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Healthcare Bill Part III; Obamacare
Topic Started: Mar 3 2014, 02:20 PM (48,693 Views)
kbp

Drudge...

Quote:
 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/21/White-House-Leads-Liberal-Media-In-Matt-Drudge-Attack

LIBERTY TAX’: WHITE HOUSE, MEDIA ATTACK AFTER DRUDGE PAYS OBAMACARE OPT-OUT PENALTY

[...]

Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not 'getting covered'... I'M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.”

[...]

“Dazed team Obama media reporters think Opt-Out tax 'year away’?” Drudge tweeted. “Not for small businesses that file Qtr estimates. We're there NOW, baby #pay.”


LMAO! I've experienced the penalties for insufficient 'Qtr estimates' many times because my income was subject to the outcome of the last qtr of the year and varied extremely from one year to the next. The only thing that prevented massive penalties was to pay higher tax estimates than you had in the previous year, and that did not avoids all penalties if it had been a good year. Luckily we had until Jan 15 to try to cover the tax liability and reduce penalties.
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Mason
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Parts unknown
kbp
Mar 22 2014, 10:16 AM
Concerned
Mar 22 2014, 12:39 AM
My 27 year old son was paying $150 a month for himself on a private policy. He just added his wife and new baby as his wife had been on her mother's policy. He now will be paying $750 a month for the three of them (with a $3000 a year deductible).

Blue Cross also told him that the "grandfathered" policies will expire in two years. Then what? Nobody wants Obamacare with their limited doctors and hospitals.

$750 a month is affordable for a young couple? All these 20-somethings who are on their parents plans are in for a rude awakening when they turn 27.
Is it more affordable if you eliminate spouse and child?

YES

See where we're going?
.

Cheap Drugs from Canada, Baracky said....

Well, look again -- $650.00 a month for a common arthritis medication!

MUST READ


http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/22/obamacare-plans-bring-hefty-fees-for-certain-drugs/

Chatham is right about Single Payer.

.
Edited by Mason, Mar 22 2014, 05:09 PM.
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kbp

If Obamacare is a teazer for single payer, the people should learn we can't afford it. They'd probably had been better off just giving Medicaid to more people whie leaving the balance untouched, then working on care reform.
Edited by kbp, Mar 22 2014, 08:46 PM.
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kbp

Quote:
 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/23/Obamacare-Turns-4-Has-Covered-Just-1-4-of-Uninsured-Americans

OBAMACARE TURNS 4, JUST 1.4% OF UNINSURED AMERICANS COVERED

Four years of Obamacare have produced health insurance for just 1.4% of uninsured Americans.

According to CNBC, of the 5 million people the Obama administration claims have enrolled in Obamacare, just 715,000 are previously uninsured Americans who have chosen and paid for new insurance. As the Washington Post notes, there are 48.6 million uninsured Americans. That means that after four years of being the law of the land, Obamacare--whose purported purpose was to cover the uninsured--has provided coverage for just 1.4% of uninsured Americans.

Indeed, the vast majority of those who have signed up for Obamacare are merely Americans who already had health insurance but whose plans were canceled by Obamacare.

Moreover, a year ago the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that between 26 million and 27 million uninsured Americans will never receive health care coverage under Obamacare.

Statistics like that have Democrats panicking heading into the November midterm elections. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just 39% of Americans now support Obamacare. One Democratic member of Congress told the New York Times that President Barack Obama has now become "poisonous" to Democrats running for office.
The latest Gallup poll finds that just 40% of Americans now support Obama.

Obamacare will cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years.

That $2.6 trillion does not include the collateral damage, the cost of draining the funds from our economy and increasing the cost of production in the nation. That's closer to $5 trillion.

Even if you spread out the startup cost over a decade(10 year), deduct the Medicaid expansion (39%+/-), and use their cost numbers ($1.8 trillion), we're going to spend at least $100 billion per year to insure about 700,000 previously uninsured.
$1.8 trillion = CBO lowball estimate for decade (May 2013 estimate)
$o.8 trillion = Medicaid 39%
$1.0 trillion = CBO's Exchange cost
/10 = years
$100 billion per year cost
/700 thousand = uninsured now insured
$143,000 per policy

We're getting close to $150,000 per year to insure each person who was previously uninsured. These numbers need to get out in the media (after checking my math!).

Those numbers do not include the indirect costs our economy will suffer.
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Baldo
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Meanwhile another big deadline awaits, not the enrollment of Obama-care, but rather the Medicare's physician reimbursement system which will go into effect on April 1.

Physicians face a 24% Medicare pay cut on April 1 if lawmakers pass nothing.


What is the SGR? Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate

Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate

The Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) is a method currently used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the United States to control spending by Medicare on physician services.[1] Enacted by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to amend Section 1848(f) of the Social Security Act, the SGR replaced the Medicare Volume Performance Standard (MVPS), which was the previous method that CMS used in an attempt to control costs. Generally, this is a method to ensure that the yearly increase in the expense per Medicare beneficiary does not exceed the growth in GDP. Every year, the CMS sends a report to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises the U.S. Congress on the previous year's total expenditures and the target expenditures. The report also includes a conversion factor that will change the payments for physician services for the next year in order to match the target SGR. If the expenditures for the previous year exceeded the target expenditures, then the conversion factor will decrease payments for the next year. If the expenditures were less than expected, the conversion factor would increase the payments to physicians for the next year. On March 1 of each year, the physician fee schedule is updated accordingly. The implementation of the physician fee schedule update to meet the target SGR can be suspended or adjusted by Congress, as has been done regularly in the past (a doc fix). Physician groups, including the American Medical Association, lobby for a permanent reform to the SGR so that physician payment rates are not subject to annual cuts (a permanent doc fix)...snipped

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Sustainable_Growth_Rate


The Death of SGR Reform

A Senate bill to repeal and replace Medicare's physician reimbursement system and to extend certain Medicare programs would cost about $180 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which released the estimate late Wednesday night.

The estimate came five days after the House of Representatives passed a bill also aimed to repeal the SGR, but the Senate is unlikely to vote on that bill because it contains an amendment that excuses people for five years from the healthcare reform law's financial penalty for not purchasing health insurance. The CBO estimated that this add-on would increase the number of uninsured Americans by about 13 million in 2018.

The Senate returns from recess on March 24 and must act quickly if it still wants to move forward with the bill. Physicians face a 24% Medicare pay cut on April 1 if lawmakers pass nothing.

The bill introduced last week by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—the Medicare SGR Repeal and Beneficiary Access Improvement Act of 2014—reflects ideas supported by the Senate Finance, House Ways and Means and House Energy and Commerce committees to repeal and replace the SGR. It also contains funding for a variety of expiring programs (so-called Medicare extenders) viewed as critical to rural hospitals, such as outpatient therapy caps, ambulance add-on payments and the low-volume hospital adjustment.

However, the bill didn't provide a mechanism to pay for the SGR fix or the extenders. According to sources familiar with SGR negotiations on Capitol Hill, Wyden is open to using overseas contingency operations funds—which are used to pay for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations—to offset the cost of the bill.

Had the bill been just a straight forward SGR repeal bill, it would have cost just under $140 billion over the next decade. The extenders tacked on an additional $41 billion in costs over the same period, bringing the cost to $180 billion.

The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the bill will actually cost $215 billion over the next decade. Its estimate includes $35 billion in interest.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140320/NEWS/303209940/sgr-repeal-bill-would-cost-more-than-180-billion-cbo-says


Why wasn't this included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?

IMHO the cost. It served as a barrier to passing Obama-care and Obama, Reid, & Pelosi knew it. So they did what all good Congresses & Presidents do, Kick the can down the road.
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kbp

A single female approx. 30 YO just called me to see if she could stop by and have me help her review the Obamacare exchange plans offered. The two she had selected to look over showed an annual deductible of $-0- and $600/year. I have no idea WTH she found on the exchange web site.

I'll let you know what I find this evening when she stops by!
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LTC8K6
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
There are several 0 deductible plans. They have higher prices for everything. You have to read carefully, because they sometimes cover very little.

https://www.bcbsnc.com/assets/shopper/public/pdf/sbc/Blue_Advantage_Silver_0.pdf
Edited by LTC8K6, Mar 24 2014, 02:03 PM.
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kbp

LTC8K6
Mar 24 2014, 02:00 PM
There are several 0 deductible plans. They have higher prices for everything. You have to read carefully, because they sometimes cover very little.

https://www.bcbsnc.com/assets/shopper/public/pdf/sbc/Blue_Advantage_Silver_0.pdf
I really need to read up on this, as I evidently misunderstood it. I was under the impression that the deductibles were set by the law and regulations, which put the out-of-pocket at $6,350/year and the Bronze plan had $5,000 of that in deductible alone. That must be the maximum!

It appears the variances in premiums reflect variances in deductibles, which makes me wonder how they figure the tax credits some may get.
Edited by kbp, Mar 24 2014, 02:38 PM.
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LTC8K6
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
kbp
Mar 24 2014, 02:38 PM
LTC8K6
Mar 24 2014, 02:00 PM
There are several 0 deductible plans. They have higher prices for everything. You have to read carefully, because they sometimes cover very little.

https://www.bcbsnc.com/assets/shopper/public/pdf/sbc/Blue_Advantage_Silver_0.pdf
I really need to read up on this, as I evidently misunderstood it. I was under the impression that the deductibles were set by the law and regulations, which put the out-of-pocket at $6,350/year and the Bronze plan had $5,000 of that in deductible alone. That must be the maximum!

It appears the variances in premiums reflect variances in deductibles, which makes me wonder how they figure the tax credits some may get.
You'll get dizzy reading through all the permutations and possibilities.

Deductibles/co-pays/prescriptions are all over the place.

I have no idea how anyone figures out anything...

And yet, there is really only one provider for North Carolina...

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kbp

LTC8K6
Mar 24 2014, 02:53 PM
kbp
Mar 24 2014, 02:38 PM
LTC8K6
Mar 24 2014, 02:00 PM
There are several 0 deductible plans. They have higher prices for everything. You have to read carefully, because they sometimes cover very little.

https://www.bcbsnc.com/assets/shopper/public/pdf/sbc/Blue_Advantage_Silver_0.pdf
I really need to read up on this, as I evidently misunderstood it. I was under the impression that the deductibles were set by the law and regulations, which put the out-of-pocket at $6,350/year and the Bronze plan had $5,000 of that in deductible alone. That must be the maximum!

It appears the variances in premiums reflect variances in deductibles, which makes me wonder how they figure the tax credits some may get.
You'll get dizzy reading through all the permutations and possibilities.

Deductibles/co-pays/prescriptions are all over the place.

I have no idea how anyone figures out anything...

And yet, there is really only one provider for North Carolina...

Absent an answer that is different, I suppose I should assume the tax credits are based on income and the premium for a Bronze plan with $5,000 deductible, still allowing you to pay more for a lower deductible. That seems to be the only explanation for how the deductible set by regulation works here.
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kbp

Obamacare case, where day is night and...
Quote:
 
http://cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/doj-supreme-court-killing-human-embryo-womb-not-abortion

DOJ to Supreme Court: Killing Human Embryo in Womb is Not Abortion

The U.S. Justice Department is telling the Supreme Court that killing a human embryo by preventing the embryo from implanting in his or her mother’s uterus is not an "abortion" and, thus, drugs that kill embryos this way are not "abortion-inducing" drugs.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. The crux of the administration’s argument in this case is that when Christians form a corporation they give up the right to freely exercise their religion--n.b. live according to their Christian beliefs—in the way they run their business.

It is in the context of this case, that the administration is making its argument that killing an embryo seeking to implant in his or her mother's womb is not an abortion.

The dispute involves a regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued under the Affordable Care Act. This regulation says that virtually all health insurance plans must cover, without any fees or co-pay, all FDA-approved “contraceptives.”

But what the FDA and the regulation call “contraceptives” include drugs and devices that sometimes work not by preventing conception but by ending a human life after conception. In other words, in these circumstances, the mandated drugs and devices are not contraceptives at all, but post-conception killing agents.

When the Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the Hobby Lobby case last September, the administration conceded in its petition that among the mandated drugs and devices were some that did indeed prevent human “fertilized eggs”—n.b. human embryos--from implanting in their mothers’ wombs.

“The FDA has approved twenty such methods, ranging from oral contraceptives to surgical sterilization,” Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said in the administration’s petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. “Four of the twenty approved methods—two types of intrauterine devices (IUDs) and the emergency contraceptives commonly known as Plan B and Ella—can function by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg."

In a footnote, Verilli added: “Both the government and the medical amici supporting the government concede that at least some of the contraceptive methods to which the plaintiffs object have the potential to prevent uterine implantation.”

According to a collection of citations posted on a Princeton University website, medical dictionaries, embryology texts, and a federal commission, have all defined fertilization as the beginning of a new human life with the formation of an embryo.

An “embryo,” says the Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary, is “[a]n organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."

"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote,” says the text of Langman’s Medical Embryology.

An “embryo,” said the U.S. government’s 1997 National Bioethics Advisory Commission on Cloning Human Beings, is “the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus.”

Even though science says human life begins at “fertilization,” the Obama Administration claims in its brief to the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, which was filed in January, that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, came to this conclusion as a matter of “religious conviction.”

“The Greens maintain the sincere religious conviction that human life begins at conception, that is when sperm fertilizes an egg,” Solicitor General Verrilli said in the brief.

But this is not true.

In their original complaint in federal court and in their brief to the Supreme Court, the Greens do not state—as the administration contends—that they have a “sincere religious conviction that human life begins at conception.” What they do state is that they have “a sincere religious objection” to providing coverage for drugs and devices that kill human embryos—which, as per the science recorded in embryology texts, come into being at fertilization.

“Plaintiffs have a sincere religious objection to providing coverage for Plan B and Ella since they believe those drugs could prevent a human embryo—which they understand to include a fertilized egg before it implants in the uterus—from implanting in the wall of the uterus, causing the death of the embryo,” the Greens said in their original complaint in federal court.

“Plaintiff have a sincere religious objection to providing coverage for certain contraceptive intrauterine devices or ‘IUDs’ since they believe those devices prevent a human embryo from implanting in the wall of the uterus, causing the death of the embryo,” the Greens told the federal court.

“Plaintiffs consider the prevention by artificial means of the implantation of a human embryo to be an abortion,” said the Greens.

In their brief to the Supreme Court, the Greens point out that the government has conceded that there is no dispute about the fact that the drugs and devices the administration is trying to force Christian business owners to cover can in fact prevent a human embryo from implanting in the womb.

“The government concedes in its petition, as it has throughout this litigation, that the drugs to which Respondents object can prevent an embryo’s ‘implantation’ in the womb,” said the Green’s brief.

“Based on that concession,” says the Green’s brief to the Supreme Court, “the en banc court found ‘no material dispute’ on the issue, and, thus, that the court ‘need not wade into scientific waters here.’”

The issue then is not when human life begins. Science has long since settled that. Nor is it whether the drugs and devices mandated by the government can end a human life by preventing a human embryo from implanting in the uterus.

The question is whether the government can force a Christian business owner to cooperate in ending a human life by that means.

In its final brief to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration again conceded that the drugs and devices the administration wants to force Christian business owners to provide coverage for can act by preventing a human embryo from implanting in the uterus.

“According to FDA-approved product labels, a copper IUD is a device inserted into the uterus by a health care providers that works ... possibly by preventing implantation (of a fertilized egg in the uterus),” says Solicitor General Verrilli in this brief.

“Plan B is an emergency contraceptive in pill form that ... may inhibit implantation (of a fertilized egg in the uterus) by altering the endometrium, but it is not effective once the process of implantation has begun.”

“Ella, another emergency contraceptive, is a pill that ... may affect implantation (of the fertilized egg in the uterus),” Verrilli told the court.

Having repeatedly conceded that the drugs and devices the administration wants to force Christian business owners to buy for their employees can in fact terminate the life of a human embryo by preventing “implantation,” the administration is now arguing to the Supreme Court that terminating the life of a human embryo by preventing the embryo from implanting in the womb is not an “abortion.”

“Although respondents describe the devices and drugs as ‘abortion-inducing,’” says the administration’s brief to the court, “federal law, which defines pregnancy as beginning at implantation, does not so classify them.”

The administration attempts to establish this claim—that terminating a human life by preventing implantation is not an “abortion”—by pointing the court not to a statute enacted by Congress, but to a federal regulation issued during the Clinton administration.

This regulation--62 Fed Reg 8611 (Feb. 25, 1997) 45 CFR 46.202(f)--was promulgated by the FDA. It addressed what it called “postcoital emergency contraception” and said it was “intended to encourage manufacturers to make this additional contraceptive option available.’

Like the Obama administration’s argument to the Supreme Court, this FDA regulation conceded that what it called “emergency contraception” may in fact prevent a post-conception “fertilized egg” from implanting in the uterus.

The regulation does not use any form of the words “abort” or “abortion," but it does say this: “Taking ECP’s [Emergency Contraception Pills] provides a short, strong, burst of hormone exposure. Depending on where you are in your cycle and when you had unprotected intercourse, using ECP’s may prevent ovulation, disrupt fertilization, or inhibit implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.”

So, the FDA and the Obama Administration want Americans to believe an "emergency contraceptive" can act post-conception to kill a "fertilized egg"--but that does not mean it induces an abortion.

It just kills a human being.
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kbp

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Premium-Health-Exchange-plan-not-so-premium-as-user-thought-251614801.html

Premium Health Exchange plan not so premium for some

Alex Szablya just wants the best health care she can get for her children. So she got a gold plan, the highest level possible with the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. She picked a plan with Lifewise, an affiliate of Premera Blue Cross.

In early March, her 16-year old daughter had a medical emergency. Alex drove her to the nearest hospital, which was Seattle Children's. Alex says doctors there felt her daughter's situation was so dire she needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately. She was there for nine days.

Then came news that her stay, which involved specialized mental health care for adolescents, was going to cost $36,000 and her insurance would only pay for half because Seattle Children's was considered on out-of-network facility....
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kbp

kbp
Mar 24 2014, 05:09 PM
Obamacare case, where day is night and...
Quote:
 
http://cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/doj-supreme-court-killing-human-embryo-womb-not-abortion

DOJ to Supreme Court: Killing Human Embryo in Womb is Not Abortion

The U.S. Justice Department is telling the Supreme Court that killing a human embryo by preventing the embryo from implanting in his or her mother’s uterus is not an "abortion" and, thus, drugs that kill embryos this way are not "abortion-inducing" drugs.

snip

It just kills a human being.
This one is stuck in my mind! Their claim that it is something in between the birth control pill and abortion has left me wondering how they figure that makes it any better?

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kbp

Charles Payne was on Fox News 30+\- minutes ago and said the head count for the uninsured now insured is 400,000. I have no idea where he got that number.
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kbp

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/shrinking-obamacare-mandate-104966.html#.UzEOxTOnnLE.twitter


Politico is finally telling their readers that the mandate is full of exemptions!
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