The Affordable Healthcare Act signed into law by President Obama has benefits for the entire nation. But especially for our most vulnerable citizens, the seniors.
Under the health care law, your existing guaranteed Medicare-covered benefits won’t be reduced or taken away. Neither will your ability to choose your own doctor.
If you have high prescription drug costs that put you in the donut hole, you now get a 50% discount on covered brand-name drugs while you’re in the donut hole. Between today and 2020, you’ll get continuous Medicare coverage for your prescription drugs. The donut hole will be closed completely by 2020.
Medicare covers certain preventive services without charging you the Part B coinsurance or deductible. You will also be offered a free annual wellness exam.
The life of the Medicare Trust Fund will be extended as a result of reducing waste, fraud and abuse, and slowing cost growth in Medicare, which will provide you with future cost savings on your premiums and coinsurance.
Former President Bill Clintonspoke at a recent fundraiser earlier this week and warned of the dangers this country faced if the Supreme Court rules against President Obama’s Health Care Law. Given his special abilities to explain complex matters to a two-year old, Mr. Clinton broke it down like this”
If the Supreme Court decides to invalidate the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, there will be consequences, Clinton said, which he claims aren’t being reported, and which he spelled out:
• Changing the health-care delivery system has already produced two years in a row of 4 percent inflation in health-care costs. This is the first time in 50 years that health-care costs have gone up so little. Killing the Affordable Care Act would let inflation loose again.
• Some 2.6 million people ages 21 to 26, who now have insurance coverage for the first time because they can be carried under their parents’ policy, would lose it.
• $1.3 billion dollars in insurance refunds have already been paid to businesses and individuals because now the law says 85 percent of your premium has to go to health care and not to profits and promotion. (California hasn’t reported yet, but will likely increase that figure to more than $1.5 billion.) Refunds would shrink.
• If Republicans succeed in persuading the Supreme Court to repeal the individual mandate, somewhere between 12 million and 16 million Americans will be unable to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions.
The Daily Beast also reports that “Clinton predicted that if the law is declared unconstitutional, Republicans will suffer a backlash when millions of Americans calculate what they have lost. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, two thirds of all the applications for bankruptcy were because of health-care emergencies, a consequence likely to return if health care inflation again rises precipitously.”
“Before Mitt Romney as governor signed the individual mandate, Massachusetts had the highest health-care costs in America. Today, that state is seventh, because inflation in health-care costs in that state have been much lower than in the country as a whole. Why? The mandate prevents insurance companies from shifting their promotional costs to consumers, Clinton said.”
The Supreme Court will issue its decision on Health Care on Thursday.
Thanks to ObamaCare, 12.8 millions of Americans will receive a rebate check in the mail this summer. The check is because of a provision in President Obama’s Health Care Law called the 80/20 rule. It requires insurance providers to spend 80% of premiums on providing health care to policy holders with the remaining 20% going to administrative costs. Any remaining balance must be returned to consumers instead of going to CEO’s bonus checks.
The total rebate of $1.1 billion is scheduled to go out this summer. An average of $151 will be sent to qualifying policy holders with other Americans receiving up to $800 checks depending on the type of policy, the state they live in and other factors. According to HealthCare.gov, Americans will be rewarded in one of the following ways;
a rebate check in the mail
a lump-sum reimbursement to the same account that was used to pay the premium if it was paid by credit card or debit card
a direct reduction in their future premiums
their employer providing one of the above rebate methods, or applying the rebate in a manner that benefits its employees.
ObamaCare, also called The Affordable Health Care Law is presently being debated in The Supreme Court. A Congressional Republican push to paint the law as unconstitutional will be decided by the Supreme Court in a few more days. If the Republicans succeed and the Court determines the law violates the Constitution, insurance companies may chose to pay their CEO’s with the rebate checks instead, just like they did before the law went into effect.
Just another example of Congressional Republicans, working for Corporations instead of the American people.
To put things in perspective, Mitt Romney implemented ObamaCare in Massachusetts. Okay, it wasn’t called ObamaCare when Mitt Romney fell in love with the idea that everyone in the state he governed should have access to quality Health Care and included an individual mandate requiring all to buy insurance. No, ObamaCare wasn’t around at that time, so the bill was called The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law.
The main part of Romney’s law was an individual mandate that required all state residents to get insurance. The goal of the mandate was to make it financially feasible for insurance providers to be able to cover everyone, even those with pre-existing conditions. Romney loved the idea of the mandate so much, he even called for its implementation nationwide. His Health Care reform Law went into effect in Massachusetts 2006.
Now Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States and he is promising to repeal the very Health Care Law he once said should be replicated nationwide. Mr. Romney took this very different position because the individual mandate is not popular with Teaparty members of his party. Now that the President took Romney’s word and signed a bill that duplicates the Massachusetts model, offering the Health Care nationwide, Romney is promising to repeal and replace what is now called ObamaCare.
But what will Mitt Romney replace ObamaCare with?
Based on what he said earlier this month, Romney’s new-found vision of Health Care in America will not include an individual mandate and those who have a pre-existing condition but couldn’t afford “continuous” insurance, will not have health care.
So let’s say someone has been continuously insured and they develop a serious condition. And let’s say they lose their jobs or they change jobs or they move and go to a different place, I don’t want them to be denied insurance because they have some pre-existing conditions. So we’re going to have to make sure that the law that we replace Obamacare with,ensures that people who have a pre-existing condition, who have been insured in the past, are able to get insurance in the future so they don’t have to worry about that condition keeping them from getting the kind of health care they deserve.
Video:
So the short version of what Mitt Romney is saying is this: if you have a pre-existing condition and couldn’t afford continuous health care coverage, don’t even bother trying to get insurance. Under Mitt Romney’s plan, you’re back to a system where healthcare insurance providers are allowed to drop your coverage based on your pre-existing condition.
Even though much of the Affordable Care Act does not go into effect until 2014, conservatives insist the bill is making things worse for Americans. But a new study shows that one implemented provision of the ACA is already providing millions of young Americans with health insurance.
According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, 6.6 million young adults have signed up for coverage through their parents’ health insurance plans. Under the ACA provision, young people can now stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26. About half of the 19-to-25 year-olds interviewed for the study reported opting in to their parents’ plans between November 2010 and November 2011.
Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote college presidents and student organizations urging them to remind students they can stay on their parents’ plans after graduation. “Now, graduating students are free to make career choices based on what they want to do, not where they can get health insurance,” they wrote.
But according to Republicans, giving Americans life saving health care is obviously not a good thing. They are in the process of Repealing the President’s Health Care Reform Law, which will result in 6.6 million young adults dropped from insurance policies all over this country. And for those seniors who are now saving money on their prescription drugs by having the donut hole closed? Republicans think you should spend more and if you can’t afford it, then just die already.
If you listen to Mitt Romney today, you will think that President Obama is breaking all kinds of laws with his Health Care Reform law, also referred to as ObamaCare. Romney would like you to believe that President Obama health care law is so wrong, so intrusive, that saving America depends on the immediate repeal of ObamaCare.
But what did Romney think of ObamaCare just as recently as two years ago?
Smith: Earlier today, President Obama remarked to NBC on the degree of similarity between his health-care reform policies and those that you passed in Massachusetts under your term as governor. How is the health-care reform legislation signed by Obama last week significantly different from the policies that you passed in Massachusetts?
Romney: Well, there are similarities. And some of the best features of his health-care plan are like ours — such as, we do not allow insurance companies to drop people who develop illnesses, our insurance is entirely portable, virtually all of our citizens are insured and there is an individual responsibility for getting insurance.
The big differences are that he raised taxes; we did not. He cut Medicare; we did not. He put in place price controls; we did not. And his is a federal program — a one-size-fits-all solution — and in our view — in my view, the best approach is a state-by-state creation of programs designed to fit the needs of citizens of each state.
We often brag that we are the most powerful nation on earth. But are we also the most selfish and uncaring when it comes to our own citizens? Why is it apparently acceptable by some if our next door neighbor dies for something as trivial as a lack of healthcare or more specifically as in this case, dental care?
According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis‘ wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday.
We must be better than this.
We send our troops overseas to “free” other nations, and to teach these nations how “civilized” people should live. We want those nations to be able to live like us. We ask international governments to provide for their people by building schools, roads and hospitals among other things, and we expect the leaders of these nations to do these things, because in our minds, these are the basic and necessary needs of any citizenry.
But when it comes to our own there’s obviously a different standard, as our own citizens without healthcare die because they can’t afford pain medication and antibiotics.
Meanwhile, Republicans are still promising to repeal what they call, “Obamacare” – President Obama’s healthcare reform plan which would offer basic healthcare coverage to over 30 million Americans who presently have none. To congressional Republicans, this is a terrible thing for the leader of our nation to do. What would these Republicans have to say to Kyle Willis’ family? Oh, never-mind that question, Republicans consider Kyle’s death as the natural order of things, you know, eliminating the weak. Only the strong survives!
ThinkProgress came up with this little nugget. The graph below shows one difference between the Health Care plan set forth by Mitt Romney, the man who could be the eventual Republican nominee for the presidency in 2012, and the Affordable Health Care Act signed into law by President Obama. The difference? Romney’s plan provides funds for abortion services and President Obama’s does not.
The little secret Republicans don’t want you to know about.
After the Republican controlled House of Representatives approved a measure to repeal the Health Care Reform passed by President Obama and the Democratic controlled congress in 2010, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Leader promised a vote will be held in the Senate as well.
Mr. McConnell attached the repeal bill to another legislation for aviation as an amendment, and the vote was held yesterday needing 60 votes to pass. It failed along party lines, with all 47 Republicans voting for repeal, and all 51 Democrats voting against it.
McConnell however, promised to continue his efforts to deny Americans the very same health coverage he and the rest of Congress has, saying;
“This fight isn’t over, we intend to continue to fight to repeal and replace Obamacare with sensible reforms that would lower the cost of American healthcare…
This issue is still ahead of us and we will be going back at it in a variety of ways”
The Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, pleaded with Republicans to work with Democrats on finding “common sense” ways to improve the bill;
“It’s time for Republicans to set aside the battles of the past. It’s time to move on from extreme, ideological plans to repeal a health care law that is lowering prices, expanding access to care and lowering our deficit.”
There was one area of bipartisanship where both Democrats and Republicans agreed overwhelmingly. One provision of the Health Reform Law was repealed through an amendment, and received a vote of 81-17. The provision required businesses to file a 1099 form for every purchase they made over $600.00. That provision has been under heavy attack, and criticized as unnecessary and burdensome additional paperwork. Both parties voted, and the amendment was adopted.
In a recent interview conducted by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, with one of the original authors of the individual mandate – the piece of language in the health care reform bill that requires Americans to purchase health insurance, but is attacked by Republicans as “unconstitutional,” – was asked if the constitutionality of the mandate was ever questioned back in 1991 when the term was first used.
Mr. Mark Pauly, who was the lead author of a Health Affairs paper, was given the job to come up with a way to persuade President George H.W. Bush to adopt a health care policy where all Americans will be covered, while keeping the private health care providers in charge of the industry. The individual mandate was seen as the only way to accomplish this feat.
The question was asked by Mr. Klein; “Was the constitutionality of the provision a question, either in your deliberations or after it was released?” Mr. Pauly answered;
“I don’t remember that being raised at all. The way it was viewed by the Congressional Budget Office in 1994 was, effectively, as a tax. You either paid the tax and got insurance that way or went and got it another way. So I’ve been surprised at that argument. But I’m not an expert on the Constitution. My fix would be to simply say raise everyone’s taxes by what a health insurance policy would cost — Congress definitely has the power to do that — and then tell people that if they obtain insurance, they’ll get a tax break of the same amount. So instead of a penalty, it’s a perfectly legal tax break. But this seems to me to angelic pinhead density arguments about whether it’s a payment to do something or not to do something.”
Opponents of the law, which they have affectionately dubbed ‘ObamaCare,’ states that the law violates the Commerce Clause in the constitution, which, according to Article 1 Section 8 Clause 3 states that Congress shall have the power to: “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”. This its opponents claim, does not give congress the power to mandate commerce, or to make anyone buy insurance, thus, its unconstitutionality.
Proponents claim that the power given to Congress through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution is a grant of power, not an express limitation on the power of Congress to regulate the economy, thus, the law is giving Congress the power to improve the economy through the individual mandate and is therefore constitutional.
This ongoing debate prompted the next question from Mr. Klein, “…whether the individual mandate is a penalty for economic inactivity or whether it’s part of a broader system of regulations affecting a market for health care that we’re all participating in.” Mr. Pauly answered;
I see it in the latter way. We thought it was a good idea to do everything possible to encourage people to get insurance. Subsidies will probably pick up the great bulk of the population. But the point of the mandate was that there are a few Evil Knievals who won’t buy it and this would bring them into the system. In our version, the penalty was effectively equal to the premium of a policy. You paid the penalty and you got the insurance. That’s one of my puzzlements here: In the new law, the actual level of the penalty is quite small compared to the price of a policy. It’s only about 20 percent of the cost of a policy
In short, at the time this ‘individual mandate’ was implemented and presented to a Republican president, the common wisdom was that it would keep the government out of the healthcare sector. Requiring people to buy healthcare as the mandate did back in the early nineties, insured a larger portion of Americans and eliminated the need for a single payer government run option.
Because the private sector would benefit from the increased policies sales the individual mandate provided, Republicans signed on to the measure. Democrats on the other hand did not approve of the measure.
So why now the debate on the constitutionality of the individual mandate coming from the right? Simply put, there is now a Democratic President in the White House, and although he and other Democrats have now seen the need for the individual mandate as a way to allow the private sector to offer health care to all, Republicans now have a change of heart. So the debate, childish as it is, continues…
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