Thread: Health Care Passes

Originally Posted by sabang

In an economic behemoth like the US, that is a small number indeed. Nonetheless it is quite telling that some employers already prefer their workers to go to the competitive and public health care exchanges set up by Obamacare, rather than sign up with the existing, but bloated and expensive company plan. Longer term, as the AHC becomes embedded, it is likely that company plans will increasingly be reserved for senior personnel, with most employees being covered by the national health care system- as is the case in Australia. This would mean a cost saving for both employer & employee.

The important thing is that, casually or full time employed, that person will still have health care coverage.

What about their reduced take home pay as a result them working less hours does that not count?

Originally Posted by piwanoi

What about their reduced take home pay as a result them working less hours does that not count?

Economically, not a lot- actually it increases employment (albeit of the shit variety), so given welfare payments thus saved it might well be a net benefit.

The fact is, since the great GFC a large proportion of jobs created in the US have been of the crap variety, many of the new jobs created in the so called recovery are on effectively casual terms and conditions. Like shit jobs anywhere, these jobs are highly mobile- people come and go. It makes a lot more sense for them to not be tied to company administered health care plans- the bureaucracy would be a nightmare. Should point out too, attributing the above list solely to obamacare, when it also reflects an employment trend that has been happening for a number of years in the states, is quite dubious.

Over time, it will make less and less sense for small employers and 'mobile' employees to have their health care arrangements via individual company plans. One of the great advantages of the AHC, or of any national healthcare system, is portability- and bureaucratic streamlining. Great cost savings to be realised there alone.

Originally Posted by sabang

One of the great advantages of the AHC, or of any national healthcare system, is portability- and bureaucratic streamlining. Great cost savings to be realised there alone.

Yes and this is the real win detaching health care from business is necessary and will be a big positive down the road.

Originally Posted by sabang

The fact is, since the great GFC

What is the "great GFC?"

Over time, it will make less and less sense for small employers and 'mobile' employees to have their health care arrangements via individual company plans.

True. Very, true.

Originally Posted by barbaro

What is the "great GFC?"

Global Financial Crisis.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Originally Posted by barbaro

What is the "great GFC?"

Global Financial Crisis.

Thank you.

(Did you see the Dawgs today?)

Snort!

How do you fix a Train Wreck?

All summed up in one tweet/graphic:

Brian Phillips @SenLeeComs Obamacare is killing jobs, raising costs, and making people lose their health insurance. Democrats: it's working!
8:33 PM - 29 Sep 2013



Burn it to the ground...

enrollment opens for obamacare tomorrow....online marketplaces and exchanges will give millions of americans the opportunity to have affordable health care coverage.


btw, the teabagger's temper tantrum of shutting down the govt won't affect the launch in any way, shape or form.





IT'S
THE
LAW

If you’re in a hurry, and you can only memorize one fact about the coming congressional debt and budget war, try this: There will be no “defunding of Obamacare.” It’s impossible for Republicans to admit it, great energy is being spent to prevent them from admitting it, and large sums of money are being raised and spent to stop conservatives from realizing it. If you want to skip to the end of this drama, past Friday’s likely vote on the resolution that defunds Obamacare, the final page reads “… and Obamacare survived.”

To get to that ending, House Republicans—who really do want to shred the law—have to construct a series of hallucinations for their holdouts. They’re very convincing hallucinations. The current plan, which Republican leaders were confident enough to endorse on camera today, is to pass a continuing resolution that funds the government at a shrunken, post-sequestration level, but ends funding for Obamacare—implementation, subsidies, etc.—permanently. And if that fails, Republicans are going to try to demand a one-year delay of Obamacare in a deal to raise the debt limit.

It’s a brilliant ruse. Until last week, Eric Cantor and other House GOP leaders had wanted to pass a funding bill that carved out Obamacare. This would have allowed members to say they’d voted against the funding, then blame the Senate for betraying them. The plan was condemned by conservative groups like Heritage Action, and by Sen. Ted Cruz, who’d just spent August stumping for the death of Obamacare, often at events sponsored by Heritage Action. “Another symbolic vote against Obamacare is meaningless,” said Cruz. “Tell Pete Sessions and Eric Cantor to stop playing games with the lives of Americans,” said RedState.com’s Erick Erickson. Cantor relented right before Congress recessed for a long weekend instead of resolving the dispute.

The new defunding plan was built from the blueprints of Cruz and Georgia Rep. Tom Graves, both Republicans who’d criticized the Cantor sellout. It was sold, successfully, at the conference’s Wednesday meeting.

“The key to any leadership job is to listen,” said House Speaker John Boehner after the doors opened.

“The conference was unifying around the proposal because we focused on keeping the government open and protecting the American people from Obamacare,” said Graves after the meeting. From there, he logged on to a Heritage webcast to sell the plan to his base. “People say it’s a victory for conservatives or the right. It’s actually a victory for America.”

What’s remarkable about this illusion is just how often it works. Defunding Obamacare through the continuing resolution isn’t a new idea. It came up in the winter of 2011, when the new House Republican majority faced its first continuing resolution. Cantor said it would “likely preclude any funding” for Obamacare. Rep. Steve King pledged to “block funding for its implementation and enforcement onto every appropriations bill or continuing resolution from this point forward.” The House ended up “defunding” Obamacare, and watching the Senate strike that part of the bill—but it was OK, because it would get another chance.

Here’s another old idea: getting conservative holdouts to back their preferred version of a bill, just in order to say that the House has passed something. That happened in June 2011, when Republican whips failed to line up votes for a compromise debt limit package because it didn’t require spending caps or a balanced-budget amendment. Conservatives had demanded, and pledged to support, a debt limit hike that hinged on passing a strict balanced-budget amendment, one that would make tax hikes impossible. Leadership caved and let the party pass the hardline bill—which was, of course, ignored in the final debt deal, as the amendment went down like a soggy paper plane.

The hard times continued into 2013. Up to now, the House Republicans’ most embarrassing stumble seemed to be the failure of the farm bill, way back in June. Conservatives refused to back a compromise that would have funded food stamps; Democrats refused to provide enough votes for Republican leaders to pass the bill with defections. So the bill failed, and Republicans passed, with amusing fanfare, a farm bill that didn’t fund food stamps at all, one that would be doomed in the Senate.

Why does this keep happening? A large number of Republicans, who know that funding bills have to originate in the House, take this issue very seriously. Their constituents, and the pressure groups, promise to punish them if they don’t defund what needs defunding.

So they run up to the edge, and they pretend that Democrats may go along with their plans—maybe, if they try this a few more times. “We’ll see what the Senate does,” said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a loyal and talkative Boehner ally. “Nobody can predict that. … If the president and Democrats in the Senate have a road-to-Damascus moment, maybe we will.”

This was a little risible, because we can predict with 100 percent certainty that President Obama will not accept the demolition of Obamacare. And we know that even vulnerable Senate Democrats have no interest in destroying the law. Most of them either voted for the law in 2009 or defended it on the campaign trail—what, like Republicans would go easy on them if they flip-flopped?

The endorsement from Cole, who was perfectly ready to cave in and vote for the old Cantor plan, proves how illusory the whole plan is. The hardliners were making it impossible to proceed without another showdown, so voilà —here’s the showdown, which they’ll lose. Maybe they can convince Americans that a government shutdown over a refusal to fund current law was really President Obama’s fault. “When it comes to a government shutdown,” said the optimistic Florida Rep. Steve Southerland, “it may depend on who is holding the ball at the end.”

What if that football analogy turns out to be wrong? Well, the leadership can say it did all it could. Enough moderate Republicans will be willing to vote with a majority of Democrats for some ugly compromise.

“Ted Cruz and [Utah Sen.] Mike Lee have been asking for this fight,” said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, a reliable conservative. “The conservative base has been asking for this fight. So we’re gonna give ’em the fight.”

They’ll give it to them knowing that the fight is almost certainly impossible to win. That’s not as humiliating as it sounds. As illusory as the “defund” campaign is, it’s flashy enough to obscure the gains won by hardliners. Every Republican leaving the meeting today suggested that a compromise funding bill or a compromise debt limit hike would set spending at the levels set by sequestration. At his short press conference, Boehner agreed with that. Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry sounded as cynical as Cole about Obamacare, saying it was “worth falling on your sword” to stop it, not saying that doing so would work. He was much more confident, and more insistent, that the eventual deals would force Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

These would be solid Republican wins, enabled—as far as the conservatives can tell—by the most hard-core members’ willingness to humiliate their leadership. Republicans can see exactly how this plan will make that happen. They’re not able to say how the plan will actually defund Obamacare.

“Our responsibility is to focus on the House,” said Graves. “The Senate’s the Senate.”

Fleming agreed with that, happily punting to his colleagues in the upper house. “If they can deliver on the CR to defund,” he said, “hey, more power to ’em!”

Republican plan to defund Obamacare: The GOP’s strategy is make-believe.

News You Can Use - Most Popular Question at Healthcare.gov: How to Get Exemption From Lack-of-Coverage Penalty Fee?

One day away from the launch of the Obamacare marketplaces, the question most on the minds people visiting the Healthcare.gov website is not about coverage, but rather about avoiding the penalty, or tax, for not having health insurance.As the website explains, the fee (tax) in 2014 is 1 percent of annual income or $95 per person, whichever is higher. The fee increases each year. By 2016 it increases to 2.5 percent of income or $695 per person, whichever is higher"

Doesn't sound like this Obamacare thing is too popular, eh?

Interestingly, your colonial masters have no such qualms about health care-
Health care in Israel is universal and participation in a medical insurance plan is compulsory.

I will be signing up in a few days the servers are damn busy!!

i found this to be a very interesting theory as to why the GOP is so passionately opposed to the ACA:

Bowing to the vehemence of its Tea Party faction, the House G.O.P. forced a government shutdown when Senate Democrats refused to delay or defund the president’s health overhaul. House Republicans are threatening even further damage if they don’t get their way, possibly unleashing financial chaos if they manage to force the United States into its first default ever on the government’s debt.

Republicans’ efforts raise the same perplexing question posed by the Missourian: What drives Tea Party Republicans and their financial backers? What calculation persuades them that repealing the health care law is worth the risk? Indeed, whose interests do they represent?

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of trying to stop the law by cutting its financing. Even among those who don’t like the law, less than half want their representatives in Congress to try to make it fail.

It is tempting to discard the Tea Party activists driving the Republican Party as crazy — as some commentators have — motivated by fear and willing to believe that default won’t cause much harm and might even act as a purgative to free the economy of a bloated government.

“They listen to nobody but themselves,” the Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol told me. “They are convinced of their rectitude and convinced that they alone are qualified to save America from the dire threat of Obama and his polices. They have worked themselves into a dangerous place.”

Their relationship with reality can take peculiar turns. Reflexive opponents of “government,” they can exhibit little sense of what the government actually does.
And yet the argument that half the Republican Party has simply lost its mind has to be an unsatisfactory answer, especially considering the sophistication of some of the deep-pocketed backers of the Tea Party insurgency.

There is a plausible alternative to irrationality. Flawed though it may turn out to be, Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is popularly known, could fundamentally change the relationship between working Americans and their government. This could pose an existential threat to the small-government credo that has defined the G.O.P. for four decades.

The law is imperfect. It has dozens of complicated, interlocking parts. Half of Americans say they don’t understand how it will affect them and their family. Still, the law has many provisions that are likely to improve life for millions of Americans, including a big portion of what we know as the working middle class.

Almost two-thirds of uninsured Americans have a full-time job, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A further 16 percent are employed part time.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently estimated that nearly six in 10 uninsured Americans could qualify for health coverage in the insurance market for less than $100 per person per month.

According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, 28 million Americans would gain health insurance under Obamacare. Of these, eight million earn more than twice the poverty level of $47,100 for a family of four. A majority of those would get a subsidy to buy a plan.

As it turns out, the core TeaParty demographic — working white men between the ages of 45 and 64 — would do fairly well under the law.
Take Missouri. It has about 800,000 uninsured. Almost half of them would have been eligible for expanded Medicaid benefits, had the Legislature not rejected them. Many of the rest — including families of four making up to $94,000 — will be eligible to get subsidized health insurance.

In St. Louis, for instance, a family of four making $50,000 a year will be able to buy a middle-of-the-road “silver” health plan for $282 a month and a bottom-end “bronze” plan for $32. Even Medicare recipients will get a benefit worth a few hundred dollars a year.

This could justify conservative Republicans’ greatest fears.

In 1994, when President Bill Clinton took an earlier stab at a health care overhaul, the conservative thinker Irving Kristol published a manifesto about why Republicans had to stop it.

“Passage of the Clinton health plan in any form would be disastrous,” Mr. Kristol wrote, italicizing for emphasis. “It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”

Two decades after Mr. Clinton’s ultimately failed attempt, Obamacare poses the same sort of threat.

Even Americans who say they dislike the law actually like many of its components. Nearly three-quarters approve of giving financial help to poor and moderate-income Americans to buy health insurance. Two-thirds approve of barring insurance companies from denying coverage because of somebody’s medical history. Three-quarters favor letting children stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26.
Until now, social welfare programs in the United States have exhibited a “big hole,” Professor Skocpol said, consisting of nonpoor working-age Americans and their children. Obamacare closes a big chunk of it.

“The main beneficiaries tend to have lower wages, employed in smaller businesses that are not providing health insurance,” she said. “They are not elderly. They are also not the poorest.”

And they might be grateful to Democrats for the benefit.

To conservative Republicans, losing a large slice of the middle class to the ranks of the Democratic Party could justify extreme measures.

what is laid out above would explain a few of the absurd moves the GOP has made over the last couple of years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/bu...p.html?hp&_r=0

What does Obamacare have against American Indians?

“If you are an American Indian, we recommend waiting until next week to submit an application.” Indians to the back of the line! It’s a good thing this isn’t a Republican program.

Indeed...

What Does Obamacare Have Against Indians? | Power Line

Since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2011, they have repeatedly attempted to use the prospect of a government shutdown or a debt default as leverage. A shutdown would furlough close to a million federal workers and cut off essential services for millions more Americans, while a default on U.S. debt, even according to Speaker John Boehner, could devastate the global economy. While the recent debate has focused on Obamacare, that is just the latest in a series of demands made by Republicans. The following is a list of things that have been, at various times, demanded by Republicans under threat of a government shutdown or default:

1. A balanced budget amendment [ Link]

2. Approving Keystone XL [ Link]

3. Eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood [ Link]

4. Medicare privatization [ Link]

5. Tax reform, as outlined by Paul Ryan [ Link]

6. The REINS Act, which would require Congress to approve significant federal regulations [ Link]

7. Means-testing Social Security [ Link]

8. Defunding Obamacare [ Link]

9. Allowing employers to eliminate insurance coverage for birth control [ Link]

10. An expansion of off-shore drilling [ Link]

11. Preserving all the Bush tax cuts [ Link]

12. “Trillions” in budget cuts [ Link]

13. Slashing funding for food stamps [ Link]

14. Protecting mountaintop strip mining [ Link]

15. Stripping the EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse gases [ Link]

16. Loosening regulation on coal ash [ Link]

17. Delaying Obamacare implementation by one year [ Link]

18. Repealing a tax on medical devices [ Link]

19. Eliminating Social Service Block Grants [ Link]

20. Expanding drilling on federal lands [ Link]

21. Restricting the child tax credit [ Link]
21 Things Republicans Have Demanded In Exchange For Not Tanking The Global Economy | Alternet

The added cost of the government shutdown to the US taxpayer is around $300 million per day, which of course would worry the neo-'republicans' if they were truly deficit hawks- but they are not.

A US sovereign debt default will be looming in a few weeks, and the gyrations of the financial markets in the lead up to that should be interesting, to say the least. At this stage though, what the markets are collectively saying is 'Yawwn'. They know full well the republicans will cave, they have little choice- the gop is a lobby group for the biggest losers in such an eventuality, or even in the eventuality that a debt default is seriously factored into financial markets.

As an economic rationalist, I continue to scratch my head at why the worlds capital markets are still willing to fund the US at less than the cost of money- I mean, if you were a bank manager would you give a nine year old kid with a record of ADD and delinquency an A grade credit rating, and a Gold card? Surely, in high places, the political risk posed by the US and it's dysfunctional Congressional system and the GOP must be being considered, with regards to future loans and USD allocation. Personally, I would only be willing to lend money to the US government in Swiss francs.

^
Obviously, you are not addressing the issue at hand.

Please try to stay on topic...

I got a bit closer this early morning trying to sign up,... username, password, answered their three security questions (for the user's security). But when I moved to complete the account I was told to come back later (system still busy).

Anyway news from all over the states,.........Obamacare is going to be a big success.

“A first-day rush ,” “strong early interest ,” “high volume” — those are just some of the words animating Wednesday morning’s headlines about the first day of enrollment in Obamacare’s health care marketplaces.

snip

CONNECTICUT: Health Care Plans Begin: 28,000-Plus Go Online To State Marketplace [Hartford Courant]

GEORGIA: Enrollment Sites Are Swamped On First Day [The Augusta Chronicle]

IDAHO: Idaho Health Exchange Launches With Few Hiccups [Idaho Statesman]

INDIANA: Insurance Marketplace Draws Strong Early Interest [Journal and Courier]

KENTUCKY: Kynect Opens To High Demand [The Courier-Journal]

MAINE: Insurance Marketplace Opens To Flood Of Interest [Bangor Daily News]

DELAWARE: Off And Running In New Market: Website Overwhelmed On First Day Of Access [The News Journal]

MICHIGAN: Insurance Exchange Debut Draws Millions [The Detroit News]

NEW MEXICO: Obamacare: Plenty Of Interest, A Bevy Of Computer Snags [Carlsbad Current-Argus]

COLORADO: Heavy Traffic Slows Health Website On Debut Day [The Durango Herald]

FLORIDA: Website Are Overwhelmed As Many Log On, But Optimism Is Voiced [Tampa Bay Times]

ARIZONA: Health Markets Swamped On Day 1 [The Arizona Republic]

CALIFORNIA: Millions Try To Enroll [The Bakersfield Californian]

CALIFORNIA: Healthcare Exchange Off To Busy Start [Los Angeles Times]

ALABAMA: State Insurance Marketplace Swamped With Consumer Interest[The Anniston Star]

RHODE ISLAND: Strong Interest On First Day Of R.I. Exchange [The Providence Journal]

SOUTH CAROLINA Health Insurance Website Overwhelmed On First Day [The State]

VIRGINIA: Markets Open For Business [Daily News-Record]

WISCONSIN: Insurance Exchanges Slowed By Demand [Green Bay Press-Gazette]

WISCONSIN: Wis. Residents Flood Exchanges [Stevens Point Journal]

OHIO: High Volume, Glitches Mark ACA’s First Day [Dayton Daily News]

PENNSYLVANIA: A First-Day Rush On Health Care [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

NEW YORK: Overloaded Website Delays Health Exchange Enrollment [The Epoch Times]

NORTH CAROLINA: Heavy Demand Stymies Health Care Law Rollout [The Fayetteville Observer]

Texas: Texans Sign Up Through Exchange [The Brownsville Herald]

Officials charged with implementing the law don’t expect the visits to immediately translate into sign-ups, pointing to the experience in Massachusetts, where uninsured people visited the website multiple times before eventually enrolling in health care reform. Enrollment will be open until March 31, though the uninsured have to sign-up by Dec. 15 to receive coverage on Jan. 1.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

____________________________

edit,.forgot to add: https://www.healthcare.gov/

The AHC is a government administered program, but the insurance providers are private. In contrast, Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Affairs are government underwritten. What do the neo-'republicans' have against private enterprise?

Hey Booners , riveting stuff ,and written by a Negro too , so they cannot say he's a racist can they !Politics: ObamaCare do-gooders don't care | Best of Cain

Originally Posted by piwanoi

Hey Booners , riveting stuff ,and written by a Negro too , so they cannot say he's a racist can they !Politics: ObamaCare do-gooders don't care | Best of Cain

Heh...this Obumercare thing is going to crash under its own ineptitude - what a clusterfuck, eh?

Originally Posted by piwanoi

written by a Negro too , so they cannot say he's a racist can they

How do you spell dumm again?

this Obumercare thing is going to crash under its own ineptitude - what a clusterfuck, eh?

So it's not gonna collapse under the 42nd attempt by the neo 'republicans' to collapse it?
I admire your honesty, you could have been the drummer boy for the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Still trying to adjust to the time difference (Thailand and US) I decided to try to open an account at www.healthcare.gov. I was able to, but when trying to log-in I was redirected. The site is still very busy; it seems, even at 3am (EST) here in the states.

I'll try again later in the day to see the rates they will offer me.

_______________________

Walt Disney Co. announced on Wednesday that it is offering full-time employment to the 427 part-time employees at its Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida who work at least 30 hours per week — the threshold at which the Affordable Care Act requires large employers with 50 or more workers to offer basic health benefits to employees or risk paying a $2,000 per employee fine after the first 30 workers.

Disney already offers a level of health coverage that is acceptable under Obamacare to its full-time employees. But part-time workers, including those who work at the 30-hour cutoff set by the health law, receive more limited benefits. Instead of rolling back these workers’ hours to avoid expanding their health coverage, Disney is choosing to promote them to full-time status.

“Disney wants to be proactive,” said Ed Chambers, president of the Service Trades Council union that represents tens of thousands of Orlando Disney employees, in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Disney is way out in front on this.”

That’s a striking departure from some retail and service sector firms that have used Obamacare’s employee coverage requirement as an excuse to cut hours and benefits. While the vast majority of firms are not engaging in such tactics, high-profile stories about companies that do adopt that approach tend to dominate media coverage.

In fact, Disney’s decision tracks with a recent survey of chief financial officers at large American firms finding that American companies actually intend to increase their number of full-time employees by almost 2 percent over the next year, despite repeated claims by Obamacare critics that the reform law will create a part-time economy, discourage hiring, or encourage employers to roll back workers’ hours to avoid Obamacare.

Under Obamacare, Disney World Will Promote Its Part-Time Workers To Full-Time Status