-based health insurance, and you want to make insurance available to
those who currently can't get it, then you have to get complicated.
All conservative alternatives might improve some things around the edges,
but they wouldn't solve the BIG problem, which is how people with pre-existing
conditions would get insurance through the individual market, and how poorer
people (including the working poor) would get insurance if their employer
doesn't offer it. I guess Republicans think this isn't a very important problem- I
think it obviously is.
Don’t believe your lying eyes and ears
ReplyDelete"I said this once or twice, but it bears repeating: If you like your current insurance, you will keep your current insurance," Obama said. "Nobody is changing what you've got if you're happy with it. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor."
Once it became known that this was not the case, as millions of unsuspecting Americans received cancellation letters, the wheels of Obamacare started to come off. Following that devastating promise, Euphoria over Obamacare became a nightmare of higher premiums and deductibles. Now, because of Obamacare, millions of Americans in the individual market, most of whom have not had a major health crisis, are facing abrupt increases of more than 40 percent in their health insurance premiums. On top of that, they are finding deductibles rising far beyond those that troubled Canfield. (In a 2009 letter to the president, Canfield complained of having a $2,500 deductible; on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that under Obamacare "the average individual deductible for what is called a bronze plan on the exchange — the lowest-priced coverage — is $5,081 a year." Imagine the poor families who thought they were getting a break find out that they have to pay $5,081.00 out of their own pockets. They will inevitably end up where they started before Obamacare,,in the Emergency room.
A new report from President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services details that 365,000 people combined have "selected" plans on the federal and state Obamacare marketplaces. It'll take almost 3 million sign-ups in the month of December to hit the Obama Administration's stated goal of signing up 3.3 million people by the end of 2013.
ReplyDeleteThe total Obamacare signups reported by HHS is still short of what was projected to be a "low target" for October alone.
Meanwhile, more than 6 million people have lost their health insurance thanks to Obamacare and cancellation letters are still hitting mailboxes on a daily basis
2500 pages and 3 years in the making and it is a mess. One has to wonder what is happening to the Federal Government. The obvious answer is, it's too big and too political to get anything right. When hundreds of Politicians and Lawyers get their chance to write a law, they write what will best serve themselves. Each has an agenda and it is not likely that it serves the needs of anyone but themselves. When the needs of most of the American people are not served and the costs are not manageable within the budget, the effort is likely to fail. In times like this when we have huge Deficits and Debt, the last thing Americans need is another Entitlement.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama has just won another major award. But this time he deserves it. For saying, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” President Obama has been awarded the Lie of the Year award, handed out by PolitiFact, the organization that monitors the veracity of what public people say.
ReplyDeleteAnd unless you’ve either been in a coma or have been visiting your cousin Lenny on Neptune you know that he didn’t just say it once or twice or ten times. We might, if we were feeling especially generous, simply forgive that as a few slips of the tongue. No, Mr. Obama said it over and over and over and over again in one form or another. My personal favorite is when he added the “Period” at the end of the lie. Nice touch, Mr. President.
And when millions of Americans got cancellation notices from their insurance companies telling them that contrary to what Mr. Obama had been telling them, they couldnot keep their healthcare plan – even if they liked it – then everyone knew he had his fingers crossed behind his back when he said what he said which wasn’t true.
Obama doesn't like much of Obamacare
ReplyDeleteHe pleads with Americans to like it; he lies about it to convince us that it’s great, yet,,,. Slowly but surely President Obama is unwinding, rolling back, and even cancelling his very own Obamacare. A couple of years ago he told Republicans not to mess with his plan. He said he’d veto any changes. But now, in substantial ways, he’s messing with his own plan. He’s doing what Republicans asked him to do in a way that is very likely to be un-Constitutional. He could have gone to the Congress and asked for a vote on the changes but his ego got in the way. They would have welcomed changes to the harmful sections of the law. His changes are nothing more than delaying the harm for the days AFTER THE ELECTION. It's bad for America so we'll save the bad for when it doesn't hurt Democrats who have to stand in front of voters and try to explain the reasons why their President (and themselves) lied to them.