Thank You Obama

[jitter77]

So i just found out that my company which is a multi - million and maybe billion dollar company is severely cutting our benefit credit. Currently we receive $165 every pay toward benefits. If we do not get benefits from the company we just get the money added in our pay. The cheapest plan we currently have you still pay $20 out of pocket per pay.
Once the new year starts people who do not sign up for health care through our company will get $50 per pay and people who do sign up will get $125. Between me and my girlfriend we will be losing at least $310 a month. She gets the benefits and I don't. Now if the cost of plans go up which im sure they will we will lose even more. We barely make ends meet now so I have no idea how anyone expects people to live off this and we are making well over minimum wage.

 

[Steelr4evr]

It was never about making things more affordable. It's about control and nothing the federal government controls comes out cheaper. Everything he does is geared toward gutting everything that made America great. That's his fundamental change for you.

 

[fedderone]

Just you wait until you're not even offered benefits in 2018 because of the double whammy that ACA has stored away in it.
See, your company, my company, all of our companies are going to be hit with fines.
They will be fined if you are on their plan and not in a government exchange.
Or they will be fined if you opted out of their coverage and chose one through an exchange.
See how that works?
The ONLY way to avoid a fine is to not offer coverage, thus forcing you into the system.
Nobody will make a stink about it until late in 2017, if at all, hoping the 2016 elections can somehow magically make it all go away.
Damage is already done, and even most idiots with Rs behind their names joined forces with the idiots with Ds behind theirs to ensure the ACA is here to stay.
You've already been bent over, your jeans are still on, and the vaseline was just ripped from your hands.
Get ready.....................

 

[Superman]

friend of mine posted on FB that his insurance (for him, and his two kids) will go up $250/paycheck. he gets paid weekly.
$1000/month for health insurance.

yes, i guess it's racist to not like the unAffordable Care Act

 

[21STEELERS21]

Since 1980 the total inflation on healthcare in the US is 870%. Not sure you can blame that on Obama.

Seems like the healthcare industry greed needs more regulation than less.

 

[Steeltime]

Since 1980 the total inflation on healthcare in the US is 870%. Not sure you can blame that on Obama.

Seems like the healthcare industry greed needs more regulation than less.

Please cite one example - ONE - where increased regulation reduced the cost of a consumer item for the general public.

21Steelers, you fail to understand that the entities most fervently pushing for government regulation are the large corporations already protected by government. For example, Google offers health care to employees at "x" dollars per month. Google wants government to mandate that other employers offer the same insurance to all employees, thereby punishing smaller companies, start-ups, etc.

In short, regulation benefits existing businesses and harms competitors. It has been that way since the queen granted monopoly rights to the East India Trading Company. Government regulation ... great for existing multi-million dollar businesses and government employees, bad for competitors and the public.

 

[Ironcitysteelers]

Seems to me is not to have health coverage and let the govment take care of me like they do all other illegals.

 

[fedderone]

Since 1980 the total inflation on healthcare in the US is 870%. Not sure you can blame that on Obama.

Seems like the healthcare industry greed needs more regulation than less.

Hey, genius........who do you think helped write the ACA?
Lemmie give you a hint. It's those evil greedy health insurance companies you're looking to blame for high healthcare costs.
There's a lot of blame to go around for high healthcare costs. I'll point a finger at insurance companies. I'll point a finger at our elected criminals. But the biggest finger gets pointed back at all of us.
You know. Those that like to sue doctors for failing to save their life. Not the scumbag doctors who molest an under anesthesia patient, or is doing surgery all hepped up on drugs. No, the idiots who bring their 800 lbs father in who's choking on a whole live turkey and the doctor couldn't prevent their heart from exploding. That doctor gets sued for tens of millions because he didn't do their job properly. Doctors and hospitals are then forced to charge astronomical amounts of money for services to cover the just shy of SEVENTY PERCENT OF THEIR PAYCHECK that goes toward their malpractice insurance. Tort reform is needed.

See, the REAL problem with the ACA is that it's the worst of both worlds.
It's not quite single payer, yet not quite free market.
It's 1/2 of each, and the crappiest parts of each.
I'm not a proponent of a single payer system. But if you're gonna do it. DO IT! Don't half - arse it.
Your democrips held ALL the power from 01/01/2009 - 01/01/2011 and rammed the ACA down our throats against all our wills.
They could have written it any way they wanted to.
Guess what they wanted to do? Insure all? Nope. Even the great ACA didn't/doesn't do that.
Lower costs? Nope, try again.
They wanted to milk us out of more money that they could line their pockets with.
Did they decide to pass a budget in that 2 year time period? Nope.
Solve immigration problem that Barry the Crook promised to do? Nope.
Bring the troops home and close Gitmo which he promised. Nope.

Once you stop shaking your finger at people with Rs behind their name and start doing some independent thinking and researching for yourself, and not regurgitating articles from Salon and The Huffington Post, you may soon realize that Ds are just as evil as Rs.
We only have one party in the country. Not two like it appears to be.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid, lots of dems and obviously lots of repubs like the Paul Ryan pick for Speaker? Doesn't this set off just the slightest of red flags?

But keep buying into the Coke vs Pepsi illusion.
Keep dividing us further rather than holding ALL of these R and D crooks accountable.

 

[Vader]

Those that like to sue doctors for failing to save their life.

I don't think you can sue post mortem....

Great post BTW.

 

[fedderone]

I don't think you can sue post mortem....

Great post BTW.

I guess I should have phrased better, but I was referring to surviving family member(s).
Thanks.

 

[Vader]

I guess I should have phrased better, but I was referring to surviving family member(s).
Thanks.

I know... just thought it was funny. Reminds me of those attorney ads on T.V. where they say if you or a loved one have died call them.

 

[jitter77]

Another thing I find funny is the company always has an enrollment "inservice / education." People come and explain the benefits / field questions. This year they are too chicken to show up so they are putting together an online FAQ. I can see how this is going to go.

I did read the letter myself and it is not quite as bad as people were saying. Basically they are forcing you to use their plan. They give you enough to cover the cost of the low plan. Anything extra you pay out of pocket (vision, dental, HSA etc etc). If you do not use their plan then you just get the $100 to do as you please. Realistically either you go without insurance or find your own plan, but there is no way to get a plan under $100.

 

[TAS]

I don't find any of this funny

 

[Tim Steelersfan]

You probably won't find this funny either.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/04/obamacare-co-op-mess-causes-1-3-billion-in-losses/

Obamacare Co-Op Mess Causes $1.3 Billion In Losses

Obamacare health insurance co-ops surged past the $1 billion mark in losses this week, making history of sorts.

The insolvencies, totaling $1.36 billion, mean that the co-ops have burned through more than half of the original $2 billion appropriated in 2010 for the program under the Affordable Care Act. The funds were loaned to the start-up co-ops in 2012 and were to be repaid in 15 years, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages Obamacare.

Instead, 13 of the 23 federally-financed Obamacare co-ops have officially failed in only two years. Most are in the process of default as insurance regulators attempt to pay customer’s medical bills, cover medical providers and pay other creditors.

Thomas Miller, resident scholar in health care at the American Enterprise Institute, has calculated that the co-op failures will be a “total loss” for taxpayers.

“The way I’m reading the priority rules for who is paid in the event of these insolvencies and the way the co-op agreements were laid out, it looks like a total loss for the loans,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “The taxpayers lose all the money.”

Almost weekly announcements of new co-op failures have come as the Nov. 1 deadline approached for the new Obamacare open enrollment season. The co-ops’ demise forces at least 740,000 largely low-income individuals and families to scramble from coast-to-coast to find new health insurance by December.

Many of the co-ops blame their financial crisis on the enrollment of a sicker population than expected. Many also found they face financial peril because their premium income did not cover the cost of claims.

In the face of the closures, co-op customers are frantically scrambling to find some sort of affordable health insurance.

“There are 740,000 people who were hoping to be getting coverage under these co-ops which were sold as making healthcare more affordable that now have to make hasty decisions about trying to find individual coverage that they can afford,” Pacific Research Institute President Sally Pipes told TheDCNF.

The pain for co-op policyholders is particularly acute in New York, where Health Republic of New York, the largest Obamacare co-op, went belly up Sept. 25. State insurance regulators initially told enrollees they had until Dec. 31 to obtain new coverage.

Then officials said the New York co-op, founded by Sara Horowitz, a well-connected liberal political activist, misled state regulators about the organization’s actual financial condition, As a result, state officials told enrollees last week that they only have until Nov. 15.

Fear is gripping the New York market for both patients and doctors.

“As the doctors realize they may not get paid, they are struggling to pay claims, and they fear they aren’t going to be paid” by the co-op, Craig Hasday, president of Frenkel Benefits, told TheDCNF in an interview. New York-based Frenkel is the largest insurance brokerage firm in the United States.

“I’ve always had concerns about this company,” Hasday said of Health Republic, and now “there is a fear the doctors will push back in a big way and say ‘I’m not going to see these patients.'”

Vermont’s Susan L. Donegan also had reservations about the co-op program from the outset.

“I feel a great deal of sympathy for the policyholders who are going through this,” Donegan told TheDCNF. Donegan was Vermont’s insurance commissioner when she refused to license the first Obamacare co-op in May, 2013, because “the model was not sustainable.”

She is now the state’s financial regulatory commissioner.

President Obama backed creation of the co-ops in place of a government-run single-payer proposal that was deemed too expensive by some congressional Democrats. The co-op program was originally slated to receive $6 billion to establish operations in all 50 states as a means of providing publicly funded competition to private for-profit insurers.

Congress reduced the appropriation to $2 billion, which Democrats now say isn’t enough. Federal officials gave no indication last year that the co-ops were in distress, and even expanded the program from 24 to 28 states.

Insurance ratings firm A.M. Best warned in January, 2015, however, that as of Sept. 30, 2014, “the ratio of surplus notes outstanding to capital and surplus exceeded 100% for all of the co-ops.”

Another co-op study done by the Galen Institute and the American Enterprise Institute reported that the co-ops had burned through a record $614 million in 2014. Industry data showed that 22 of the 23 co-ops were losing money.

 

[Tim Steelersfan]

But this is promising, though if true, the experiment has cost us all a boat-load.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426550/obamacare-failures

Obamacare Is Dead

It doesn’t work because it couldn’t work.

Regardless of whether there is a President Cruz or a President Rubio in January 2017, regardless of the existence or size of a Republican majority in Congress, the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has failed. The grand vision of an efficient pseudo-market in health insurance under enlightened federal management — the heart of Obamacare — is not coming to pass. Obamacare, meaning the operating model that undergirded the law that Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed with great fanfare — is dead, and it will not be revived. What remains is fitful chaos.

A brief refresher:

The fundamental problem with ACA is that under it, insurance ceases to be insurance. Insurance is a prospective financial product, one that exploits the mathematical predictability of certain life events among very large groups of people — out of 1 million 40-to-60-year-old Americans, x percent will get in car wrecks every year, and y percent will be diagnosed with chronic renal failure — which allows actuaries and the insurance companies that employ them to calculate premiums based on risk, thus funding the reimbursement of certain expenses incurred by the insurance pool’s members. Insurance is, by its very nature, always forward-looking, considering events that have yet to come to pass but that may be expected and, to a reasonable extent, predicted with some level of specificity. Under ACA, insurance is retrospective. ACA mandates that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions, meaning events that already have happened, which renders the basic mathematical architecture of insurance — the calculation of risk among large pools of people — pointless. Insurance ceases to be insurance and instead becomes something else, namely a very badly constructed cost-sharing program.

Not all cost-sharing programs are bad ideas. Medi-Share, for example, is precisely the sort of voluntary, privately administered mutual-aid program that could — and, I believe, will — end up displacing government-run health-care programs entirely. But Obamacare is a very different kind of beast: It creates a deeply perverse incentive structure by combining compulsory coverage of pre-existing conditions with a mandate that is enforced in theory more than in fact. The mandate is necessary to prevent the ruthless exploitation of the preexisting-coverage rules: If insurers have to cover you no matter what, then there’s no point in buying insurance — thereby sharing in the costs — until you are sick enough to need it.

As James Freeman reports in the Wall Street Journal, the ACA’s plethora of exemptions — there are at least 30 of them — ensure that a great many people — 12 million last year — will simply opt out. “It is easy to avoid or limit exposure to the penalty with some simple tax planning,” he writes. In 2016, there were supposed to be 21 million people enrolled in ACA programs; the Obama administration currently predicts that the actual number will be somewhat less than half of that. This was entirely predictable; in fact, it was predicted in the pages of National Review, in my book The End Is Near (and It’s Going to Be Awesome), and elsewhere.

Many of Obamacare’s failures came fast and early. Strike one: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Strike two: Obamacare will save “the average family $2,500 a year on their premiums.” Strike three: Obamacare will add “not one dime” to the deficit. We all knew that was coming, just as we knew that people would respond to the very strong incentives not to buy insurance by not buying insurance.

Other failures took longer to become manifest. The architects of Obamacare are deeply distrustful of the role of for-profit companies in the health-care business because, in their nearly pristine ignorance, they falsely believe profits to be net deductions from the sum of the public good rather than measures of the creation of real social value. So they created incentives to set up co-ops, nonprofit enterprises that would administer Obamacare plans in particular states and jurisdictions. It was obvious from the beginning that if Obamacare’s perverse incentives created insurance pools that were older and sicker rather than younger and healthier, these co-ops wouldn’t be economically viable: You need lots of young, healthy insurance subscribers to offset the costs associated with your older, sicker subscribers. Many of us — myself included — assumed that the federal government under President Obama would simply write these co-ops huge checks to keep them afloat. We were half right: The government is writing them huge checks, but they are failing anyway, so fundamental is their economic unsustainability. Half of the co-ops have gone belly-up already, including large, prominent, splendidly subsidized ones in Kentucky, New York, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Hundreds of thousands of customers have lost their coverage as a result. Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money has been poured into these enterprises, to no avail.

Obamacare’s partisans were confronted with the economic facts long before the law was even passed, and their answer was: “Never mind the economics, we’re the good guys, and you want poor people to die.” Democrats argued that Republicans literally wanted to kill poor people, that their plan was for the poor to “die quickly.” This is a habitual mode of discourse among progressives: Reality doesn’t matter; only the purity of Democrats’ motives matters. Obamacare is what it is: Another damned five-year plan based on wishful thinking and very little else.

The fact is that Obamacare has fallen apart without Republicans’ dismantling it. Almost all of its basic promises have failed, it is an economic shambles, and it is a political mess: Unsurprisingly, people still don’t like it. Less than a third of Americans support the individual mandate, three-fourths oppose Obamacare’s tax on high-end health-care programs, and more voters oppose the law categorically than support it. A quarter of voters say the law has hurt them personally. The question isn’t why Republicans haven’t gotten around to repealing and replacing it — the answer to that question resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a while, still — the question is when Democrats will get around to admitting that, purity of their hearts notwithstanding, they and they alone — not one Republican voted for Obamacare — have created a mess that has introduced nothing to American health care except chaos.

The basic principles of meaningful health-care reform are these: Let insurance be insurance; understand that ordinary, regular medical procedures, such as physicals and prostate exams, are not insurable events, and account for that in your calculations; the only way to mitigate the effects of scarcity on health care is to make it less scarce by expanding the supply of medical practitioners and facilities; the only way to make insurance more competitive, and therefore more affordable and more responsive to consumers, is to increase the number of players in the markets; the best way to deal with people who are, for example, profoundly disabled, children, or otherwise unable to provide for their own care, is direct, clear-eyed subsidy of their medical expenses, rather than laundering those payments through the insurance market; so long as practicing medicine pays less than filing frivolous lawsuits against doctors, there’s going to be a lot of politically induced inefficiency in the system.

Of course markets work for most people, and of course there are exceptions to that. For 93 percent of the population, the solution to health-care reform is: Let markets do their thing. The only real argument is how big a check to write to those looking after the other 7 percent, and how to structure the payments. That’s a real fight, too, but it isn’t the one we’re having. Right now, the Republicans and the Democrats are two political coroners arguing over what time and cause of death to put on the paperwork; rigor mortis set in long ago.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Once you stop shaking your finger at people with Rs behind their name and start doing some independent thinking and researching for yourself, and not regurgitating articles from Salon and The Huffington Post, you may soon realize that Ds are just as evil as Rs.
We only have one party in the country. Not two like it appears to be.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid, lots of dems and obviously lots of repubs like the Paul Ryan pick for Speaker?

Democrats had majorities in Congress at the time. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for it. BommaCare was designed so it wouldn't fully wreck both healthcare and the economy until He was out of office. Best thing the Republicans can do is keep calling it BommaCare until it's burned into everyone's brain.

 

[ark steel]

Since 1980 the total inflation on healthcare in the US is 870%. Not sure you can blame that on Obama.

Seems like the healthcare industry greed needs more regulation than less.

You seem to be missing the irony is that, year after year, more and more regulations, restrictions and subsidies have pou red into healthcare. And the price skyrocketed.

Another "industry " where you see this is education. More and more subsidizing, less quality results and another industry where the cost has outstripped inflation for years.

See a pattern?

 

[ark steel]

Many of the co-ops blame their financial crisis on the enrollment of a sicker population than expected. Many also found they face financial peril because their premium income did not cover the cost of claims.

From Tim's article. I'm sure Captain Renault is shocked.

 

[oneforthebus]

Another thing I find funny is the company always has an enrollment "inservice / education." People come and explain the benefits / field questions. This year they are too chicken to show up so they are putting together an online FAQ. I can see how this is going to go.

I did read the letter myself and it is not quite as bad as people were saying. Basically they are forcing you to use their plan. They give you enough to cover the cost of the low plan. Anything extra you pay out of pocket (vision, dental, HSA etc etc). If you do not use their plan then you just get the $100 to do as you please. Realistically either you go without insurance or find your own plan, but there is no way to get a plan under $100.

Why would either one of you get it? If you don't buy insurance, you will pay a small fine from your tax refund (if you're not due a tax refund you'll pay nothing), and if you get sick you can just enroll then. You can't be turned down. If you are young and healthy and don't make a particularly high income (the fine gets steep past certain incomes) it would seem to me to be insanity to get it.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Why would either one of you get it? If you don't buy insurance, you will pay a small fine from your tax refund (if you're not due a tax refund you'll pay nothing), and if you get sick you can just enroll then. You can't be turned down. If you are young and healthy and don't make a particularly high income (the fine gets steep past certain incomes) it would seem to me to be insanity to get it.

Except that over time the fines ramp up until you get to where insurance is cheaper than the fine, which is the idea.

 

[ark steel]

Many of the co-ops blame their financial crisis on the enrollment of a sicker population than expected. Many also found they face financial peril because their premium income did not cover the cost of claims.

From Tim's article. I'm sure Captain Renault is shocked.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Honestly, I want a Nationally televised event across all network and cable channels of the official ***-kicking of Jonathan Gruber. I really, really want this dickwad in the Octogon...hell, put in Ronda Rousey to tear him apart. No officials.

 

[jitter77]

Except that over time the fines ramp up until you get to where insurance is cheaper than the fine, which is the idea.

There is a minimum fine you have to pay regardless of income. If you make so much then it's a percentage of income. I want to say the minimum fine after 3 years is $960, but i forget exactly. The good thing is if you show your company insurance is over a certain percent of your income you get out of the fine. You just have to fill out some forms and send with the tax return.
As for us getting insurance our enrollment deadline for the company is the end of November. If one of us gets sick we would have to use the Healthcare marketplace and at best coverage would start the following month.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

There is a minimum fine you have to pay regardless of income. If you make so much then it's a percentage of income. I want to say the minimum fine after 3 years is $960, but i forget exactly. The good thing is if you show your company insurance is over a certain percent of your income you get out of the fine. You just have to fill out some forms and send with the tax return.
As for us getting insurance our enrollment deadline for the company is the end of November. If one of us gets sick we would have to use the Healthcare marketplace and at best coverage would start the following month.

I'm just going to start speaking Spanish and get my **** for free. Forget this work bullshit.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

If I'm the next Republican President, and the next President will be a Republican, I don't repeal BommaCare right away and let the people feel some pain for a time, all the while reminding them that their health insurance costs and problems came exclusively from the Democrats.
President Trump: "What do we want?"
The Peoples: "REPEAL!"
President Trump: " I can't hear yooouuu...."
The Peoples: "REPEAL!!!"
President Trump: "One more time."
The Peoples: "REPEAL, REPEAL, REPEAL!!!!!!!!!"
President Trump: "Okay, okay, I'll do it."