*

 

This one was drawn by a friend of mine, a local editorial cartoonist. (Halloween)

 

Trick or trick!

 

Former New Hampshire GOP Chair Saves $1,000 A Month With Obamacare


WASHINGTON -- The former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party will save $1,000 a month in premiums for his family's health care package after signing up for a new policy through the Obamacare exchange.

But Fergus Cullen said the savings aren't enough to turn him into a supporter of the new health care law. He said he anticipates higher out-of-pocket costs with his new Anthem-administered plan, and he's frustrated by what he sees as a lack of information about coverage options. His old plan, which was pricey but covered what he needed, was cancelled by his insurer because it didn't meet Obamacare regulations.

"Fundamentally, the plan I wanted to buy is one that gives me catastrophic coverage for my family and lets me self-insure for everything else," Cullen said in a phone interview with The Huffington Post.

Stories similar to Cullen's are being told by folks across the country -- that the Affordable Care Act has benefits that must be weighed against its downsides. What makes his tale a bit rarer is that he's one of the few Republicans of stature willing to acknowledge the tradeoffs.

Cullen, who runs the consulting firm Fergus Cullen Communications, was chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party in 2007 and 2008. He wrote about his Obamacare experience in the pages of the conservative-leaning New Hampshire Union Leader. He acknowledged that other Republicans had warned him that the article would be picked up by defenders of the law as evidence that it worked even for staunch, free-market oriented conservatives.

But his personal experience with Obamacare -- and his assessment of the law –- is not an endorsement. If anything, it's part approval, part condemnation, and part withheld judgment.

First, the facts. Per Cullen, his family of five spent $26,934.89 on health care last year, a combination of insurance premiums (the majority of the cost) and out-of-pocket expenses. The year before, that number was $22,121.50. In other words, his costs were rising prior to Obamacare exchanges going into effect.

Cullen called his insurer to see if he could lower the cost. The company said no, and sent him a letter explaining that on July 1, 2014, his individual health plan would no longer be offered. It "didn't conform to ACA mandates," Cullen wrote. His insurance agent searched for new plans and found options comparable to his old one that potentially saved money. Cullen then logged on to healthcare.gov. Since New Hampshire did not set up its own exchange, he had to use the federal website.

Cullen acknowledged that he was pleasantly surprised by the experience. "I didn't need to start and stop and didn't need to call a friend," he said. But he wondered if his less tech-savvy parents would be able to do the same. He described the experience in the Union Leader:

Whatever problems existed last October, the site is pretty impressive now, intuitive for people who are used to using smartphones and tablets. Navigating the site took most of an hour. The program did crash once while I registered my family, but when I logged back in it took me right back to where I’d been without losing any information.

He ended up with a bronze plan (the least comprehensive of the tiers available to his family) that will save him in premiums about $12,000 a year. And this is before applying for tax credits, which he said he was thinking of doing. Tax credits are available to a family of five with an income of less than $110,280.

So what's to complain about? For one, Cullen said he's worried about out-of-pocket costs, which he said may be unpredictable. But under the law, out-of-pocket costs are capped at $12,700 a year per family. So at the most, he may end up spending $700 more this year than last (the difference between the savings on premiums and the out-of-pocket maximum).

Second, Cullen said there's a lack of general information about what his plan actually does for him and his family.

"I don’t know what prescriptions are covered exactly," Cullen said. "We don’t have dental, for example. So I'm expecting that my out-of-pocket is going to be higher."

The main issue that Cullen has, however, is that he doesn't want to pay for services he feels are unnecessary or redundant. The analogy he uses is car ownership. "You don’t buy car insurance for your oil changes," he said. "You buy it for those things you can't predict." In other words, he thinks he shouldn't have to pay insurance costs for preventative services because he can handle those expenses himself.

What Cullen wants, instead, is a form of a la carte insurance with catastrophic care component. Since he is paying lower premiums now than he did prior to Obamacare, and since catastrophic care generally has a high deductible, it's unclear how much that would actually save him. Cullen acknowledged that he may, indeed, end up with lower costs.

"Am I complaining about the outcome? Not as much as I am complaining about the process and my total lack of confidence that they fixed the system," he said.

And that brings him to his final, larger critique. Cullen said he believes Obamacare does too little to streamline health care services and reduce costs.

"I don’t think this addresses any of the fundamental broken aspects," he said, "which is that consumers don't know the costs and the providers have no incentives to hold down costs and that huge amounts of our economy are being directed in non-productive ways."

 

Repeat.

 

Sebelius: Higher Premiums and ‘No Idea’ Who’s Paid

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal...miums-and-no-idea-whos-paid/?intcmp=obnetwork

 

Ace would you expect obama and minions to actually tell the truth?

 

http://www.providencejournal.com/br...ing-younger-people-to-sign-up-causes-stir.ece

HealthSource RI’s ad campaign aimed at getting younger people to sign up causes stir




[FONT=Georgia !important]PROVIDENCE, R.I. — So you’ve signed up for the dating website OKCupid, looking for love. But instead of your dream date, your nagging mother shows up haranguing you to buy health insurance before the clock runs out.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia !important]A new social media ad campaign by HealthSource RI aimed at getting younger Rhode Islanders to sign up for private health insurance plans by the March 31{+s}{+t} deadline is drawing national attention this week — not all of it positive.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]The Rhode Island health-benefits exchange campaign uses Facebook ads targeting so-called “young invincibles” [ages 23 to 33], teasing them that unless they enroll, HealthSource RI “will teach their mothers how to find them on social media.”[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]A separate Facebook ad aimed at women 45 and older does just that. The “Nag Toolkit” (www.nagtoolkit.com) shows them how to register for dating and social media sites and apps such as Tinder, OkCupid, Twitter, Snapchat and Vine, so they can “mercilessly” nag their children to sign up for health care.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]“Creepy,” said the Washington Post. “A little unsettling,” said BuzzFeed. “Weird,” “desperate,” and “curious,” Obamacare critics have opined.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia !important]HealthSource RI director Christine Ferguson said Wednesday that the campaign “is going beautifully. Since Thursday, we have had close to 1,100 young people click through from the ad to HealthSource RI” at www.healthsourceri.com.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia !important]Ferguson acknowledged the criticism, saying, “Some people like the ad, some people don’t like the ad — it’s tongue-in-cheek.”[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]The Nag Toolkit provides step-by-step tutorials, including “create a provocative username,” upload a photo, create a profile, find son/daughter and send messages saying, ‘Get health insurance.’ ”[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia !important]Ferguson said, “The point wasn’t to get moms actually to sign up; the point was to get people to start talking about it.”[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]She added, “The most important thing to me, and to us, is that it sparks the conversation and it gets people interested enough to look at the issue and look at what the possibilities for coverage are. Based on the number of people we’ve seen in a very short time without any publicity, I think it’s a success.”[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]Ferguson said she tried out the campaign on her 22-year-old son, who attends Drew University.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]“I actually went through it with a bunch of kids from the rugby team, and people from the theater department, and his friends, and tested out what their reactions were. And they thought it was a really great campaign.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia !important]“Their initial reaction was to cringe and say, ‘Oh my god.’ But immediately after the cringe, there were a whole lot of belly laughs … they thought it was hilarious. They thought it made the point.”[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]The marketing campaign cost $14,535, and was done by NAIL, the Rhode Island exchange’s Providence-based advertising firm, said HealthSource RI spokeswoman Dara Chadwick.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]The HealthSource RI ads come as the Obama administration races the clock with its own publicity campaign, much of it aimed at enrolling young people — the 18- to 34-year-olds considered critical to keeping premiums reasonable under the systems established by the national health-care law.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia !important]The Facebook advertisements will run through the end of March. March 31 marks the last day individuals can get covered in 2014 and avoid paying a federal penalty.[/FONT]
-------------------

 

fucking criminals wasting more tax dollars on bullshit. The people don't want the shit because they know they are getting fucked.

 

Is anyone surprised this is happening under Obama's Mini Me?

http://bostonherald.com/business/he...90m_in_connector_penalties_just_the_beginning

Expert: $90M in Connector penalties just the beginning





The state could lose up to $90 million in federal funds because lingering problems with its disastrous Obama*care website have kept tens of thousands of people on health plans that were supposed to expire in January — forcing it to burn up cigarette tax funds to fill the gap — and that’s only part of a fast-approaching hit on taxpayers, experts told the Herald.

“Ninety million extra is a floor for what the coming taxpayer bill will be,” said Joshua Archambault, a health care expert at the Pioneer Institute. “Taxpayers will pay for all the pieces of this puzzle that they wouldn’t be paying for if the site had worked.”

The Health Connector is asking for an extension through Sept. 30 for more than 100,000 people on subsidized plans known as Commonwealth Care — who haven’t been able to move to Obamacare-compliant plans because of the bad site, leaving the Bay State with an approximately $10 million a month penalty in federal funding.

“This is the impact of lost federal revenue, lost federal support, due to IT system challenges,” Administration and Finance Secretary Glen Shor told the Herald yesterday. So the state will now tap a Connector trust fund used to subsidize health care costs — including cigarette tax revenue — to help fix the mess.

But the $90 million is just one of the costs piling up in the signature Democratic program that has become a headache for Gov. Deval Patrick. Optum, the company hired earlier this year to address technology issues, is charging $16.4 million just through March. Consulting group MITRE also reviewed the system and filed two different reports, though it’s unclear how much they’ll be paid.

Developer CGI has only been paid $15 million of its $69 million milestone-based contract, but it is unclear whether the state will have to shell out more. Then there is the cost of placing 84,000 Bay Staters on temporary Medicaid coverage — after the state was overwhelmed by the backlog of applications and couldn’t process them before applicants’ plans expired.

“The cost of temporary coverage will still need to unfold,” Shor said.

“There are a number of variables.”

Stakeholders find the uncertainty unacceptable.

“It’s concerning that the state remains unable to quantify the total cost of ownership for their utter failure to comply with the federal health care overhaul,” said David A. Shore of the Massachusetts Association of Health Underwriters. “Perhaps more concerning is their complete lack of transparency and accountability on these complex financial issues to residents of the commonwealth.”

The experts say with temporary insurance, some new customers who are eligible for some subsidies are essentially getting a free ride now — avoiding hundreds of dollars in premiums and out-of-pocket costs — while the state figures out their eligibility. An unknown number of applicants may not be eligible at all.

“Literally anybody in the commonwealth could sign up right now and be put onto the program,” Archambault said.

Exactly who pays for the expenses they rack up in the meantime is still unclear, but Shore predicted all of this will simply drive up health care costs in the end.

“History suggests that the administration will attempt to recoup these monies through assessments on health insurance premiums paid for by small businesses and individual consumers,” Shore said. “This is something that all consumers should watch carefully.”

 

A family living on min wage gets medicaid!

 

I tried to read through the vitriol.

As a European simplify this for me......please!

Is this about the more wealthy paying a contribution to how your country looks after its incapable?

Do you think that the standard of care you receive should depend on your ability to pay or on the capability of your medical profession?

Remember I am just a European. Here in Holland I pay more than the average but receive the same standard of care.

A confused Thinskin.

 

This song expresses the way Republicans and libertarians want things to be:

If living was a thing that money can buy
The rich would live, and the poor would die.

 

A straight answer to my two questions would have facilitated my understanding DL!

Thinskin

 

It should have been obvious that the answers to your questions were, "Yes," and "Yes."

 

The second question was not yes or no!

You are a contradiction DL.

Thinskin

 

http://nypost.com/2014/03/21/obamas-ever-growing-insurance-company-bailout/

Obama’s ever-growing insurance company bailout



Health-insurance executives are starting to warn of double- and even triple-digit premium hikes for health plans sold on the ObamaCare exchanges for 2015. But Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Congress last week that any ObamaCare premium hikes would be modest. In fact, the Obama administration is scrambling to rewrite the law to make that happen.

After close of business Friday, the administration proposed greater bailout protection for insurers who sell exchange plans. The new rule sweetens what the Affordable Care Act provided (at taxpayer expense, of course) to protect the companies from losses. It’s illegal, because no president has the constitutional authority to rewrite any law, including the Affordable Care Act.

It’s a clear effort to head off these sky-high premium hikes, which would be announced publicly in the months ahead, further angering voters just before the November elections.

Until last Friday, insurers faced two options: Hike premiums skyward or drop out of ObamaCare. The administration is providing a third option — an enhanced bailout for companies that incur losses.

The Affordable Care Act, as written and enacted in 2010, already contained a bailout provision, Section 1342, to make insurers whole for losses up to a point.

Such losses were likely, because ObamaCare rules make it impossible for an insurer to offer “affordable” plans and still cover costs. The premiums have to cover a long list of mandatory benefits, as well as $100 billion in taxes that the law imposes on insurers over the decade. And premiums have to cover the cost of caring for seriously ill people for the same price as healthy people. Every state that tried this “community rating” scheme (including New York ) has seen premiums soar as the healthy, unwilling to foot the bill, stop buying insurance.

The bailout provision (known as “risk corridors”) was inserted to encourage insurers to set premiums low, secure in the knowledge that their downside risks were limited. It went unnoticed until last November, when public outrage over millions of canceled plans moved President Obama to make one of his many ad-hoc changes to the law.

As written, the law forced insurers to cancel policies that didn’t comply with Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all coverage requirements. But the president told insurers they could keep selling the noncompliant plans. When the companies complained that this sudden change would wind up costing them money, Obama health official Gary Cohen pointed to Section 1342 and even promised to sweeten the bailout’s rules to “provide additional assistance.”

And that help came Friday, when the administration lawlessly enlarged the bailout for 2015. The key change hikes insurers’ permissible profit margins from the 3 percent spelled out in the Affordable Care Act to 5 percent, a hefty increase. Another “fix” (this one to HHS regulations) would increase how much of premiums can be spent on things other than patient care — pushing it up from 20 percent to 22 percent — allowing more for administration, salaries, etc.

So insurers can make more money, deliver less to patients out of their premiums and still qualify for a bailout. Nice.

President Obama continues to dismantle his own law, hacking off some provisions and remaking others as needed in order to minimize Democratic losses this fall — health reform be damned. Other recent ad-hoc changes include letting people continue to buy their old, noncompliant plans through 2016, and virtually eliminating the tax on people who don’t buy insurance.
Popular with John Q. Public, perhaps, until he finds out he has to prop up the insurers who’ll lose money because of these changes.

But only through 2016, when the law says the bailouts will end. Conveniently, that’s also when Obama leaves office and insurers have to face the music.

No wonder the rating agency Moody’s just lowered its outlook on the insurance industry from stable to negative, blaming the “ongoing unstable and evolving environment” as the health-care law proves unworkable.
In 2016, it seems, insurers will start paying their due for embracing a scheme that forces the public to buy their product and bail them out to boot. Just deserts.

The real victim is John Q. Public — forced to throw good money after bad to prop up the president’s unworkable law.



--------------------------
Who said it's not affordable, huh? Obama can afford anything when he's spending everyone else's money.

 

I still love how they continue to beef up bailouts for the insurance companies, but as usual fuck the individual person struggling to put one meal a day on the table, the government will crash them into the ground without a second of thought. People will not have a home or car because they have to pay 75% of their check to insurance premiums. No home no car nothing to eat but they have a healthcare plan that will pay out some after the individual pays $10,000 deductible out of pocket. That is the best thing a government could ever do for the people, they should be on their knees praying to obamas kindness

 

GET THE FACTS

The government makes the payments not you silly. I just got it and I will pay 3 dollars a month for three hundred and fifty dollars worth of humana care per month. This is the first time in my life I can go to a real doctor and not the emergency room. Thank you so very much Mr. President for looking out for the elderly and people with less income cause no one else gives a shit.