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Obamacare Haters Refuse to Accept Reality

SocialD said:
Yea most of the costly parts of the ACA didn't kick in until open enrollment of 2014, which means the end of 2014 so there still really isn't thorough numbers yet.
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And the 2014 increase in cost of the health system was over 5%, when inflation was 1.6%.

That is just great.
 
Greenbeard said:
Rosy projections? Shortly after the ACA passed, the CMS actuaries projected that the bump in national health spending growth as the coverage expansions kicked in would push spending growth up to 9.2%. Instead, as your article notes, in actuality it was more like 5.5%.
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Let see now, we have something like the 23rd best healthcare system in the world, pay at least 40% too much for it, and in 2014 before the most expensive parts of ObamaCare kicked in ... I am told.... costs of the system were going up about triple the inflation rate.....and you are here trying to sell me a "HAPPY DAYS!!" story??!!


NEXT!
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Let see now, we have something like the 23rd best healthcare system in the world, pay at least 40% too much for it, and in 2014 before the most expensive parts of ObamaCare kicked in ... I am told.... costs of the system were going up about triple the inflation rate.....and you are here trying to sell me a "HAPPY DAYS!!" story??!!


NEXT!
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As the OP already noted, health price inflation is in line with inflation in the rest of the economy. Health care prices have been rising almost unprecedentedly slowly (prices for physician and clinical services have actually been dropping lately).

28vuoat.png


The reason spending jumped in 2014 is that we as a nation started buying more services--as others earlier in the thread noted, more sick people are getting the care they need now. That jump was expected (and intended) as millions of people gained coverage; it'll continue until the coverage gains taper off and the insurance rate stabilizes, at which point that new utilization will be baked into the baseline and it won't drive growth anymore.

Anyway, the point was the projections were substantially more pessimistic than the reality across the board.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
And the 2014 increase in cost of the health system was over 5%, when inflation was 1.6%.

That is just great.
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To be fair you will expect health insurance costs to rise at a faster rate than inflation.. by a bit.. because you not only have to account for inflation but also increasing age.
As an example my coworker has the same health insurance I have. he is 26 and his is about 80 dollars. since I'm 20 years older than him mine is about 120 dollars.
Its frustrating in a way as I'm actually less of a risk than he is as he has a congenital heart condition and he capped out his deductible last year. I went to the doctors once for the flu.
 
Greenbeard said:
As the OP already noted, health price inflation is in line with inflation in the rest of the economy. Health care prices have been rising almost unprecedentedly slowly (prices for physician and clinical services have actually been dropping lately).

28vuoat.png


The reason spending jumped in 2014 is that we as a nation started buying more services--as others earlier in the thread noted, more sick people are getting the care they need now. That jump was expected (and intended) as millions of people gained coverage; it'll continue until the coverage gains taper off and the insurance rate stabilizes, at which point that new utilization will be baked into the baseline and it won't drive growth anymore.

Anyway, the point was the projections were substantially more pessimistic than the reality across the board.
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I know, and when the system is costing us so much already that it is bankrupting the nation spending more and giving me a " value for money"argument is not going to work. We dont have the money to spend, and we get far less value for our medical dollar than most anyone else in the world.

Obama completely misdiagnosed the problem, and in trying to fix the imaginary problem in his head he made the real problem worse.

Heck of a job Barack!
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
I know, and when the system is costing us so much already that it is bankrupting the nation spending more and giving me a " value for money"argument is not going to work. We dont have the money to spend, and we get far less value for our medical dollar than most anyone else in the world.

Obama completely misdiagnosed the problem, and in trying to fix the imaginary problem in his head he made the real problem worse.

Heck of a job Barack!
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What ?

I don't understand what you're complaining about. You wanted him to singlehandedly reverse decades of cost growth in healthcare ?
 
Absentglare said:
What ?

I don't understand what you're complaining about. You wanted him to singlehandedly reverse decades of cost growth in healthcare ?
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I wanted him to not add to the cost problem, the one that is bankrupting the nation. We only get so many attempts to fix the system, spending a year allegedly fixing the system while making its real problems worse hurt bad, because in spite of what the R's say throwing the system into massive upheaval again is barely an option. It was said at the time that it had taken 30 years to get to a real effort to fix the system, that he had to do it right because it will easily take 10, 20, 30 years to get enough political steam to try again. The Professor did not care, he wanted want he wanted for his legacy and he did not care about fixing problems or good government, because he has never cared about that stuff.
 
SocialD said:
Yea most of the costly parts of the ACA didn't kick in until open enrollment of 2014, which means the end of 2014 so there still really isn't thorough numbers yet.
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Treating people early who have diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis, etc. is cheaper in the long run. It's certainly better for society to give a diabetic some insulin than it is to let them go blind or develop heart disease; it's much cheaper to hand someone blood pressure pills than hospitalize them after a stroke, and letting someone's liver go toxic instead of treating their hepatitis is simply in humane.
 
calamity said:
Treating people early who have diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis, etc. is cheaper in the long run. It's certainly better for society to give a diabetic some insulin than it is to let them go blind or develop heart disease; it's much cheaper to hand someone blood pressure pills than hospitalize them after a stroke, and letting someone's liver go toxic instead of treating their hepatitis is simply in humane.
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I love when liberals start talking how government programs are going to make things more efficient :lol: I have a little test for you: Call 10 random businesses out of the Yellow Pages or Google. Count the total amount of time it takes you to reach a representative. Then call the IRS. If it's an average day, you should be thrilled if you don't spend twice as long waiting on hold for an IRS agent as you do for the 10 random businesses combined, and that should tell you something about what to expect from our government concerning efficiency.

I have Obamacare, it's horrible. And what do you know, I've contacted 2 Democrat senators and 1 representative with complaints and haven't heard anything back.
 
calamity said:
Treating people early who have diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis, etc. is cheaper in the long run. It's certainly better for society to give a diabetic some insulin than it is to let them go blind or develop heart disease; it's much cheaper to hand someone blood pressure pills than hospitalize them after a stroke, and letting someone's liver go toxic instead of treating their hepatitis is simply in humane.
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HMO's were build on that theory.

How did that work out?
 
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JC Callender said:
I love when liberals start talking how government programs are going to make things more efficient :lol: I have a little test for you: Call 10 random businesses out of the Yellow Pages or Google. Count the total amount of time it takes you to reach a representative. Then call the IRS. If it's an average day, you should be thrilled if you don't spend twice as long waiting on hold for an IRS agent as you do for the 10 random businesses combined, and that should tell you something about what to expect from our government concerning efficiency.

I have Obamacare, it's horrible. And what do you know, I've contacted 2 Democrat senators and 1 representative with complaints and haven't heard anything back.
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1) that says nothing about efficiency. It tells you about staffing levels for phone banks in private business vs public agencies.

2) if you have 'Obamacare', you have an oddly named insurance plan. And it sounds like you picked the wrong one- choosing insurance takes a bit of effort, and not knowing 'Obamacare' is not insurance probably is the first clue you could use some help buying more wisely.
 
JC Callender said:
I love when liberals start talking how government programs are going to make things more efficient :lol: I have a little test for you: Call 10 random businesses out of the Yellow Pages or Google. Count the total amount of time it takes you to reach a representative. Then call the IRS. If it's an average day, you should be thrilled if you don't spend twice as long waiting on hold for an IRS agent as you do for the 10 random businesses combined, and that should tell you something about what to expect from our government concerning efficiency.

I have Obamacare, it's horrible. And what do you know, I've contacted 2 Democrat senators and 1 representative with complaints and haven't heard anything back.
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IMO, businesses should not be burdened with providing employees healthcare. It should be a government function. As should be waste disposal, clean air provisions and employee safety programs. BTW, I am OK with the government subcontracting those functions to professionals. I just don't see why we should burden industry with all that red tape. Hell, we have an entire department dedicated to that crap.
 
jaeger19 said:
Very true. But that's not the full story.

The person who posted was describing one of the unintended consequences of OBamacare regulation. And that's that hospitals are decreasing care and now decreasing care not just when the patient is in the hospital... but denying them care they should be receiving in post hospital facilities.

Its called bundled payments... and its intent was for hospitals to provide better care.. so that patients would do better and could be sent to lower levels of care or home and would stay home.

but what is occurring in hospitals around the country... not everyone.. but its becoming more and more common.. is that the hospital is tying the physicians hands on the care the patient can receive. I have friends who are physicians that are being TOLD that they cannot admit a patient to the hospital because they were just discharged.

Hospitals are now going around to assisted livings, SNF's and home healths and giving them "report cards"... in other words... if you have a patient that's been discharged from the hospital and you end up sending them back because they are ill.. the hospital is not going to send patients your way.

Its becoming more and more of a problem. I just traveled to one of my rehab facilities where we had a meeting with the hospital from this very issue. They brought up our "scorecard" and pointed to two patients that were sent back to the hospital.

We pointed out that one patient was sent by the hospital because on the day he was admitted to us from the hospital, he had severe hip pain and was unable to bear weight, the same problems he had in the hospital.. and we discovered that the hospital had missed that he had fractured his hip. He was sent back to the hospital for subsequent ORIF of his fracture.

The second patient we sent back, was discovered to be septic on admission. He was put into observation, and then they discharged him not back to our facility but to assisted living (they told the family we had no beds when by law we had to keep one open for him) . The family wanted him transferred back to the hospital after a day in the assisted living but the assisted living didn;t. Two days later he was so sick that the family simply dialed 911. the patient died before they could get him to the hospital.

He was 72 and had been in good health before developing a pneumonia and going to the hospital.
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First of all, neither ACA nor the govt is telling anyone they can't get care. They are not denying care to anyone. It's doctors, hospitals and other health care providers doing that. They are the ones who are responsible for the despicable behavior.

But I do find it humorous that you have such a low opinion of health care providers while being one yourself. If you are to be believed, they are so greedy, callous and incompetent that they are failing to diagnose potentially fatal conditions and completely disregard the well-being of their patients and consumed with making as much money as possible regardless of the harm they cause. Even worse, you describe yourself as a helpless bystander who does nothing while observing this malpractice, incompetence and greed.

ACA isn't the problem; it's the health care providers who put their own interests above all else and do and say nothing when confronted with this greed.
 
JC Callender said:
I love when liberals start talking how government programs are going to make things more efficient :lol: I have a little test for you: Call 10 random businesses out of the Yellow Pages or Google. Count the total amount of time it takes you to reach a representative. Then call the IRS. If it's an average day, you should be thrilled if you don't spend twice as long waiting on hold for an IRS agent as you do for the 10 random businesses combined, and that should tell you something about what to expect from our government concerning efficiency.

I have Obamacare, it's horrible. And what do you know, I've contacted 2 Democrat senators and 1 representative with complaints and haven't heard anything back.
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I'm working in a tax prep office and I call the IRS nearly every single day. The wait time is rarely over 20 minutes and often less than 10.
 
Beaudreaux said:
The last chart seems to be misleading, in that the PPACA restricted the level of care allowed which is not a reduction is cost as much as it is a reduction is approved services which has a tertiary yet corollary affect on costs. For instance, reducing the number of days a person can stay in the hospital - Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) in chart 2 as just one example. This is reducing care by limiting the doctor's options, which by cause and effect reduces costs.

My father-in-law became very ill not long after the PPACA's restrictions became effective. Part of the PPACA are restrictions on doctor's ability to choose the best course of action for their patients. My father-in-law was sent home from the hospital twice because of PPACA restrictions on length of stay, and on his third return he was found to had become septic... he never returned home. The doctors (both members of our church and good family friends) explained to us exactly what, how, and why this had happened. They showed us the law and described how they were being told when to send people home and at point that insurance would no longer be required to pay.
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it also ignores the fact that hospitals are putting more people in out-patient rooms than admitting them into the hospital unless needed.
why? because it gets around the re-admittance rule. out-patient they are not admitted. also medicare doesn't cover anything on
out-patient except the admittance cost. any other charges are given to the patient as a direct cost to them.

I find it funny they find these bogus charts when all the other information says costs and premiums are rising faster than before.

still waiting on my 2500 reduction still haven't seen it.
I have seen a 70% increase over 2 years in my premium payments though.

I thought this was to be affordable.

my company had to spend 500k in obamacare compliance.
guess who's check that came out of.
 
JC Callender said:
I love when liberals start talking how government programs are going to make things more efficient :lol: I have a little test for you: Call 10 random businesses out of the Yellow Pages or Google. Count the total amount of time it takes you to reach a representative. Then call the IRS. If it's an average day, you should be thrilled if you don't spend twice as long waiting on hold for an IRS agent as you do for the 10 random businesses combined, and that should tell you something about what to expect from our government concerning efficiency.

I have Obamacare, it's horrible. And what do you know, I've contacted 2 Democrat senators and 1 representative with complaints and haven't heard anything back.
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I love how conservatives think the government is the only thing that's inefficient in this world.

It's like the Waltons don't have $37 billion for running stores and that Comcast is so big because the consumers just love them so much.
 
Threegoofs said:
Yes. NEXT year!

Prices will SKYROCKET!


We've heard this since 2010....

LOL.
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it is happening all across the country. We have our meeting tomorrow where management is going to tell everyone how much more expensive health care is going to be at renewal, and that they have to pass the increase on to the employees.
no amount of sticking your head in the sand will change that.
 
Beaudreaux said:
My father-in-law was sent home from the hospital twice because of PPACA restrictions on length of stay, and on his third return he was found to had become septic... he never returned home.
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What restrictions?

There are no new limits on the length of a hospital stay because of the ACA.

Medicare has an up-front deductible, then 60 days where they pay for everything, then 30 days where you pay a per-day deductible. You also get another 60 "lifetime days" you can use at any time. After that, the hospital won't kick you out, but you will have to pay the full cost of the hospital stay.

The MHRRP is set up to discourage hospitals sending people home when they aren't ready. If the patient returns within 30 days, the hospital gets penalized.

There are some complications with nursing homes and other types of care, and I'm sure your doctors gave you the right information about when coverage ended. You are also (reasonably) leaving out lots of information here. However, it sounds highly unlikely that any policy changes due to the ACA had any effect on your FIL's care.
 
Absentglare said:
I love how conservatives think the government is the only thing that's inefficient in this world.

It's like the Waltons don't have $37 billion for running stores and that Comcast is so big because the consumers just love them so much.
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this is such a stupid reply. inefficiencies do exist in the private market, but because their purposes are generally to profit, they have checks and balances against those inefficiencies that simply don't exist when government is in charge.
 
ARealConservative said:
this is such a stupid reply. inefficiencies do exist in the private market, but because their purposes are generally to profit, they have checks and balances against those inefficiencies that simply don't exist when government is in charge.
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The checks and balances aren't working when the Walton's accrue $37 billion for selling cheap crap to poor people.

The checks and balances aren't working when one of the most hated companies in America has a 97% profit margin and maintains massive market share.
 
ARealConservative said:
it is happening all across the country. We have our meeting tomorrow where management is going to tell everyone how much more expensive health care is going to be at renewal, and that they have to pass the increase on to the employees.
no amount of sticking your head in the sand will change that.
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You mean a meeting like those that have taken place every year for the last 30 years?

Or is this the year premiums will SKYROCKET!!!! LOL
 
Threegoofs said:
You mean a meeting like those that have taken place every year for the last 30 years?
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wrong. I have been working professionally for over 20 years, this will be the first massive increase passed on to employees.
 
ARealConservative said:
wrong. I have been working professionally for over 20 years, this will be the first massive increase passed on to employees.
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Sorry, but one employer late to the game does not change years of national statistics.

Passing on cost increases to employees really started picking up around 2005, not 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/business/03insure.html

Employers continue to do so, even though the increases in costs to the employers have slowed:
Employer Health Insurance Costs Slow as Workers Pay Bigger Share - Bloomberg
 
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