Obama Admin knew millions could not keep their health ins.

[Peter_Plato]

There are 30 million people in Canada…there are over 300 million here. Half of my family are Canadian.They tell me that they actually still have to have a supplemental plan through their employer since the government run insurance only covers certain things. I am of the opinion that what is happening now with this legislation (ACA) was meant to happen.He (Obama) wants single payer and this is the long road to getting it.The problem is he’ ll need the middle class to pay for it and they are shrinking at an alarming rate. As to impeachment? Wont happen. Neither party has the political will(for different reasons) to carry it out.

So you seem to be saying that while Canadian style health care is not “good enough,” your family is still willing to shell out additional monies to make their health coverage more extensive rather than adopting the position of “pay as you go.” That doesn’t argue that Canadian style health care is undesirable, but only that it is in some ways insufficient and your family is quite willing to pay more to get that care.

Notice they do not seem to be insisting that basic health care should be dumped in favour of some other option. Are they?

When you say only “certain things” are covered, perhaps you can run through the following list of those “certain things” and point out which others SHOULD be included under a plan that costs a family earning about 100k approximately $6700 through taxes. (I demonstrated that in a previous post and am quite willing to refresh the info.)

Basic services covered by the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan

Examinations
Medically required surgery
Standard Ward Hospitalization
Medically necessary use of a semi-private or private room
Private nursing care, ordered by the attending physician and meeting the hospital’s by-laws
Pacemakers, steel plates, pins, joint prostheses, valve implants and any goods approved by the Minister (unless they are enhanced goods and services)
Accommodation and meals at the standard or public ward level
Necessary nursing services
Laboratory, radiological and other diagnostic procedures (including interpretation) to maintain health, prevent disease and help diagnose/treat any injury, illness or disability
Drugs, biologicals and related preparations administered in a hospital (as specified in the Hospitalization Benefits Regulation)
Use of operating room, case room and anaesthetic facilities, plus the necessary equipment and supplies • Routine surgical supplies
Use of radiotherapy facilities
Use of physical therapy facilities
Services supplied by persons being paid by the hospital
Hospitalization Benefits (In-patients)
Transporting a patient in Alberta by ambulance or other commercial vehicle from one facility to another
Goods and services included in an approved hospital or specific program (unless they are enhanced goods and services)
Hospitalization Benefits (Outpatients)
Medically necessary goods and services provided to an outpatient, including goods used in a medical procedure but excluding goods given to a patient to use after discharge.
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Services
Diagnostic interview and evaluation or consultation
Insured oral surgery
This information is not intended to cover all instances. If you are unsure whether a medical service is insured, please contact our office.

Could you find a comparable plan pre or post the “ACA” that even comes close to the above for about the same cost, then we can talk about affordable care.

The fact that there are only 30 million Canadians is neither here nor there because, all things being equal, that simply means Americans have 10 times the resources to contribute to making a similar system workable.

What you have to show is that the “basic care” covered by Alberta Health is not basic enough for the amount it costs taxpayers and some other option is not only feasible but actually “universally” available elsewhere.

The ball is in your court…

 

[ProVobis]

If people read the fine print, took the chance and were still happy with it - why should we do away with it? It is better than nothing.

Or do you think the electorate is too stupid to make their own healthcare decisions and big brother government has to make it for them?

It seems big brother government doesn’t understand the insurance business (and possible fraud on their part) any better than the electorate. Just saying.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Wow. I was not expecting this. Thankfully I am on Medicaid and so I hopefully won’t be affected by the new law.

You will be in a way. Obamacare adds at least 17 more people onto the Medicaid rolls. Some thing it will be higher than that. In many places, providers have a maximum number of Medicaid patients they will take. Adding more people to it adds to the chances of bumping up against that “maximum”.

 

[garn9173]

oops

breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/08/poll-78-percent-of-uninsured-not-interested-in-obamacare

A new Gallup poll brings more terrible news for President Obama and his signature health plan, showing that only 22% of uninsured Americans intend to buy insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges.

One of the major selling points for using ObamaCare to disrupt our health care system (that polls showed up to 80% of Americans were satisfied with) was to insure the uninsured. But according to this poll, only a very small minority of that small minority is even interested in obtaining insurance.

Even more troubling is the realization that a month ago, that number was double; a full 44% of the uninsured said they would purchase insurance though the exchanges.

Over the course of a month, however, the reality of ObamaCare scared off half of that 44%. The high cost of premiums, the high deductibles customers have to pay regardless of any tax subsidy, and the unforgivable bungling of the rollout only discouraged those who we blew up a perfectly good health care system to help.

 

[ishii]

Which is at the core of this law. People are too stupid to know what is best for them.

This is also at the core of liberalism: people are stupid and don’t know what’s best for them. Whether its insurance, education or retirement.

Ishii

 

[estesbob]

It seems big brother government doesn’t understand the insurance business (and possible fraud on their part) any better than the electorate. Just saying.

You are right they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that requiring men to carry maternity coverage would raise their rates. Of course the other alternative is they lied repeatedly to the American people to get this abomination passed.

 

[ProVobis]

You are right they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that requiring men to carry maternity coverage would raise their rates. Of course the other alternative is they lied repeatedly to the American people to get this abomination passed.

They had the votes; they didn’t need to lie to the people. They were protecting the insurance companies in the mildest way. Look what happened to AIG. Like I said, there was probably fraud involved and sooner or later they would have probably raised premiums anyway to comply with their own state regulators due to the growing bankruptcy claims.

 

[ProVobis]

You are right they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that requiring men to carry maternity coverage would raise their rates. Of course the other alternative is they lied repeatedly to the American people to get this abomination passed.

They had the votes; they didn’t need to lie to the people. They were protecting the insurance companies in the mildest way. Look what happened to AIG. Like I said, there was probably fraud involved and sooner or later they would have probably raised premiums anyway to comply with their own state regulators due to the growing bankruptcy claims. There’s still a lot the public doesn’t know.

 

[estesbob]

They had the votes; they didn’t need to lie to the people. They were protecting the insurance companies in the mildest way. Look what happened to AIG. Like I said, there was probably fraud involved and sooner or later they would have probably raised rates anyway to comply with their own state regulators due to the growing bankruptcy claims.

They needed to lie to the people so they would vote for the people who voted for this abomination. There was no fraud involved here-just willful prevarication by Democrats and , as usual, a total ignorance of how business works. How they could possibly believe that you could cover more people and and increase the coverage for everyone else(whether they wanted it or not) and rates would go down?

Of course many of us knew it was impossible but the low information voters took it hook line and sinker

 

[estesbob]

POLL: 78% OF UNINSURED NOT INTERESTED IN OBAMACARE

breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/08/poll-78-percent-of-uninsured-not-interested-in-obamacare

 

[_Abyssinia]

POLL: 78% OF UNINSURED NOT INTERESTED IN OBAMACARE

 

[Ridgerunner]

POLL: 78% OF UNINSURED NOT INTERESTED IN OBAMACARE

breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/08/poll-78-percent-of-uninsured-not-interested-in-obamacare

I have wondered about this.

One of the peculiarities of Medicaid is that you can sign up for it to pay for medical expenses already incurred. So a lot of people (we are informed) who would qualify for Medicaid don’t sign up for it until they need to use it. Then they do. That will perhaps change some now, because of the perception they’ll be fined if they don’t sign up sooner.

If one who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid is uninsured, and is relatively immune from the “fine”, or even if one pays the fine, he knows he can get onto Obamacare if he gets sick. So why pay the premium before one has to?

Trouble is, for insurance to work, one has to have a lot of healthy people for every sick one, and those healthy ones have to be doing it in order to protect against the unknown. If protecting oneself against the unknown is made irrelevant by being able to sign up and get insurance that will cover one’s expenses when the medical need is known, why pay money for it in the present absence of that need?

Maybe somehow, it’s all better than that, but I don’t see how it could be for at least a lot of people. Expensive practices wear thin very quickly once the perception of the need for them goes away.

 

[estesbob]

I have wondered about this.

One of the peculiarities of Medicaid is that you can sign up for it to pay for medical expenses already incurred. So a lot of people (we are informed) who would qualify for Medicaid don’t sign up for it until they need to use it. Then they do. That will perhaps change some now, because of the perception they’ll be fined if they don’t sign up sooner.

If one who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid is uninsured, and is relatively immune from the “fine”, or even if one pays the fine, he knows he can get onto Obamacare if he gets sick. So why pay the premium before one has to?

Trouble is, for insurance to work, one has to have a lot of healthy people for every sick one, and those healthy ones have to be doing it in order to protect against the unknown. If protecting oneself against the unknown is made irrelevant by being able to sign up and get insurance that will cover one’s expenses when the medical need is known, why pay money for it in the present absence of that need?

Maybe somehow, it’s all better than that, but I don’t see how it could be for at least a lot of people. Expensive practices wear thin very quickly once the perception of the need for them goes away.

I was told by a Hospital exec that the same thing happens with obamacare. if someone shows up in the emergency room with a heart attack and needs a bypass he can buy a plan on the exchange that will cover the operation. in fact the Hospital will probably fund the plan for him -pay 8,000 to 12,000 up front for a plan and get reimbursed $150,000 or so for the operation

 

[St_Francis]

I have wondered about this.

One of the peculiarities of Medicaid is that you can sign up for it to pay for medical expenses already incurred. So a lot of people (we are informed) who would qualify for Medicaid don’t sign up for it until they need to use it. Then they do. That will perhaps change some now, because of the perception they’ll be fined if they don’t sign up sooner.

If one who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid is uninsured, and is relatively immune from the “fine”, or even if one pays the fine, he knows he can get onto Obamacare if he gets sick. So why pay the premium before one has to?

Trouble is, for insurance to work, one has to have a lot of healthy people for every sick one, and those healthy ones have to be doing it in order to protect against the unknown. If protecting oneself against the unknown is made irrelevant by being able to sign up and get insurance that will cover one’s expenses when the medical need is known, why pay money for it in the present absence of that need?

I thought that one could enroll only during part of the year?

Maybe somehow, it’s all better than that, but I don’t see how it could be for at least a lot of people. Expensive practices wear thin very quickly once the perception of the need for them goes away.

 

[ProVobis]

Trouble is, for insurance to work, one has to have a lot of healthy people for every sick one, and those healthy ones have to be doing it in order to protect against the unknown.

As I understand it, the actuarial tables were set up with that assumption. Thus their reluctance to extend the deadline for the individual mandate. It could be that some individual state regulators are conservative enough to assume many healthy won’t be signing up and forcing higher premiums on the rest of the policy holders. Life isn’t easy for actuaries these days as they don’t have a lot of historical data to work with, as I think you’re implying.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I thought that one could enroll only during part of the year?

I find it extraordinarily difficult to really know details of Obamacare, first because there are so many “pro” and “con” sites. Second, because nobody wants to wade through 2,000 pages, Third, it probably wouldn’t help if a person did, because there are thousands more pages of regulations that probably refer back and forth to other laws and sections.

My general impression of Obamacare is that it’s whatever Obama wants it to be from time to time.

Having said that, my impression is that there are “open enrollment” periods to be decreed by the Secretary of HHS from time to time, with no set times for them. Right now we know it’s from Oct 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014. But that’s all we know.

Now, in trying to sift information on what that means, it appears to me the “open enrollment periods” are not exclusive. You can enroll at any time, but if you do so outside an “open enrollment period” you’ll pay a monthly fine for not enrolling during the open enrollment period.

In other words, if you sign up on, say, June 1, 2014 for the first time, you will get insured, but you will pay a part of the annual fine for doing it late.

If anybody on the planet is truly an expert on Obamacare, he/she can tell us different, but that seems to be the case.

If so, there really isn’t much incentive for people to sign up until they’re sick.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Has anybody wondered just a little why the government-sponsored Obamacare sites claim 80% of people will be on employment-based insurance and therefore “not affected” when only about 50% of Americans are employed?

And does nobody wonder about the cost of employment-based insurance when all the mandates get added to the cost?

 

[ProVobis]

I was told by a Hospital exec that the same thing happens with obamacare. if someone shows up in the emergency room with a heart attack and needs a bypass he can buy a plan on the exchange that will cover the operation. in fact the Hospital will probably fund the plan for him -pay 8,000 to 12,000 up front for a plan and get reimbursed $150,000 or so for the operation

I was hoping someone would bring up a case like this. It seems the operation is mandated given the existing law. Yet the patient (or a relative) has to sign some kind of consent form.

As for who pays for it, that depends on whether it’s after March I believe.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I was hoping someone would bring up a case like this. It seems the operation is mandated given the existing law. Yet the patient (or a relative) has to sign some kind of consent form.

As for who pays for it, that depends on whether it’s after March I believe.

I don’t know if hospitals are outfitting “Obamacare signup stations”, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. So, okay, the late signer-upper pays a fine for not signing up during the open enrollment period. It would undoubtedly be worth it for the hospital to pay it for him if it was going to get $150,000 out of a major surgery.

 

[Dawnia]

I was hoping someone would bring up a case like this. It seems the operation is mandated given the existing law. Yet the patient (or a relative) has to sign some kind of consent form.

As for who pays for it, that depends on whether it’s after March I believe.

I was reading an article that there also might be a loophole that would allow insurance companies not to cover such cases.

Something about they have to cover those with preexisting conditions, but not those who are currently sick. Insurance companies can still institute a waiting period of up to 6 mos or so on treatment of any preexisting condition.

Not sure if this is accurate, but that is one of the theories being bounced around.

EDIT: The govt website contradicts this info saying that coverage is immediate with no waiting period.