The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

If you don't have the resources for a hotel room, should you really be traveling to Philly and attending the Frozen Four in the first place? Your question is baseless on its face.

It's an example. Try not being so literal.

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

You already do.



I suppose when I go to the Frozen Four I can sleep outside the Wells Fargo Center. I'm sure the locals won't mind.

If you don't have the resources for a hotel room, should you really be traveling to Philly and attending the Frozen Four in the first place? Your question is baseless on its face.

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Of course if you don't pay for the hotel room you can't stay there, but if you don't pay for health insurance you still get healthcare provided on the backs of everyone who does pay.

You already do.

You choose whether or not to make use of a hotel at all. We're now mandated to purchase insurance. In the Land of the Free we're compelled to make a purchase regardless of whether or not we want the product.

I suppose when I go to the Frozen Four I can sleep outside the Wells Fargo Center. I'm sure the locals won't mind.

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

It appears some people are still tryng to justify the theory to support the intention, while others are describing the effects and results of the actual law.

Where I see the biggest problem coming is in the destruction of the doctor-patient relationship. While subtler, it also appears to have been disguised deliberate intent.

Pre-PPACA, the theory was that the doctor was in charge of how "his/her" patients were treated: the personal physician was aware of all the medical considerations and had a sense of responsibility for how "his/her" patients fared.

One of the more pernicious effects (no matter what the "theory" says, I'm talking practical reality here) is the transformation of the physician from "boss" to "employee." I've seen first-hand what happens when a practitioner moves from private practice to the state payroll, and this process will only become more and more widespread.

No one person is responsible. The patient data is recorded in the chart, and whoever happens to be on duty at the time picks up the chart, reads it, and handles the situation until the end of his/her shift, after which the responsibility transfers over to whomever is next on the schedule. The whole concept of "my" doctor or "my" patients is tossed aside. We can't afford it any more. All must sacrifice to support the greater good.

DrD can probably speak more eloquently than me about how fundamentally transformative this is, and not at all for the better. There are abundant anecdotal stories from Britain about a patient who was ready for surgery at the end of the day who, because the preceding surgery ran long, had to wait for the next day because it was the end of shift and everyone just packed up and left.

This is a separate issue from a doctor shortage, which people can argue theory vs practicality elsewhere. It's the difference between treating "my" patients and making sure they are receiving all the care they need, and "okay, who's next on the list today? and I hope it doesn't take too long because I really have to get out of here by 5 today."

It's the difference between knowing the person, and managing the symptoms. All you blusterers are not going to like it, but by then it will be too late, and no one will take any pleasure in being right.

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Of course if you don't pay for the hotel room you can't stay there, but if you don't pay for health insurance you still get healthcare provided on the backs of everyone who does pay.

Then we should re-examine healthcare as being "a right" afforded to people. IMO, a personal right should not require something of someone else in order to exercise it.

[jerphisch]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

You choose whether or not to make use of a hotel at all. We're now mandated to purchase insurance. In the Land of the Free we're compelled to make a purchase regardless of whether or not we want the product.

Of course if you don't pay for the hotel room you can't stay there, but if you don't pay for health insurance you still get healthcare provided on the backs of everyone who does pay.

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

The policies will include those services whether it is on the bill or not. If it makes people feel better, just ignore it.

It's like when I go to a hotel with a pool and a gym. I'm not going to use the pool and the gym, but I don't demand a lower price for my room or get angry with the people at the front desk for offering it.

You choose whether or not to make use of a hotel at all. We're now mandated to purchase insurance. In the Land of the Free we're compelled to make a purchase regardless of whether or not we want the product.

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

The policies will include those services whether it is on the bill or not. If it makes people feel better, just ignore it.

It's like when I go to a hotel with a pool and a gym. I'm not going to use the pool and the gym, but I don't demand a lower price for my room or get angry with the people at the front desk for offering it.

Here here. The bill has been passed, and we're finding out what is in it. "If you like your plan, you can keep it" is hardly a lie. The plan just has to be a real plan, unlike the ridiculously threadbare plans out there that don't cover sh*t. We all know that's what Obama meant in his speeches, despite the protestations of the whiny conservaginas screaming "T3H socialism!1!!1!".

[joecct]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

OK, this is from Newt, which will mean most of you will discount this as the rantings of a deranged man.

Obamacare’s Marriage Penalty and Divorce Incentive

President Obama’s reelection campaign raised the hackles of conservatives last year when it released an interactive web graphic called the Life of Julia. The graphic depicted “Julia’s” cradle-to-grave reliance on government, and many viewers felt it offered a disturbing glimpse of the President’s ideology.

It was particularly striking that Julia seemed to lack any family or friends. At one point she “decides” to have a baby, but she never marries. And now perhaps we know why: under Obamacare, being married would likely have cost Julia thousands of dollars a year.

Many couples buying insurance through the Obamacare exchanges will face huge premium increases if they choose to get married, according to a tool created by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s because jointly they’ll lose substantial tax credits or subsidies they were eligible for individually.

The Kaiser calculator reveals that a married couple of 64-year-olds earning a combined $62,081 a year (each earning the same salary) would pay a premium of $15,211 for a “silver” plan under Obamacare. That amounts to more than a quarter of their income (and an even larger portion after taxes). If they chose not to marry (or to get divorced if they were already married), however, they’d pay only $5,360 combined for the same coverage. That’s a marriage penalty (or divorce incentive) of nearly $10,000 a year.

The story isn’t much better for a couple of 40-year-olds, one earning $70,000 a year and the other earning $23,000 a year. If married with two children, they would pay a premium of $9,700. If they chose not to marry (or to get divorced), however, they’d pay only $3,700 combined for the same coverage. That’s a marriage penalty (or divorce incentive) of $6,000 a year. By the time their children were 18, that would add up to well over $100,000 they could have saved to send them to college. (Tom Blumer at PJ Media highlighted similarly troubling scenarios before Kaiser adjusted its calculator.)

It was Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation who first pointed out the “wedding tax” in Obamacare. That was back in January 2010 before the bill became law. Rector warned that “the bill’s anti-marriage penalties occur because of the income counting and benefit structure rules of the bill. If a two-earner couple is married, the bill counts their income jointly; since the joint income will be higher, a married couple’s health care subsidies would be lower.”

Nearly four years later as Americans log on to the exchange websites to sign up for Obamacare, many couples are discovering this unpleasant consequence for the first time. This week Al Jazeera talked to an Obamacare “navigator” in Colorado who said so far “no one” she’d talked to had signed up for coverage. “Thus far everybody has taken a look at the rates and they've walked out the door,” she said. “There's sticker shock. They just can't afford it.”

It’s a perverse law that would take such a sticker-shocked couple and tell them they could save $5,000, $7,000, even upward of $10,000 a year if they simply got divorced. At a time when nearly two in five children nationwide are born to parents who are not married to each other, this is no small problem.

This anti-marriage, pro-divorce provision needs to be changed before January 1. It should never go into effect.

The law creates a destructive incentive for the poor and their children, especially. As I relate in Chapter 10 of my new book Breakout, we know that children who grow up in single-parent households are far more likely to live in poverty. The poverty rate in 2010 for married couples with children was just 8.8 percent, compared to 40.7 percent for unmarried mothers. Children who grow up in single parent households are seven times more likely to become welfare recipients as adults, according to my friend Peter Ferrara at the Heartland Institute. So in some ways the Obamacare marriage penalty actually feeds the poverty problem.

We already have dozens of welfare programs that create terrible disincentives to marry. Obamacare’s marriage penalty makes this problem even worse, and extends it to many middle class Americans as well. Unfortunately, there are sure to be many more unpleasant surprises like this one ahead.

Your Friend,
Newt

[pirate]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

The policies will include those services whether it is on the bill or not. If it makes people feel better, just ignore it.

It's like when I go to a hotel with a pool and a gym. I'm not going to use the pool and the gym, but I don't demand a lower price for my room or get angry with the people at the front desk for offering it.

rationalize much?

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

And there's your sign

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...69711152265686

The policies will include those services whether it is on the bill or not. If it makes people feel better, just ignore it.

It's like when I go to a hotel with a pool and a gym. I'm not going to use the pool and the gym, but I don't demand a lower price for my room or get angry with the people at the front desk for offering it.

[SteveP]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Does that qualify as oxymoronic?

How 'bout just moronic?

And there's your sign

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...69711152265686

First, it's not only men who are forced to buy maternity coverage they are physically incapable of using. So are women in the stage of life between childbearing age and Medicare eligibility.

Second, under-30s are exempt. That's right, the geniuses who wrote ObamaCare are forcing everyone to buy maternity care except the age cohort that includes women at peak fertility.

[Old Pio]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

She'd purchase that for the same reason I pay for Medicare. Same thing.

I guess the bottom line is people look at taxes and insurance in two completely different ways. The real world, and fantasy land. That 55 year old woman lives in fantasy land.

I'll agree with you there, Tinkerbell.

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

There's no way to explain away or rationalize away this woman's story:




It is really sad. Typically, when an honorable person makes a mistake, the honest thing to say is "oops, I goofed. This isn't turning out the way I planned." Yet the sycophants here are so deeply invested that they cannot even acknowledge the obvious!

I have to give a big-time shout out to ericredaxe for being honorable even though we may disagree on substance. He supports the law's intentions and has enough character to acknowledge that there is something wrong with its execution.

I said at the outset of the predecessor thread that there are plenty of good intentions behind the impetus to do something. This situation now is beyond horrible. It's fraudulent. If any business tried this we'd all be howling for a criminal prosecution.

Let's give her a bill that just says she's paying for A, B, C and D even though it also covers E, F and G because she will feel better about her policy if it doesn't list the things she doesn't "need". Sure, she will still be paying the same amount, but she'll feel so much better about it.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

She'd purchase that for the same reason I pay for Medicare. Same thing.

I guess the bottom line is people look at taxes and insurance in two completely different ways. The real world, and fantasy land. That 55 year old woman lives in fantasy land.