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"Obamacare" fallout-first datum

Unabogie said:
No, if everyone was on Medicare, hospitals costs would go down, because they wouldn't be paying for uninsured people in the emergency rooms. See "every other industrialized nation" for examples. Try and keep up.
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Read the article.

Medicare pays less than the cost of delivering care. It's an unsustainable business model.
 
WildCat said:
Read the article.

Medicare pays less than the cost of delivering care. It's an unsustainable business model.
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Well, look into how other countries do it. We could simply lower costs by insuring everyone and pay a little more to hospitals. Who would, by the way, have lower costs since they wouldn't have to pay for uninsured patients and wouldn't have to employ an army of people to deal with insurance companies.

But I think I've answered your question. You just don't like the answer.
 
Unabogie said:
So you never paid any attention during a two year run for the presidency? And you're the one disappointed?
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I was deceived by the liberal media into believing that Obama supported socialist national health insurance. I have since learned that he did not and does not. I thought he did. I was wrong.

He also didn’t close/control Guantanamo Bay. He didn’t end the tax cuts for the rich. He didn’t end “don’t ask don’t tell” or help gay marriage or gays in any way. I don’t think he has done anything to address immigration.

He has spent a whole bunch of borrowed money on stimulus spending, but hasn’t explained how that benefits the country and how spending the money now to stimulate the economy is on things that would have to be paid for eventually so that it is “spending now” instead of “spending later” and not really “spending more” to quash the claims of “out of control spending”.

Frankly, Obama is not at all what I expected him to be. That is probably mostly my fault. But he did seem to transform into another person once he took office.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
I was deceived by the liberal media into believing that Obama supported socialist national health insurance. I have since learned that he did not and does not. I thought he did. I was wrong.

He also didn’t close/control Guantanamo Bay. He didn’t end the tax cuts for the rich. He didn’t end “don’t ask don’t tell” or help gay marriage or gays in any way. I don’t think he has done anything to address immigration.

He has spent a whole bunch of borrowed money on stimulus spending, but hasn’t explained how that benefits the country and how spending the money now to stimulate the economy is on things that would have to be paid for eventually so that it is “spending now” instead of “spending later” and not really “spending more” to quash the claims of “out of control spending”.

Frankly, Obama is not at all what I expected him to be. That is probably mostly my fault. But he did seem to transform into another person once he took office.
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Go look up his health care plan on his website. The plan that passed is remarkably close. And honestly your politics are all over the map. I suggest you read more about the various legislation that passed, and what hurdles each piece of legislation had to jump in order to pass. For instance, the tax cuts for the rich. They're about to expire. No one ever suggested a new law to repeal them, since they simply go away on their own. But you may have heard we just had an election, and that the GOP won the House, and that they're fighting him on this. It seems like you're missing much of the news here.
 
I'm surprised that I'm the first to point out that the singular form of "anecdotes" is not "datum"
 
Unabogie said:
Well, look into how other countries do it. We could simply lower costs by insuring everyone and pay a little more to hospitals. Who would, by the way, have lower costs since they wouldn't have to pay for uninsured patients and wouldn't have to employ an army of people to deal with insurance companies.
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Nice dodge. But what does that have to do with the fact that Medicare doesn't pay enough to cover the costs of care to Medicare patients?

Unabogie said:
But I think I've answered your question. You just don't like the answer.
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Handwaving away the question is not answering it.
 
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Unabogie said:
Go look up his health care plan on his website. The plan that passed is remarkably close. And honestly your politics are all over the map. I suggest you read more about the various legislation that passed, and what hurdles each piece of legislation had to jump in order to pass. For instance, the tax cuts for the rich. They're about to expire. No one ever suggested a new law to repeal them, since they simply go away on their own. But you may have heard we just had an election, and that the GOP won the House, and that they're fighting him on this. It seems like you're missing much of the news here.
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Yes. My politics are all over the map. There are things I like and don’t like about both parties (I know that is not what you meant).

For instance, the tax cuts for the rich. They will likely be extended. What has Obama done to stop it?
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
I was deceived by the liberal media into believing that Obama supported socialist national health insurance. I have since learned that he did not and does not. I thought he did. I was wrong.

He also didn’t close/control Guantanamo Bay. He didn’t end the tax cuts for the rich. He didn’t end “don’t ask don’t tell” or help gay marriage or gays in any way. I don’t think he has done anything to address immigration.

He has spent a whole bunch of borrowed money on stimulus spending, but hasn’t explained how that benefits the country and how spending the money now to stimulate the economy is on things that would have to be paid for eventually so that it is “spending now” instead of “spending later” and not really “spending more” to quash the claims of “out of control spending”.

Frankly, Obama is not at all what I expected him to be. That is probably mostly my fault. But he did seem to transform into another person once he took office.
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Most politicians transform when they have to deal with reality.
 
I'd just like to point out that my personal anecdote counters the OP's anecdote, rendering this thread null and void.

Anecdote: My health insurance premiums didn't go up this year.


/thread.
 
My insurance went up significantly this year. I don't know how much "Obamacare" contributed, but it had to be at least a little. The parts of the law that took effect this year increased coverage without doing anything to control costs. (For example, the lifetime cap on benefits was made illegal. That means insurance companies will shell out more money. They have to get that somewhere.)

I liked the idea of the health care bill, but lets be realistic. When costs go up, so does price. When more are covered, cost goes up. Maybe, possibly, when the individual mandata kicks in in a few years, adding a bunch of healthy people to the pool of insured might lower overall prices, but without some sort of actual cost control, it will cost more to cover more people.
 
Lurker said:
Did you miss the Congressional Budget Office report?
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Did you miss the flawed premises it was based on, like the $500 bazillion that would be saved by cutting Medicare payments?

eta: and that's really besides the point, what is being done to bring US medical costs in line with those of other western countries?
 
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Unabogie said:
You mean Medicare Advantage?
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No, I mean how all this money was going to be saved by cutting Medicare payments to doctors. First cuts were supposed to take place back in January IIRC, Congress said no *****' way.

eta: I can't believe the auto-censor censored that...
 
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In the spirit of inquiry do you have a good cite for the flawed premises in the CBO report?
 
WildCat said:
No, I mean how all this money was going to be saved by cutting Medicare payments to doctors. First cuts were supposed to take place back in January IIRC, Congress said no *****' way.
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Last I saw, the house passed an extension of payments and the senate literally walked away from it and went on recess. I think the cuts went into effect as a result.

Sounds a bit like the Bush tax cuts might go.
 
WildCat said:
No, I mean how all this money was going to be saved by cutting Medicare payments to doctors. First cuts were supposed to take place back in January IIRC, Congress said no *****' way.

eta: I can't believe the auto-censor censored that...
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Then you need to be more specific and include some sources. I'm referring to "Medicare Advantage" which was a useless sop to the insurance companies that was draining money from the treasury. This program was eliminated in the new bill, which saved lots of money.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62J1FS20100322

There are no cuts to the traditional Medicare benefit. The lion's share of spending cuts are in Medicare Advantage -- a program that uses private firms such as Humana and UnitedHealth Group to deliver Medicare benefits. Many of these providers offer extra coverage and some of those extras could be dropped as Medicare Advantage subsidies are bought more in line with the cost of traditional Medicare benefits. Medicare Advantage payment rates will be frozen in 2011 and then gradually reduced giving companies time to adjust to the changes.
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According to Reuters, this will save almost $500 billion dollars.
 
Lurker said:
In the spirit of inquiry do you have a good cite for the flawed premises in the CBO report?
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The CBO report was already revised back in May:
The director of the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the health care reform legislation would cost, over the next ten years, $115 billion more than previously thought, bringing the total cost to more than $1 trillion.

The revised figure is due to estimated costs to federal agencies to implement the new health care reform bill – such as administrative expenses for the Internal Revenue Services and the Department of Health and Human Services -- and the costs for a "variety of grant and other program spending for which specified funding levels for one or more years are provided in the act."

CBO had originally estimated that the health care reform bill would result in a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion from 2010-2019; this revised number would eliminate most of that savings.
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalp...15-billion-more-than-previously-assessed.html

Wait until it's actually implemented...
 
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