Pipe dream? Obamacare

[swchandler]

From the latest good news about the costs of the ACA, there is some suggestion that healthcare insurance costs are projected go up in 2015, and then flatten out and even possibly decrease over time. As one might expect, Republicans are praying feverishly for the costs to go up for 2015, because the timing for them is perfect. It's usually in November that everyone makes their yearly selection decision regarding the plans available to them in the upcoming year. If insurance companies re-adjust their rates upward costing both the government and individuals more, a strong anti-ACA message from Republicans may be enough to influence on-the-fence voters in the mid-term elections to give them a majority in the Senate. It's a moment in time that makes it or breaks it for Republicans and their ability to kill the ACA.

[isobars]

[uwindsurf]

“In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized — ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — half of those people are enthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, at the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri, Feb. 3, 2012

These were interesting remarks by one of the leading candidates for the GOP nomination. Though Santorum made this observation earlier in the month, a video of his comments only circulated on the web over the weekend and a number of readers asked whether he is correct. (His comments also spawned headlines in Holland, such as one that proclaimed: “Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale.”)

So we will check his statistics — 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are from euthanasia and 50 percent of those die involuntarily — and also his claim that the elderly wear bracelets requesting that they not be euthanized...There appears to be not a shred of evidence to back up Santorum’s claims about euthanasia in the Netherlands. It is telling that his campaign did not even bother to defend his comments."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/euthanasia-in-the-netherlands-rick-santorums-bogus-statistics/2012/02/21/gIQAJaRbSR_blog.html

[pueno]

[uwindsurf]

So, I wondered about “Bette in Spokane”, mentioned in the official GOP SOTU response. I wondered how she could face a $700 a month increase in premiums, and speculated that she must have had “a really bare-bones policy offering hardly any protection.”

Well, now we know, and I was right: her previous plan was catastrophic coverage only, with a $10,000 deductible — and the “$700 a month more” was the most expensive option offered by her insurer. She didn’t go to the healthcare.gov website, where she could have found cheaper plans.

So this wasn’t sticker shock, at least as described. This was someone finding out that the ACA requires that you have a minimum level of insurance, and that minimalist plans are no longer allowed — and it was also Ms. Rodgers misrepresenting what had happened.

Oh, and why isn’t catastrophic coverage only allowed? For the same reason we have a coverage mandate in the first place: everyone has to be in the risk pool. If you’re allowed to have insurance that barely covers anything, that’s almost the same as not participating at all.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/bette-in-spokane-blogging/?_php=true&_type=blogs&module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=0

[techno900]

youwindsurf said:

[uwindsurf]

[isobars]

[keycocker]

The problem lies mainly in the easily fooled conservatives who repeat lobbyist lies almost nonstop like Iso.
Army of fools pretending to be well informed as their minds grow weaker each day.

[keycocker]

The reason the conservative Heritage Foundation included the mandate was so the one third of Americans who have been passing their health costs on to taxpayers would have some skin in the game.
It is about personal responsibility.
We are already paying that money out techno in the current broken system.