Medicaid's Last Stand

Hey Seniors, You Might Want To See This

Republican health care bill raises premiums for older, poor Americans by more than 750%

The American Health Care Act would make a low-income 64-year-old in the individual market pay more than half his income for health insurance.

Beautifully Covered ... By Insurance Or Six Feet Of Dirt

"Of course, we won't know the official numbers until the Congressional Budget Office releases its report which by law it must do for any bill over $5 billion. With one -- this is kind of funny -- exception. Thanks to new rules passed by the Republicans, this law shall not apply to repealing the Affordable Care Act. That's right. The GOP is so confident the repeal will save money, that they don't want to know if that's true. And if Congress can make it illegal for us to know how much it costs to repeal ObamaCare, I think they might have stumbled on the replacement. Just make it illegal for your doctor to tell you your diagnosis. That way -- that way you'll need insurance as far as you know. 'Well, Mr. Johnston, I have your chart right here. Let's see. And I can't legally tell you how you are. Uh, just make the most of your day. And here's a hint, don't worry about the expiration dates on your food. Your milk's going to be fine.' So Republicans -- so Republicans are right to keep news the dark. I know when someone is screwing me, I like to keep the lights off. And that's the word." [source]

Weekend Reading

Another Clinton-Trump Divide: High-Output America Vs. Low-Output America
Obama's Economic Record: An Assessment
The New Suburbia: More Urban
Bring This Up When A Conservative Mentions Obama's Doubled The National Debt
Fox News Screws Up Its Latest Lie
Kansas Offers Cautionary Tale For Trump's Tax Ambition
Republicans Call Obamacare A 'Failure.' These 7 Charts Show They Couldn't Be More Wrong
The Real "Takers" In America: The Unproductive, Rent-Extracting Rich
How To Be A Lawyer Without Going To Law School
Mesmerizing Commute Maps Reveal We All Live In Mega-Regions, Not Cities
Management Theory Is Becoming A Compendium Of Dead Ideas

Trumpsters Don't Know ACA & Obamacare Are The Same Thing

Trumpsters On ACA Don't Know Obamacare Is Same Thing?

More than one Trump supporter in the past 24 hours has announced on social media that repealing Obamacare will not affect the Affordable Care Act. 

You can assume these folks are beneficiaries of the latter. Because nobody would ever take away THEIR stuff, they're Trump voters!

Also:

Brutal Reality Check Abruptly Terminates Angry Obamacare Facebook Rant

Thursday Reading

John Kerry just delivered the sharpest attack on Israeli settlements of any top US official

Americans — especially but not exclusively Trump voters — believe crazy, wrong things

Comedian Jim Gaffigan raises $70,000 for food pantry

2016 Election Results Prove Gerrymandering

On Obamacare repeal, GOP ideology is colliding with reality

Watch Bernie Sanders Make a Trump Supporter Question Her Stance in Just 2 Minutes

We Can Now Measure Exactly What Scott Walker's Done to Wisconsin

U.S. churches are now costing taxpayers $71 billion a year

Obamacare enrollment in Wisconsin running 14% higher than last year

From Milwaukee County to Madison, Scott Walker's rise marked by union battles

DNR purges climate change from web page
Donald Trump’s economic inheritance in 7 charts. Only recent president to take office during a stronger economy is George HW Bush

Weekend Reading

Why Financial Advisers Hate Elizabeth Warren
Ask Colorado Whether Infrastructure Spending Works
Excess Management Is Costing The U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year
Taking Stock: Income Inequality and the Stock Market
The States With The Biggest Obamacare Woes Spent Years Undermining The Law
Why Companies Are Moving Back Downtown
Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped By Segregation
One Big Reason For Stagnant Wages and Rising Inequality
Workplace Wellness Programs Are A Sham

Stop Cryin' In Yer Beer

I've heard varieties of the "Obama hasn't done anything" idea spouted about in the media, from friends, by co-workers, etc.

Now, I wanted a more liberal agenda pursued, but nonetheless, I'm not blind to the fact that Barack Obama has accomplished very, very big things.

Government is shrinking, deficits are declining, employment is improving, health care inflation is subsiding, infrastructure projects have been completed nationwide ...

For Further Enlightenment:

PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS DONE A LOT! A LIST OF 340 ACCOMPLISHMENTS SO FAR, WITH CITATIONS

Obama's top 10 accomplishments

Obama's Top 50 Accomplishments

History will be very kind

In Defense of Obama

Down With Success!

Only in America can the Republicans - the guardians of government efficiency and fiscal fortitude - score political points disparaging legislation that will save the taxpayers $1 trillion more than projected.

Jiggery Pokery

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

Percentage of U.S. Adults Without Health Insurance

Hidden Healthcare Horrors

One of the odder subplots of the health reform saga has been the almost pathetic efforts of Republicans to come up with Obamacare horror stories. You might think that given the complexity of the law and the almost unlimited resources of the propaganda machine, they’d be able to come up with someone to serve as the poster child of the law’s terrible effects on innocent Americans. As far as I know, however, we have yet to see a single credible example — all the characters featured in Koch brothers ads or GOP speeches have turned out to be potential beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, if only they were willing to look at their actual options. 

So Cathy McMorris Rodgers went on Facebook to ask for Obamacare horror stories — and instead got an avalanche of testimonials from people who got essential insurance and care thanks to the ACA. 

Why can’t the GOP find the horror stories it knows, just knows, must be out there? Matthew Yglesias gets at most of it by noting that Obamacare does, in fact, redistribute from the few to the many: 

[O]ne of the main things it does is raise taxes rather dramatically on a pretty small number of high-income people in order to give subsidized health insurance policies to a substantially larger number of low-income people. Indeed, this is one of the main things Republicans don’t like about it! 

But there’s a bit more to the story. Millionaires paying higher taxes aren’t the only people hurt, at least slightly, by the law. If you are a young. healthy person (especially if you’re male), living in a state that didn’t have community rating pre-ACA, you may have had a cheap policy that went up in price once the law went into effect; and if you’re affluent as well, you don’t receive subsidies. So there are victims out there. 

The problem for the GOP is that they’re the wrong kind of victims. What Republicans want are struggling, salt of the earth regular Americans, preferably older and with expensive medical conditions — not healthy, well-paid guys in their 20s. But the profile of the ideal Obamacare victim matches, pretty much exactly, the profile of the kind of person Obamacare was designed to help. 

And the inability of the GOP to come up with true horror stories is, in its own way, a demonstration that the law is working as intended.

The Unhealthiest States

The top 10 unhealthiest states are all Republican. Big surprise.

Who needs health care!

Unhealthiest States

Indiana
South Carolina
Alabama
West Virginia
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Kentucky
Louisiana
Arkansas
Mississippi

Health Care Scandal Hype

Veterans and Zombies: The Hype Behind the Health Care Scandal

Excerpt:

So here’s what you need to know: It’s still true that Veterans Affairs provides excellent care, at low cost. Those waiting lists arise partly because so many veterans want care, but Congress has provided neither clear guidelines on who is entitled to coverage, nor sufficient resources to cover all applicants. And, yes, some officials appear to have responded to incentives to reduce waiting times by falsifying data. 

Yet, on average, veterans don’t appear to wait longer for care than other Americans. And does anyone doubt that many Americans have died while waiting for approval from private insurers? 

A scandal is a scandal, and wrongdoing must be punished. But beware of people trying to use the veterans’ care scandal to derail health reform. 

And here’s the thing: Health reform is working. Too many Americans still lack good insurance, and hence lack access to health care and protection from high medical costs — but not as many as last year, and next year should be better still. Health costs are still far too high, but their growth has slowed dramatically. We’re moving in the right direction, and we shouldn’t let the zombies get in our way.

For Further Reading:
The Best Care Anywhere

Memo To Republicans: The ACA War Is Over

The Journal Sentinel really needs to do a better job with their "reporting."

The top story in their Sunday Editorials & Opinion section was Life In The Land Of Make Believe by Kathleen Parker.

Another misconstruction from the right-wing completely misreading data points to claim, again, that the Affordable Car Act (aka Obamacare) is a failure and is destroying America. Anyone with the ability to do a google search, or if you just happen to get your news from somewhere other than FOX News, can quickly dismiss these false, incendiary claims.

Why did the Journal deem this article newsworthy?

Here's just two of Parker's debunked talking points:

Only about 3 million people have signed up for health insurance through the new marketplaces, well below expectations.

A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report issued earlier this month estimates that by 2017, the workforce will be reduced by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs and 2.3 million by 2021 — because of Obamacare.

Parker's 3 million signup number is only the private insurance plan signups. Including Medicaid and CHIP, the minimum estimate for total Affordable Care Act signups is 8.8 million, with a maximum of 14.4 million, thus far. The program got off to a rough start, yet signups are only marginally below expectations. Are Republicans unhappy that more people now have health insurance?

Destroying jobs is quite different from people having the choice of whether to work or to raise a family. People no longer need to stay at horrible job to have insurance. This actually opens up jobs for those looking for work.

As the Economic Policy Institute explains, "In December, the number of job seekers was 10.4 million (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey and can be found here). Thus, there are 10.4 million job seekers and only 4.0 million job openings, meaning that there are only enough job openings for 38.5 percent of job seekers."

Based on their history of being all about the family-unit and saving our children, along with their supposed intense interest in helping the unemployed, one would think the Republicans would support a program that accomplishes both of these goals.

But, in fitting with their typical prescription, Republicans are more interested in power than policy. Facts be damned! There are actual specifics of the Act that can be improved, efficiencies to be gained, by working with Democrats and constructively analyzing and implementing adjustments and/or improvements to the program. But, instead, Republicans are still raging on, spinning fanciful yarns and lying through their teeth, in the (health care) war they've already lost.

For Further Reading:
Health, Work, Lies
Bette In Spokane Blogging
CBO Says Obamacare Will Raise Wages
Obamacare Attacks Failing

Government Health Programs Save Everyone Money

Government Health Programs Save Everyone Money: Study

More and more it seems that, when the government subsidizes health insurance, patients' share of health care costs go down. 

The latest evidence: In the years immediately following the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid -- two programs that dramatically expanded government-sponsored health coverage -- patients’ share of out-of-pocket costs dropped by 40 percent, according to a December paper from Jeffrey Clemens, an economist at the University of California at San Diego. Out-of-pocket costs are what patients are responsible for paying on their own. In the case of insured patients, those costs can include copays and deductibles. Uninsured patients typically have to pay for all of their medical services “out-of-pocket.”

In the charts above, the dotted lines represent the share of various health-care costs paid out-of-pocket by patients, and the solid red lines represent the percent change in the share of out-of-pocket health care costs since 1960. 

The explanation for the precipitous drop in patient costs is somewhat obvious, said Clemens. 

"The period right around 1965 had such a large drop because a pretty substantial fraction of seniors basically didn’t have insurance against hospital episodes and office visits at that time," he said. "Covering that population just kind of mechanically meant that people were paying way less out of pocket when they had the need to go to hospital." 

As Medicaid became more comprehensive, patients' out-of-pocket costs continued to drop, Clements said, ultimately falling 90 percent from their 1960 levels by 1980. 

The study adds to a growing body of evidence that these government entitlement programs helped cut health-care cost burdens for struggling consumers. Just 16 percent of funding for personal health care came from out-of-pocket payments in 2003, down from 55 percent in 1960, according to a 2005 study from the Department of Health and Human Services. 

And Medicaid alone kept at least 2.6 million people out of poverty in 2010, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Health Economics. 

If the pattern holds, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, could lead to even more cost savings. Out-of-pocket health-care costs will drop from $1,463 to just $34 per year in 2016 for the 11.6 million low-income Americans who are expected get health coverage as a result of the law’s expansion of Medicaid, according to an October RAND study.

Correcting Health Care Myths

From Nicole Belle, at Crooks and Liars:

You hear it on the lips of every single one of the Republican talking heads on every single Sunday news show:President Obama promised that if you liked your healthcare, you could keep it and HE LIED!!! (cue sobbing) Millions of Americans found out that they've been dropped from their healthcare! (hand wringing commences) 

Color me skeptical that any conservative actually gives a flying fig to the healthcare woes of any average American, much less ones who had substandard policies. 

But David Gregory has never come across a Republican talking point that he didn't love, embrace and swallow up whole to faithfully regurgitate to the masses. So he dutifully confronts Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida CEO Patrick Geraghty about the news that 300,000 Floridians have found their policies dropped because they fall below the minimum standards of coverage set by Obamacare. Problem was, Geraghty wasn't going to play Gregory's gotcha game with people's healthcare:

“We’re not cutting people,” Geraghty said. “We’re actually transitioning people. What we’ve been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn’t meet the test of the essential health benefits; therefore, they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange. And, in fact, with subsidy, many people will be getting better plans at a lesser cost. This really is a transition. In fact, the 300,000 figure is the entire year. So it’s really 40,000 people for January 1, and we’re walking them through that transition.” 

Now, it's absolutely true that there will be a fraction of people who find that their costs have gone up, the specific number and amount is still up for debate. And if they don't qualify for subsidies, that will mean a higher out-of-pocket cost, at least in the short term. However, short-term partisan gains notwithstanding, the program will factor in long-term the inclusion of healthy, young people on the exchanges, which will help mitigate the ailing people who rushed for the initial coverage. Specifically, the re-insurance tax is being levied for the first three years is intended to help smooth that transition to allow for the long-term sustainability of the program. 

But why would NBC News be interested in actually informing their viewers of the realities of the program when they can have their newscasters "sell" a misleading partisan argument instead?

The Sabotage Of Democracy

Republican Kamikaze Mission

[source]

[source]

Republican Health Care Obstructionism