Why is Obamacare Failing?

I don't do it for the right. No point in that.

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Yeah, beer is really important. Priorities are priorities, I guess.

 

It has everything to do with Republican obstructionists.

 

Who told you that?

 

Great post! And by the way, after Alan Graysons brilliant 5 minute performance of Patrick Kennedy, that was all it took to completely destroy the legitimacy of the Benghazi scandal as a scandal at all.

 

I new there would be no takers, and this post would be ignored. The right has absolutely nothing to debunk these websites with, other than their own angry rants. This is the proof that the republicans are cheats and liars. They create their own bogus Obamacare website on one end, and have Darrell Issa release faulty half written transcripts about the healthcare law on another to create a healthcare scandal. Since the right has decided to try and hijack the law, create faulty transcripts about the law, and generally just lie out of their teeth about everything about this law, proves that the healthcare law works and will continue to work. Thanks for giving the left the proof they needed.

 

Yes, I know that YOU know. I was actually using some sarcasam with my post by using your post as leverage, making believe you were the one I was addressing, when I really wasn't. Hope that makes sense for you.

 

Perhaps there was a link error as it didn't take me to a post that had anything to do with "Obamacare" not going into effect on Jan 1st. We know that millions have already obtained health insurance coverage either with private insurance through the exchanges or through Medicaid and for all of those individuals "Obamacare" will most certainly go into effect on 1/1/2014 as scheduled.

Will everyone that is supposed to be covered going to be covered on 1/1/2014? Of course not nor was that ever projected by anyone. By 1/1/2015 far more will be covered though as employers will then also be penalized if they are required to provide health insurance but don't. These employers are still supposed to provide health insurance for 2014 but they're not going to penalized if they don't.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate of "Obamacare" as I believe the same goal of ensuring that tens of millions of Americans received necessary health care services with a better proposal but I only point out that we cannot evaluate whether "Obamacare" is a success or a failure before at least 2016 and, realistically, we should probably wait until about 2020 before drawing any informed conclusions.

 

Why can't UHC work for Americans? Are you a different species or something? It'll work if you allow it to work. The right-wing constantly putting obstacles in its path isn't helping, is it?

 

well, it is an inside link, but here it is, again, just for you:
Obama Repeals ObamaCare

Under pressure from Senate Democrats, the President partly suspends the individual mandate
...."The White House argued at the Supreme Court that the insurance-purchase mandate was not only constitutional but essential to the law's success, while refusing Republican demands to delay or repeal it. But late on Thursday, with only four days to go before the December enrollment deadline, the Health and Human Services Department decreed that millions of Americans are suddenly exempt.

Individuals whose health plans were canceled will now automatically qualify for a "hardship exemption" from the mandate. If they can't or don't sign up for a new plan, they don't have to pay the tax. They can also get a special category of ObamaCare insurance designed for people under age 30.....
So merry Christmas. If ObamaCare's benefit and income redistribution requirements made your old, cheaper, better health plan illegal, you now have the option of going without coverage without the government taking your money as punishment. You can also claim the tautological consolation of an ObamaCare hardship exemption due to ObamaCare itself."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...70252042143502

 

maybe, unlike you, we do not desire cradle to grave government care. A subject born as a subject, cannot differentiate Liberty from slavery to the govenment

 

the feds funding it is also a problem. when ever the feds fund anything there is always strings attached . If the citizens of a state want government paid health care then let them pay for it why should one state that doesn't want it pay for another state who does

 

The Hidden Impact of Obamacare and the Economy
By Jacqueline Leo
December 22, 2013 5:30 AM

Obamacare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it’s sticker shock.

Now that a few people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy.

In California, policies for about 900,000 Californians are being canceled because of Obamacare’s mandates and about 2/3rd of these do not qualify for subsidies, according to The Chicago Tribune. The result—these folks will be paying higher premiums.

RELATED: THE MANY DISRUPTED LIVES UNDER OBAMACARE

In Alabama, premiums have doubled for some middle class families like Courtney Long, a stay-at-home mother of four. She told WHNT News. “It’s devastating. I started crying,” said Long. “I mean, we have worked so hard to get out of credit card debt, get ahead on the car loan, transfer our mortgage to a 15 from a 30 year mortgage… and for what?”

In Tennessee, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) issued an analysis of a White House report and found the following:

— Today, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest state average is $119 a month — a 190 percent increase.

— Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can also buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest-priced plan in Nashville is $114 a month — a 97 percent increase. Even with a tax subsidy, that plan is $104 a month, almost twice what she could pay today.

— Today, women in Nashville can choose from 30 insurance plans that cost less than the administration says insurance plans on the exchange will cost, even with the new tax subsidy.

— In Nashville, 105 insurance plans offered today will not be available in the exchange.

RELATED: THE OBAMACARE ‘SHOTGUN WEDDING’—MARRY OR LOSE YOUR HOME

In Washington State, Obamacare will increase the underlying cost of individually purchased health insurance by 34-80 percent on average, according to Forbes. The list goes on and on and includes Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Georgia and North Carolina. But premiums are just the beginning. The deductibles are outrageous, too.

A piece in Saturday’s The New York Times tells the story of Doug and Ginger Chapman, ages 55 and 54, a middle class couple “sitting on the health care cliff.” Their annual income of around $100,000 a year makes them ineligible for a subsidy in New Hampshire (if they earned under $94,000, it would cut their costs by half). They have to replace their family insurance which includes the two of them and their two sons. The premium cost alone, not including any deductible is $1,000 a month, or 12 percent of their income.

The Times’ analysis found the following:

“The cost of premiums for people who just miss qualifying for subsidies rises rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly approach 20 percent of a person’s income. Experts consider health insurance unaffordable once it exceeds 10 percent of annual income. By that measure, a 50-year-old making $50,000 a year, or just above the qualifying limit for assistance, would find the cheapest available plan to be unaffordable in more than 170 counties around the country, ranging from Anchorage to Jackson, Miss.”

RELATED: MILLENNIALS JUMP SHIP OVER OBAMACARE BAIT AND SWITCH

The other group that gets disproportionately hit is the young, according to Forbes. For a 40 year old, the 2013 average deductible was $4,045, and the cost increased 29 percent to $309. For a 64-year-old man, the cost of a plan with a $3,494 deductible increased 64 percent to $806.

The Real Impact of Obamacare is Yet to Come

If even a fraction of the middle class and upper middle income earners divert some of their discretionary dollars to pay for health care, it will have a significant impact on consumer spending. What will that mean for the economy? Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s GDP, although experts say that number is likely to decline.

The top 20 percent of income earners account for about 40 percent of all spending in the U.S. When you increase the costs of health care and the new taxes associated with Obamacare, you can hear the wallets closing.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hidden-impact-obamacare-economy-103000621.html

Is success measured by how many people sign up or by how many people are put into a ditch?

 

Claims do get denied and almost every time it is because people do not read their policy documents and try to do things that their policy was never meant to do. Also rates do go up in areas but for the most part that is so we can stay in an area. If we go out of business because we keep our rates to low then no one gets coverage and we are all out of luck. Insurance companies do their best to balance helping people and making a profit. Or do you believe they should not make money and insurance should be based on charity?

 

Thanks for the clarification.

Of course this ultimately has nothing to do with the ultimate success or failure of "Obamacare" but instead is merely an issue of implementation. There have been a lot of problems with implementation but they do not have any long term effect on the success or failure of Obamacare.

The true success or failure of Obamacare will be judged based upon whether it accomplished what it set out to do and that is to ensure that tens of millions of Americans that weren't receiving health care services they needed are receiving those health care services. If Obamacare accomplishes that goal then it is a success and, if not, then it is a failure.

We can certainly condemn the failures of implementation but ultimately they don't matter once they are resolved and they will be. We can also condemn the costs and intrusiveness of Obamacare but that is secondary to whether it succeeds or fails to accomplish that which it set out to do.

For example I have a serious problem with the "employer mandate" that only applies to enterprises with 50 or more full time employees. Why are they different than an employer with less than 50 full time employees? Why aren't there provisions that address the fact that all employers should have some obligations to their employees related to the costs of health care the employee must provide for? In another forum I proposed a $1.50/hr "tax" on all labor (up to 2080 hrs per year that is a standard work year) for any enterprise that didn't provide health insurance to their employees. This "tax" would be used to subsidize the purchase of private insurance by the employee that didn't have company provided health care. I don't believe the government should be playing "favoritism" of some enterprises over other enterprises which is what Obamacare currently does. If the employers, that are profiting from the labor of the employee, pay this tax then it reduces my personal taxation where I'm not profiting from the labor of the employee.

I'm not overly fond of taxation but if a tax is required then tax those that are profiting and don't tax those that aren't profiting.

 

It will work. But anything that tends to impede the agendas of our nation's most greedy capitalists... is somehow vilified as being tragic economic policy.

People are starting to see through that BS... which is exactly why certain elements on the Right, are attempting to control or manipulate our election process with bogus, disenfranchising laws.

It's all very obvious.

 

Some things, the government (the will of the people expressed) has a role in tending to.

Or do you believe that laissez-faire capitalism is so 'perfect' that it properly attends all elements of a civilized, modern society?

If you DO believe that... I say, think again.

 

Insurance policies now have STANDARDS of care. That was not there before. People were being ripped-off and THERE was a large part of the VERY HIDDEN cost people were experiencing.

Spreading out the burden of ensuring Americans' medical care (yes even upon the younger folk), is a smarter thing to do than set more and more people up for bankruptcy and death (because they would avoid getting medical care, even as youngsters).

There will ALWAYS be some additional cost for doing things in better ways; but at least AMERICA has stopped pretending that everything was somehow 'just fine' before the Affordable Care Act.

We know better now.

 

Yes indeed, you want 47,000 Americans to die annually, you want to run up Corporate business costs due to lost time profits, cost stockholders millions in lost dividends as GDP goes down. Are you a Commie sent here to subvert America by destroying it from within?

What often gets lost in these discussions is the equally significant cost to business of indirect costs or lost productivity due to illness. Looking at recent statistics for the cost of lost productivity due to common diseases, conditions, and risk factors is eye-opening.

In 2010, cardiovascular disease and stroke cost American business more than $503 billion in lost productivity and health care costs.
In 2010, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia cost $172 billion in lost productivity and direct health care costs. In addition, the Alzheimer’s Association found in a 2006 study that an additional $36.5 billion was lost because of caregiver absenteeism, lost productivity and need for worker replacement. Another study in 2010 found that people caring for family with Alzheimer’s $7.9 billion in additional healthcare costs.
A 2009 study by the CDC found direct and indirect costs of obesity to be as high as $147 billion per year.
In 2008, the estimated cost of lost productivity due to cancer was $18.8 billion. Lost productivity due to premature death from cancer was estimated to be $116.1 billion.
According to a 2009 study, workers with diabetes lost an average of 11 to 15 percent of work time due to health problems.
In 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available, arthritis was responsible for a $47 billion in lost earnings.
Each year, smoking costs business about $97 billion in lost productivity.
Alcohol abuse cost $81 billion in lost productivity in 2009.
Depression accounts for $51 billion a year in lost productivity and absenteeism.
Lost productivity due to asthma costs business $5 billion annually.
More broadly felt, though harder to quantify, would be the overall deleterious effect of high stress levels on key executives, those on the hectic front lines of an enterprise.

 

And those costs can be offset with savings in other areas, like my post above about costs created by a lack of health care to our businesses, even losses to workers paychecks that they could have spent in stores were they not sick and off the job.

 

Unfortunately all that time spent gathering up those stats isn't going to get to the right-wing nerve center of the brain. But I do thank you for putting it into perspective for the rest of us. You can bet it will be noted. It will never reach the other side of the aisle though. If it has something to do with promoting Obamacare your cost summary analysis was a waste of time. Obamacare for them to the brain means hate. Hate means Obamacare! It's all they see. Logical deductive reasoning through the brain using statistical data, is not possible for them.

 

Amen to that, Brother!! So right.

 

It's possible... but what they've done is rejected the good option of using "...Logical deductive reasoning...".

 

Exactly!

 

There is no proof its failing, give it say five years and see how it is they can always make changes then give it time to kick in. I for one like having a reply from the DHHS I'm a paper to add to my records it will be perfect when applying for charity care and that I'm real poor good for other government programs and charity support.

And if the state expands Medicaid I'm good to go.

 

In spite of what the starry-eyed libs think, Obamacare is a massive failure. Ask the folks making comments on Obama's Facebook page

https://m.facebook.com/Healthcare.g...://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php&_rdr

Where's the lefts' compassion for their fellow Americans? Is it more important to you that Barack is right?