Tag: ACA

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Again! Comedian Jon Stewart Schools Seasoned “Journalists” on CBO Report

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s… JON STEWART! The Comedian who does a better job reporting actual news than the so-called seasoned “journalists!”

Let the debunking begin!

Okay. Okay. This one was easy. The debunking in this case had to do with a recent CBO report that Conservatives and even some on CNN took and run with. The report claimed that because of Obamacare or the ACA, workers will now be free to leave some jobs to pursue other things, because they will no longer feel the need to work to keep healthcare.

Simple, right? Wrong.

Conservatives and Republicans took this report to claim that “Obamacare was killing the American dream.” They even went on to manufacture false statistics claiming that millions of people would lose their jobs because of Obamacare forcing them out of the jobs market.

Doomsday!

Jon Stewart, the comedian, set things straight… again!

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Politics

Republicans New Plan – Kill Obamacare by Making it Unaffordable

Republicans are not ready to give up the fight to take away your healthcare. They have tried the failed strategy of repealing the entire Obamacare bill I’ve 40 tines already, and now,  they have a plan that just might achieve their ultimate goal of allowing Americans to die because they have no healthcare.

Their plan? To make Obamacare also called The Affordable Care Act, unaffordable. Their plan is to repeal a provision in the law that keeps premiums low, thus raising the oremiums.

The provision — called “risk corridors,” but dubbed the “Obamacare bailout” by the law’s opponents — seeks to stabilize costs by creating a pot of money that takes in funds from insurers who enroll healthier customers and uses it to pay out insurers who enroll sicker customers. It’s a safety valve that sunsets after 2016. The repeal push is clever messaging in a sense because it lets conservatives snatch the mantle of populism from liberals against wealthy insurance companies. But it comes with its share of dangers, too.

Last November, as TPM reported, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced legislation to repeal this provision. Since then it has picked up 13 Republican co-sponsors, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and spawned two companion bills in the House, which are supported by numerous Republicans. The idea has been championed by conservative lobbying groups like the Club For Growth and Heritage Action, and pushed by writers including Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, Ramesh Punnuru in Bloomberg View and Deroy Murdock in National Review.

The conservatives are open about the end goal: collapse Obamacare by causing higher premiums on the law’s marketplaces for the newly insured, which progressive experts who support Obamacare agree may occur if the provision is scrapped.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Texas

Report: Almost Half a Million Texans Applied for Healthcare under ObamaCare

But, according to their governor Rick Perry and Canadian born senator Ted Cruz, Texans don’t want healthcare, right?

Wrong!

New numbers on ACA enrollment are out, and nearly half a million Texans have applied for coverage through the federal exchange. The latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show us that:

457,382 total Texans who applied for coverage through completed applications
390,658 Texans have been found eligible to enroll in a marketplace plan
Over 47,000 have been found eligible to enroll in the state’s existing Medicaid or CHIP plans
Ed Espinoza, Executive Director of Progress Texas, released the following statement:

Twelve weeks of ACA has done more to help Texans without health care than Rick Perry has done in twelve years as Governor.

– h/t ProgressTexas

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Healthcare ObamaCare

While They Complained about The Website, SinglePayer Went Into Effect

Did you notice the best part?

Did you see what happened when everyone was complaining about a website?

Single-payer got started in America!!!

Vermont is using authority granted in a provision under the Affordable Care Act to start a single-payer system. Most Americans still don’t know what the phrase “single-payer” even means. It had little support in Congress in 2009 and Senate “Democrats” like Nelson and Lieberman even killed the public option. But, the ACA had this sweet little provision that allowed states to set up a single-payer system and now people will see it in action. You know what that means.

As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opines, “The quickest route toward a national health care program will be when individual states go forward and demonstrate that universal and non-profit health care works, and that it is the cost-effective and moral thing to do.”

As many predicted, ACA is already leading to the kind of transformative progressive change Obama promised. The progressive movement will be responsible for showing the nation how well single-payer works after the Vermont system goes into effect. When public and non-profit insurance becomes the national norm, we’ll know where it began.

By David Cole in a comment on our Facebook Page.

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Healthcare ObamaCare

President Obama’s Approval Numbers Are On The Rise

The President’s poll numbers hit a low of 39% approval and 54% disapproval when this poll was taken during the December 21st to 23rd period. Around that same time, Americans were storming the healthcare.gov website signing up for policies that went into effect January 1st. But since the 39% lows, Americans are beginning to see President Obama in a whole new light and Obamacare-love seems to be the only reason, considering the President has not done anything tremendous since those lows. In fact, he is on vacation with his family.

According to the new poll taken between December 27 and December 29th, President Obama’s approval shot up to 44% and his disapproval fell to 49%. Just another small piece of evidence to prove that, unlike the Republican lie claiming that people don’t want Obamacare, they do want Obamacare and they’re loving it!

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ObamaCare Politics

In December, Almost 1 million People Signed Up for Obamacare

HONOLULU (AP) — A December surge propelled health care sign-ups through the government’s rehabilitated website past the 1 million mark, the Obama administration said Sunday, reflecting new signs of life for the problem-plagued federal insurance exchange.

Of the more than 1.1 million people now enrolled, nearly 1 million signed up in December, with the majority coming in the week before a pre-Christmas deadline for coverage to start in January. Compare that to a paltry 27,000 in October —the website’s first, error-prone month — or 137,000 in November.The figures tell only part of the story. The administration has yet to provide a December update on the 14 states running their own exchanges. While California, New York, Washington, Kentucky and Connecticut have performed well, others are still struggling.

Still, the end-of-year surge suggests that with HealthCare.Gov now functioning better, the federal market may be starting to pull its weight. The windfall comes at a critical moment for Obama’s sweeping health care law, which becomes “real” for many Americans on Jan. 1 when coverage through the exchanges and key patient protections kick in.

“As we continue our open enrollment campaign, we experienced a welcome surge in enrollment as millions of Americans seek access to affordable health care coverage,” Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a blog post.

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Healthcare ObamaCare

#GetCovered – Nancy’s Story – Video

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

States See Huge Increase in Healthcare Sign up

WASHINGTON – States with their own well-running health insurance exchanges reported Wednesday an increase of 30 percent to 40 percent in enrollments from last week to this week.

“We’re seeing huge interest,” said Peter Lee, director of California’s exchange, during a conference call sponsored by Families USA, a health care advocacy group that supports the Affordable Care Act.

Six months ago, “no American knew about” the state exchanges.

In the first week of December, 50,000 people signed up for insurance in California.

Last week, 15,000 people were signing up every day, Lee said. He expects the interest to increase as local organizations, such as libraries or even cities, launch their own campaigns to encourage people to buy health insurance.

Lee and other officials in states that have expanded Medicaid coverage and spent millions promoting their exchanges said they are seeing an increasing diversity among the people buying insurance and the types they are purchasing.

The numbers show interest in buying insurance is increasing after the initial problems that hurt the site when it launched Oct. 1, said Ron Pollack, the founding executive director of Families USA. States that are doing well, he said, can share how they succeeded with other states and the federal government.

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Healthcare Politics

Republican House Speaker John Boehner Successfully Signs Up For ObamaCare

Congratulations House Speaker John Boehner for successfully enrolling in the Affordable Care Act; Aka: Obamacare.

It was about an hour after Boehner’s office said he couldn’t sign up for Obamacare coverage on the District of Columbia’s exchange, that his office said, he had officially enrolled.

Boehner’s office wrote, “Kept at it, and called the DC Health Link help line. They called back a few hours later, and after restarting the process on the website two more times, I just heard from DC Health Link that I have been successfully enrolled.”

Politico reports:

 Responding to Boehner’s earlier failed attempts to sign up for coverage, the District’s exchange — known as DC Health Link — said it recently identified some system errors after enrollment.

“We recently discovered the fact that after enrollment, some users have been receiving a random error message,” DC Health Link communications director Richard Sorian wrote in an email. “Despite the message, these individuals have been enrolled. Our call center has been able to quickly resolve these matters. We are working on a system-wide update that will eliminate this soon. Users will be able to verify their enrollment in their secure, online account.”
Boehner’s office on Thursday afternoon said he originally received an error screen when he tried to sign up for coverage. “Guess I’ll just have to keep trying…” his office wrote at the time.

I plan to enroll too, but I’m not a ‘shop on Black Friday’ kind of person. I’ve been waiting for things to settle down. After I enroll, it will be like Boehner and I are BFFs. Isn’t that exciting?

Stuff not covered: How long did it take to enroll for coverage by an insurance company before Obamacare?

Categories
ObamaCare Politics

Finally! Some Good News About Obamacare

In states with functioning websites, enrollments are picking up:

A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.

“What we are seeing is incredible momentum,” said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation’s largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month.

Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind.

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Health insurance Healthcare ObamaCare

Yes, People Are Successfully Signing Up For Obamacare – Video

She was so happy to finally get affordable healthcare, this constituent wrote a thank you letter to her congressman. Here is a story you will never see on Fox News. And since Fox won’t cover it, you will never hear any Republicans in Washington talking about it.

After her husband died in February 2012, Amy Bowman was diagnosed with breast cancer. She tells her story that she was eventually able to continue 0n her husband’s insurance for a year. But cancer is a serious pre-existing condition and Amy knew that getting insurance after her year was out would be almost impossible.

After searching, Amy was able to continue her insurance at another company, but they monthly price for her policy was extremely high. On a monthly basis, Amy Bowman’s insurance policy was almost $1500.00. But she was able to sign on and shop for healthcare on the marketplace provided by Obamacare, and received a health policy with provision for dental benefits, for about half of what she was paying before.

This is Amy Bowman’s story.

Categories
ObamaCare Politics

Governor Deval Patrick Counsels Congress on Obamacare – His Letter

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, witnessed firsthand some of the problems involved in providing healthcare to his state. And with that knowledge in mind, Governor Deval Patrick decided to write this letter to the members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation.

The Members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation:

As you consider current proposals to change the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I write to remind you about what we have learned from health care reform in Massachusetts, and to inform you of some of our experiences so far with implementing it.

We have seen firsthand the positive changes brought about by a strong individual insurance market with protections that ensure a basic level of care.  Individuals are protected from being dropped from insurance when they need it most, or being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition.  Benefits must meet minimum standards, and there are limits on individuals’ exposure to out-of-pocket costs for needed health care.  And the rest of us are protected against having our premiums inflated or our taxes tapped to pick up the tab for the uninsured or underinsured.  With these basic features in place, we have achieved near universal coverage, better health and slower growth in health costs.  With the ACA, the same can and will happen for the country.

Much has been made of the fact that some Americans have had their current policies canceled by their insurers.  Some of that, we know, is in the normal course of annual insurance renewals.  Some is because the existing policies do not provide the minimum level of coverage required by the ACA.  So long as the means for individuals to learn about and enroll in affordable alternatives is available, through an improved website, a call center or otherwise, the transition of people from non-compliant policies to compliant ones should proceed. 

Nonetheless, the public has been poorly informed about this transition, and too many consumers are unable to enroll conveniently in compliant plans.  For some, the temporary delay proposed yesterday by the President may be appropriate.  Our experience in Massachusetts tells us that our health plans and their customers have prepared for the transition and are unlikely to need or to use the additional time.

However, any delay in requiring plans to meet the basic standards of the ACA must only be temporary.  Leaving non-compliant plans to remain permanently in place means we revert to the status quo: a broken health care system where many people carry policies that don’t cover them when they get seriously ill, and where those with comprehensive coverage pay for those uninsured or underinsured in higher premiums and taxes.  Permitting plans to be permanently non-compliant means the pool of individuals who do purchase plans through the marketplaces will likely be sicker on average, and their options will be more expensive and constrained.  And it will disrupt the market-based model on which premiums and policy options hinge.

We benefit in Massachusetts from broad, bipartisan support for health reform and the willingness of our legislature — encouraged by business, labor, industry, patient advocates and others — to make refinements to our plan as we go.  The President does not enjoy that collaboration with the Congress, and the American people suffer as a result.  If you wish to take further legislative action to ensure the successful extension of the benefits of the ACA to all our citizens, I would humbly propose that you consider granting the administration broader authority to make adjustments to the ACA by regulation so long as such regulations advance the fundamental goal.  That way any administration can make changes in the details of implementation quickly in response to lessons learned along the way.

The fundamental goal of the Affordable Care Act is to give all Americans access to reliable, quality health insurance at a reasonable cost.  Guaranteeing a basic level of coverage for everyone is the first step towards fixing our broken health care system and promoting a healthier population.  We have seen in Massachusetts how well it works and how important it is.  While the transition is challenging for some, I urge you not to lose sight of the long-term good for all as you consider any changes or adjustments to the Affordable Care Act.

For these reasons, I urge you to oppose any bill that extends access to non-compliant plans beyond a short transition period.

With continued thanks for your partnership, I am

Respectfully yours,

Governor Deval L. Patrick

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