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Heeeeeeere's Obamacare!

Among U.S. adults, the uninsurance rate declined to 13.4 percent in April, hitting the lowest rate since Gallup began tracking the monthly data in 2008. The sharp decline in the number of people without insurance coincided with Obamacare’s first open enrollment period between October and April:

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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/05/3434013/uninsurance-rate-low-income-non-white/
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B-b-b-but Benghazi!!!
 
From a hearing today.

Four out of five companies represented said more than 80 percent of their new customers had paid. The fifth, Cigna, did not offer an estimate.
 
Purely anecdotal, I know, but, my wife informed me today, that we were billed for our last visit to my kid's neurologist. Seems after ten plus years he's no longer accepting the insurance we get thought my wife's job, at the biggest hospital in St. Louis. We liked him too.
 
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Mike! said:
Purely anecdotal, I know, but, my wife informed me today, that we were billed for our last visit to my kid's neurologist. Seems after ten plus years he's no longer accepting the insurance we get thought my wife's job, at the biggest hospital in St. Louis. We liked him too.
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Sorry to hear this, but are you blaming Obama???
 
Unabogie said:
Sorry to hear this, but are you blaming Obama???
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I'm sure it's a complete coincidence... :rolleyes: But for now, he's the best target I have to blame at the moment. I'm very pissed about this. Money we don't have out of my pocket for now, followed by the joy of looking for a new children's neurologist, that takes our insurance. All before the next time we need their prescriptions filled again. :mad:
Yep, a complete coincidence, I'm sure.
 
Mike! said:
I'm sure it's a complete coincidence... :rolleyes: But for now, he's the best target I have to blame at the moment. I'm very pissed about this. Money we don't have out of my pocket for now, followed by the joy of looking for a new children's neurologist, that takes our insurance. All before the next time we need their prescriptions filled again. :mad:
Yep, a complete coincidence, I'm sure.
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So with no evidence you blame Obama. Got it.

Thanks, Obama!!!

:mad:
 
Mike! said:
Well, first off, I'm a right wing loon, so it's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it?
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Apparently so.

But for now, humor me, why shouldn't I? I'm willing to hear your argument on how, with no evidence, it's not the fault of the ACA.
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So now I'm supposed to prove a negative just because you've made a wild assertion with no evidence to back it up?

You doctor had a deal with his hospital, who had a deal with your insurer, who had a deal with your wife's employer. Any one of the players could have decided the deal wasn't sweet enough and you have no idea which one it may have been. What you haven't presented is any mechanism under which the ACA would have affected your doctor's deal. Unfortunately, this is par for the course when it comes to Obamacare complaints.

Hence, THANKS OBAMA!
 
Unabogie said:
Sorry to hear this, but are you blaming Obama???
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There is bound to be a lot of "post hoc" reasoning as things shake out.

My suggestion is that Mike! attempt to speak with this physician and ask him his take on whether recent changes in the health insurance environment affected his decision to no longer accept this particular insurance plan.

Of course, doctors can fall victim to the same biases as anyone else, but I for one would be curious as to what the doctor says.

We have to be aware that the ability to make predictions is part of a successful hypothesis. What I mean is, if it is being predicted that Obamacare provisions will lead to hospitals closing or doctors leaving their professions or higher premiums or more limited access or whatever, if and when each of these occurs it may lend some validity to the hypotheses put forth. But only after careful analyses, of course.

And to dismiss these outcomes out of hand as being unrelated to Obamacare may be equally fallacious as well.

A few years down the road, we'll be in a much better position to praise or condemn the new health insurance/health care landscape.

But for now, anecdotes like Mike!'s do help inform us, if only a little.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
There is bound to be a lot of "post hoc" reasoning as things shake out.

My suggestion is that Mike! attempt to speak with this physician and ask him his take on whether recent changes in the health insurance environment affected his decision to no longer accept this particular insurance plan.

Of course, doctors can fall victim to the same biases as anyone else, but I for one would be curious as to what the doctor says.

We have to be aware that the ability to make predictions is part of a successful hypothesis. What I mean is, if it is being predicted that Obamacare provisions will lead to hospitals closing or doctors leaving their professions or higher premiums or more limited access or whatever, if and when each of these occurs it may lend some validity to the hypotheses put forth. But only after careful analyses, of course.

And to dismiss these outcomes out of hand as being unrelated to Obamacare may be equally fallacious as well.

A few years down the road, we'll be in a much better position to praise or condemn the new health insurance/health care landscape.

But for now, anecdotes like Mike!'s do help inform us, if only a little.
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There's a reason we mock this as "anecdata". The problem arises when people attempt to ascribe any problem they have to "Obamacare" without ever bothering to describe the mechanism under which the problem would have arisen. Mike!'s doctor stopped accepting a certain insurer. Is this because the insurer wanted to pay less? If so, is that because they didn't make enough profit from the doctor? Or did his wife's employer decide that they wanted to downgrade the policy to save some money, so while technically the same policy, the coverage was shrunk and didn't include the previous agreement with the doctor? And would this have happened anyway, even without the ACA? Weren't doctors refusing insurance deals prior to 2014? What caused those doctors to do this?

You're right that the correct way to measure the ACA's success is to look at the results a few years down the road. But even just using that dreaded "common sense" tells you that if all policies are now "Obamacare" policies, and doctors are all refusing such policies, then they'd end up with no patients at all? Did that happen in Massachusetts? If not, why would it be different in other states? Again, I'm asking for a mechanism, not anecdotes or correlation being mistaken for causation.

ETA: And I just want to expand on one thing. The favorite tactic of critics of the ACA seems to be to just pick any random thing that's bad that happens and then turn around and blame "Obamacare" for it. This almost always requires them to ignore the fact that the thing was already occurring before, and sometimes was worse. For instance, premiums. There's a lot of predictions about how "premiums will increase in 2015". Well, so what? Were premiums stable before? Of course not. Were medical costs stable before? Of course not. But critics will still tout any increase in either costs or premiums as somehow being a failure of the new law, without ever showing how the trendline is moving. A great example of this is the question of whether or not the ACA is "bending the cost curve". There's evidence it is:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickung...s-actually-bending-the-healthcare-cost-curve/

And yet critics could ignore this and simply say "COSTS ARE UP!!!". That's true, but they're up LESS than they were before. It's that kind of dishonesty that I'm criticizing here.
 
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Unabogie said:
Mike!'s doctor stopped accepting a certain insurer. Is this because the insurer wanted to pay less? If so, is that because they didn't make enough profit from the doctor? Or did his wife's employer decide that they wanted to downgrade the policy to save some money, so while technically the same policy, the coverage was shrunk and didn't include the previous agreement with the doctor? And would this have happened anyway, even without the ACA?
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Like I said, the only way to know his reasons is to ask him.

Beyond that, it's just speculation.

Mike!, can you do that? A written response from the doctor would be ideal, of course.
 
Are the Conservatives in this forum behind the current news? The Republicans have abandoned attacking the ACA because they know it's a losing issue for them. They've gone back to BENGHAZI!!!!
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Like I said, the only way to know his reasons is to ask him.

Beyond that, it's just speculation.

Mike!, can you do that? A written response from the doctor would be ideal, of course.
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I plan to find out Monday, Eddie. It was dropped on me Friday evening, well after office hours. It looks to me, that the insurance didn't pay him this time, it's been a couple months since the boys last appointment, and we got the bill from the doctors office Friday. We've been seeing him since the boys were first diagnosed with autism, in fact, he was the doctor who did the diagnosis originally, over 11 years ago now. Never been a problem in the past. Changing doctors is never easy when it comes to my kids. They were used to this one, and generally had no issues when it came to visits. So we have that new adventure to look forward to as well.
 
Mike! said:
I plan to find out Monday, Eddie.
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Great! Looking forward to it!

There are a fair number of physicians over on a couple aviation sites I frequent.

Many are grousing about the paperwork requirements - already odious but just getting worse. Several are discussing early retirement plans rather than deal with more paperwork, erratic compensation and lowered allowed charges that barely cover their overhead.

Anecdotes, to be sure, but if anyone tracks the number of active physicians, it should be easy to quantify.

Good luck!
 
From what I understand, the additional paperwork generated by the ACA is related to quality control.

For example, many hospitals have mandated the use of checklists to cut down on medical errors. These function much the same as the checklists used in aviation.
 
Mike! said:
I plan to find out Monday, Eddie. It was dropped on me Friday evening, well after office hours. It looks to me, that the insurance didn't pay him this time, it's been a couple months since the boys last appointment, and we got the bill from the doctors office Friday. We've been seeing him since the boys were first diagnosed with autism, in fact, he was the doctor who did the diagnosis originally, over 11 years ago now. Never been a problem in the past. Changing doctors is never easy when it comes to my kids. They were used to this one, and generally had no issues when it came to visits. So we have that new adventure to look forward to as well.
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Again, sorry for your situation, and autism can't be easy to deal with, but how on earth would the ACA cause the insurance company to not pay your doctor, and isn't that the real reason he's refusing to work with them any more?
 
Unabogie said:
Again, sorry for your situation, and autism can't be easy to deal with, but how on earth would the ACA cause the insurance company to not pay your doctor, and isn't that the real reason he's refusing to work with them any more?
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Oh he's not refusing to work with them anymore. We'll just be footing the bill if we wish to continue using him. We can't afford that, so we'll have to find someone new that our insurance will pay. I'll, hopefully, know more when I speak to someone about it tomorrow.
 
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