Obamacare Saving, Improving Lives

jpn · Feb 11, 2016

That delights Will Blythe, an unemployed construction worker who didn’t caucus in 2008 because he mistakenly thought it required driving to Las Vegas. This time around he’s not just planning to caucus for Clinton but also volunteering for her campaign, along with his wife, who had cancer detected and treated after she got insurance under the Affordable Care Act. “We almost feel like we owe Obama our life,” Blythe says.

Clinton Looks to Nevada and Its Delegate-Rich Outskirts - Bloomberg Politics

Is this just a stand-alone anecdote? No. Statistics show that this story is being repeated all across the nation. Look at this:

Diabetes Cases Surge in States That Expanded Medicaid
A new study offers insight into how the Affordable Care Act has affected diagnoses of a prevalent chronic disease.
States that chose to expand Medicaid for low-income Americans under President Barack Obama's health care law have seen a surge in diabetes diagnoses, a new study shows, particularly during the disease's earlier stages when changes in lifestyle can have a significant impact on a person's later health.
Conducted by Quest Diagnostics and published Monday in the journal Diabetes Care, the analysis found that newly identified diabetes cases among Medicaid-enrolled patients jumped 23 percent in states that expanded the program, but increased by less than 1 percent – 0.4 percent – in states that did not.

Wow.

Blue bar: Obamacare states where people with diabetes can receive care. Red bar: Red states where Republicans would rather play politics than care for their sick citizens.

Reducing financial barriers to health care, as Obamacare aims to do, tends to lead to more use of medical care. And in diabetes cases, there is room for significant improvement regarding diagnosis and treatment: 1 in 4 Americans who have diabetes don't know it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Without health insurance coverage, people are likely to delay getting care until symptoms of the disease get worse.

I hope you don't have diabetes. But if you do, I hope you live in a state where they are more concerned with providing health care than with playing politics.

joG · Feb 12, 2016

jpn said:
Clinton Looks to Nevada and Its Delegate-Rich Outskirts - Bloomberg Politics

Is this just a stand-alone anecdote? No. Statistics show that this story is being repeated all across the nation. Look at this:

Wow.

Blue bar: Obamacare states where people with diabetes can receive care. Red bar: Red states where Republicans would rather play politics than care for their sick citizens.

I hope you don't have diabetes. But if you do, I hope you live in a state where they are more concerned with providing health care than with playing politics.

Of course people will tend use more of a free good. But that is not necessarily an advantage that being a much less recognizable matter.

Greenbeard · Feb 13, 2016

joG said:
Of course people will tend use more of a free good. But that is not necessarily an advantage that being a much less recognizable matter.

When it comes to people with chronic conditions like diabetes, ongoing management of their condition is certainly better than waiting for an expensive acute event to hit.

LetsGoBrandon · Feb 13, 2016

jpn said:
Clinton Looks to Nevada and Its Delegate-Rich Outskirts - Bloomberg Politics

Is this just a stand-alone anecdote? No. Statistics show that this story is being repeated all across the nation. Look at this:

Wow.

Blue bar: Obamacare states where people with diabetes can receive care. Red bar: Red states where Republicans would rather play politics than care for their sick citizens.

I hope you don't have diabetes. But if you do, I hope you live in a state where they are more concerned with providing health care than with playing politics.

For a few yes....for most....absolutely not. Millions are not paying more for health insurance premiums than home mortgage payments.....and for policies with a deductable of $6000.00 or more. Obamacare is a failed ponzi scheme that "Hussein Obama intended as a gateway top single payer:

joG · Feb 13, 2016

Greenbeard said:
When it comes to people with chronic conditions like diabetes, ongoing management of their condition is certainly better than waiting for an expensive acute event to hit.

There is no question that it can turn out to have been a bad mistake to have decided against health insurance.

jpn · Feb 13, 2016

joG said:
There is no question that it can turn out to have been a bad mistake to have decided against health insurance.

Before Obamacare, if you already had diabetes, YOU COULDN'T GET HEALTH INSURANCE. Got it?

jpn · Feb 13, 2016

ObamacareFail said:
For a few yes....for most....absolutely not. Millions are not paying more for health insurance premiums than home mortgage payments.....and for policies with a deductable of $6000.00 or more. Obamacare is a failed ponzi scheme that "Hussein Obama intended as a gateway top single payer:

So you imply that health care premiums have soared due to Obamacare. You provide no facts (anecdotes don't count) to back your assertion. I wonder why that is?

Here's the CBO, March 2015:

...when compared year by year, CBO and JCT’s estimates of the net budgetary impact of the ACA’s insurance coverage provisions have decreased notably, on balance, over the past five years (see Figure A-1).
...Another notable influence is the slowdown in the growth of health care costs covered by private insurance and in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

If all you do is watch Fox "News," then you have no idea what reality looks like.

joG · Feb 13, 2016

jpn said:
Before Obamacare, if you already had diabetes, YOU COULDN'T GET HEALTH INSURANCE. Got it?

I guess that might have been true in some cases. There are infants sick infants. To solve that problem only a very limited law would have been required, of course, and not a thousand pages.
But wasn't insulin available on Medicaid? I had had the impression that it was. Sort of like dailysis.

LetsGoBrandon · Feb 13, 2016

jpn said:
So you imply that health care premiums have soared due to Obamacare. You provide no facts (anecdotes don't count) to back your assertion. I wonder why that is?

Here's the CBO, March 2015:

If all you do is watch Fox "News," then you have no idea what reality looks like.

I have my own experiances as well as everyone else I know to go by. I do not give a damn about CBO numbers and updated biudget projections. I opted out of private healthcare insurance because my premiums under obamacare went up 300% and my deductable went up 500%. I also know what it has done to the business I am employed in. You are the one cherry picking news sources. I am pointing out the real world.

jpn · Feb 13, 2016

joG said:
I guess that might have been true in some cases. There are infants sick infants. To solve that problem only a very limited law would have been required, of course, and not a thousand pages.
But wasn't insulin available on Medicaid? I had had the impression that it was. Sort of like dailysis.

1). You can't force insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions without also making insurance mandatory for everyone. Otherwise, we'd all wait until we had to see the doctor before we bought health insurance. You can't make it mandatory without providing assistance to low-income people. Thus the law gets more and more complex.

2). I'm sure diabetics on Medicaid got treatment. But Obamacare covers people who have high enough incomes to not qualify for Medicaid (but they're still at poverty levels in most states), but not high enough incomes to afford health insurance premiums. It also expanded Medicaid coverage, but conservative states rejected that expansion because they'd rather play politics than make sure their citizens got the treatment they need. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it's true.

jpn · Feb 13, 2016

ObamacareFail said:
I have my own experiances as well as everyone else I know to go by. I do not give a damn about CBO numbers and updated biudget projections. I opted out of private healthcare insurance because my premiums under obamacare went up 300% and my deductable went up 500%. I also know what it has done to the business I am employed in. You are the one cherry picking news sources. I am pointing out the real world.

Actually the opposite is true. You provide anecdotes (which Surprise! appear to support your pre-existing opinion), but no actual facts to back up those anecdotes. I provide actual facts ("cherry picking new sources" uh huh, like the CBO's assessment, which is the gold standard for objective analysis in D.C.) which call your anecdotes into question. You just re-assert your anecdotes. You aren't very persuasive.

katzgar · Feb 14, 2016

ObamacareFail said:
For a few yes....for most....absolutely not. Millions are not paying more for health insurance premiums than home mortgage payments.....and for policies with a deductable of $6000.00 or more. Obamacare is a failed ponzi scheme that "Hussein Obama intended as a gateway top single payer:

when you put Hussein in there you totally blew any sort of honesty. OC is a success. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...-hugely-inconvenient-truth-for-its-opponents/

ocean515 · Feb 14, 2016

jpn said:
Clinton Looks to Nevada and Its Delegate-Rich Outskirts - Bloomberg Politics

Is this just a stand-alone anecdote? No. Statistics show that this story is being repeated all across the nation. Look at this:

Wow.

Blue bar: Obamacare states where people with diabetes can receive care. Red bar: Red states where Republicans would rather play politics than care for their sick citizens.

I hope you don't have diabetes. But if you do, I hope you live in a state where they are more concerned with providing health care than with playing politics.

Well, could you post the statistics for those people now diagnosed who have changed their lifestyle so they can address their diabetic condition?

After all: "seen a surge in diabetes diagnoses, a new study shows, particularly during the disease's earlier stages when changes in lifestyle can have a significant impact on a person's later health"

If they don't change their lifestyle so that other taxpayers end up supporting them, should they have their insurance cancelled? Should Obamacare contain a mechanism that forces people to comply to the treatment?

ludin · Feb 14, 2016

jpn said:
So you imply that health care premiums have soared due to Obamacare. You provide no facts (anecdotes don't count) to back your assertion. I wonder why that is?

Here's the CBO, March 2015:
If all you do is watch Fox "News," then you have no idea what reality looks like.

Healthcare costs rise again, and the burden continues to shift to workers - LA Times

yep they have soared.
in fact for 2016 insurance premiums went up another 20% on people in the exchange.

I am still waiting for my nonexistent 2500 premium reduction I haven't seen it yet but I have seen multiple year
premium increases and deductible increases as well.

you obviously don't understand that a slow down in growth is still prices increasing. yet insurance companies continue
to increase their prices and most are going to pull out of the exchange next year at least the major players.

Blue Cross, Aetna, UnitedHealth, and humana have all said they are probably going to pull out of the insurance
exchange. they are simply losing to much money and their multi-million dollar losses are not worth the price or the cost.

if all you do is read salon, dailykos, democratic underground, and mother jones you have no idea what reality looks like.

Greenbeard · Feb 14, 2016

ludin said:
Healthcare costs rise again, and the burden continues to shift to workers - LA Times

yep they have soared.
in fact for 2016 insurance premiums went up another 20% on people in the exchange.

Reality check:

Three years in, the ACA marketplace shows modest premium growth, fewer plan options and continued competition

Benchmark premiums – those for the second-lowest-cost silver plans – have begun creeping up in year three on the exchanges. In 2016, more states experienced an increase in their benchmark premium in the most populous county than in 2015, and fewer saw decreases. There were 20 states in 2016 where the benchmark premium in the most populous county grew by double digits, according to HRI’s analysis. In comparison, just five states experienced such increases in 2015. Eleven states did see decreases in the benchmark premium in 2016, but this is down from 25 states in 2015.

However, rate changes vary widely depending on individual states, geographic areas, companies, network types and enrollee demographics. Despite concerns about examples of significant rate hikes, overall national growth of these benchmark premiums over the three years has been modest and has largely mirrored increases in the employer market.

Between 2014 and 2015, benchmark premiums in the most populous counties decreased by 0.2% on average, HRI found.

Growth between 2015 and 2016 – at an average of about 4.2% – was higher than that between the first two years of operation.

This means that over three years, benchmark premiums in the most populous counties increased, on average, 4.0%. The median increase was 1.2%. This reflects a split in state experiences – a few have had significantly larger increases, pulling the average up.

The increase compares favorably to employer premiums for single coverage, which have grown an average of 4.4% each year for the last five years.

These findings echo an initial analysis conducted by HRI in 2014 which found that premiums for state-based exchange health plans were comparable to – and
in some cases lower than – those being offered by employers.3 The growth also falls well below the double-digit premium growth observed in the individual market prior to the ACA.4

Meanwhile, in larger spending trends: Has the Slowdown in Spending Growth Arrived?

The January 2016 trend report from the Altarum Institute continues the engrossing saga of recent trends in health care spending. Last month’s expanded report used data from the Census Bureau’s December Quarterly Services Survey to show that overall spending had notched up in the third quarter of 2015, and that spending in 2015 exceeded 2014. However there were also signs in these data that a slowdown may be approaching, as the increased spending was largely driven by coverage expansion, which seems to be at or near a plateau. Among the suggestive indicators in last month’s data was a beginning of a softening in the growth of new jobs in health care, and a reduction in the growth of spending on health care services, a very important component of overall spending.

This month’s results are quite consistent with this foreshadowing. The quarterly trend in overall health spending growth using the Altarum Health Spending Economic Indicators series shows a clear peak in Q1 2015 at 6.7 percent, with subsequent declines every quarter. Partial data for Q4 (October and November) show a spending growth rate of 5.2 percent. While overall spending growth in 2015 will clearly exceed that of 2014, a reduction appears to be underway.

LetsGoBrandon · Feb 14, 2016

jpn said:
Actually the opposite is true. You provide anecdotes (which Surprise! appear to support your pre-existing opinion), but no actual facts to back up those anecdotes. I provide actual facts ("cherry picking new sources" uh huh, like the CBO's assessment, which is the gold standard for objective analysis in D.C.) which call your anecdotes into question. You just re-assert your anecdotes. You aren't very persuasive.

You like CBO assessments? Read the following:

Forbes Welcome

And while your art it....read the following from the left wing New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/u...es-seek-big-rate-increases-for-2016.html?_r=0

LetsGoBrandon · Feb 14, 2016

katzgar said:
when you put Hussein in there you totally blew any sort of honesty. OC is a success. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...-hugely-inconvenient-truth-for-its-opponents/

Hussein is obama's middlle name....is it not? As for the Post article, it depends on what you call success. If you are eligible for the subsidies, you might consider it a success. If not, your rates are skyrocking and you see it as a big fat sh*t burger. Those are the realities. I dropped out of the healthcare market because I refuse to pay what obamacare has driven my rates up to. There is not a pro-obamacare article anywhere on the internet that will convince me that I am benefiting from Obamacare. The Post article conveniantly leaves out the downside. It's a conveniant form of cherry picking.

joG · Feb 14, 2016

jpn said:
1). You can't force insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions without also making insurance mandatory for everyone. Otherwise, we'd all wait until we had to see the doctor before we bought health insurance. You can't make it mandatory without providing assistance to low-income people. Thus the law gets more and more complex.

2). I'm sure diabetics on Medicaid got treatment. But Obamacare covers people who have high enough incomes to not qualify for Medicaid (but they're still at poverty levels in most states), but not high enough incomes to afford health insurance premiums. It also expanded Medicaid coverage, but conservative states rejected that expansion because they'd rather play politics than make sure their citizens got the treatment they need. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it's true.

The total approach is poor.

sangha · Feb 14, 2016

joG said:
Of course people will tend use more of a free good.

Yes, if prostate exams were free, everyone would want one :screwy

joG · Feb 14, 2016

sangha said:
Yes, if prostate exams were free, everyone would want one :screwy

Actually, my medicine costs nothing after the insurance premium and there are lots of tests i don't take. But I do have a number that probably won't prove necessary. But I don't see that the question is pertinent. You do not think that free goods will be resorted to more frequently that those that cost something?

sangha · Feb 14, 2016

joG said:
Actually, my medicine costs nothing after the insurance premium and there are lots of tests i don't take. But I do have a number that probably won't prove necessary. But I don't see that the question is pertinent. You do not think that free goods will be resorted to more frequently that those that cost something?

I've been itching to go through chemo but I'm waiting till it goes on sale.

jpn · Feb 14, 2016

ludin said:
Healthcare costs rise again, and the burden continues to shift to workers - LA Times
yep they have soared.
in fact for 2016 insurance premiums went up another 20% on people in the exchange. I am still waiting for my nonexistent 2500 premium reduction I haven't seen it yet but I have seen multiple year premium increases and deductible increases as well.
you obviously don't understand that a slow down in growth is still prices increasing. yet insurance companies continue to increase their prices and most are going to pull out of the exchange next year at least the major players. Blue Cross, Aetna, UnitedHealth, and humana have all said they are probably going to pull out of the insurance exchange. they are simply losing to much money and their multi-million dollar losses are not worth the price or the cost. if all you do is read salon, dailykos, democratic underground, and mother jones you have no idea what reality looks like.

First, no one ever seriously claimed that Obamacare would result in a net reduction in health costs. They hoped it would slow down the increase. And that it clearly did.

To your article: It's kind of telling that we liberals so often need to explain articles that conservatives think somehow prove their biases:
Your article says that the employee portion of employer-provided health insurance has risen. But why? Is that because of soaring health care costs, or is it the result of employers shifting more of the burden on employees?
Great question!?! What does your article say about that key point?

Raising deductibles and co-pays has traditionally been a way for employers to keep premiums in check.
And the new report shows that premium growth remained modest in 2015.
An average employer-provided health plan cost workers $1,071 in 2015. That is down nearly 1% from 2014, marking the first time that the survey has documented an absolute decline in workers’ share of premiums.The average family plan cost workers $4,955, up 3% from last year. By comparison, employees’ share of health insurance routinely shot up by double digits in the early 2000s.

Did you catch that? Okay, your article is even more explicit a bit later on:

There is also growing evidence that the steep rise in deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses such as co-pays are preventing workers from benefiting from the overall slowdown in healthcare cost growth.
A recent report by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning Washington think tank, showed that employers are largely pocketing savings while passing along higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs to workers.

So you cite an article that notes that employee premiums are soaring, but don't notice that this is due to employer greed, not soaring health care prices themselves. I wonder how many misinformed conservative employees, spoon-fed Fox "News" Pablum all evening, think the reason that their employer-provided insurance is rising is because of Obamacare rather than the real reason--employer greed. Based on your post, a lot.

jpn · Feb 14, 2016

ObamacareFail said:
You like CBO assessments? Read the following:
Forbes Welcome

Wow. Obamacare must be a total disaster!!!

Or, alternatively, maybe CBO's projections were been high because CBO assumed a larger shift of people to the Obamacare exchanges from either job-based health plans or individual plans sold outside of the exchanges. Which would be a good thing, right? The goal is to get people insured. How that occurs is secondary. Right? Maybe the CBO overestimated due to unexpectedly tame increases in insurance costs since the ACA was passed?

Let's see, how would we test this idea? I know, if Obamacare is the disaster you claim, then its key goal, to reduce the number of people without access to affordable health care, would not have improved at all. Well, let's see where the nation is on that score, shall we?

At the end of the day, this is what matters. Right?

Not whether people are covered by Medicaid or exchanges or employers or something else. It's whether or not they have coverage. And the ACA keeps beating expectations. Isn't that good for America? Isn't that good for our citizens?

Why doesn't that make you happy? Because it's bad for your political party? But if more citizens getting health insurance is bad for your party, it sounds to me like it's your party that has the problem. Maybe you should ask yourself what your priorities are.

Just sayin'...

LetsGoBrandon · Feb 15, 2016

jpn said:
Wow. Obamacare must be a total disaster!!!

Or, alternatively, maybe CBO's projections were been high because CBO assumed a larger shift of people to the Obamacare exchanges from either job-based health plans or individual plans sold outside of the exchanges. Which would be a good thing, right? The goal is to get people insured. How that occurs is secondary. Right? Maybe the CBO overestimated due to unexpectedly tame increases in insurance costs since the ACA was passed?

Let's see, how would we test this idea? I know, if Obamacare is the disaster you claim, then its key goal, to reduce the number of people without access to affordable health care, would not have improved at all. Well, let's see where the nation is on that score, shall we?

At the end of the day, this is what matters. Right?

Not whether people are covered by Medicaid or exchanges or employers or something else. It's whether or not they have coverage. And the ACA keeps beating expectations. Isn't that good for America? Isn't that good for our citizens?

Why doesn't that make you happy? Because it's bad for your political party? But if more citizens getting health insurance is bad for your party, it sounds to me like it's your party that has the problem. Maybe you should ask yourself what your priorities are.

Just sayin'...

Tame increases since ACA was passed? You have to be kidding. I do not consider my premiums going up 300% and my deductible going up 500% as tame. And enough of the "your party" nonsense. I am an independant. Technically more are insured under obamacare, however what good is insurance if you cannot afford to take advantage of it? At best, obamacare turned health insurance for most middle class Americans into prohibitively expensive catastrophic policies. The publicly claimed goal of the ACA was affordable health insurance. Health insurance was already expensive before the ACA now it is considerably more expensive. The only ones getting a break are the ones who qualify for subsidies. The problem is that everyone else is paying for those subsidies with exorbitant rates. If you cannot admit to the downsides of obamacare, how can you expect anyone to take you seriously?

ludin · Feb 15, 2016

Greenbeard said:
Reality check:

yes you do need a reality check.

Forbes Welcome
how is 11% increases from last year making costs go down?
how are higher deductibles making costs go down.

if things are going up they are not going down this is what is called a reality check.
some places saw a 20%+ increase depending on where the state was.

if things are going up that cannot mean that it is getting cheaper.
this is just basic logic.

Obamacare Saving, Improving Lives

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

joG

Greenbeard

LetsGoBrandon

joG

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

joG

LetsGoBrandon

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

katzgar

ocean515

ludin

Greenbeard

LetsGoBrandon

LetsGoBrandon

joG

sangha

joG

sangha

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

jpn

Retired Navy Commander

LetsGoBrandon

ludin