Obamacare 5 years later. Crow, anyone?

[ponderingturtle]

Why did you quote me?

Because I was responding to you. Not sure how you connect what you said to the ACA though. Clearly it was better when people still died of treatable diseases because they had family around them or some such?

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Yea but double digit inflation in premiums has been standard for the past several decades. So why blame Obamacare for that?

Obamacare isnt guilty for what was already a problem. Essentially it succeeded in expanding access to people who otherwise wouldnt have it but the trade off for greatly improving the situation for some has resulted in lowering quality for others. Given how insurance works this wasnt a surprising outcome. Besides that, the eventual inflation in already sky high costs poses issues for the wealth redistribution that the laws taxes rely on to fund the subsidies... in other words i dont see ot as taking into account eventual costs, similar to the conflict social security is having.

Good intentions, some succes, but a lot.law complexity not addressing key avenues

 

[ponderingturtle]

Obamacare isnt guilty for what was already a problem. Essentially it succeeded in expanding access to people who otherwise wouldnt have it but the trade off for greatly improving the situation for some has resulted in lowering quality for others. Given how insurance works this wasnt a surprising outcome. Besides that, the eventual inflation in already sky high costs poses issues for the wealth redistribution that the laws taxes rely on to fund the subsidies... in other words i dont see ot as taking into account eventual costs, similar to the conflict social security is having.

Good intentions, some succes, but a lot.law complexity not addressing key avenues

We need to make people much happier to be a burden to their children, that is the real problem, they are to damn independent and don't want to ruin their children s finances along with their own. I blame Obama for that also. Time traveling bastard.

 

[Dessi]

I work for a health insurance company. After the insurance mandates went into effect, my employer hired 100s of employees (developers, testers, managers, HR, CSRs, security consultants, DBAs, network engineers, marketing, graphics designers, HR, account managers, report writers, etc), including myself, to implement the federal regulations and support enrollments through the health care exchanges.

Surprisingly, even after the bulk of regulations were implemented, we've never had a layoff and we keep hiring more people. Through the exchanges, we were also able to roll some of the smaller hospitals and urgent care clinics into our network.

Thanks, Obama!

 

[Grizzly Bear]

We need to make people much happier to be a burden to their children, that is the real problem, they are to damn independent and don't want to ruin their children s finances along with their own. I blame Obama for that also. Time traveling bastard.

Sorry, im not a sarcastic kind of guy so if theres a joke somewhere in there it flew over. If you were realistic enough and accounted for the trade off then i have little to complain to you about. if we're going to play the hate obama for not being a time traveler game its going to get boring

Eta: actually, you forgot... we critics want granny thrown off a cliff, to breathe dirty air, and drink dirty water .-.

 

[The_Animus]

It doesn't effect me (yet) but a good friend of mine who signed up has a very, very common Sicilian name (to the point he has two cousins with the same name) that has found out the hardway that there a bunch of deadbeat dad's and tax cheats that share the same name, and the system seems to default to blaming him for their bad debts or tax liabilities - it's been a nightmare for him.

This doesn't make any sense to me. I find it difficult to believe that by filling out the info for health insurance he started getting tons of calls from collectors just because he shares a name. Does your good friend not have a unuiqe SS #? Did he not enter it into the information?

My mom got a call like this as a result of a similar name once. All she did was say she had no idea what they were talking about and asked for the SS# tied to the name of the person in collection. She said that is not my SS# and don't call again.

Problem solved.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Sorry, im not a sarcastic kind of guy so if theres a joke somewhere in there it flew over. If you were realistic enough and accounted for the trade off then i have little to complain to you about. if we're going to play the hate obama for not being a time traveler game its going to get boring

Eta: actually, you forgot... we critics want granny thrown off a cliff, to breathe dirty air, and drink dirty water .-.

Not granny, she would be covered by medicare. It is the poor under 65 that die because of these policies that you want to go back to.

As for drinking dirty water, well look at West Virginia. In response to getting their drinking water poisoned they are of course lowering standards for inspection of companies in a position to poison the water again.

 

[Spindrift]

It doesn't effect me (yet) but a good friend of mine who signed up has a very, very common Sicilian name (to the point he has two cousins with the same name) that has found out the hardway that there a bunch of deadbeat dad's and tax cheats that share the same name, and the system seems to default to blaming him for their bad debts or tax liabilities - it's been a nightmare for him.

I fail to see how A is directly related to B. ACA is covered by HIPAA and they don't share data with the judicial system AFAIK.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Not granny, she would be covered by medicare. It is the poor under 65 that die because of these policies that you want to go back to.

 

[ponderingturtle]

So you opposed the ACA, want it repealed and yet don't want the situation that existed before to reign?

 

[Grizzly Bear]

So you opposed the ACA, want it repealed and yet don't want the situation that existed before to reign?

I don't think you've read anything I've written, and your response was purely a kneejerk one. The law's got implications - real ones - that we no longer need to play clairvoyant to see. Which was the point of my comment that the mileage varies from your starting point and that the law had some consequences for those who had good coverage before and those who had initially no coverage at all. It's not saying the law should be repealed, or that the results are inherently evil or anything, but that the result was to be expected with the way the laws' provisions were designed. If expanding the health coverage was its main goal, then by that metric it's succeeding, and I'm fine with the fact that it's not the hyperbolic disaster people were saying it would be.

As to "going back"... much as I did not want the law in its current form. It's a bit late to be doing a straight off repeal without a decent replacement - which has not been produced so far. If the repeal does more damage than the ACA law itself then the law in its current form will have to do, with improvements that can address its weaknesses until a better alternative is made. The status quo before was still bad.

 

[Spindrift]

I don't think you've read anything I've written, and your response was purely a kneejerk one. The law's got implications - real ones - that we no longer need to play clairvoyant to see. Which was the point of my comment that the mileage varies from your starting point and that the law had some consequences for those who had good coverage before and those who had initially no coverage at all. It's not saying the law should be repealed, but that the result was to be expected with the way the laws' provisions were designed. If expanding the health coverage was its main goal, then by that metric it's succeeding, and I'm fine with the fact that it's not the hyperbolic disaster people were saying it would be.

As to "going back"... much as I did not want the law in its current form. It's a bit late to be doing a straight off repeal without a decent replacement - which has not been produced so far. If the repeal does more damage than the ACA law itself then the law in its current form will have to do, with improvements that can address its weaknesses until a better alternative is made. The status quo before was still bad.

Unfortunately the one proven model that is better than the current ACA model is the single payer system.

 

[Lowpro]

This doesn't make any sense to me. I find it difficult to believe that by filling out the info for health insurance he started getting tons of calls from collectors just because he shares a name. Does your good friend not have a unuiqe SS #? Did he not enter it into the information?

My mom got a call like this as a result of a similar name once. All she did was say she had no idea what they were talking about and asked for the SS# tied to the name of the person in collection. She said that is not my SS# and don't call again.

Problem solved.

Dude there are entire departments dedicated to identification issues for collection agencies of all types. It's a very common occurrence because last names are hardly unique (first names too) and collections validation of debts requires communication, hence the calls. The SS# is not used to identify as agencies are given the consumer's information from whatever entity recruits collections. What's worse is that identity fraudsters specifically find similar people by name age and location (again they just aren't unique. Chances are someone with the same name as you lives within your county, check your phone book...)

So yea, ALL THE DAMNED TIME... whatever the information of debt the agency receives is the information they MUST use, and if that information was misidentified well, they have to figure that out first somehow.

 

[CelticRose]

Why is the ACA a huge source of stress when it is quite possibly the reason you have insurance at all? It isn't perfect and could be better but it was the best that could get passed.

If there is a bureaucratic foul-up that causes me to lose my insurance I have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

I can't work extra hours to make a bit of extra money or to oblige my client (I'm an independent contractor) without losing my insurance and having to pay huge fines that I can't afford.

If the legislature votes to get rid of the Medicaid expansion then I lose my insurance and I have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

If my client decides to give me a bonus without sufficient notice for me to be able to work fewer hours, I could end up making too much money that month and lose my health insurance and have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

I'm effectively locked into poverty with the threat of huge fines due to circumstances beyond my control constantly hanging over my head. That's what's stressing me out.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Unfortunately the one proven model that is better than the current ACA model is the single payer system.

Even that's... meh... Some of the single payer countries have funding issues of their own. The UK faced issues last year because of the way it's population is dealing with funding. It would be nice to see measures taken at the source of the costs before going full-on single-payer

 

[The Don]

I work for a health insurance company. After the insurance mandates went into effect, my employer hired 100s of employees (developers, testers, managers, HR, CSRs, security consultants, DBAs, network engineers, marketing, graphics designers, HR, account managers, report writers, etc), including myself, to implement the federal regulations and support enrollments through the health care exchanges.

Surprisingly, even after the bulk of regulations were implemented, we've never had a layoff and we keep hiring more people. Through the exchanges, we were also able to roll some of the smaller hospitals and urgent care clinics into our network.

Thanks, Obama!

Well there you go, if it wasn't for all those horrible regulations, they wouldn't have had to hire all those people and would have had higher profits and/or been able to offer their customers lower premiums.....

Or something like that.....

 

[The Don]

Even that's... meh... Some of the single payer countries have funding issues of their own. The UK faced issues last year because of the way it's population is dealing with funding. It would be nice to see measures taken at the source of the costs before going full-on single-payer

Please to illuminate about this..

The funding issues for the NHS are due to a number of factors. Demand for the NHS is growing due to an increasing population and more importantly an increasingly elderly population. Medical inflation is typically higher than CPI/RPI due to the more expensive and more effective treatments that are available but NHS funding is fixed to inflation. Another huge millstone around the NHS neck is PFI (private funding of investment in the NHS where costs are exceptionally high compared to funding it publicly - indeed many health trusts have bought their way out of PFI contracts, they're so expensive) the costs of which are much higher than anticipated.

The U.S. model faces many of the same challenges but unlike the NHS has the ability to increase premiums above inflation. This means that while the NHS has to do things more efficiently, there is no such pressure in the U.S. to do things efficiently and take advantage of economies of scale.

Despite all of the above (and the breathless media reports of an NHS in crisis) more people than ever before were treated by the NHS and the NHS achieves better health outcomes for the UK population than the U.S. model does for the U.S. population for about half the cost (as has been pointed out in many other threads, the U.S. spends a greater proportion of GDP on government funding of healthcare than the U.K.).

 

[ponderingturtle]

Unfortunately the one proven model that is better than the current ACA model is the single payer system.

There are a lot of different models embraced by industrial nations that are better than the american system. It is just that Canada and UK use a single payer system and so they get more press in the US rather than German or Swiss systems that are not single payer.

Of course all of them are politically untennable in the US. No one could cut into profits like that and get through congress, way to much lobbying money against them.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I don't think you've read anything I've written, and your response was purely a kneejerk one. The law's got implications - real ones - that we no longer need to play clairvoyant to see. Which was the point of my comment that the mileage varies from your starting point and that the law had some consequences for those who had good coverage before and those who had initially no coverage at all. It's not saying the law should be repealed, or that the results are inherently evil or anything, but that the result was to be expected with the way the laws' provisions were designed. If expanding the health coverage was its main goal, then by that metric it's succeeding, and I'm fine with the fact that it's not the hyperbolic disaster people were saying it would be.

As to "going back"... much as I did not want the law in its current form. It's a bit late to be doing a straight off repeal without a decent replacement - which has not been produced so far. If the repeal does more damage than the ACA law itself then the law in its current form will have to do, with improvements that can address its weaknesses until a better alternative is made. The status quo before was still bad.

It has a replacement, business as usual before it was passed. That is a alternative and one that many people including you preferred when it was passed. Sure more people would die but not anyone who matters.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If there is a bureaucratic foul-up that causes me to lose my insurance I have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

I can't work extra hours to make a bit of extra money or to oblige my client (I'm an independent contractor) without losing my insurance and having to pay huge fines that I can't afford.

If the legislature votes to get rid of the Medicaid expansion then I lose my insurance and I have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

If my client decides to give me a bonus without sufficient notice for me to be able to work fewer hours, I could end up making too much money that month and lose my health insurance and have to pay huge fines that I can't afford. Since the fine is based on flat fee or a percentage of income, whichever is higher, I can't work extra hours to make the money to cover the fine without making the fine higher.

I'm effectively locked into poverty with the threat of huge fines due to circumstances beyond my control constantly hanging over my head. That's what's stressing me out.

Yea clearly you were much better off when you simply would die if you got sick. I have a problem seeing a relatively small fine as back breaking, but a few hundred thousand dollars in unexpected medical bills isn't a big deal.