Obamacare like a multi-million car winter highway pile up
Still trying to find the right analogy, any suggestions?
With each passing day, we learn more and more about the horrible effects of Obamacare.
Here are just some of the “new” revelations.
While there is ample evidence that premiums have risen for many if not most people, the NY Times finds that the supposedly lower premiums come with much higher deductibles, On Health Exchanges, Premiums May Be Low, but Other Costs Can Be High:
For months, the Obama administration has heralded the low premiums of medical insurance policies on sale in the insurance exchanges created by the new health law. But as consumers dig into the details, they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans….
In El Paso, Tex., for example, for a husband and wife both age 35, one of the cheapest plans on the federal exchange, offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has a premium less than $300 a month, but the annual deductible is more than $12,000. For a 45-year-old couple seeking insurance on the federal exchange in Saginaw, Mich., a policy with a premium of $515 a month has a deductible of $10,000.
In Santa Cruz, Calif., where the exchange is run by the state, Robert Aaron, a self-employed 56-year-old engineer, said he was looking for a low-cost plan. The best one he could find had a premium of $488 a month. But the annual deductible was $5,000, and that, he said, “sounds really high.”
By contrast, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average deductible in employer-sponsored health plans is $1,135.
That is not exactly news, but that the NY Times is now up to speed with the rest of us is important because it helps filter the information down even to low information NY Times readers.
NYTimes playing catch-up writes piece on sky-high #HCR deductables. http://t.co/YcNbpQarrw "deductible often tops…$10,000 for a couple."
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) December 9, 2013
Jim Geraghty has more bad news, But Other Than All That, Obamacare Had a Good Weekend!:
You Know the Latest News on Obamacare Is Bad. But You Don’t Know How It’s Bad.
The threat that Obamacare could end up shutting down volunteer firehouses, the site not working again, the administrators demanding bonuses and raises . . . rough end of the week for Obamacare. But things had to get better this weekend, right?
Nope.
Behold, members of Congress and their staff, unable to purchase insurance through the exchanges. I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing at the hardships of other people….
Then the state of California decided that they could do whatever they wanted with the personal information that insurance shoppers typed into the site..l.
Then we learned the implementation in Maryland was even worse than anyone imagined….
Finally, remember all of those administration officials telling the public to use paper applications if the web site wasn’t working? Well, now they’re not so sure there’s time to process all of those….
Stop Jim, Stop! You are depressing me.
Let’s go to a real “expert,” Dr. Death Panel himself:
Well, there’s always Medicaid, free health care for those who can’t afford it. We’ve already seen that there will be too few doctors willing to take the reimbursement rates, but could it be even worse than that? You betcha.
ObamaCare created a Medicaid time bomb:
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far.
The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments.
This all is stressing me out. At least I can load up on meds to ease the pain, right? Right!?!?
No, You Can’t Keep Your Drugs Either Under Obamacare:
These are the ways that Obamacare cheapens the health coverage in order to pay for all of its expensive mandates. Obamacare is a throwback to the old HMO model of the 1990s, which promised a broad package of coverage for primary care benefits like vaccines, and routine doctor visits. But to pay for these benefits, the Obamacare plans skimp on other things – principally the number of doctors you’ll have access to, and also, the number of costlier branded drugs that make it onto formularies.
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Comments
Medications are for wussies!
Try homeopathy at home! Think of a cure, fill a glass with water from the tap, and drink it!
It is covered under Obamacare!* Because Obama cares!
* You are still responsible for the glass and paying the water bill.
Well, maybe. But they are necessary for survival for many.
The Times and other liberal rags are shocked because Obamacare, unlike most partisan bills, has bi-partisan results.
Your pic is right on target, and I love its caption.
I think the People’s Cube has the right take, as in their commerative stamp collector’s issue.
The most recent development I have seen from die hard liberals is that it is the Republicans fault for not being cooperative enough to make Obamacare work. So it is now the republicans fault for not saving Obama from himself. Because Republicans didn’t believe in Obama. ummmm…. the democrats are going off a cliff. I think they have ruined their brand.
If that’s what they think then so be it.
Anyone should be proud to go as the guy(s) who saved the US from the obamacare disaster.
Obamacare is a bad law. Nothing good will come out of it.
The GOP brilliantly attacks with negative vibes.
Accidental thumbs down click. Meant to hit reply.
Still trying to find the right analogy, any suggestions?
Howz’ about the definition of insanity?
You know, “doing the same thing over and over…..”
And let us not forget the RACE issue..
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/12/09/msnbc-lets-face-it-obamacare-was-a-word-coined-by-wealthy-white-men-to-diminish-obamas-accomplishments/
Sweet Melissa Harris Perry..
Disparate impact by design, not incidence.
Too many people favor intelligent design when their mortal gods promise them a material return. They are fearful of the evolutionary process, other than the comfort they feel in expert testimony and association with experts.
There is a class of human beings which demand instant or immediate gratification. It was once when adulthood meant reconciling that innocence with reality. It seems that civilization is a progressive obstacle to a human being’s proper development.
*sigh*
Because if you like your mind you can keep it, I’ll be in the LI lobby for the duration passing out free prescriptions for Prosac, Xanax, Zoloft, Paxil, etc.
What…???
No organic choooom…???
See Jerome in the parking lot.
If the Hindenburg crashed on that winter highway pile-up, you’d be close to a good metaphor.
Those BIG deductibles are the real killer for normal people.
If you only have insurance kick in after $5000, your only use is going to be for something pretty catastrophic…which would normally allow you to buy a quite cheap policy against that possibility.
Not now, of course. That choice is gone. Now you buy what you’re told…if you put up with this.
But, for most working people, it is a matter of a cash-flow nut cracker. Very few people have $5,000 laying around.
In the last thirty years I would have met a $5,000 deductible just once.
I know, right…???
The same doofus that’s responsible for Obamacare is negotiating with Iran.
[…] ObamaCare gives us the worst of both worlds: relatively expensive plans with absurdly high deductibl…. This isn’t Hannah Montana’s “The Best of Both Worlds;” it’s Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” People are now spending lots of money on premiums every month with no guarantee of limiting their health care spending if they fall ill. […]
Kaiser put together a calculator of costs ages ago that any reporter, with middling curiosity, could have used to see that co-pays and deductibles would be very high. None of this is news…it was out there in plain sight last summer.
Its obvious that given these ridiculous costs, self-insurance is the way to go for most people facing $10,000+ deductibles on top of the sky high premiums. Of course Obamacare might be birthing a new insurance line, similar to umbrella policies. Why not offer a catastrophic policy for any sort of catastrophic event to your body? Say coverage starting when you’re facing $5,000 in costs to repair your body? Or $10,000 or whatever? Wouldn’t cover anything unless you had a very serious cost to repair your body?
Not mentioned in the pile up coming this winter is S. Carolina’s fast tracked Republican House bill on its way to their Republican controlled State Senate in January which will eliminate Obamacare in the State of S. Carolinga. Titled the “South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act,”. Already passed with special priority by the state House it will become the first state to exempt citizens and businesses from all participation in the Affordable Care Act.
State Sen. Tom Davis, the bill’s sponsor who recently wrapped up study committee hearings for H3101 in Columbia, Charleston and other cities, says that the proposed legislation renders the Affordable Care Act void or inoperable through a handful of provisions. The components of the bill have constitutional legal precedence and would be effective immediately. It also provides law canceling any insurance company regulated in the state the ability to conduct business if it underwrites any insurance using federal laws of Obamacare.
Perhaps the state is prepared to set a state regulated self insured program with third party administration such is done by many large corporations. The SCOTUS has already ruled the Feds cannot withhold Federal Medicaid as an enticement to join the Federal Program.
I would predict that this will be headed to the Supreme Court with many of the other 34 states signing on before year end 2014. Along with the other 5 major legal challenges now in the U.S. District Courts.
Can anyone explain to me why HR 3319 is not at least a topic for discussion?
Let’s see: the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program has been in existence for over 50 years, with a working data base that can handle at least 1 million users in 30 days, has no prior condition exclusions, has supplements for Medicare recipients, and has at least a dozen plans by private insurers, most with minimal co-pays and deductibles, for each and every state, plus is essentially portable, if you move, between said states.
It is only 6 pages long because the bulk of the matter is already covered by the FEBHP. At most 2 more pages could be added to cover means testing for individuals, not based upon poverty rates but a scale of incomes per se, and a mechanism to assure private employers could enlist in the FEHBP for their employees, much as they do now, and perhaps with better rates.
Oh, and making it doubly confounding, the idea was first broached by Democratic Liberals in 2004 and promptly dropped. Not enough power to be acquired, not enough crony capital expense, I presume when a plan already exists that has worked for half a century.
How about some music to express what ObamaCare is, and what it will be like?
http://bluecollarphilosophy.com/2013/10/29778/
‘Sabotage’ by the Beastie Boys and ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy’ by the Grateful Dead.
You any relation to Big Head Todd?
I want to warn you that the pain has not even started. This law is so invasive that it will effect everyone at every level of medical care. You will not have options of obtaining procedures from your doctor if the risk is above average as that would effect his quality markers. Then there is the aspect of force preventative care with fines for non-compliance. Then there is the fact that you are not paying for affordable care, you are only paying for a worthless insurance policy that likely would not have been approved by the state insurance commissioner. The cheapest plan, which most will turn to, has a $5000 deductible. My patients can’t afford that and will make decisions that will be bad for them due to the excessive cost. Such as, a stress test cost about $2500 with nuclear (doctors don’t set that price), thus a patient will not be able to afford that price out of pocket. In the past, the deductible for many was about $500, but the IRS is abolishing those policies by mandating a deductible of at least $2500 on existing policies. So the patient will forgo a test that might shed light on symptoms.
What is strange is that no one has received any information on what is happening. As a doctor and talking with other doctors, we have not had one bit of communication with the government on this policy. We have nothing with which to educate or help patients. I have asked several CPA’s if they have received any information, no have. They would be important as they are the ones communicating with the IRS and the IRS runs this mess. Even small business owners do not have the information they need, only people in larger corporations.
Finally, the only way to get information is by the web. What if you don’t use the computer or have web access? I know a large number that are in that situation. And without the web, you don’t know to call or who to give you information.
It is very telling on how stressful the medical side of administration will be when the doctor gives an example for a foreseeable diagnostic unaffordable test which he may need to recommend a prescription treatment would be a “Stress Test”. I “wish the doctor well”, which will be as effective as Obamacare will prove to be.
Shocking news.
You mean you can’t force the health care industry to cover everyone for everything and have all the math work out to save people money???
That “pass it to find out what’s in it” strategy is working wonders.
Here’s a visual of how Obamacare will work*.
*(Just like every other agency in this administration – as a weapon against opposition and dissent.)
Here is an animation of how the Obamacare signup website works.
I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, but sensing something amiss, with the drugs. Was looking over the CO site, comparing drug coverages, and noticed that BC/BS had, by far, the worst coverage. We spend over $1,000 a month on my partner’s drugs, and, the only drugs of hers that are covered are her $10-$15 dollar (self pay) drugs, with her costly ones uncovered, and, indeed, not even the preferred alternatives (which don’t work nearly as well) were covered. Still going to cost us over $1,000 a month. The other companies weren’t as bad, but didn’t offer much help.
Heavily restricting the approved drugs is apparently how the biggest providers are pushing the sicker people into other company’s plans. They have the claim information to know which drugs correlate with the sick people they really want some other company to cover.