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Omamacare is Romneycare.

I'm Supposn

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The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, (“Omamacare”) is conceptually “Romneycare”.

The federal Patient Protection Affordable Care Act was modeled after the existing medical policy that was signed by the then Massachusetts Republican governor Mitt Romney.

Romneycare's individuals' mandated requirement for individuals to purchase or otherwise acquire acceptable medical insurance was a concept advocated by “right-wingers” such as the Heritage Foundation think-tank. They proposed it to enable non-government medical insurance continuous existence. Without sufficient proportions of the population's participation within a medical insurance plan, any (government or non-government) medical insurance provisions for not considering applicants' previous medical conditions are much less financially sustainable.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, (“Omamacare”) is conceptually “Romneycare”.

The federal Patient Protection Affordable Care Act was modeled after the existing medical policy that was signed by the then Massachusetts Republican governor Mitt Romney.

Romneycare's individuals' mandated requirement for individuals to purchase or otherwise acquire acceptable medical insurance was a concept advocated by “right-wingers” such as the Heritage Foundation think-tank. They proposed it to enable non-government medical insurance continuous existence. Without sufficient proportions of the population's participation within a medical insurance plan, any (government or non-government) medical insurance provisions for not considering applicants' previous medical conditions are much less financially sustainable.

Respectfully, Supposn

Is your point that Romney is as big a dildo as the Democratics?
 
Your first sentence is incorrect. A small portion of the omnibus law called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is drawn from the Massachusetts plan signed by Mitt Romney. The majority is not and some parts are contradictory. Two major areas of difference are the mandated coverages and the actuarial soundness of the plan.

You have repeated an old political spin which is about as accurate as calling Obama the fracking President.
 
Your first sentence is incorrect. A small portion of the omnibus law called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is drawn from the Massachusetts plan signed by Mitt Romney. The majority is not and some parts are contradictory. Two major areas of difference are the mandated coverages and the actuarial soundness of the plan.

You have repeated an old political spin which is about as accurate as calling Obama the fracking President.

The mandate is drawn from the Heritage Foundation blueprint.
 
Your first sentence is incorrect. A small portion of the omnibus law called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is drawn from the Massachusetts plan signed by Mitt Romney. The majority is not and some parts are contradictory. Two major areas of difference are the mandated coverages and the actuarial soundness of the plan.

You have repeated an old political spin which is about as accurate as calling Obama the fracking President.
Jay59,
The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, (“Omamacare”) is conceptually “Romneycare”.

The federal Patient Protection Affordable Care Act was modeled after the existing medical policy that was signed by the then Massachusetts Republican governor Mitt Romney.

Romneycare's individuals' mandated requirement for individuals to purchase or otherwise acquire acceptable medical insurance was a concept advocated by “right-wingers” such as the Heritage Foundation think-tank. They proposed it to enable non-government medical insurance continuous existence. Without sufficient proportions of the population's participation within a medical insurance plan, any (government or non-government) medical insurance provisions for not considering applicants' previous medical conditions are much less financially sustainable. Respectfully, Supposn

Excerpted from: Massachusetts health care reform - Wikipedia
Massachusetts health care reform
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a health care reform law in 2006 with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of its residents. The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL)[1] and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance. ...
... the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, also known as the Massachusetts Health Connector. The Connector acts as an insurance broker to offer free, highly subsidized and full-price private insurance plans to residents, including through its web site. As such it is one of the models of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. The 2006 Massachusetts law successfully covered approximately two-thirds of the state's then-uninsured residents, half via federal-government-paid-for Medicaid expansion (administered by MassHealth) and half via the Connector's free and subsidized network-tiered health care insurance for those not eligible for expanded Medicaid. Relatively few Massachusetts residents used the Connector to buy full-priced insurance.
After implementation of the law, 98% of Massachusetts residents had health coverage.
 
These observations could have been made a full ten years ago now. It's well understood that the support for the ACA has had broad bipartisan support, conceptually, albeit at different points in time because of partisan politics.
 
Jay59,

Excerpted from: Massachusetts health care reform - Wikipedia
Massachusetts health care reform
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a health care reform law in 2006 with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of its residents. The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL)[1] and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance. ...
... the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, also known as the Massachusetts Health Connector. The Connector acts as an insurance broker to offer free, highly subsidized and full-price private insurance plans to residents, including through its web site. As such it is one of the models of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. The 2006 Massachusetts law successfully covered approximately two-thirds of the state's then-uninsured residents, half via federal-government-paid-for Medicaid expansion (administered by MassHealth) and half via the Connector's free and subsidized network-tiered health care insurance for those not eligible for expanded Medicaid. Relatively few Massachusetts residents used the Connector to buy full-priced insurance.
After implementation of the law, 98% of Massachusetts residents had health coverage.
You have presented nothing which contradicts anything I stated, but it appears you think you have. The OP first sentence is still in error.

These observations could have been made a full ten years ago now. It's well understood that the support for the ACA has had broad bipartisan support, conceptually, albeit at different points in time because of partisan politics.
It would be more accurate to say that there is wide bipartisan opposition. Specific elements have support but the entire law is a trainwreck.
 
You have presented nothing which contradicts anything I stated, but it appears you think you have. The OP first sentence is still in error.

It would be more accurate to say that there is wide bipartisan opposition. Specific elements have support but the entire law is a trainwreck.

I'm not a huge fan of it overall, but I really wonder what its potential could be if a few glitches/failures embedded in it were changed:

1) Eliminate the subsidy cap (at 400% of the FPL)
2) Eliminate the disqualification from subsidies based on an employer's offer of coverage
 
You have presented nothing which contradicts anything I stated, but it appears you think you have. The OP first sentence is still in error.


It would be more accurate to say that there is wide bipartisan opposition. Specific elements have support but the entire law is a trainwreck.

The "Romneycare" parts (i.e., certain coverage/insurance market-related pieces of the law) are the controversial parts: namely the individual and employer mandates needed to deter adverse selection and employer dumping once you eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions in the individual market.

The non-Romneycare stuff in the ACA--like reforming Medicare to link payment to performance and move the market toward more sustainable business models, increasing transparency and accountability across the system, modernizing the nation's antifraud strategy, building up the nation's health care workforce, investing in our public health and prevention infrastructure, etc--has a great deal of bipartisan support.

As for the "trainwreck" rhetoric, get real.
 
I'm not a huge fan of it overall, but I really wonder what its potential could be if a few glitches/failures embedded in it were changed:

1) Eliminate the subsidy cap (at 400% of the FPL)
2) Eliminate the disqualification from subsidies based on an employer's offer of coverage

Used to be that if your employer coverage was going to cost you more than 8% of your income, you could take the value of your employer's financial contribution to the company plan and put it toward any plan sold in the open marketplace. In essence you would be uncoupled from your group--probably self-insured--plan and got to shop in the marketplaces without giving up your employer's financial support. That was one of the first pieces of the ACA the GOP repealed in 2011 when they took the House, so it was never implemented. I'm all for supporting ways toward organically moving the employer market to either transition into the individual market or effectively mimic it (which is what I had hoped the employee choice aspect of the SHOP exchanges would facilitate).

Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!
 
Used to be that if your employer coverage was going to cost you more than 8% of your income, you could take the value of your employer's financial contribution to the company plan and put it toward any plan sold in the open marketplace. In essence you would be uncoupled from your group--probably self-insured--plan and got to shop in the marketplaces without giving up your employer's financial support. That was one of the first pieces of the ACA the GOP repealed in 2011 when they took the House, so it was never implemented. I'm all for supporting ways toward organically moving the employer market to either transition into the individual market or effectively mimic it (which is what I had hoped the employee choice aspect of the SHOP exchanges would facilitate).

Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!

I wonder if the employee choice would have created adverse selection in employer groups. For example the employers I've had pay the same amount per employee, unadjusted for age, so as a relatively young person, it would have always made sense to take the employer's contribution and shop with it (and I'd have bought an HDHP starting over 10 years ago and have tens of thousands in health savings by now). If employer pools were full of old and unhealthy people, then wouldn't the "employer's share" be inflated for younger employees based on that?

Eliminating the 400% cap alone could do a lot, I feel. People's cost would increase with income, not age (though perhaps it should tick up a bit with age, too, which it doesn't currently for the employer-insured and subsidy-eligible).
 
I wonder if the employee choice would have created adverse selection in employer groups. For example the employers I've had pay the same amount per employee, unadjusted for age, so as a relatively young person, it would have always made sense to take the employer's contribution and shop with it (and I'd have bought an HDHP starting over 10 years ago and have tens of thousands in health savings by now). If employer pools were full of old and unhealthy people, then wouldn't the "employer's share" be inflated for younger employees based on that?

All the more reason to get out of the insurance business and let all of your employees take a contribution to put toward their coverage in a SHOP exchange!
 
Used to be that if your employer coverage was going to cost you more than 8% of your income, you could take the value of your employer's financial contribution to the company plan and put it toward any plan sold in the open marketplace. In essence you would be uncoupled from your group--probably self-insured--plan and got to shop in the marketplaces without giving up your employer's financial support.
That was one of the first pieces of the ACA the GOP repealed in 2011 when they took the House, so it was never implemented. I'm all for supporting ways toward organically moving the employer market to either transition into the individual market or effectively mimic it (which is what I had hoped the employee choice aspect of the SHOP exchanges would facilitate).

Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!
Green beard, my interpretation of larger employers medical insurance responsibilities as described within
Employer Responsibility Under the Affordable Care Act | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation , is:
If an employer of 50 or more full time employees
and
offers affordable medical insurance to 95% of those employees,
and
the insurance pays for no less than 60% of the covered health care for “a standard population (called minimum value)”,
then that employer is in compliance with the federal Patient Protection Affordable-Care-Act.

I'm confused upon that mouthful of “a standard population (called minimum value)”. Is this a concept that replaced the concept of the 8% of an employees income that you referred to? If you have some insight to this, please help me understand it.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
Used to be that if your employer coverage was going to cost you more than 8% of your income, you could take the value of your employer's financial contribution to the company plan and put it toward any plan sold in the open marketplace. In essence you would be uncoupled from your group--probably self-insured--plan and got to shop in the marketplaces without giving up your employer's financial support. That was one of the first pieces of the ACA the GOP repealed in 2011 when they took the House, so it was never implemented. I'm all for supporting ways toward organically moving the employer market to either transition into the individual market or effectively mimic it (which is what I had hoped the employee choice aspect of the SHOP exchanges would facilitate).

Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!
Green beard, the Republicans voted to repeal permitting employees' some determination of their own individual medical insurance at little or no additional cost to their employer?

Even if something is better promotes individual employees' self determinations and is of little or no additional cost to employers or our government, Republic Party's policy is not to support anything that may not be politically detrimental to Democrats? Given a choice between serving their nation or their party, they generally choose in favor of of their party?

Respectfully, Supposn
 
All the more reason to get out of the insurance business and let all of your employees take a contribution to put toward their coverage in a SHOP exchange!

Need that 400% FPL thing to go away, and that could start happening.

Where I used to live and work, the employer is paying 40% of a 55-year old employee's gross wages toward health insurance for that employee and her spouse. The employee/spouse's share of the premiums were $3,000 a year. Thanks to the subsidy cliff, if we had gotten out of the insurance business, that $3,000 would have jumped to over $40,000 per year in premiums, on a household income of about $80,000. Net of the employer share distributed to the employee, that's still ~$20,000 per year net increase in premium cost to the employee.
 
... Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the [medical insurance] premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!

Greenbeard, isn't the tax credits for medical insurance premiums and a federal subsidy of insurance for individuals with incomes that do not exceed 400% of the federal poverty line both sufficiently generous?

Wouldn't increasing those individuals' tax credits or caps upon those subsidies be net detrimental to our annual federal budgets?
Why do you believe increasing the annual federal budget deficits in those particular cases would be justified?

Respectfully, Supposn
 
Need that 400% FPL thing to go away, and that could start happening.

Where I used to live and work, the employer is paying 40% of a 55-year old employee's gross wages toward health insurance for that employee and her spouse. The employee/spouse's share of the premiums were $3,000 a year. Thanks to the subsidy cliff, if we had gotten out of the insurance business, that $3,000 would have jumped to over $40,000 per year in premiums, on a household income of about $80,000. Net of the employer share distributed to the employee, that's still ~$20,000 per year net increase in premium cost to the employee.
Neomalthusian, in what state does medical insurance cost $40,000 annually for a married couple? Respectfully, Supposn
 
While the ACA was being debated, I brought up the point on some of these politics discussion boards that the ACA was nothing more than Romneycare, and was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation. The response I usually got was that it's OK for states to implement it at the state level, but it's unconstitutional to implement it at the national level.

I don't know. I think that's all just an excuse, and they just wanted to make sure Obama didn't pass anything to make him look bad.
 
These observations could have been made a full ten years ago now. It's well understood that the support for the ACA has had broad bipartisan support, conceptually, albeit at different points in time because of partisan politics.

They were, ad nauseum.
Didn't matter...Republicans seized on the fact that a Democratic administration was pushing the idea, so man the battle stations. And they did. And several turncoat "Democrats" (who have proven all along that they're really just Republicans) helped them.

Joe Lieberman is the single reason the Public Option never even made it to the floor of the Senate.

“A public option plan is unnecessary,” he told Fox News. “It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance.”

True, President Obama could have fought tooth and nail, but he didn't. I don't know if he was simply trying to placate the Republicans, or if he simply threw in the towel due to weakness.
But former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter tells the story.

ELIMINATION OF ‘PUBLIC OPTION’ THREW CONSUMERS TO THE INSURANCE WOLVES
Wendell Potter, February 2015

Knowing the industry as I did, I told the committee that if Congress failed to create a public option to compete with private insurers, “the bill it sends to the President might as well be called “The Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”
 
While the ACA was being debated, I brought up the point on some of these politics discussion boards that the ACA was nothing more than Romneycare, and was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation. The response I usually got was that it's OK for states to implement it at the state level, but it's unconstitutional to implement it at the national level.

I don't know. I think that's all just an excuse, and they just wanted to make sure Obama didn't pass anything to make him look bad.

Mitch McConnell codified that verbatim immediately after Obama won in 2008. In January 2009 he made it clear that Obama would NEVER pass anything if he could help it.
 
Used to be that if your employer coverage was going to cost you more than 8% of your income, you could take the value of your employer's financial contribution to the company plan and put it toward any plan sold in the open marketplace. In essence you would be uncoupled from your group--probably self-insured--plan and got to shop in the marketplaces without giving up your employer's financial support. That was one of the first pieces of the ACA the GOP repealed in 2011 when they took the House, so it was never implemented. I'm all for supporting ways toward organically moving the employer market to either transition into the individual market or effectively mimic it (which is what I had hoped the employee choice aspect of the SHOP exchanges would facilitate).

Anyway, I agree it's long past time to make the premium tax credits more generous and remove the 400% FPL cap. That's quite high on Congressional Dems' agenda!

It's long past time we forget the idea of fighting to get insurance companies to take their foot off our throat, and just implement single payer.
 
Green beard, my interpretation of larger employers medical insurance responsibilities as described within
Employer Responsibility Under the Affordable Care Act | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation , is:
If an employer of 50 or more full time employees
and
offers affordable medical insurance to 95% of those employees,
and
the insurance pays for no less than 60% of the covered health care for “a standard population (called minimum value)”,
then that employer is in compliance with the federal Patient Protection Affordable-Care-Act.

I'm confused upon that mouthful of “a standard population (called minimum value)”. Is this a concept that replaced the concept of the 8% of an employees income that you referred to? If you have some insight to this, please help me understand it.

Respectfully, Supposn

Healthcare should have never been tied to employment. Sorry, but employers should not be in the health insurance business at all to begin with.
 
While the ACA was being debated, I brought up the point on some of these politics discussion boards that the ACA was nothing more than Romneycare, and was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation. The response I usually got was that it's OK for states to implement it at the state level, but it's unconstitutional to implement it at the national level.

I don't know. I think that's all just an excuse, and they just wanted to make sure Obama didn't pass anything to make him look bad.
Ataraxia, since Theodore Roosevelt's administrations, the concept of the population's medical conditions being of government's concern has been advocated by some Republican and Democratic presidents. The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, (the first federal act upholding that concept), was passed and enacted during Bock Obama's administration, it will increasingly improve his reputed historical status.

Similarly to federal Social Security retirement, and the federal minimum wage rate, it would be futile for a political party to attempt eliminating, or undermining, or otherwise reducing federal laws or regulations regarding individual's entitlements of medical insurance; It would be politically detrimental to do so.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
Healthcare should have never been tied to employment. Sorry, but employers should not be in the health insurance business at all, to begin with.
Checkerboard Strangler, those more to the left want to “stick it” to employers; too many employers believe they'll benefit more if the money all flows first through employers and/or conservatives believe it will some how cost taxpayers more if the money doesn't flow through employers first.

I absolutely agree, “employers should not be in the health insurance business” and federal basic single payer medical insurance is the best way to go. Respectfully, Supposn
 
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