Category: Healthcare

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Featured Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Fox News Outrage – Because of Obamacare, People Must Now Wait to Buy Healthcare

Fox News has something else to complain about. They are now blaming Obamacare for the people who chose to remain uninsured past the enrollment cycle. You know, those same folks Fox News told not to buy healthcare.

On the so-called “news” network’s website, this was written;

There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.

Apparently, the concept of an enrollment cycle is foreign to the good ole folks over at Fox. Of course, the rest of us already know that enrollment in health insurance happens every year and anyone who missed or failed to enroll because, they listened to Fox for example – would usually wait for the next enrollment cycle. But according to the foxers, Obamacare is now the culprit.

I still cannot figure out why their audience continue buying their bull!

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

More Obamacare Good News – More Deficit Reduction, More People Insured Than Expected

Photo: CBO

Did you know? Obamacare, also known as the ACA will reduce the federal budget even more than the CBO initially reported. Also, more people will be covered than initially thought. Also, the Republicans are dead set on repealing the whole thing.

In 2010, it estimated that Obamacare’s costs to the federal budget between 2014 and 2019 would hit $759 billion. That figure has steadily declined with each revision. The new figures project “a net cost of $36 billion for 2014, $5 billion less than the previous projection for the year; and $1,383 billion for the 2015–2024 period.” That last figures is “$104 billion less than the previous projection.”

It also projected an increase to the number of people gaining coverage under Obamacare — though a modest one. Compared to its February estimates, the CBO now assumes that 7 million more people will gain coverage under the Obamacare exchanges. In total, it projects that “12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 than would have had it in the absence of the ACA” — an increase that appears to be independent of the spike in Obamacare enrollments at the end of March.

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Healthcare News Obama care Politics

Health Care Horror?

You’d think that people were dying because they signed up for health insurance. You’d think that people were going broke because they had to leave behind their old policies that didn’t cover needed expenses and treatments. You’d think that the opponents of the Affordable Care Act would come up with a specific, viable alternative that they could run on this November.

Oh, the horror. None of this is happening.

I will say for the final time that the website rollout was terrible and horrible, but it’s now time to move beyond that because over 7 million people now have health insurance and the numbers keep going up. Citizens living in the most prosperous country in the world will not have to worry about medical costs bankrupting them or forcing them to lose their houses or their livelihoods. People can now make decisions based on their own life choices, rather than having to stay at a dead-end job because of the benefits.

Oh, the horror?

The real horror is being perpetrated by the states that refuse to take free federal money to expand Medicaid and cover even more people. These states are led by governors and legislatures that are acting on ideology rather than common sense. They have convinced themselves that president Obama wishes to enslave their citizens through federal programs, making them dependent on the government for their happiness. It’s irrational and will eventually lead to defeat for the politicians that are erecting the legal roadblocks to health care.

The history of the United States has moved inexorably in one direction, and that’s towards equality, access and enhanced civil rights. The Affordable Care Act will survive and thrive because it enables citizens to live better lives. In the end, it is truly American.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics rachel maddow

Rachel Maddow is Shocked By The Kathleen Sebelius Resignation

“Well that was a surprise!”

That was how Rachel maddow started her segment about the resignation of HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Maddow went on saying that the administration finally got some good news about Obamacare since the website debacle back in October, and she found it strange that they decided to accept Sebelius’ resignation now.

Accepting the resignation Maddow said, turned the story of the successful Obamacare enrollment figures into “a story instead about firing people.”

“Kathleen Sebelius has to go? Why now? Because the administration can’t resist stepping on its own tail and turning the first good news cycle they have had about Obamacare since it passed into a story instead about firing people for Obamacare’s failures?”

Maddow concluded by comparing the administration’s acceptance of Sebelius’ resignation to a team that began the season playing badly, then eventually winning the championship and in the middle of their celebration, they fire their coach.

Video

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Turns In Her Resignation

Republicans should be happy. For months, since the original failed launch of the Obamacare website, Republicans have called for heads to roll… preferably, the head of the Health and Human Services – Kathleen Sebelius. Well today, Republicans got their wish as Sebelius turned in her resignation to the Obama administration.

Sylvia Burwell, who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, will be nominated to take her place, according to multiple White House sources.

Sibelius was not expected to remain in the Obama administration through the end of the president’s second term – with reports that she had been discussing her future for months with the President.

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dead Featured Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Florida Woman Dropped Dead Because State Republicans Refused Obamacare

While Obamacare is saving millions of lives today, there are still some states – headed by Republican governors – that insist on killing their citizens… literally. One of those states is Florida and the case of Charlene Dill is a sad but perfect example.

Dill, a 32-year-old mother of three, collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor at the end of March. She was at an appointment to try to sell a vacuum cleaner, one of the three part-time jobs that she worked to try to make ends meet for her family. Her death was a result of a documented heart condition — and it could have been prevented.

Dill was uninsured, and she went years without the care she needed to address her chronic conditions because she couldn’t afford it.

Under the health reform law, which seeks to expand coverage to millions of low-income Americans, Dill wasn’t supposed to lack insurance. She was supposed to have access to a public health plan through the law’s expansion of the Medicaid program. But Dill, a Florida resident, is one of the millions of Americans living in a state that has refused to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion after the Supreme Court ruled this provision to be optional. Those low-income people have been left in a coverage gap, making too much income to qualify for a public Medicaid plan but too little income to qualify for the federal subsidies to buy a plan on Obamacare’s private exchanges.

Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the nation, and is home to a disproportionately large number of residents who struggle to afford health services. Nonetheless, lawmakers have continued to resist accepting generous federal funds to expand Medicaid to an estimated 750,000 low-income Floridians like Dill.

 

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Featured Healthcare

Paralysed Stroke Victim Helplessly Listened as Doctors Discussed Donating His Organs

A stroke patient lying paralysed in hospital listened in horror as doctors discussed organ donation with his family after telling them he would not survive.

Jimi Fritze, 43, heard every word but couldn’t protest because he was unable to speak.

His heartbroken relatives had come to say their final goodbyes after doctors said brain scans showed he had ‘no hope’ of pulling through.

As they surrounded his hospital bed, doctors asked the family about the possibility of donating his organs when he died, not realising Mr Fritze could also hear the conversation.

Stroke victim Jimi Fritze listened helplessly as doctors discussed donating his organs with his family, but was unable to speak out. He later recovered and is now taking action against the hospital

He eventually recovered after his family sought advice from another medic.

He has now launched an official complaint against the doctors for breaching rules by discussing organ donation before a patient is brain dead, it was reported by The Local.

Read more: Daily Mail

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Abortions Domestic Policies Health Healthcare News Politics

The Abortion Freeport Doctrine

In 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slavery was legal and that slaves were property. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, in debates with challenger Abraham Lincoln in 1858, was a supporter of popular sovereignty on slavery, That is, he wanted to let the people of a territory decide if it was to be legally free or slave. This, obviously, wouldn’t be possible given the Court’s decision because the justices said that slavery could not be banned. So Douglas came up with a dance that came to be called The Freeport Doctrine. This doctrine would allow slavery, but would encourage territories to enact high legal boundaries to its implementation, rendering it moot in practice.

Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, anti-abortion groups have stopped at nothing–not even the law–to enact high legal hurdles that inhibit the right of every women to control their reproductive lives and health choices. In one of the presidential debates in 2004, George W. Bush even invoked Dred Scott as a guiding principle for his judicial choices. Abortion equals slavery. Welcome to the Abortion Freeport Doctrine.

Three states have taken this tactic to new extremes. Texas passed an onerous law that will result in the closing of more than half of the remaining clinics in the state. Arizona passed a law, now under judicial review, that would restrict medication abortions. And Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said today that he will sign a law that will prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and with no exception for rape or incest This is all on top of restrictive laws that have been passed, and have passed judicial muster, over the 41 years that Roe has been the law of the land. The Supreme Court is now weighing whether the Affordable Care Act can require all employers to cover contraception for all of its employees, because those companies consider some contraception to mimic abortions.

This is an emotional issue and the debate over abortion does not yield any middle ground. But we can find a way to make abortions less likely, provide contraception and sex education, and allow women and their doctors to make decisions that are in the best interests of the patient. That’s called freedom of choice and it’s something I hear a great deal about from those on the political right who want the government out of our lives, except in the bedroom. Or kitchen. Or back seat. Or…you get the point.

My solace comes from the belief that the conservative tide has crested and that we’re seeing the worst of the restrictions now. Many will stay in the most conservative states, but the idea that a women’s body is her own is pretty much a settled social idea that the court overturns at the country’s peril. It’s worth remembering that the Freeport Doctrine went nowhere. It’s also worth remembering that it took another hundred years for African-Americans to gain their full legal rights. I hope we’re not still debating the choice issue 60 years from now.

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Healthcare Mitch McConnell ObamaCare Politics

Thanks to Obamacare, Uninsured is Cut by 40% in Mitch McConnell’s State

Mitch McConnell could thank Obama for making his state more healthy. He could thank Obama, but he won’t. He’s more concerned with trying to deny Obama a second term. Oh wait a minute…

Obamacare has cut Kentucky’s uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Some 75 percent of them — 270,000 — were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky’s uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent.

The enrollment figures, which state officials relayed to the Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, underscore the relative success of Kentucky’s state-based Obamacare exchange compared to other states and, in some ways, the HealthCare.gov federal marketplace portal.

Like the federal government, Kentucky has decided to give people who began their applications until April 15 to sign up for insurance on the exchanges. State officials told the Herald-Leader that those who are eligible for Medicaid can sign up after the March 31 deadline

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Healthcare ObamaCare

President Obama’s Full Victory Speech on Obamacare – Video


Rest assured. Right now, Republicans are brainstorming, trying to come up with another set of lies talking points to fool the American people into thinking that having healthcare is a bad thing. Today however, President Obama took a victory lap in announcing the end of the end of the enrollment period for healthcare and that the initial goal of 7 million enrollees was reached.

The President;

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Healthcare

How Many People Signed up for Obamacare So Far? 7,041,000

How many people have signed up for private coverage under Obamacare? 7,041,000, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced Tuesday afternoon.

That number is likely to rise: It does not include the Monday sign-ups in the 14 states operating their own marketplaces. In addition, the enrollment deadline was relaxed for people having trouble completing the process, so some people could still sign up in the next two weeks.

The figure does not account for how many people have paid their first premium, formally initiating their coverage. Independent analysts have also estimated that about 9 million people have enrolled directly through their insurer.

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Health Care Healthcare Politics repeal obamacare

John Boehner Is Still Promising to Repeal Obamacare

Relax Americans, the good old folks in the Republican party are working hard on your behalf, and they are promising to do everything they can to take away your health care and to deny you the basic right of having affordable health care.

In a statement issued on his website, House Speaker John Boehner said;

“The president’s health care law continues to wreak havoc on American families, small businesses and our economy, and as I’ve said many times, the problem was never just about the website – it’s the whole law.  Millions of Americans are seeing their premiums rise, not the lower prices the president promised.  Many small businesses are afraid to hire new workers, instead cutting hours and dropping health coverage for existing employees.  Many Americans can no longer see their family doctor, despite the pledge no one would lose access to their physician.  Seniors are feeling the impact, losing their Medicare Advantage plans the president promised they could keep.  And taxpayers are being forced to pick up an unaffordable tab.

“House Republicans will continue to work to repeal this law and protect families and small businesses from its harmful consequences, and that’s why we’re taking action this week to repeal the law’s 30-hour rule that has become a significant barrier to job growth and higher wages.  We will also continue our work to replace this fundamentally-flawed law with patient-centered solutions focused on lowering health care costs and protecting jobs.”

Yes Americans, having access to quality healthcare is apparently not a good thing. You should be allowed to get sick and die if you have no insurance. And for the selected few that have insurance, your policies should be subjected to denial by the insurance companies if they so choose.

You know… freedom! Like it was in the good old days.

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