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One man's ObamaCare nightmare[W:51]

Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

BWG said:
Now I don't claim to be an expert on HSA's, HRA's or FSA's, but from what I can find is that HSA's are allowed under the ACA. And the only thing I can find on your claim that accumulated HSA funds (and interest) will be taxed as income is only addressed as that which is spent on "non-medical purposes" or "over-the-counter medications not prescribed by a doctor".

Am I missing something here?


I even found it on a site that some cons may prefer...:lol:
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I was not aware of that, thank you for the link. I'd be interesting in seeing if HSA/catastrophic plans will be allowed as stand alone policies or as supplements. When the bill originally went thru the explanation of "qualifying plans" all had to include preventative care including checkups, which catastrophic plans do not provide. I could see them working in conjunction with Medicare, but what about the rest of us?

A couple of years ago I approached our local electric coop with the idea of having them extend their internal health insurance program currently used by their employee's to the members. It is a non profit, so costs should be lower. The president of the coop contacted me and said that he thought it was a great idea (if you choose to use their insurance the cost would be added to your power bill) and would just require expansion of their HR department. The offer an HSA/ catastrophic plan. He said that when he asked their attorneys about it they were concerned that the program would not be supported under ACA.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

digsbe said:
My family is self ensured, our premium went up from 580 a month to almost 800 per month. Our pharmacy benefits decreased, our copays increased, and our deductible increased. I also know many hospitals that are cutting budgets and laying off staff (job destruction) in anticipation of Obamacare.
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Yeah, my wife is a medical lab tech and we hear this a lot from doctors with private practices. Many of them are closing, doctors are planning retirement, and some have stopped accepting Medicare/ Medicaid.
 
Grant said:
This is why (re C and P) the present administration has actually advertised for people to go on food stamps, and why they insist on the debt growing even greater. The plan to break the United States appears to be deliberate.
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That's exactly right. Ie: "fundamental transformation"
 
Boo Radley said:
We haven't socialized it. We don't have UHC. UHC hasn't been proposed. so ACA doesn't qualify as socialized medicine.

So I repeat: For passing it, no. For pretending it's radical liberalism, yes. Do pay attention.
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Better tell Harry Reid, and your own red sweater vest wearing dumb ass, Harkin that. They both said this was the path to UHC...that's how libs lie.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

tech30528 said:
Yeah, my wife is a medical lab tech and we hear this a lot from doctors with private practices. Many of them are closing, doctors are planning retirement, and some have stopped accepting Medicare/ Medicaid.
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I've discussed things with doctors in hospitals, pharmacists, and a pharmacy manager who manages a hospital pharmacy. They have a consensus that the reforms are bad news. It's anecdotal, but they give rational reasons behind their opinions.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

ItAin'tFree said:
Just as I said. Having health insurance or not having health insurance makes no difference in future health problems.

I provided you with more than enough clues to find the study and it's already been linked many times before now. It's common public knowledge not an obscure study.

Spend your time finding it this time.
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I just did a quick search and see the opposite. Are you sure they aren't saying don't save money?
 
j-mac said:
Better tell Harry Reid, and your own red sweater vest wearing dumb ass, Harkin that. They both said this was the path to UHC...that's how libs lie.
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Are you saying if I find something stupid a republican says that I can then say that's the absolute truth? Don't forget I have Steve King here! :lamo:lamo:lamo

I sure hope you understand how silly your statement was. Someone saying something doesn't make it so.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

digsbe said:
I've discussed things with doctors in hospitals, pharmacists, and a pharmacy manager who manages a hospital pharmacy. They have a consensus that the reforms are bad news. It's anecdotal, but they give rational reasons behind their opinions.
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I'm much more likely to trust what medical professionals are saying about it than what we are hearing from Obama and friends.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

tech30528 said:
I'm much more likely to trust what medical professionals are saying about it than what we are hearing from Obama and friends.
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Great! Here are what they are saying:

Our Mission: Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Greg Silver, MD
The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $8,936 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 50 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

http://www.pnhp.org/

59% Of Doctors Now Back Universal Health Care

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/31/59-of-doctors-now-back-un_n_94365.html

Doctors support universal health care: survey | Reuters
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Another difference from the original post is that the original premium the family paid was ONLY AVAILABLE TO HEALTHY FAMILIES THAT THE INSURANCE COMPANY WOULD ACCEPT. They had the right to deny coverage to sick families. The new premium comes with a guarantee that they MUST COVER all families.

Why was it ok for insurance companies to deny coverage to families with pre-existing conditions?
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
Another difference from the original post is that the original premium the family paid was ONLY AVAILABLE TO HEALTHY FAMILIES THAT THE INSURANCE COMPANY WOULD ACCEPT. They had the right to deny coverage to sick families. The new premium comes with a guarantee that they MUST COVER all families.

Why was it ok for insurance companies to deny coverage to families with pre-existing conditions?
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Because they have the right to association and property. They also have the right to decide on who they will provide service to.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Henrin said:
Because they have the right to association and property. They also have the right to decide on who they will provide service to.
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That is not a national healthcare program, it is a guaranteed profit plan for the insurance companies.

What was to become of those who were denied coverage? Many died. That's immoral. The govt. is supposed to support programs that advance the public good. Allowing health insurance companies to guarantee their profits while letting the citizens with serious illness die is a pathetic system, and that's why it had to be changed.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
That is not a national healthcare program, it is a guaranteed profit plan for the insurance companies.
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True, but it does plenty to empower the state as well.

What was to become of those who were denied coverage? Many died. That's immoral. The govt. is supposed to support programs that advance the public good. Allowing health insurance companies to guarantee their profits while letting the citizens with serious illness die is a pathetic system, and that's why it had to be changed.
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The government is not your moral agent, sorry.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Henrin said:
True, but it does plenty to empower the state as well.
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You are not following the discussion. What I said was "not a national healthcare program" was the old system that allowed the insurers to accept only those customers they chose to accept. That system did NOTHING to empower the state.

Henrin said:
The government is not your moral agent, sorry.
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You are wrong again. The govt. is the moral agent in this case, moving to disallow the insurance companies from continuing THEIR IMMORAL ACTIONS, putting profits clearly above human life. If you wish to construct an argument that attempts to demonstrate the moral superiority of the heath ins. companies, go for it, but that will be interesting for me to watch.

The govt. WAS the moral agent in the 50's and 60's in ending segregation in the south. I can tell you it was unpopular, I was there, but it was the right thing to do. The govt. is capable of corruption, but in healthcare reform they are acting as the moral agent. They are providing the counterbalance to the power of the health ins. companies in a way that NOBODY else could.

And Obamacare is very similar to the repub healthcare reform plan from 1993:
In November, 1993, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., introduced what was considered to be one of the main Republican health overhaul proposals: "A bill to provide comprehensive reform of the health care system of the United States."

Titled the "Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993," it had 21 co-sponsors, including two Democrats (Sens. Boren and Kerrey). The bill, which was not debated or voted upon, was an alternative to President Bill Clinton's plan. It bears similarity to the Democratic bill passed by the Senate Dec. 24, 2009, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Here is a summary of the 1993 bill:

Title I: Basic Reforms to Expand Access to Health Insurance Coverage and to Ensure Universal Coverage - Subtitle A: Universal Access - Provides access to health insurance coverage under a qualified health plan for every citizen and lawful permanent resident of the United States.

(Sec. 1003) Establishes a program under which persons with low incomes (and who are not eligible for Medicaid) will receive vouchers to buy insurance through purchasing groups.

(Sec. 1004) Requires each employer to make available, either directly, through a purchasing group, or otherwise, enrollment in a qualified health plan to each eligible employee.

Subtitle B: Qualified General Access Plan in the Small Employer and Individual Marketplace- Requires the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to develop specific standards to implement requirements concerning: (1) guaranteed eligibility, availability, and renewability of health insurance coverage; (2) nondiscrimination based on health status; (3) benefits offered; (4) insurer financial solvency; (5) enrollment process; (6) premium rating limitations; (7) risk adjustment; and (8) consumer protection.

(Sec. 1119) Requires each qualified general access plan to: (1) establish and maintain a quality assurance program and a mediation procedures program; and (2) contain assurances of service to designated underserved areas.

(Sec. 1141) Provides for the formation of purchasing groups by individuals and small employers.
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Summary Of A 1993 Republican Health Reform Plan - Kaiser Health News
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
That is not a national healthcare program, it is a guaranteed profit plan for the insurance companies.

What was to become of those who were denied coverage? Many died. That's immoral. The govt. is supposed to support programs that advance the public good. Allowing health insurance companies to guarantee their profits while letting the citizens with serious illness die is a pathetic system, and that's why it had to be changed.
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Scare tactics such as letting citizens with serious illnesses die, throwing the elderly over cliffs, etc, has coerced the uninformed into accepting a boondoggle of horrendous proportions, one that will change America forever. And yet American history has demonstrated that neighbors once cared for each other, doctors made house calls, the March of Dimes helped defeat polio, and so on.

Now the government, on so many levels, is firmly planted between doctor and patient and, unless individual states exert themselves, it will envelop the greatest spending of any government agency. No more America 'the policeman of the world'. It will come to imitate Europe in the same terminally ill ward, ineffectual and powerless.

Mark Steyn -
What does your employer or your spouse’s employer have to do with health care? For most of modern history, your health care was a matter between you and your doctor. Since World War II, in much of the developed world, it’s been between you, your doctor, and your government. In America, it’s now between you, your doctor, your government, your insurer, your employer, your insurer’s outsourced health-care-administration-services company . . . Anybody else? Oh, let’s not forget Lois Lerner’s IRS, which, in the biggest expansion of the agency in the post-war era, has hired 16,500 new agents to determine whether your hernia merits an audit.
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Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Grant said:
Scare tactics such as letting citizens with serious illnesses die, throwing the elderly over cliffs, etc, has coerced the uninformed into accepting a boondoggle of horrendous proportions, one that will change America forever. And yet American history has demonstrated that neighbors once cared for each other, doctors made house calls, the March of Dimes helped defeat polio, and so on.

Now the government, on so many levels, is firmly planted between doctor and patient and, unless individual states exert themselves, it will envelop the greatest spending of any government agency. No more America 'the policeman of the world'. It will come to imitate Europe in the same terminally ill ward, ineffectual and powerless.
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Americans are being RAPED by their insurance companies, hospitals, big pharma, and medical device makers. I wish we were as efficient as Europe. See below.

WARSAW, Ind. — Michael Shopenn’s artificial hip was made by a company based in this remote town, a global center of joint manufacturing. But he had to fly to Europe to have it installed.

Mr. Shopenn, 67, an architectural photographer and avid snowboarder, had been in such pain from arthritis that he could not stand long enough to make coffee, let alone work. He had health insurance, but it would not cover a joint replacement because his degenerative disease was related to an old sports injury, thus considered a pre-existing condition.

Desperate to find an affordable solution, he reached out to a sailing buddy with friends at a medical device manufacturer, which arranged to provide his local hospital with an implant at what was described as the “list price” of $13,000, with no markup. But when the hospital’s finance office estimated that the hospital charges would run another $65,000, not including the surgeon’s fee, he knew he had to think outside the box, and outside the country.

“That was a third of my savings at the time,” Mr. Shopenn said recently from the living room of his condo in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t happening.”

“Very leery” of going to a developing country like India or Thailand, which both draw so-called medical tourists, he ultimately chose to have his hip replaced in 2007 at a private hospital outside Brussels for $13,660. That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.

“We have the most expensive health care in the world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best,” Mr. Shopenn said. “I’m kind of the poster child for that.”

As the United States struggles to rein in its growing $2.7 trillion health care bill, the cost of medical devices like joint implants, pacemakers and artificial urinary valves offers a cautionary tale. Like many medical products or procedures, they cost far more in the United States than in many other developed countries.

Makers of artificial implants — the biggest single cost of most joint replacement surgeries — have proved particularly adept at commanding inflated prices, according to health economists. Multiple intermediaries then mark up the charges. While Mr. Shopenn was offered an implant in the United States for $13,000, many privately insured patients are billed two to nearly three times that amount.

An artificial hip, however, costs only about $350 to manufacture in the United States, according to Dr. Blair Rhode, an orthopedist and entrepreneur whose company is developing generic implants.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/health/for-medical-tourists-simple-math.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If free enterprise was at work in the marketplace in the US, we would have lower prices. Clearly they are not competing with each other, they are lobbying and getting sweatheart rules passed, which they then manipulate to keep the prices high. The only alternative at this time is govt. action, or flying to Belgium or India.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

tererun said:
OMG one person who was buying bargain basement health insurance has their rates go up? Yes, and what happens when you get sick on bargain health insurance before obamacare? Oh yeah, they deny your claim and slap you into high risk and drop your coverage.
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Sounds good. Now they will offer a different excuse for denying your claim (or most of it) and force you to pay their premiums anyway.

tererun said:
Now they will have to pay and keep on covering you.
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Really? Who's gonna force them to cover you (i. e. actually pay your claims instead of offering a bunch of legalistic mumbo jumbo as excuses for denial)? The same federal gov't they're so effectively lobbying and controlling? :rolleyes:
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
Americans are being RAPED by their insurance companies, hospitals, big pharma, and medical device makers. I wish we were as efficient as Europe. See below.
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No worries. You will be.

If free enterprise was at work in the marketplace in the US, we would have lower prices. Clearly they are not competing with each other, they are lobbying and getting sweatheart rules passed, which they then manipulate to keep the prices high. The only alternative at this time is govt. action, or flying to Belgium or India.
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If they are not competing, getting Sweetheart deals, and lobbying, then that is the fault of the government, the people you want to be in charge, There are anti trust laws available which the government could have used, just as Reagan used against AT&T but the government wanted the power this will bring. You are now their servant.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

opendebate said:
I hear you. The ****storm of bad information that has rained down on everyone is mind-boggling, worse yet are those that stand out in the storm with their heads tilted back and their mouths wide open.
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Easy for you to say, doctors are scratching their heads on the codes that multiplied 4 times over the old system. Some seniors are finding out that their B-12 shots are no longer covered and making the decision to do without them thus their quality of life suffers. Unions that once supported this legislation wishing now they had actually audited what Obama and company were saying. It is sad, but probably all of us will know someone in the next 5 years that died because of the ****ty changes brought on by ACA.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
You are not following the discussion. What I said was "not a national healthcare program" was the old system that allowed the insurers to accept only those customers they chose to accept. That system did NOTHING to empower the state.
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It's a little silly to say that a system that is heavily regulated does nothing for the government.

You are wrong again. The govt. is the moral agent in this case, moving to disallow the insurance companies from continuing THEIR IMMORAL ACTIONS, putting profits clearly above human life. If you wish to construct an argument that attempts to demonstrate the moral superiority of the heath ins. companies, go for it, but that will be interesting for me to watch.
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They have the right to decide on who they will provide service and labor towards as a property owner, as a service provider and more importantly as a human being. If they do not desire to provide service towards the already ill that is there choice to make. The government is forbidden by the thirteenth amendment from forcing any party into service for another party.

People will do many things that we feel are immoral and like it or not it is not our place or the governments place to make them follow our moral code. If you really want to push this point of yours further it should be noted that forcing people into service for others is immoral.
 
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Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Neomalthusian said:
There are lots of options. Overall, the only two ways to meaningfully control costs are to go full force toward a government takeover and expect government to suppress the costs actively, or abolish health insurance as it currently exists and let cash-only markets for health care pull prices down naturally.

Other more specific ideas:

1) Overturn EMTALA; provide expanded tort protection for emergency health care staff and departments (allow ER doctors to turn away non-emergencies); eliminate the practice of admitting uninsured patients to hospitals to cover providers' own asses and then spreading the costs to insured patients.
2) Prohibit coverage for preventive care, office visits, wellness checks, etc., except for specific procedures/diagnostic tests that have shown incontrovertible proof of being cost-saving. Open up more non-critical care to cash-only markets (no insurance coverage permitted).
3) Repeal Medicare D
4) Prohibit insurance coverage of addictive agents (opioids, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, sleep agents) outside of hospital settings.
5) Reform Medicare A-C
6) Abolish private health insurance or relegate it to coverage of out-of-work expenses and implement across-the-board governmentalized health insurance (not actually something I desire, but nonetheless would be a hell of a lot better than PPACA).
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Gov't health care is the same as insurance-run healthcare in the US because the US gummint and insurance cos. are one and the same.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Grant said:
If they are not competing, getting Sweetheart deals, and lobbying, then that is the fault of the government, the people you want to be in charge, There are anti trust laws available which the government could have used, just as Reagan used against AT&T but the government wanted the power this will bring. You are now their servant.
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It is not just the fault of the govt., it is also the fault of the greedy leaders of the healthcare industry who are raping the nation. Why do you give them a pass, when a hip transplant here would run $100K and you can get the same thing in Belgium for $13K?

This administration is the only one that has stepped up to healthcare reform. Why haven't the repubs, they held all of congress from 1994-2006, with the white house from 2001-2008? I don't think Obamacare is the best system possible, but I view it as a step in the right direction, and it cured the worst problems of health insurance, the ability of the ins. company to reject sick customers, and the ability to drop paying customers who got seriously ill. Nobody else stepped up to that, and for that I give the dems credit.
 
Re: One man's ObamaCare nightmare

finebead said:
It is not just the fault of the govt., it is also the fault of the greedy leaders of the healthcare industry who are raping the nation. Why do you give them a pass, when a hip transplant here would run $100K and you can get the same thing in Belgium for $13K?

This administration is the only one that has stepped up to healthcare reform. Why haven't the repubs, they held all of congress from 1994-2006, with the white house from 2001-2008? I don't think Obamacare is the best system possible, but I view it as a step in the right direction, and it cured the worst problems of health insurance, the ability of the ins. company to reject sick customers, and the ability to drop paying customers who got seriously ill. Nobody else stepped up to that, and for that I give the dems credit.
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It's the government who is 'raping the nation'. Washington DC is now the wealthiest city in the country and the taxes they accumulate and the money they continue to print still cannot keep up with the expenses, and the debt continues to grow. Do you really believe that the government is on your side, and that it will look after you?

Insurance companies can always be controlled by the government, but who will control the government?
 
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