The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

I'm completely on board as the GOP Congress is the worst in the history of the Republic. In that context I'd expect Obama to take action to govern while one party in one half of one third of the govt tries to hold everybody else hostage. Look, The Boner is impotent. No use waiting around for him to stiffen up his spine.

However, I sense the GOP isn't too bent out of shape over this as they were worried about losing their staff. From a party that calls for impeachment hearings when Obama forgets to pet stray dogs when he's on vacation, their silence is all you need to know.

How is the worst Congress "the GOP Congress" when the Dems control the Senate and GOP controls the House? A number of bills have passed the House and Reid refuses to even take a vote on them. Obstructionism goes both ways, control of the two houses goes both ways.

[Rover]

How is the worst Congress "the GOP Congress" when the Dems control the Senate and GOP controls the House? A number of bills have passed the House and Reid refuses to even take a vote on them. Obstructionism goes both ways, control of the two houses goes both ways.

The GOP House refuses to go to conference on the budget. Why is that?

The Senate passed bipartisan immigration reform. What has the House done?

Senate passed bipartisan farm bill. What has the House done?

Obstructionism = Republicans. That's why the party right now is as popular as used car salesmen. You guys tried leading up to the 2012 elections. How did that work out again?

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Obstructionism = Republicans. That's why the party right now is as popular as used car salesmen. You guys tried leading up to the 2012 elections. How did that work out again?

I'm not a Republican. I quit any affiliation with them back around late 2003. I merely bring up that each party controls one house of Congress because it's not just side making the problems.

Oh, and in regards to the budge, the Senate can't create a budget. All spending bills must originate withing the House. The Senate can create all the budgets in the world, they hold no water if someone were to challenge them in court. Still, I think the House has taken on a seriously pusillanimous tone by using these CRs instead of a true budget bill.

[unofan]

I'm not a Republican. I quit any affiliation with them back around late 2003. I merely bring up that each party controls one house of Congress because it's not just side making the problems.

Oh, and in regards to the budge, the Senate can't create a budget. All spending bills must originate withing the House. The Senate can create all the budgets in the world, they hold no water if someone were to challenge them in court. Still, I think the House has taken on a seriously pusillanimous tone by using these CRs instead of a true budget bill.

You do realize there is a legislative end around to that, right? The Senate merely takes a bill that originated in the house and amends it with all of its budgetary ideas. Thus the Senate passes a budget bill that originated in the house, and the Constitution is satisfied

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

I'd expect Obama to take action to govern.

I expected you enthusiastically to promote the totalitarian option. Your nose is so far up Oblamer's anus I wonder how you can even breathe!

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

You do realize there is a legislative end around to that, right? The Senate merely takes a bill that originated in the house and amends it with all of its budgetary ideas. Thus the Senate passes a budget bill that originated in the house, and the Constitution is satisfied

Yes, and it happens all the time. However, the House never took up any bill, let alone passed one to the Senate. This Senate passed a budget bill that it originated. It's meaningless.

[brookyone]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

More disturbing to me...as someone who has supported the legislation, is my own recent discovery that the federal government may indeed be intruding upon and restricting the dispense of certain prescription drugs with complete disregard for the doctors orders for dispense of those prescription drugs and subsequently the doctors intended benefit to his patients per his / her decision to prescribe those medications.

I haven't verified this yet but I will. This is what I learned via a letter received last week from my Rx coverage provider. They didn't specify this new "provision" was enacted by the PPACA in the letter but claimed that was the case during a call to their customer service. Per extensive past experience with health insurance providers I won't take their word for it...but I will investigate on my own. If true, it's the government pulling the exact same kind of crap the crooked HMO's have been pulling for decades...and the very type of HMO crap the law was intended to protect the consumer from.

So, the PPACA mandates the health insurers can't deny / refuse you coverage and thus, treatment for illness...but now the govt. can deny you the medication your Dr. prescribes? Huh?

It's wrong...every bit as wrong as any bull doody health insurance providers have perpetrated over the last 4+ decades, denying coverage, denying treatment, also refusing to pay for medications prescribed, blackballing the undesirable consumer right out of the free market etc. etc.

[unofan]

Yes, and it happens all the time. However, the House never took up any bill, let alone passed one to the Senate. This Senate passed a budget bill that it originated. It's meaningless.

The Senate couldve used one of the 40-some attempts to repeal Obamacare.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

More disturbing to me...as someone who has supported the legislation, is my own recent discovery that the federal government may indeed be intruding upon and restricting the dispense of certain prescription drugs with complete disregard for the doctors orders for dispense of those prescription drugs and subsequently the doctors intended benefit to his patients per his / her decision to prescribe those medications.

I haven't verified this yet but I will. This is what I learned via a letter received last week from my Rx coverage provider. They didn't specify this new "provision" was enacted by the PPACA in the letter but claimed that was the case during a call to their customer service. Per extensive past experience with health insurance providers I won't take their word for it...but I will investigate on my own. If true, it's the government pulling the exact same kind of crap the crooked HMO's have been pulling for decades...and the very type of HMO crap the law was intended to protect the consumer from.

So, the PPACA mandates the health insurers can't deny / refuse you coverage and thus, treatment for illness...but now the govt. can deny you the medication your Dr. prescribes? Huh?

It's wrong...every bit as wrong as any bull doody health insurance providers have perpetrated over the last 4+ decades, denying coverage, denying treatment, also refusing to pay for medications prescribed, blackballing the undesirable consumer right out of the free market etc. etc.

This actually isn't new. The FDA has been doing this for a century now. I'm sure within the next 24 hours we'll hear The Jungle speech to refute this complaint.

You wanted these laws and such? You got 'em, and everything that goes with 'em.

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Why am I not surprised?

Aetna is pulling out of ObamaCare in Connecticut.

Aetna calculated that the premiums the company could charge were unlikely to cover the cost of its claims.

Aetna is the second of five insurers that wanted to participate in the Connecticut exchange to drop out under regulatory pressure on prices.

Gee, what happens if you mandate coverage requirements AND mandate loss ratios AND mandate what is an 'acceptable' premium to a regulator?

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

More disturbing to me...as someone who has supported the legislation, is my own recent discovery that the federal government may indeed be intruding upon and restricting the dispense of certain prescription drugs with complete disregard for the doctors orders for dispense of those prescription drugs and subsequently the doctors intended benefit to his patients per his / her decision to prescribe those medications.

Howard Dean (yes, that Howard Dean...) wrote about the very same thing last week in the WSJ. I'll see if I can find an active link. While generally in favor of most of PPACA provisions, he took issue with the Independent Payments Advisory Board. He thought that element of the law was a very, very, very bad idea, for just this reason and similar reasons. The IPAB is likely to completely stifle innovation while also shafting people with relatively rare conditions that are expensive to treat.

You have cancer? here, this morphine will leave you so you don't care one way or the other. Next?

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Howard Dean on Obamacare:

He is generally favorable of most of the law's provisions and hails its passage, except that we do need to fix a few "flaws":

One major problem is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.

There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system. However, rate setting—the essential mechanism of the IPAB—has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients. Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the IPAB, in its current form, won't save a single dime before 2021. As everyone in Washington knows, but less frequently admits, CBO projections of any kind—past five years or so—are really just speculation. I believe the IPAB will never control costs based on the long record of previous attempts in many of the states, including my own state of Vermont.

If Medicare is to have a secure future, we have to move away from fee-for-service medicine, which is all about incentives to spend more, and has no incentives in the system to keep patients healthy. The IPAB has no possibility of helping to solve this major problem and will almost certainly make the system more bureaucratic and therefore drive up administrative costs. [emphases added]

An astute, well-reasoned, fact-based discussion, from a progressive who favors universal health care. Take heed.

[Bill]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

This sums it up nicely:

"We’re being “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, who have recently demonstrated their objective and professional integrity, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we’ll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Post Office all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke!!!!!
What the hell could possibly go wrong?"

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

This was the Republican alternative to Universal Care. For some reason we refuse to do what most of the rest of the world is already doing. Beyond me.

[Priceless]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

This sums it up nicely:

"We’re being “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, who have recently demonstrated their objective and professional integrity, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we’ll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Post Office all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke!!!!!
What the hell could possibly go wrong?"

In the wake of a June 2012 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of health care reform legislation commonly known as Obamacare, the above-quoted criticism of that legislation began circulating on the Internet, attributed to business magnate Donald Trump. However, that criticism didn't originate with any public statement made by Donald Trump: it's an anonymous bit of political humor that has been posted and reposted many times in blogs and social media since at least as far back as March 2010.

Although I would expect a statement with this many lies, half-truths and strawmen to have originated with Trump...

This was the Republican alternative to Universal Care. For some reason we refuse to do what most of the rest of the world is already doing. Beyond me.

Universal care is Socialism! Just ask those Communists in Japan, Germany and England.