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The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

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Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

FreshFish said:
I'm not posting links to subscription-only trade journals, what would be the point?

Do you argue aeronautical engineering with LynahFan, merely because you read part of an article about it once on the internet?

I'm always amused at how readily you discard my actuarial expertise. I would have been quite happy had a decent law been passed. as I said in the original post of the "sad case" thread, no matter what your political affiliation, no matter what you thought was the right solution, the actual language of PPACA is a disaster. It is one case where any partisan of any stripe should be disappointed!

You keep arguing that they meant well. Big deal. Good intentions don't cut it when your math is out of balance. They've set in place several negative feedback loops which can only exacerbate whatever they were trying to cure. Hold up a microphone next to a speaker broadcasting what the mike picks up and you'll hear what I mean pretty quickly!
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The "point" might be to prove that you're not just pulling things out of your @ ss. Whether you do that or not I can't tell as all you righties tend to run together unless they're a real closet case like Opie. However if you're going to claim massive cost overruns, cannibalism, etc, in a state I reside in, I don't think its a stretch to ask you to maybe back up some of these assertions. If you don't want to, no worries, but it doesn't exactly boost the credibility of your arguments. While you seek to have legitimacy granted to you because of the field you work in, I'll remind you that The Unibomber has a Harvard degree and I'd be taking his arguments with a grain of salt regardless. When people have a bias, as you do in this case, they'll tend to slant things a certain way. Human nature.

Also put away the strawman because I'm not arguing the law means well, I'm arguing its the right thing to do? Why? Because its already worked in Massachusetts, which by all right wing accounts should have been broke by now with double digit unemployment. As I continually ask, why has none of that come to pass in a decent sized state (7M people) that's had the law on the books for 7 years? Surely by now we'd all be working part time and under 30 hours so our employers could skip the mandate if they hadn't already left the state. :rolleyes: The biggest counterpoint to conservative fear mongering on this issue is the fact that's its already been done successfully.
 
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Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Rover said:
I'm arguing its the right thing to do.
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If you believe in your religion, it's the "right thing to do" to ask other people to convert. That doesn't justify the Spanish Inquisition.

The way PPACA is written, it cannot deliver on its promises, the math simply will not work. You are behaving like the Catholic Church and I'm Galileo. Don't shoot the messenger; heed the message.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

St. Clown said:
I wonder if the BAG can recover the cost from her based upon the alleged confession at the end of the article.
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At the very least, if her new taxpayer financed boobs "make it all happen" as she hopes I hope they get it back from her in taxes.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Hm, my tablet auto-corrected NHS to BAG. I didn't expect that.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

OK, let's go by the numbers on this one. http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12 FR.pdf is the actual data, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-cheapest-obamacare-plan-will-be-20000-family is a cliffs notes version.

According to this site, the penalty for a family of five making $120,000 a year living in a place that is the national average will be a charged a tax of $2400. They will be offered a credit of $2400 by paying for the lowest-level of insurance plan that will cost, per year for the five of them, anywhere between $12,000 and $20,000 ($12,000 is from http://www.factcheck.org/2013/03/obamacare-to-cost-20000-a-family/ just in case the whiners would like to put in a rebuttal about numbers; there isn't much of a difference in the point anyway). Knowing this, and how certain high risk individuals that go skiing and break their leg bones will likely not have the same payments or possibly even qualifications as bronze coverage, are families still going to fork over five figures extra for this product, when putting that money in the bank for ten years will save enough enough to cover the cost of that broken leg?
 
FlagDUDE08 said:
OK, let's go by the numbers on this one. http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12 FR.pdf is the actual data, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-cheapest-obamacare-plan-will-be-20000-family is a cliffs notes version.

According to this site, the penalty for a family of five making $120,000 a year living in a place that is the national average will be a charged a tax of $2400. They will be offered a credit of $2400 by paying for the lowest-level of insurance plan that will cost, per year for the five of them, anywhere between $12,000 and $20,000 ($12,000 is from http://www.factcheck.org/2013/03/obamacare-to-cost-20000-a-family/ just in case the whiners would like to put in a rebuttal about numbers; there isn't much of a difference in the point anyway). Knowing this, and how certain high risk individuals that go skiing and break their leg bones will likely not have the same payments or possibly even qualifications as bronze coverage, are families still going to fork over five figures extra for this product, when putting that money in the bank for ten years will save enough enough to cover the cost of that broken leg?
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Flaggy your logic makes little sense. First of all if someone is making 120 large a year and chooses not to insure their own kids that's pretty scummy. Most likely these people ARE ALREADY PAYING 10K to insure their family.

Next the notion that they should just save the money for a rainy day is stark raving stupid and speaks of someone who hasn't lived away from his parents for long if ever. While you can game the system and hope nobody out of 5 people ever gets an injury that requires a hospital visit (car accident, sports injury, etc) you also are counting on not getting your kids regular check ups in your savings calculation, which is astounding. The idea that there would be two nickles left over after 10 years, let alone tens of thousands of dollars, is laughable. I like libertarians as much as the next guy, but sometimes you people need to spend time in the real world with the rest of us.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Rover said:
Flaggy your logic makes little sense. First of all if someone is making 120 large a year and chooses not to insure their own kids that's pretty scummy. Most likely these people ARE ALREADY PAYING 10K to insure their family.

Next the notion that they should just save the money for a rainy day is stark raving stupid and speaks of someone who hasn't lived away from his parents for long if ever. While you can game the system and hope nobody out of 5 people ever gets an injury that requires a hospital visit (car accident, sports injury, etc) you also are counting on not getting your kids regular check ups in your savings calculation, which is astounding. The idea that there would be two nickles left over after 10 years, let alone tens of thousands of dollars, is laughable. I like libertarians as much as the next guy, but sometimes you people need to spend time in the real world with the rest of us.
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Flaggy has no clue what insurance is. Don't bother.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Rover said:
Flaggy your logic makes little sense. First of all if someone is making 120 large a year and chooses not to insure their own kids that's pretty scummy. Most likely these people ARE ALREADY PAYING 10K to insure their family.

Next the notion that they should just save the money for a rainy day is stark raving stupid and speaks of someone who hasn't lived away from his parents for long if ever. While you can game the system and hope nobody out of 5 people ever gets an injury that requires a hospital visit (car accident, sports injury, etc) you also are counting on not getting your kids regular check ups in your savings calculation, which is astounding. The idea that there would be two nickles left over after 10 years, let alone tens of thousands of dollars, is laughable. I like libertarians as much as the next guy, but sometimes you people need to spend time in the real world with the rest of us.
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I forget where the information is, as it's been a couple years since I last saw it, but a large portion of the uninsured in this country are uninsured by choice (I forget the exact %, but it was far from insubstantial). These people who were uninsured by choice were usually sole proprietors, and many of them had incomes in excess of $80,000. You can find the information easily enough on the web should you choose. The site I was read summarized IRS data, IIRC.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

St. Clown said:
I forget where the information is, as it's been a couple years since I last saw it, but a large portion of the uninsured in this country are uninsured by choice (I forget the exact %, but it was far from insubstantial). These people who were uninsured by choice were usually sole proprietors, and many of them had incomes in excess of $80,000. You can find the information easily enough on the web should you choose. The site I was read summarized IRS data, IIRC.
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No businessperson in their right mind would be completely uninsured. They'd at least have a catastrophic policy of some sort.
 
St. Clown said:
I forget where the information is, as it's been a couple years since I last saw it, but a large portion of the uninsured in this country are uninsured by choice (I forget the exact %, but it was far from insubstantial). These people who were uninsured by choice were usually sole proprietors, and many of them had incomes in excess of $80,000. You can find the information easily enough on the web should you choose. The site I was read summarized IRS data, IIRC.
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Flag cited a specific example (120K family of 5) so I gave him an answer to that scenario. Lets say you are a sole proprietor. If you make that kind of money and can't be bothered to insure your kids that's scraping the bottom of the barrel IMHO.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Rover said:
Interesting and on point article:

http://theweek.com/article/index/245071/will-obamacare-double-your-health-insurance-premiums
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which omits an extremely important element, which is the quality of care. The policies available on the California exchanges have an extremely limited provider network when compared to other policies. The Wall St. Journal has done several interesting articles from various points of view this week on the CA exchange. They have a similar conclusion as in the article you cited: people who otherwise would have lower premium policies will be forced to buy higher premium policies, so that people who would have had higher premiums get their premiums lowered.

The problem is, health care is not only about premiums, it's also about access to the system. The provider networks in LA are reportedly the same as the provider networks for Medicaid. The places where the best care is available aren't on those networks.

So if you really want to have an honest debate, you don't only compare premiums, you also compare what kind of access you get in exchange for those premiums. The CA exchanges, by offering such narrow networks, are reducing quality. For those of us who understand basic math, that's a disguised price "increase" in the sense that you are not getting as much "unit value" in return.

My doctor retired at the end of last year specifically because he didn't want to put up with Obama'care'. He wasn't shy about what he disliked about it. and he liked Medicare too.
 
Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

Sometimes an analogy can help clarify something when direct conversation bogs down.

There have been quite a few natural disasters in the news in the past several years. California has earthquakes and mud slides. Montana has wild fires. Oklahoma has tornadoes. Illinois and Missouri have flooding. Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey have been slammed by hurricanes.

As a result of all these events, homeowners' insurance premiums have increased considerably. On top of that, FEMA is often called upon to provide assistance after disasters strike, which puts additional strain on the federal budget. The President and Congress couldn't just sit idly by; they agree that a recovery in the housing market is essential to restoring economic growth. On top of that, since FEMA is already backstopping the insurance companies anyway, the Federal government needs to make sure that enough additional money is set aside to deal with disasters ahead of time, rather than respond retroactively only after disaster has struck. As a result, they passed the Homeowners Protection and Affordable Coverage Act, which sets national standards for homeowners' insurance policies and requires the establishment of homeowners' insurance exchanges in every state.

There has been quite a bit of controversy over this move. The west coast is never hit by hurricanes (neither are most inland states), and there is a lot of pushback there to the requirement that all policies include mandatory hurricane coverage. Tornadoes are rare in many parts of the country, and there is widespread resistance there to the mandated tornado damage coverage.

A spokesperson for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners expressed that body's outrage over this unprecedented intrusion of the federal government into state regulation: "the weather conditions faced by each state are unique and are simply not amenable to a one-size fits all, across-the-board set of standardized policies for every homeowner in the country. Each state has local expertise and decades if not centuries of local climate data upon which to draw in setting rates. Every state has different building codes; there is no way a single centralized bureaucracy can take into account all of the unique local variations in building codes, local geology, and regional climate."

President Obama was non-plussed: "We are so intelligent and so well-meaning, we can blithely disregard all this carping and whining. Affordable homeowners' insurance is something that should be available to every homeowner: we need to protect them from greedy insurance companies and it's obvious that the state insurance commissioners aren't up to the job. It's the right thing to do. Just because it's never been done before and it has always been viewed as a state prerogative is no reason to resist our good intentions. History will prove we are right."

Obama sycophants of course cheered this move: "we already have a program like this in Massachusetts, and it works great for us. I'm sure the rest of the country will come around too once they see how wonderful it is."

Actuaries were unimpressed: "mandating coverage for events that are unlikely to happen can only raise premiums. The way the law is written, premium increases are inevitable." Their concerns of course were dismissed out of hand; no one even listened to them: "you know actuaries, they are always complaining about something. We can safely ignore them since they are so boring and have no constituency: the Society of Actuaries hardly ever donates any money to political campaigns anyway."
 
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Re: The PPACA - Implementation Phase I

With my Obamacare-compliant insurance that my employer is now in its second year of using, I'm sure they could make the payment and billing process more complicated, but I don't know how. The old plan used to be so much simpler.
 
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