• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

ACA Running Thread

I think this is the place to point out that the contact phone number listed at healthcare.gov is 1-800-318-2596. That would be, 1-800-F_UCKYO.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Brief recaps:

1. Tax "bad" food and similar items (fast food, soda, beer, pizza, tobacco, now e-cigs) at a rate of at least 100%. Use the tax revenue solely to (a) build clinics that are free to attend for any citizen, and (b) fund full med-school scholarships for doctors who commit to working at the clinics for ~5 years, similar to the GI Bill. If successful, it could fund program-specific med schools. This accomplishes four objectives. First, it discourages, but still permits, a large cause of our healthcare problem. Second, it creates a baseline system of care for everyone. Third, it allows people who do not want to participate to still purchase whatever insurance and healthcare they want in the normal market. Fourth, it explicitly ties the costs of healthcare to the behavior causing the need. The worst-case scenario is that it fails funding because it discourages purchases of the unhealthy items to the point that it can't support itself, which in the long run would actually be a huge victory in health care and our society.

2. Vastly expand Medicaid eligibility, with tiered co-payments based on income levels. That would also accomplish two objectives. First, it would hopefully force a corrective look at Medicaid to get the system working better for those on it, those who now be going on it, and those paying for it. Second, it would keep the negative stigma associated with the program, such that for most epople it would still be a last resort option, secondary to private insurance. Obviously, the cost of the overall program would explode, but hopefully some of that would be offset by fixing a lot of its problems; and in the long run I think it would be less costly than the ACA and with much more care arising from it.

While #1 is extremely preferable in my mind to #2, either of these plans would accomplish the goal of providing baseline health care for all Americans, while avoiding the bureaucratic nightmare that would arise if we were to go to a single payor system for everyone, when most people do not need it. In other words, help support the least common denominator without forcing the majority down to that same level.
Click to expand...

What are you going to do when the food tax revenue decreases due to decreased demand similar to the gas tax? Also, this would put a lot of people out of work.
 
Howard Dean: July 28, 2013

Quote:
----------
Continuing efforts by congressional Republicans to "defund" further implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, even if it takes shutting down the federal government, are willfully destructive. As Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) told the press last week, "I think it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard . . . as long as Barack Obama is president the Affordable Care Act is gonna be law."

Clearly, the foremost achievement of President Obama's first term is the Affordable Care Act, and when fully implemented the law will move America closer to universal health coverage—something many progressives have sought for years. Like it or not, the law—at least its foundation—is here to stay, and lawmakers ought to focus over the next year on ensuring a relatively smooth implementation.

Although I've been critical of many components of the law, there is still much to applaud. Accountable Care Organizations could eliminate duplicative services and prevent medical errors while seeking to reduce costs for individuals, particularly if their creation ultimately leads to the end of fee-for-service medicine, as I believe it will. In addition, the Health Insurance Marketplace exchange systems, once implemented, will provide individuals with competitive plan options based on price, services, quality and other factors. Even more important, the exchanges will make the process of securing health insurance much easier and more transparent for millions who don't currently have it.

The administration's decision to delay implementation of the employer mandate until 2015 will help funnel individuals and families who do not get insurance through their employer into the exchanges. While this may benefit the participating insurers in the short term, this also accelerates the trend toward divorcing health care from employment. This is not a radical idea, and was even proposed by Sen. John McCain in his 2008 presidential campaign. That development will lead to the end of job lock for workers and contribute to a more competitive American business community in the longer run.

That said, the law still has its flaws, and American lawmakers and citizens have both an opportunity and responsibility to fix them...
----------
 
WFFaithful said:
What are you going to do when the food tax revenue decreases due to decreased demand similar to the gas tax? Also, this would put a lot of people out of work.
Click to expand...

The decreased demand would be a good thing; as it means people aren't eating crap. You'd account for an initial drop-off when setting the tax rate, and if it drops lower than that then great. Again, our goal should be to imporve people's health, not simply set up government programs just for the hell of it. If a program aimed at bad nutrition fails because people get too healthy to support it, then that is the biggest victory we can hope for.

I do not think it would put people out of work in the aggregate. People still have to eat. So the fry guy becomes bbd's salad tosser.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Brief recaps:

1. Tax "bad" food and similar items (fast food, soda, beer, pizza, tobacco, now e-cigs) at a rate of at least 100%. Use the tax revenue solely to (a) build clinics that are free to attend for any citizen, and (b) fund full med-school scholarships for doctors who commit to working at the clinics for ~5 years, similar to the GI Bill. If successful, it could fund program-specific med schools. This accomplishes four objectives. First, it discourages, but still permits, a large cause of our healthcare problem. Second, it creates a baseline system of care for everyone. Third, it allows people who do not want to participate to still purchase whatever insurance and healthcare they want in the normal market. Fourth, it explicitly ties the costs of healthcare to the behavior causing the need. The worst-case scenario is that it fails funding because it discourages purchases of the unhealthy items to the point that it can't support itself, which in the long run would actually be a huge victory in health care and our society.

2. Vastly expand Medicaid eligibility, with tiered co-payments based on income levels. That would also accomplish two objectives. First, it would hopefully force a corrective look at Medicaid to get the system working better for those on it, those who now be going on it, and those paying for it. Second, it would keep the negative stigma associated with the program, such that for most epople it would still be a last resort option, secondary to private insurance. Obviously, the cost of the overall program would explode, but hopefully some of that would be offset by fixing a lot of its problems; and in the long run I think it would be less costly than the ACA and with much more care arising from it.

While #1 is extremely preferable in my mind to #2, either of these plans would accomplish the goal of providing baseline health care for all Americans, while avoiding the bureaucratic nightmare that would arise if we were to go to a single payor system for everyone, when most people do not need it. In other words, help support the least common denominator without forcing the majority down to that same level.
Click to expand...

jesus h why not go ahead and tax TV, video games, internet service, movie tickets, rock music, and anything else sedentary that keeps you from perfect health too ya fucking killjoy? toilet paper is bad for your asshole, so throw that in too. good lord, man
 
W&B - I'm not opposed to that. If people want to be 100% responsible for their own healthcare, then they are free to do whatever the hell they want. But if we are operating under a premise that society is repsonsible for people's healthcare, which apparently we now are, then society should definitely have a say in what contributes to the state of that healthcare.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
W&B - I'm not opposed to that. If people want to be 100% responsible for their own healthcare, then they are free to do whatever the hell they want. But if we are operating under a premise that society is repsonsible for people's healthcare, which apparently we now are, then society should definitely have a say in what contributes to the state of that healthcare.
Click to expand...

its ludicrous though. Bread is bad for you, any processed sugar is bad for you, after the age of 6 milk is bad for you. cheese causes inflammation in your arteries. table salt added to food is bad for you. a piece of cake or a brownie, technically, is fucking horrible for you. thanks to coal power plants, salmon and other seafood has mercury in it which is bad for you. maybe we should talk about 100% taxes on coal and petroleum on top of current rates becuase of all the health problems caused by their use. where do you draw the line? those fuckers get corporate welfare while contributing to kids asthma. wtf?

sitting is bad for you.

you cherry-picked a few obvious unhealthy choices and ignored the ones that cause many more problems.

And where are most of our healthcare dollars spent? end of life care. Everyone goes through it regardless of lifestyle choices. Do you realy believe that if you eat healthily every day of your life you eventually are not going to die of disease and your loved ones aren't going to keep you in the hospital administering expensive tests and care to you?
 
Last edited:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/insurance-company-gets-fucked-over-by-another-canc,33101/

Insurance Company Gets Fucked Over By Another Cancer Patient
Click to expand...

CHICAGO—Frustrated executives from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association announced Friday that they are getting “completely fucked over” by Allentown, PA resident Matthew Greison, a 57-year-old man suffering from an advanced form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Stressing that this is not the first issue they have had with such patients, company sources expressed their outrage to reporters over Greison's “totally unfair” comprehensive health care benefits and claimed the skyrocketing costs of his cancer treatment have gotten out of hand.

“We got the first bill and just couldn’t believe how expensive it was,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Scott Serota, adding that at first, he thought the invoice was a mistake. “Every visit to the oncologist ran about $140, not to mention the thousands of dollars for every MRI and CT scan, and then the chemotherapy and cancer drugs were more than $10,000 per month. And he paid for maybe—maybe—5 percent of it. The rest was dumped on us.”

“It’s absolute fucking bullshit,” Serota continued. “I can’t believe they’re just allowed to get away with that.”

According to reports, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s expenses have only gotten more unreasonable since Greison was first diagnosed with the life-threatening disease this past March. After an initially successful chemotherapy treatment, the health insurance company was reportedly informed that the cancer was no longer in remission and was forced to pay over $125,000 for a further two weeks of inpatient care in a hospital.

Sources confirmed that such headaches for insurance companies are unfortunately incredibly common when dealing with any cancer patient.

“These assholes are just bleeding us dry here,” said Serota. “We try to talk to them about it, to beg them to just sympathize with our situation, but they just kept bringing up bullshit excuses about deductibles and coinsurance payments and citing all these stupid small-print details about coverage eligibility. All they try to do is get out of paying for anything.”

“Trust me, dealing with these people is a total nightmare,” Serota added.

Serota went on to say that the federal government “has to step in and completely revamp this fucked-up system” and claimed that if nothing is done, many insurance companies could be stuck with increasingly costly health care bills that they will have no choice but to pay for out of their own pockets.

“The bills are really racking up at this point, and it just can’t continue like this,” said Serota, adding that cancer patients will only become harder to deal with if this disturbing trend continues. “For the sake of all insurance companies across the country, something has to change, and change soon. It’s like cancer patients don’t even care about us at all. They’re only concerned about themselves.”

“We’re human beings, goddammit,” added Serota, growing visibly incensed. “They can’t just treat us like this.” At press time, Blue Cross Blue Shield executives were relieved to learn that Greison’s coverage had abruptly expired.
Click to expand...
 
I can't remember which thread the NY Times article was posted that showed the number of citizens that would not be covered by Medicaid but also did not qualify for any subsidies, but how on earth did that happen? I know the expanded Medicaid would have lowered the number in many southern states, but why could they not legislate it to where the subsidies begin the instant you make more than the Medicaid maximum?
 
I think Dean makes plenty of good points in the above article. Of course the ACA doesn't go far enough in the moment to get us where we want to be: a much more unified system that delivers higher quality and value to us as a society. And that provides good healthcare for all our citizens. The ACA is a start. And, politically, it's about as far "right" as you can get and have any hope of accomplishing these goals. And look at the shitstorm the Pubs are producing over it. The oppositional reaction is, IMO, essentially insane. You think we'd have any chance of getting something more progressive through?
 
2and2, shouldn't we tax stress under your plan? Stress causes myriad health problems that cost Americans millions, if not billions, of dollars a year. Cancer, heart disease, etc. To be consistent in your "tax the causes" plan, you would need to measure stress levels in American humans, and then tax them accordingly.
 
Last edited:
bmoneydeac said:
I can't remember which thread the NY Times article was posted that showed the number of citizens that would not be covered by Medicaid but also did not qualify for any subsidies, but how on earth did that happen? I know the expanded Medicaid would have lowered the number in many southern states, but why could they not legislate it to where the subsidies begin the instant you make more than the Medicaid maximum?
Click to expand...


Well, the designers of the law seemed to believe the states would expand medicaid since it would cost them little, help their poor, and be part of a cooperative effort to improve the delivery of healthcare to our citizens. Since so many, especially southern/poor states have rejected the medicaid expansion there is now the need to at least extend the subsidies to those living below the poverty level. That would seem a reasonable fix. Think we could get the house of representatives to go along with that?
 
ConnorEl said:
Well, the designers of the law seemed to believe the states would expand medicaid since it would cost them little, help their poor, and be part of a cooperative effort to improve the delivery of healthcare to our citizens. Since so many, especially southern/poor states have rejected the medicaid expansion there is now the need to at least extend the subsidies to those living below the poverty level. That would seem a reasonable fix. Think we could get the house of representatives to go along with that?
Click to expand...

Understood, but even with the expansion I believe there would have been a group (albeit smaller) trapped in the middle. Seems like they'd somehow tie the two cutoffs together regardless of whether the state participated in expansion.
 
bmoneydeac said:
Understood, but even with the expansion I believe there would have been a group (albeit smaller) trapped in the middle. Seems like they'd somehow tie the two cutoffs together regardless of whether the state participated in expansion.
Click to expand...


I don't think so. As written, the ACA required states to expand Medicaid to all citizens living at/below around 135 percent of the federal poverty level. And subsidization starts at 100 percent of the federal poverty level. So there was overlap in the medicaid coverage/subsidies. That is before the SCOTUS gutted the Medicaid expansion allowing states like NC to opt out and screw up things for their poor and for the designers of the ACA. Again, seems a partial fix could be to just extend the subsidies to medicaid eligibility, as you suggest. But that would have to pass the GOP House.
 
WakeandBake said:
2and2, shouldn't we tax stress under your plan? Stress causes myriad health problems that cost Americans millions, if not billions, of dollars a year. Cancer, heart disease, etc. To be consistent in your "tax the causes" plan, you would need to measure stress levels in American humans, and then tax them accordingly.
Click to expand...

Ideally, yes, but until we can figure out how to do that we can just tax greasy burgers and fries. Stress may be something else that is bad for you, but it doesn't make McDonald's and Pepsi any less bad for you. Or, you could go the other way and say that since W&B doesn't want us to tax shitty food, then we won't pay to treat high cholesterol, obesity, diabetis, or other direct results of shitty food. But that wouldn't go over to well.
 
Oh so since you can't quantify stress levels wrt disease, it's a freebie! Wow, same with mercury tainted seafood. Cool plan!!
 
And don't forget about all those depressed adults who see shrinks constantly and are prescribed record levels of anti depressants. Gotta find the source of all that depression, and then tax the fuck out of it. I'm going go out on a limb and say it's work and relationships that cause it. Tax work and love!!!!!!!!! This is awesome
 
Tax the sources of illness/injury. Motorcycles would def be taxed 100% like cheeseburgers. Bye bye Harley Davidson
 
ConnorEl said:
I don't think so. As written, the ACA required states to expand Medicaid to all citizens living at/below around 135 percent of the federal poverty level. And subsidization starts at 100 percent of the federal poverty level. So there was overlap in the medicaid coverage/subsidies. That is before the SCOTUS gutted the Medicaid expansion allowing states like NC to opt out and screw up things for their poor and for the designers of the ACA. Again, seems a partial fix could be to just extend the subsidies to medicaid eligibility, as you suggest. But that would have to pass the GOP House.
Click to expand...

Good stuff. You are probably right. In any event, Thanks McCrory.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top