Weekend Q: Planned Parenthood asks, “What does Obamacare mean for you?”
Planned Parenthood is starting a new campaign…
This is because, in so many ways, Planned Parenthood will see a windfall of profits when Obamacare takes effect.
So, of course, PP it is pushing Obamacare, as PP CEO Cecile Richards did in an email alert yesterday.
At the same time, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, chimed in (as we will surely see from others) with talking points on its website, asking the question, “What does Obamacare mean for you?”
Well? Now mere months before it supposedly takes effect, and twisting the question a tad, what does Obamacare mean to you? Has your opinion changed in the three years since its passage?
Higher premiums for me. My husband and I have to pay for our own insurance and we’ve already watched our premiums sky-rocket thanks to “anticipated costs” of Obamacare. As if we couldn’t afford it before.
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Well I’m Canadian, so I guess my answer is nothing.
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Nope, my opinion hasn’t changed. I thought it was pure idiocy to start with and still do. I would find it mildly entertaining to watch the whole train plunge over the cliff if I were in another country, but considering that I’m a sitting duck (paying for individual insurance like Sydney) it’s much more depressing.
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Another example of the efficiency, cost effectiveness, and uncorruptibility of government run programs.
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Whoops, should be incorruptibility!
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Hi JDC,
I don’t agree. Since the Canadian gov’t has contracted with American border hospitals to provide care for Canadian citizens, I wonder if it could effect you and other Canadians.
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Not much for me – I get insurance through my work – so overall, we get some benefits – wellness programs get tax breaks, so our company saves money there.
I also think that long term, our insurance will be in much better shape because we won’t have so many system free loaders. The medicaid expansion didn’t go forth in my state – so there will be a negative affect on everyone else because of that (which is why a group of 20 counties tried to go around the state for funding) – but overall, the law will help out in the state.
Awesome early pricing coming out in various states for the general market – lower than the CBO projected – but again, my insurance comes from my work, so that won’t affect me (and my insurance has gone two years without an increase).
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My husband’s company called a meeting of their employees to duscuss the problem. His company has governmentally approved “affordable” insurance, so we won’t be eligible for the exchanges. There will now be an employer fee of ~$68 per person on insurance because of the exchanges, this combined with higher prices because they have to cover more means our insurance costs are increasing 15% The company wanted to know if we would prefer higher premiums or higher deductible and they probably won’t be contributing to our HSA anymore.
I know around here many companies are hiring only part time because benefits are too expensive now
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My husband and I do not have health insurance and we still
won’t. I especially do not want to participate in Obamacare anyway.
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My husband’s small company employer is already paying double.what they were and it’s expected to double again this year.really upsetting.
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I have long believed that this is the reason PP created super mills, they will be the future providers of Obamacare to the masses! We need to stand with Congress as they attempt to defund Obamacare or else…
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Hmm. I think God is going to use Obama’s damaging policies and programs, like Obamacare, to destroy our economy and bring many in America to their knees.
Look what we’ve done. We’ve elected the most active proponent of human genocide in the history of the US Presidency…TWICE!!! In 40 years we’ve killed over 56,000,000 babies in the womb!
A day of reckoning is coming.
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It means mandatory purchase of some kind of insurance with NO guarantee that any particular health problem will be “covered” (by that I mean real health issues, not elective procedures like birth control and abortion which nobody NEEDS). It means if you don’t play along, you will be fined. It means there is no more care than anyone had before, no REAL care, only more money spent, more bureaucracy, and more denial.
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No change in the short term as I am a military retiree paying for “Tricare” insurance, but by 2017 retirees will likely be transitioned from Tricare to Obamacare paying several magnitudes more than we do now. President Obama supporters in the Senate said military retirees should “…pay their fair share”, to which most veterans groups responded, “They already did.”
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Within 6 mos of Obamacare’s passage, the coverage my family had through my employer was canceled by the insurance company. The plan simply ceased to be available. A catastrophic plan for a family of four, providing ZERO coverage for any regular medical expenses, prescriptions, imaging, or prenatal care would set us back over $700 per month (that’s a third of our monthly income). It would only cover 30% of eligible expenses after the deductible of $20k. Since then, our family has expanded by one. I don’t even want to know what coverage would cost now.
About six months after we lost our coverage (and while we still lived in California), we were denied our application for Medical. The reason? We did not make enough money to qualify.
What really irks me, though, is that I object to the notion of insurance in general. Insurance only serves to separate the customer from the provider, meaning that prices cannot be influenced by the forces of supply and demand. It’s an immoral manipulation of the market that prices people out of healthcare. That’s on top of the fact that I object to the issues pertaining to women’s services and the notion of the government forcing me to buy anything.
In the mean time, we’re stuck with the penalty.
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It means that, because I am a Catholic, I will never be able to own a business employing more than 50 people. Outright discrimination.
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My self-purchased insurance has a premium twice what it was in 2009. One of the benefits of this higher cost (I got a letter highlighting this one) is that both my six year-old daughter and my son (age irrelevant) are now covered for pregnancy care.
Ever since I first purchased my policy, I’ve gotten an annual refund per the company’s own pledge regarding spending on customer care… now I get a refund, smaller percentage of my premiums paid for the year, with a letter explaining that the refund is due to the Affordable Care Act.
My current policy is no longer available through my insurer but for the time being it is grand-fathered in to continue to be available to me – when I recently tried to comparison shop other companies I was unable to find anything with premiums as low as I currently pay… so I guess I just need to stay put ’til the gig is up.
That’s all I can think of right now that I can directly attribute to the legislation (costs have continued to go up everywhere but then again, costs have continued to go up everywhere even not medically related). Not looking forward to full implementation.
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I’ve seen both the good and the bad from Obamacare. My step-daughter has had a pacemaker since she was an infant due to a congenital health defect. She has to have surgery to replace the battery every 7-8 years. Obamacare allows her to be covered regardless (she became too old for Medicaid and now participates in a high-risk pool). On the other hand, I’ve seen my insurance rates go up yearly, with less coverage, and I’m a state employee (an educational assistant for the schools, getting paid less than 20k per year). So, really, Obamacare is a mixed bag. If you’re generally healthy, you’ll see more of the cons (higher prices, possibly less coverage for it); if you have a chronic illness, you’ll see more of the pros (can’t be dropped for preexisting conditions, no lifetime caps on coverage).
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Last year my state legislature passed a law allowing people to opt out of the contraception & sterilization coverage if it violated our conscience / religious beliefs. (They also refused to set up a state health care exchange.) I opted out. My monthly premium was lower by a few bucks. However, Planned Parenthood went to court and got an injunction from a judge because state law did not square with the Affordable Care Act. Our state Attorney General then refused to defend the state law, so now we stuck with the HHS mandate. I was informed that on August 1 my religious exemption is no longer an option, so now I am paying for coverage I neither want nor need. I feel less empowered.
As for my son being able to stay on our insurance until he is 26 instead of 25, it did not make any difference. He already had his own insurance at 25.
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The primary reason for Obamacare was to wipe out all those uninsured. Whoops!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/02/22/government-study-finds-obama-care-leaves-thirty-million-uninsured/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-uninsured-under-obamacare-never-falls-below-30-million_733740.html
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I still don’t see why contraception and abortion are “free”, i.e. someone else is footing the bill. I consider soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, aspirin, eye drops, hot water, and a clean environment far more essential to good health. I’d like to know when in addition to my personal care items, I also get my electric bill, hot water heater replacement, and household cleaning items paid for by someone else as well.
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Hi Eric,
A;ways great to see you!
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I had always assumed that health was synonymous with happiness and then my bubble burst with the introduction of Obamacare. Am I being naieve? Is wealth the wellspring of joy? If it is, then most people in North America (including Canada) should be ecstatic (we ARE that wealthy). How silly and stupid to tie health with insurance as if to think passing out more money equates with cures. [Does any person’s bankroll ever stop him/her from dying?]
When we stop thinking of orthodox doctors as quasi-gods (and nurses as angels) then we can star to believe that abortion is NOT any kind of medicine, not even remotely. It is murder. YOU are not paying insurance, but paying government-sponsored hitmen/hitwomen and calling it … health? … THE law? We do have many who think a lab-coat makes them above the law … Do you?
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“Planned Parenthood will see a windfall of profits” – can you place a figure on this? Whose pocket will be lined with this profit?
“It means that, because I am a Catholic, I will never be able to own a business employing more than 50 people.” – there’s a law stopping catholics from owning businesses employing more than 50 people? When did that legislation go through?
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I agree that Obamacare is a mixed back but in my case its mostly been positive. I have a very good healthcare plan administered through my union. My 22 year old son has a rare congenital condition where the right and left ventricles in his heart are reversed. He already has had a heart attack, had a stent inserted, amd has to have open heart surgery. Because I am able to have him on my insurance everything is covered except for the copays. If it wasnt for this provision he would owe six figures worth of medical bills.
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As for health care costs, here is an example of what is going to happen come Jan.1 unless something is done. What follows is a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal that Obamaites will attempt to dismiss as if this gentleman’s plight is wholly unique and similar things will not apply to millions of others.
Obamacare and Starting a Business
Regarding Daniel P. Kelller’s “Obamacare is Raising Insurance Costs” (op-ed June 4): I was going to leave my job and the health insurance that came with it to start a business, unitl I shopped around for a health-insurance plan. Here is an example of what I found: At Group Health, a health-maintenance organization here in Seattle, I was given a quote of $842 per month for me and my family. But that would increase to $2,320 starting in January 2014 when Obamacare kicks in—a 276% increase. Why? Because I would be forced to carry coverage I don’t want and don’t need, such as maternity care. Welcome to the world of socialized medicine, courtesy of the Un-Affordable Care Act.
Jeff Smith, Seattle
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The above is an example of the dampening effect on job creation in causing people to re-think starting a business. When economies expand the main engine of job creation is primarily from thousands of small and newly formed companies hiring 2 or more employees. By the way, what ever happened to Obama’s claim that our health care costs would DECREASE by $2500/year?
Even as Obamacare is ruining job creation the AP put out a story a week or two ago on how four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. And then we learn that for every job created two people are signed up for food stamps. Let me guess…the intellectually dishonest liberals and media say after five years of Obama policies it is all Bush’s fault.
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Hi Mary, thought of you and our discussions when I read a book recently on Adolph Hitler and the author’s assertion that what drove him was an Axis II Cluster B personality disorder. He was charming and manipulative, wanted others to believe in him as a type of savior from fabricated woes, portrayed himself as the equalizer of “have nots” and “haves, and declared some human beings as non-persons as one of many ways to maintain power.
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I’ve stayed away from answering posts on this thread, even where there is false info – but I did want to post on this Seattle example.
Mr. Smith shouldn’t be starting a business anywhere quite frankly – the washington exchange info has been out for a while – I can link you to it if you want, and for a family of four, you can’t find plans that expensive, meaning that Mr. Smith’s going have a terrible time actually running a business if his method of shopping around always leads him to the highest prices.
Furthermore, he must be making, in his future, a heck of a lot of money, or he’d be eligible for subsidies, driving down the cost of his coverage.
As the exchanges are coming out, prices have been LOWER than what was expected from the CBO. There have been articles all over in regards to the lower costs these exchanges have been touting – if you’ve missed those, you must be living under a rock.
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Ex-GOP is full of bunk. I work for a large company. Our insurance contributions continue to increase. Jan 1st, 2014, company contributions are expected to increase by $1650 for a family (couple and one child). Includes dental and eyecare. To the employee this means more than double monthly contributions and office copay. Yes Ex-GOP, perhaps you would like to advise this fortune 500 company as to how they should not be in business. You do not see articles about this sort of increase, so I guess it must not be true. Yet the bottom line numbers are very similar to what Mr. Smith described. The notice is out that changes are forthcomming.
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Yeah. I’m pretty sure he’s being paid to post here, he seems so detached from actuality.
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Obamacare and “Planned” Parenthood are synonymous. Both are commited to a culture of death.
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For adjunct and other educators at colleges and universities, it means having work hours cut so that their employer will not have to pay for Obamacare, and new part time instructors being hired to cover the course load.
This widespread wrinkle is affecting lots and lots of families.
More than three fourths of the new jobs being “CREATED” for this year are PART TIME, with many resulting from the splitting of jobs as mentioned in the above example.
Unions are screeching against Obamacare now.
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The computer company for which I used to work (who had FANTASTIC health care coverage, btw) recently laid off 500 employees. But I guess that’s just a coincidence, too.
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Hi Eric, 7:23am
Interesting. Kind of sounds like the campaign of 2008, including the mindless adulation.
My cluster B sister hasn’t spoken to me since October. Its my fault she failed to make a doctor’s appt. for my mom. Well, she seldom talks to me anyway so I can’t say I notice much difference!
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Dave (and the six people that liked your comment)
Maybe we need to get back to healthcare 101 with you folks, which is disappointing.
It’s clear from the Seattle example that Mr. Smith is shopping for an INDIVIDUAL policy. An INDIVIDUAL policy is something that is shopped on insurance exchanges – the free market. Information is out there, subsidies are available, and price is determined by a large group.
Doug is talking about an EMPLOYER policy. The company has a pool of people and they get insurance as a group through a company.
The two don’t have a lot to do with each other, and if I’m talking individual policies, and you pull a “you are an idiot, at my work…” – well, I’m pretty much figuring we’ve got to start from scratch because you don’t even understand the world of healthcare.
So Doug – just note that employer plans have been going up for a long time – and the only reason they’d be going up a lot because of health care reform is is you had really, really crappy insurance and you need to better comply with federal policy now (in which case, you probably had really high out of pockets that will decrease). Studies show though that employer rate increases have very little to do with health care reform.
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xalisae –
First off – nobody pays me to be here – in fact, I think of all the various communities out there– I wouldn’t put this in the ‘persuadable’ category.
Secondly (your second comment) – they probably have very little to do with each other. Companies have upswings and downswings all the time. Ford just announced thousands of hires – does that mean that health care reform is good again, because the amount of their hires far surpasses your company cuts. Your post – it’s just bad logic.
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Since you disagree with almost everything on this website,
since you are unwilling to concede points, even great points, that prolifers make,
since you repeat Dem/Lib talking points, using much of their same language, like a good obedient little minion,
since you don’t really seem to support any pro-life provision or idea,
it could be very easy to speculate that you are paid to comment here.
I’ve wondered if Reality was a pro-lifer trying to make abortion advocates look bad, but he’s just so darn unskilled, I am positive nobody is paying HIM to comment here. Lol! If Reality ever turns pro-life, I hope he doesn’t try to argue on our behalf. If Ex-G ever became pro-life, (not the “I can’t make that decision for another person” variety bcs that’s actually being pro-choice), if Ex ever became really pro-life, then I’d be mighty shocked and surprised, and even glad.
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“I’ve wondered if Reality was a pro-lifer trying to make abortion advocates look bad, but he’s just so darn unskilled” – yes, it would take far more skill than I have to make pro-choicers look bad. So maybe I am an anti-choicer. Nah, you don’t need my help to demonstrate an absence of skill at making pro-choicers look bad :-)
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ninek -
If your reasoning is that anybody who votes for Dems can’t be pro-life, than the “majority of people are pro-life” goes completely out the door – you’ve narrowed the list so tightly of what it means to be pro-life, that my guess is we’re looking at a 30/70 split.
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“Interesting. Kind of sounds like the campaign of 2008, including the mindless adulation.”
Lol, and a good friend told asked me if my comment was just a veiled analogy. I’m laughing because I don’t think it was terribly veiled. Sorry to hear about your sister, Mary. I’m assuming she resists DBT… as does one of my relatives because everything is someone else’s fault.
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Lol tending liberal on most issues = can’t possibly be pro-life? Being okay with Obamacare = not pro-life as well. Good to know, I guess.
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Hi Eric,
Thank you for your concern. We’ve never had any kind of a bond so our not talking isn’t anything out of the ordinary. I love and respect her, and given her personality I know she never has and never will apologize or give a crap if I talk to her or not.
She fiercely protects my mother’s interests and that’s all that really matters to me. My sister loves nothing like a good fight, as my mother’s conniving stepson found out!
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Your agnosticism makes it questionable too Jack.
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It is good to see Dr. Howard Dean finally wake up. He is what might be called a liberal’s liberal. He writes in the Wall Street Journal the following:
One major problem is “IPAB is essentially a health care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered 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”.
This of course is what critics of Obamacare have been saying for years, beginning with a bang when Palin called them death panels. So if Dr. Dean can see it so too can other high level supporters of Obamacare which to this day will still not admit it. What does that make them? They are willing to sacrifice intellectual integrity either for purposes of self-aggrandizement or they are just too blind to see the reality.
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It has to be admitted that Obamacare means real people losing quality health care. Even my old union, the 1.5 million member UFCW, along with the Teamsters, the U.S. Border Patrol and now too the IRS employees are all coming to their senses and are complaining how Obamacare is a threat to their health care plans. What they especially find troublesome is the President’s oft repeated assertion about keeping our health plans does not seem to be happening. The soaring costs borne by insurers faced with the task of funding mandates in the law are driving the premiums to the point where employers are looking to dump their employees into less desirable exchanges. It is impossible at this point to think Obama really believed what he was saying about the health care law benefits. He was merely a salesman using bait and switch tactics. And the way so many people fell for it just points to how we are a nation comprised of way too many gullible people and those who control them.
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Jerry – concerning Dean – any chance that you read the whole opinion piece?
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“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” – possibly, but apart from your lurid conspiracy theories (Palin’s death panels indeed!), why would they do so if it had negative impacts.
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I just don’t get why people can’t see that non-emergency health care has already been rationed, has ALWAYS been rationed, and always will be until we can, idk, grow organs for transplants and have unlimited resources and free energy. It’s just that in our society, we currently ration by the individual’s ability to pay rather than other factors. Do people think that everyone in need of expensive healthcare right now simply… gets it?
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Jerry supports health care rationing – he just believes it should be poor people who forego care, even life saving care, so that rich people don’t have to get generic medicine if they want the name brand meds.
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You copied me, Ex. :)
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Ha – yes Jack.
This will all be interesting to see how it plays out – I sort of hope that the defunding and lack of info out there causes issues upon implementation – Hillary takes over in 2016, and they just pass Universal care and get the inevitable over with.
Free market health care is a failed experiment. Case closed.
Health care reform is the last shot of making free market healthcare workable…
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The goal of health care reform should have been to give more people access to the great healthcare we have. What we got will insure a lower level of care across the board. The notion that anything was better than nothing is ridiculous if you create a situation of a universal unhappiness with the healthcare system and applaud it b/c the misery is more equitable. There are aspects of this that are good, but it cements in place the failures of the system we had (mostly attributable to the way insurance operates) and actually exacerbates them with the addition of government bureaucracy.
“Health care reform is the last shot of making free market healthcare workable…”
And that’s really the crux of it. Liberals don’t believe that market healthcare is workable. Never did. And now, when this ridiculous mess of a law implodes, they will point to it and say, “see, we need socialized medicine.” The line that this was the only way to attempt to fix our healthcare problems is a lie, and I hope my fellow Americans can see it for the bull **** that it is so we can attempt real reforms in the future.
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CT -
Excellent – this is the conversation I want to have, so I hope you aren’t just some drive-by troll making noise without any substance.
So what is the conservative answer for health care?
We know that the status quo (which we’re still in) doesn’t work – if you want stats, I’ll show you. I’ve seen Tommy Thompson speak on this, I’ve seen multiple CEO’s of large health care groups speak on this – we know that that in the status quo, pre reform, we had rising amounts of uninsured, and rates have been rising for years at a pace above the GDP – which isn’t sustainable.
So health care reform rolls around, and tries to implement a lot of conservative ideas. The individual mandate was pitched by The Heritage Foundation. Health Care Exchanges have always been a darling of conservatives. Now, the law does go further in mandating minimum coverages – but by in large, the plan is a conservative’s dream (and I can post a good article arguing that).
But you imply that there are real reforms that would work. I would love to see them and dissect them a bit. You – or any of the others that hate the upcoming plan. Lots of you on the thread – so put your money where your mouth is – protest is good, but alternatives are better.
I do honestly see the free market working if we treat it like the free market, and truly don’t serve customers that can’t pay – so if a car accident happens with a couple of uninsured kids, you wheel them to a back room and let them die. That’s the true free market, right? If I can’t afford a BMW, I go elsewhere, or walk. If you say all uninsured can stay uninsured, and we’ll just subsidize their emergency care – well, we simply have socialized medicine where we pay for them at the worst time possible (meaning, we should have paid for their preventative care,not emergency).
So fire away people – I’d like to see the conservative’s plan here, and I’ll ask questions and we’ll explore viability.
This is literally life and death to people, so if you’re going to be a hater on health care reform, tell me your solution.
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EGV,
I’ve told you time and again. I’ll spare myself any further exercise in frustration.
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so if a car accident happens with a couple of uninsured kids, you wheel them to a back room and let them die. That’s the true free market
Ex-GOP, the free market assumes parents would care enough about their kids to prioritize their expenses to insure them if no one else will. If the government insures them or the hospital will cover the costs, insuring them no longer becomes a priority for the parents … which is why kids are uninsured.
As far as saying not everyone can afford to pay for insurance, there’s a reason for that — government pays for so much. Once government gets involved in paying for something, costs go up. To wit: health care and college tuition. Let true free market run and costs will go down as government-guarenteed funds become less available.
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EGV
I’m not a drive by troll (I do post here a lot), but I don’t have time for the conversation you want to have on this. Nor, I”m sure do I have your knowledge base on the subject. There’s not one conservative plan, but the crux of them all would be to fix the market failures. What insurance has done to healthcare costs is one part of that failure. It won’t be fixed by propping up the insurance status quo (and you’re right, there are plenty of conservatives who have insurance companies in their pockets – their ideas would not help either). But the picture is more complicated than “evil insurance companies” b/c over time there has been a shift in people’s behavior toward healthcare causing them to overconsume, which has actually put many insurance companies in quite a bit of trouble – it is a myth that they are rolling in profits – but who can feel sorry b/c they dug their own grave there.
“I do honestly see the free market working if we treat it like the free market, and truly don’t serve customers that can’t pay – so if a car accident happens with a couple of uninsured kids, you wheel them to a back room and let them die. That’s the true free market, right?”
Incorrect. The market is artificially overpriced b/c of failures within the system. If it were operating as a free market, economic forces would control costs much better (we see this in areas of healthcare where people typically pay out of pocket without insurance coverage (plastic surgery etc). This would still leave, as is always true, a small portion of people who are truly unable to access this market, and because this is, as you say, a matter of life and death, it would be appropriate for a civil society to offer aid in those circumstances. But if you implement a reform that cements the market failures, the cost of aid is going to be permanently out of control (and that’s before you add in the fraud and inefficiency that plague anything requiring so much government oversight).
I also think it’s a little disingenuous to call this a conservative darling, as thought the IRS control over the individual mandate and the unprecedented regulatory power granted to HHS in terms of regulating care (down to tooth level surveillance – i wish i were kidding) are merely trifles. These are the things that break this bill – much more than the ill conceived exchanges and mandates.
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CT,
Interesting you mention plastic surgery. In our community, which certainly isn’t Beverly Hills, we have an abundance of plastic surgeons, none of whom are going hungry. They are a good example of free market forces.
1. People can amazingly come up with thousands of dollars for procedures they want desperately enough.
2. The surgeons have to keep costs very competitive. As I said this isn’t Beverly Hills, but your average Midwestern community and the patients I see certainly aren’t wealthy celebrities but police officers, teachers, medical people, lawyers, social workers, etc.
Insurance will cover for disease, accident, burns, birth defects or a gross disfigurement. Everything else is out of pocket.
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Ex comments: “If your reasoning is that anybody who votes for Dems can’t be pro-life..”
And then Jack posits another: “Lol tending liberal on most issues = can’t possibly be pro-life? Being okay with Obamacare = not pro-life as well. Good to know, I guess.”
So, since I never said anyone “can’t be pro-life” I’m curious who you’re addressing? Surely not my comment. Could a supporter of Obama be pro-life? If your pro-life convictions were lower on your list of priorities, yes. The question wouldn’t be, are you pro-life, but where does the right to life sit on your ladder or priorities? Some folks are kind of pro-life, but maybe animals rights are their bigger passion. It doesn’t mean they support abortion.
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It wasn’t specifically directed at you ninek, it’s just the undercurrent here. Believe a specific way or you aren’t *really* anti-abortion. If you argue pro-universal on this blog enough you get accusations of actually supporting Obama and blah blah blah, it just gets old.
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Mary, that’s exactly what I was getting at.
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CT,
I’ve been trying to get this across to EGV and a few others since I can remember, thus my comment “exercise in frustration”. Hopefully you have better luck. I think plastic surgery offers a very good example of how well free market forces can work. Its one of the few areas that are mostly out of pocket.
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Thanks, Jack.
I really don’t know EGV’s motive for being here. He said in the past it was to keep Jill’s blog from being an echo chamber, which I find ridiculous. Like we need to go make sure the vegetarians don’t talk too much smack against bacon. 0-o.
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ninek – do you watch the show “The Newsroom” on HBO?
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Eric -
I agree that people SHOULD prioritize health care and pay for it. What I asked is what should happen if they DO NOT.
And on your second statement – true free market? If somebody can’t afford cancer treatment, you are saying as a true free market enterprise proponent, don’t cover them and let them die – correct?
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Nations which have had universal health care systems for some years have a much lower national health spend with equivalent or better medical outcomes.
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CT -
I’m not sure how to respond – you said you don’t have time, and then wrote four paragraphs.
Anyway, I would agree with you if health care was less technical and less impressive. Do you truly see a day in which the care of a baby born at 24 weeks might run just a couple of thousands of dollars? Do you truly believe somebody with cancer could be treated for a few hundred?
If you do, I agree – sure – but the reality is, there will be certain things that can be done which is outside of the ability for a person to pay for it – and if you TRULY advocate for the free market, you’d say those people should go without, because if the government steps in, well, now we’ve got a guarrantee of payment, and what’s going to push prices down?
Face it – any conservative plan is going to result in three things, no question:
1) Pre-existing conditions will be back.
2) Lifetime caps will be back (heck of an answer for pro-lifers – “yes, your baby is going to have massive issues, but have it, and we’ll make sure you go bankrupt when your lifetime cap kicks in”
3) Those that have insurance will continue to decrease, which leads to price increases.
Again – I’m standing, ready to be convinced – I read a lot on health care, and know this plan if far from perfect – but I don’t see that the solution is moving more to the free market, which health care is not.
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“I’m not sure how to respond – you said you don’t have time, and then wrote four paragraphs.”
I don’t have time to get into the nitty gritty of policy the way you want to. I just laid out some general concepts. I have nothing to offer along the lines of something you would find convincing.
“Do you truly see a day in which the care of a baby born at 24 weeks might run just a couple of thousands of dollars? Do you truly believe somebody with cancer could be treated for a few hundred?”
No. Nor do I believe that state of affairs is necessary for successful market reform.
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Thanks CT –
I’ll just leave it at this for you to think about – two of the most expensive medical issues in this country are cancer and heart issues.
With a BMW, I can walk away.
With a new digital camera, I can shop around.
With shoes, I can choose a cheaper brand, knowing they probably won’t last as long.
If a loved on has a heart attack, do you call ambulance companies shopping for cheaper rates? If the doctor comes in and says a loved one had a heart attack, do you ask about the cheapest options available for their treatment?
If a loved one has cancer, do you call a bunch of medical facilities and bargain for lowest price? Do you look for cheaper options, even if they are less effective?
Again – the free market works for things because people can shop around, not purchase items, wait for better deals, etc…
Health care isn’t like that. It just isn’t. People can throw out really, really bad examples like elective plastic surgery – yes, that works okay in the free market. But let’s take the majority of spending – cancer, trauma, diabetes, heart issues – and really ask yourself how that would truly work in the free market.
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“If somebody can’t afford cancer treatment…”
That’s what insurance is for. If someone’s own life isn’t enough of a priority to purchase insurance, then why should his/her life be a priority for someone else such as taxpayers or hospitals to cover the insurance?
People can’t care more about other people than the other people care for themselves.
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Eric, do you think most people who don’t have insurance do it for fun, or do they do it because they don’t get it through work and it’s darn near unaffordable on your own?
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Jack, I think the cost of insurance is too high because the free market has been manipulated by government involvement. It is unsustainable for others (hospitals and taxpayers) to keep paying for their insurance.
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That wasn’t my question. You just said that people don’t care about their own lives enough, so why should people care about them. I asked you if you think most uninsured people forgo insurance because they want to or because they can’t afford it. I’m aware of the conservative opinion on why healthcare costs are so high, I was questioning your reasoning for your last comment.
Would you rather subsidize tax-provided insurance, or pay for someone’s food stamps so they can buy themselves insurance?
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I always get the message in these type of conversations that people think that it’s fun to be poor and have to rely on public assistance for some things. It’s not. Most people (there are lazy cheats of course) find it depressing and degrading, but the fact is that you can work your butt off full time and still not have enough to support even a small family in this day and age. It’s not like the fifties where you can go straight from high school to a blue collar job and buy a house and support a family.
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Reality: have you ever participated in socialized/nationalized healthcare? I think I know the response to this question. By the time you see a specialist in such system, the only outcome you may see is being very comfy in a casket. The waiting lists are enormous for even the simplest elective procedures (may take several months to a couple of years) and, sorry to report it to you, there are no second opinion options. Check it out “reality.” Other than that, good luck (haha).
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No Jack, obviously people don’t skip insurance for fun – they skip insurance for gadgets and luxuries! I know that when it came down to giving up my two new iPhones a month (slightly less than the monthly cost of high-deductible insurance for me, but we’ll round up) or having basic access to doctors, I really just couldn’t give up the new phone every other week. Plus the deductible would totally have cost the same as my annual European vacation. Obviously I prioritize those things more highly than my own health.
Ridiculous. You can think all you want that prices are artificially inflated (I do – and I think every single person ever should read the Time Magazine article on the inflation of healthcare costs in general) but that has NOTHING at all to do with thinking that people without insurance “don’t care about themselves” enough to “prioritize” it. If you think it is artificially inflated, then to be consistent you probably should find it MORE likely that people legitimately, truly just cannot afford it, no matter how highly they prioritize it. Literally the only expense I could give up that would help me afford insurance is rent, and I already share my >800sf apartment to be more cost-efficient, plus I commute an hour+ to work already so moving elsewhere, moving further away, etc is basically not so much of an option.
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Ex-GOP says: So what is the conservative answer for health care?
The statement above is a HUGE problem in this country. We won’t find a solution to the healthcare crisis, or anything else for that matter, when finding solutions to those problems is ALWAYS secondary to politics/ideology.
It boggles my mind that the most important thing in finding a workable solution to health care in this country is Republicans vs Democrats. Liberals vs Conservatives. It’s so much more important who “wins” and gets their way than that our health care problems be fixed. I guess that’s what happens when we look to politicians/government to solve our freaking problems! Institutionalized adversarialism works well in some contexts. Is health care really an appropriate context for it? Is it? Who belongs on what side? Doctors vs patients? Government vs doctors? Doctor vs insurer?
I laugh every time I read one of Ex-GOP’s posts on this topic. Apparently we all are supposed to believe that the only choices are 100% free market system, Obamacare, or universal health care.
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All I know is that O-Care is not the answer to this dilemma. When government sticks its pinocchio-size nose into healthcare: the quality of care decreases (wait time for surgeries/procedures and availability of good medical equipment, etc), reimbursement to providers decreases (thus no incentive to give a care), provider lists shrink (as is the case now with state-sponsored aid programs), no chance of 2nd opinions ever (you are stuck with what the all mighty government states you can get) and finally bureaucracy shoots through the roof (have you tried to reach anyone at a state hospital or tried to get your test results?).
Supporters of O-Care are in for a rude awakening…
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So Thomas if universal healthcare is completely bad, why do countries with universal healthcare have overall better outcomes than the US?
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The reporting is false Jack. But you must have lived it to believe it I guess. Check out the nearest example across the border (Canada) but don’t rely on gov stats, rather look up independent gov watch organizations…
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So how come most of the people I’ve talked to in Canada, the UK, and Australia have told me that they are quite happy with their healthcare experience? And lol which “independent government watch agencies”?
Forget it. I can’t have a conversation with someone who will claim any reported statistics are false if they don’t back your rhetoric.
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And Jack, this is where I get my info regarding Canada’s state of healthcare, as far as the independent watch organizations you were inquiring about:
http://healthcoalition.ca
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You get your information that public healthcare is wrong from an organization dedicated to preserving and improving Canada’s public healthcare? That’s really interesting.
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Haha, these people at the Canada Health Coalition want Medicare in Canada more financially supported and federally regulated. They credit the expansion of public healthcare and greater funding for it for the reduction in wait times and the decrease in other issues inherent to publicly funded healthcare. That’s, that’s just great. They’re upset about the privatization of some services and blame it for some issues in the Canadian healthcare services. They’re also against for-profit healthcare at all, as far as I can tell. You think the stuff on this site supports the US system? They see the fix for the issues in Canada within the public system and think that the for-profit and privatization in our system is what’s causing their issues!
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“You think the stuff on this site supports the US system?” Yes I do Jack.. but we can agree to disagree.
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Eric –
So you seem to be advocating, if somebody doesn’t prioritize insurance as important, and they have a life threatening situation, to just let nature run it’s course. Is that correct?
Also, how is the government manipulating insurance costs? Because employer contributions are tax free? I’ve always heard that medicare and medicaid payments to docs is too LOW – are you not agreeing with that and the prices are too high, and thus setting too high of a bar?
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Lrning
Love to hear your thoughts. Sure, there’s room in the margins – my point is, on one end, you have free market, and the other end, you have more government control. Health care reform is in the middle. Yes, there’s other solutions – but typically people who don’t like health care reform either don’t like it because it doesn’t cover everyone (and want universal care), or they believe in more of a free market approach.
So you don’t have a conservative idea – you’ve made that point – love to hear it.
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Thomas -
You are crazy. The Canadian Health Coalition is pretty far left, pushing for universal health care. That organization is way far left of Obamacare and the US system.
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my point is, on one end, you have free market, and the other end, you have more government control. Health care reform is in the middle.
Are you using “health care reform” as a euphemism for the ACA?
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yes Lrning
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“Health care isn’t like that. It just isn’t.”
That’s right. It isn’t. The free market healthcare you’re describing is a strawman. Healthcare reform is in the middle and obamacare is not the only middle.
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“if somebody doesn’t prioritize insurance as important, and they have a life threatening situation, to just let nature run it’s course”
I think if someone doesn’t prioritize insurance, s/he is the one who already made the decision to let nature run its course. It’s a consequence to non-prioritization. If someone truly can’t pay insurance due to a disability, then that’s different and I advocate for true general welfare.
Question for you: two able-bodied people show up at the hospital with life-threatening cancer. One has been paying insurance, leaving him/her with less money each month; and one has made other expenses a priority. Do they both receive care for life-threatening cancer? If so, what’s the point of giving up monthly dollars for insurance? Sounds like person 1 was a schmuck in this case. S/he could have spent the money elsewhere.
How does government manipulate prices? By infusing government dollars into the money exchange. Government providing dollars for health insurance or airplanes or college tuitition raises the cost because those who offer insurance or airplances or college courses can charge more knowing it will get paid.
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CT –
Massively disappointed.
I talk about issues with health care and the free market, specifically citing some of the biggest cost areas. You’ve talked plastic surgery, and simply made a nothing statement says healthcare reform is in the middle, whatever that means.
I’d recommend you read a little health care policy – what some experts think, and come back another day.
Again – I asked a lot of actual questions – either skip them, or answer them. But this whole thing with ambiguous, nothing answers – it doesn’t help the conversation.
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Yes Eric. People skip insurance to, you know, eat and clothe and house their children, but let’s just make sure they die of cancer because they “prioritize other expenses”.
This is why these conversations go nowhere. Non-answers like this don’t further debate at all.
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Both Jack and Ex-GOP — I hear you say you advocate for the poor. I agree. However, I think *I* should care for the poor. The government is an institution and unlike people has no moral obligation to provide, only protect. The government does not *earn* money through a work ethic to provide for the poor. It can only take away from people who work.
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Eric -
EMTALA (passed in the Reagan years) says that emergency care must be given regardless of ability to pay – so both people would get equal emergency care.
The point of having insurance, in my view, is to try to treat things BEFORE they get to that point.
Which is why I think the status quo that you and CT and others seem to embrace is so jacked up. Instead of saying “let’s look for a way to pay for preventative care so that somebody avoids heart disease and has a heart attack”, we say “don’t worry about it, wait until you have a heart attack, come in, and then we’ll cover you. And we’ll take the costs of your care and jack up the price for those who can pay”.
On your last answer, that’s again correct, but you yourself are advocating for general welfare, so you seem to support the government paying for certain people.
Let me ask you very directly. A guy gets laid off from his job. He doesn’t pay for coverage so he’s uninsured as he looks for a job. He rolls the SUV and the family has life threatening injuries. Should an ambulance pick him up and treat him and his family? If not, where do you suggest they get taken (or should they just get left in the SUV)? If they should get treated, how do you suggest they pay for it. To be more concrete, let’s say they rack up $250K in costs.
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Jack, just because you don’t agree with an answer doesn’t make it a non-answer.
Having lived in below the poverty line myself, I know how to prioritize, so I don’t need any preaching on paying for food clothes and shelter.
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Eric -
That’s fair. I can send you a list of people who have medical debt and you can help them out.
Are you saying hospitals should just bill churches for unpaid care?
I mean, yes, agreed. What does that look like in practice? Hospital workers yelling at the corner “hey, we’ve got somebody who is about to die – anybody want to pay, or should we let them die?”
Come on man.
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It’s a non-answer Eric. You’re refusing to admit that health insurance is completely unaffordable for a lot of people who don’t have it. It seems you’re in some fantasy land where people just go without insurance, like Alexandra said, to pay for luxuries they could do without. That’s not reality.
Since you’ve lived under the poverty line, answer me this. Say you’re a single parent with two kids. You make like 1200 – 1500 dollars a month. How do you afford health insurance without starving? Where do you live to afford non-employer subsidized health insurance. If you have a chronic condition, which charities will pay hundreds a month of medical bills and prescriptions for you, especially when there are millions in your same spot?
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When did you live below the poverty live, Eric? Surely you are aware that healthcare costs have drastically accelerated; was your experience very recent?
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Jack and Ex:
Canada is seeing it’s healthcare system’s slow demise as it is becoming more and more financially unsustainable for their government. The Canadian Health Coalition was recently protesting the Federal Minister’s of Health scaling back their free-handout policies (ie. their equivalent of Medicare). They almost accosted the Premier over this nonsense! And, that is the irony I see in that organization’s efforts. Canada’s healthcare system is almost broke and is scaling back it’s free-handout government-sponsored programs. On top of this, average Canadian cannot afford bying into this “nationalized” (socialized) system. To break even, an average Canadian would have to work around 80 hrs a week to make ends meet, simply because their contributions to sustain that healthcare are disproportionate to their income level.
And, again, Canadians are lucky if they can see a specialist w/in three months. Wait times for procedures/surgeries continue to be unreasonably long. As far as other nation’s that have socialized healthcare just read the reports. I posted a number of links here to Germany, GB, Australia and Scandinavia but they did not go through. The costs are simply unsustainable there as well.
You may get your wish to have socialized healthcare here but it will be not what you think it represents…
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