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Obamacare Architect 'The Law Is Working As Designed-We Need a Larger Mandate Penalty'

CharminTide

CharminTide

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TideEngineer08 said:
Ok, I'm not trying to be disingenuous. We had goals as a family that, due to massive premium increases just announced for next year, are effectively ruined.

Please help me understand the first sentence of your last paragraph, really the entire paragraph. The GOP was against the ACA from the beginning in large part because of the disproportionate effect it was going to have on the middle class. I guess you are saying, since they lost that battle in the courts, even though they won it intellectually, they should have just worked with the arrogant moron that thumbed his nose at them during the whole process? For the good of the American people, right?

Look, again, I'm not trying to be disingenuous. But intelligent, conservative people were against this law from the beginning, and all of their claims of it's failings have come true. Again and again. To me, this just sounds like a child that insists on speeding in the car his parents just bought him, even after repeated warnings not to speed, and then being upset that the dad says he is not going to have it fixed after the kid wrecks it.

I know it has helped millions, but it has hurt many millions more. I don't know at what costs it must come that we make sure every single person has healthcare. I'm admitting my ignorance here.

I will end by saying this. I would like to see this mess get fixed. I don't care if a Republican does it, or if a Democrat does it. I would like to see both sides come together and fix the damn thing so that it doesn't financially ruin this country. Because if you think the economy is sluggish now, wait until next year when these premium increases hit.
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First off, I apologize for the disingenuous remark. I was posting on my phone at work, and my mind was partly distracted. I'd meant that as a response to your first two sentences only, but it came across as dismissing your personal experiences instead, and that's not what I intended.

Regarding the bolded part, I think that's a bit of selective memory and historical revision. Arguably, the ACA would be a more effective law if the Dems had simply forced it through Congress and ignored the GOP entirely. Of course, that's what Republicans claim happened anyway, but the reality is that 210 amendments to the bill were proposed by Republicans, and 161 of those were included in the final bill. All kinds of concessions were made to the GOP, but in the end, not a single Republican voted for it.

The Dems even dropped the public option, which would have ensured some degree of competition in the nearly 1000 (rural) counties that are, as of now, covered by only a single insurer. These, not coincidently, are the areas hardest hit by premium increases.

Then SCOTUS turned the individual mandate into a tax. In countries with working universal healthcare systems that effectively meld both private and public insurance options (think Switzerland, Germany), they balance the risk pools by forcing everyone to purchase health insurance. If you don't, the government will enroll you in a plan, garnish your wages to cover it, and possibly send to you jail. Now, we do not live in those countries, and I think a tax is a reasonable compromise that remains in line with the US Constitution. But the point is that individual mandates must be strong so the risk pool is balanced, or the whole system collapses. Ours certainly is not.

On the whole, I'm not really in disagreement with you. The ACA has effectively granted healthcare coverage to millions with low income. It has reformed private insurance in very positive ways, such as stopping the cherry-picking practices of the 90s and 2000s, and allowing dependents to stay on their parent's coverage until 26. It is also doing very well in highly populated areas, where rates are not really increasing due to insurer competition. The biggest gap in the ACA's effectiveness seems to be rural middle class Americans, who make too much to qualify for subsidies, and do not live in an area with actual insurer competition.

I think there are reasonable steps we can take to fix that problem. I'm not suggesting that I know the extent of everything that needs to be done. But I do know that, if the GOP had spent the past 6 years trying to work to improve American health care rather than wasting time and taxpayer money on the political theater of repeatedly trying to overturn the ACA, we'd be in a much better place right now. On this specific issue, I do lay most of the blame on the intentional, scorched earth obstructionism that we've seen from the McConnell and Boehner years. And on the broader issue of our current partisan paralysis, I agree with Justice Thomas: "At some point, we have got to recognize that we’re destroying our institutions."
 
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Bamaro

Bamaro

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TideEngineer08 said:
Ok, I'm not trying to be disingenuous. We had goals as a family that, due to massive premium increases just announced for next year, are effectively ruined.

Please help me understand the first sentence of your last paragraph, really the entire paragraph. The GOP was against the ACA from the beginning in large part because of the disproportionate effect it was going to have on the middle class. I guess you are saying, since they lost that battle in the courts, even though they won it intellectually, they should have just worked with the arrogant moron that thumbed his nose at them during the whole process? For the good of the American people, right?

Look, again, I'm not trying to be disingenuous. But intelligent, conservative people were against this law from the beginning, and all of their claims of it's failings have come true. Again and again. To me, this just sounds like a child that insists on speeding in the car his parents just bought him, even after repeated warnings not to speed, and then being upset that the dad says he is not going to have it fixed after the kid wrecks it.

I know it has helped millions, but it has hurt many millions more. I don't know at what costs it must come that we make sure every single person has healthcare. I'm admitting my ignorance here.

I will end by saying this. I would like to see this mess get fixed. I don't care if a Republican does it, or if a Democrat does it. I would like to see both sides come together and fix the damn thing so that it doesn't financially ruin this country. Because if you think the economy is sluggish now, wait until next year when these premium increases hit.
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I couldn't agree more.
 
seebell

seebell

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Gurley, Al
Bubbaloo said:
Could someone who is so in favor of Obama Care please tell me how it has helped them personally or their family.
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That has been posted by me and others in other Obamacare threads. Feel free to search.:) I would rehash my support but I'm too busy packing in case Trump wins.
 
Tide1986

Tide1986

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CharminTide said:
That's very disingenuous. Obamacare has helped millions who were without healthcare before. They were being screwed by the private insurers in a broken system. And say what you want about the failures of the ACA, but it has profoundly helped people below the 200% poverty line afford healthcare.

The compromises to get the law passed, however, have disproportionally hit the middle class, and especially the middle class in rural parts of America, where insurers have pulled out of the marketplaces and competition has stymied. Those are where huge rate increases are being seen. Not in big urban centers where many insurers are actively competing.

The GOP has spent years waging this ideological war against President Obama that has manifested as an active refusal to improve a law that is disproportionally hurting America's middle class. They could have accepted that this law was on the books, upheld by the SCOTUS, and that it has done tremendous good for many people (and it has). They could have then addressed its shortcomings, which it sounds like you (and many others) have experienced. Instead, the GOP has focused entirely on this useless battle to repeal the ACA instead of helping to make it better. It's political theater at its worst, and they are choosing to let Americans suffer instead of doing their job and fixing the obvious gaps in the law.
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Of course the Dems could also accept that the Republicans are part of the "governing" process. And regarding helping others, the end does not justify the means. In this case, the law is harming thousands upon thousands of people in order to "help" others. It seems that your comments are the disingenuous ones in this matter.
 
Bazza

Bazza

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Actually I won't be happy until I can get a menu from every health care provider listing what it charges for all procedures.

Then we need to pit one provided against others...nation wide...state wide....county wide....and city wide.

Like selling tires....
 
Tide1986

Tide1986

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CharminTide said:
I think the promise was that shouldering the costs of preventative care for indignant populations would be cheaper than shouldering the cost of their emergent care. Which is probably true, but the system isn't functioning exactly as intended right now, which is highlighting other problems.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-preventive-economics-idUSBRE90S05M20130129

"It seems counterintuitive: If you provide care to prevent all these expensive diseases, it should save money," said Peter Neumann, an expert on health policy and professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. "But prevention itself costs money, and some preventive measures can be very expensive, especially if you give them to a lot of people who won't benefit."
If preventive care could be provided only to those who are going to get the illness, it would be more cost-effective. "But in the real world, the number needed to screen or to treat in order to prevent one case of illness can be huge," said BU's Frakt, who blogs at theincidentaleconomist.com.
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DzynKingRTR

DzynKingRTR

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Bazza said:
Actually I won't be happy until I can get a menu from every health care provider listing what it charges for all procedures.

Then we need to pit one provided against others...nation wide...state wide....county wide....and city wide.

Like selling tires....
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This is one of the biggest issues. I can see all the charges from my accident. There is one column that says what the hospital charged my insurance and another column that says "discounts" that were applied and what my insurance actually had to pay and then a third column for what I owed. What the hell were these "discounts". I had 2 MRI's done at 2 different facilities. One was nearly triple what the other charged. So again I have to wonder just what does a MRI cost?
 
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CharminTide

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DzynKingRTR said:
So again I have to wonder just what does a MRI cost?
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There is nothing more absurd than medical billing. The interplay between ICD jargon and the innumerable contracts between individual payers and providers is completely mysterious.
 
Bazza

Bazza

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There's a local imaging business here....I asked if I could stop in and get my knee imaged. They said I'd have to have a script from a doctor.

Now the government says I also have to have insurance.

Quite a racket....
 
B

bama_wayne1

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Anyone who is really concerned about healthcare costs should be looking at torte reform. That is a large part of your health care dollar. I'm not saying that doctors should be able to mistreat patients, but there should be way to put rules in place that would remove the bad apples. No amount of money can replace a life. If the government wants a piece of healthcare to manage that should be their starting point!
 
Bazza

Bazza

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bama_wayne1 said:
Anyone who is really concerned about healthcare costs should be looking at torte reform. That is a large part of your health care dollar. I'm not saying that doctors should be able to mistreat patients, but there should be way to put rules in place that would remove the bad apples. No amount of money can replace a life. If the government wants a piece of healthcare to manage that should be their starting point!
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I've always thought there should be a rating system for health care providers...institutions, physicians, staff, even insurance companies.

Like the rating systems on Amazon and eBay.

"This place was really wonderful....I've been to some others so I know the difference. Ask for Dr. Brown...he's the best!" *****

"I couldn't believe how long I had to wait to be seen and then they rushed me through my appointment and then charged me twice what I normally pay. Will NOT go back!" *
 
B

BamaInMo1

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Obumma care is truly working as planned.
1) Get the useful idiots to buy in even though "we have to pass it before we find out what's in it"
2) Lie to everyone about keeping your plan and providers etc, etc.
3) Cause as much confusion as possible about the plan so that plausible deniability is in play
4) Use this to divide the country because a country divided cannot stand against a gvt that wants full control.
5) Tax people if they make a personal choice to not carry this idiotic plan - this way we can either FORCE more people to get on it or we can just collect more taxes from people - either way the gvt wins and becomes richer (oh, wait a minute, the gvt won't become richer because of the enormously high debt that we have now strapped our citizens with. Just the politicians will benefit from more power and more money)
6) We ultimately take over everyone's healthcare to make them soley dependent on the gvt and then we can do whatever the heck we want because without us (the gvt) you may very well be denied the healthcare that we promised we'd provide - and everyone knows that this administration is the most transparent in history and we don't lie..............
 
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