Obamacare Insurance Exchange

[tokeprep]

Medical Loss Ratio Many insurance companies spend a substantial portion of consumers’ premium dollars on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead, and marketing.
The Affordable Care Act requires health insurance issuers to submit data on the proportion of premium revenues spent on clinical services and quality improvement, also known as the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR). It also requires them to issue rebates to enrollees if this percentage does not meet minimum standards. MLR requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% or 85% of premium dollars on medical care, with the review provisions imposing tighter limits on health insurance rate increases. If they fail to meet these standards, the insurance companies will be required to provide a rebate to their customers starting in 2012.

The insurance industry didn't write 100% of the bill, obviously. There are provisions they didn't and don't like. That said, dozens of the people who actually did write the bill are now working at healthcare companies or lobbying firms (one of the people called "The architect of Obamacare" was a vice president at Wellpoint and now works for a $250 billion drug company).

 

[canndo]

LMFAO......this ACA is just another drone sucking on the American taxpayers wallets to make other people rich. I feel sorry for todays children, because they are royally screwed. How depressing it will be for them to sit around and hear tales from their Grandparents about how wonderful America was in the past.

Some people have failures of recall. How wonderful america was? Gays and blacks lynched, polio, poisoned air, rivers that caught fire, thousands of kids brain damaged because they didn't wear helmets, thousands impaled on the dashboards of their cars, child labor, detention camps, black lung disease asbestosis, mercury poisoning, lead in the paint, families going bankrupt because their child got sick, families destitute because the father got sick - on the job perhaps - yeah, we can tell our children just how "wonderful" this place was.

 

[canndo]

It's a semantic matter. The people saying congress is exempt are saying it based on the fact that congress will get an exceedingly generous subsidy far, far beyond that available to anyone else under Obamacare. You're saying they "aren't exempt" because they still have to pay a penalty for not having insurance, etc. Ok. I'm rolling my eyes at both.



I don't believe in single payer either, but I also don't believe in insurance. Like I said, the insurance companies are going to end up netting tens of billions of dollars for their shareholders thanks to Obamacare. Why is anyone celebrating that? When they were smiling, clapping, and cheering on the bill, everyone should have realized we were fucking up--there's only one reason a business interest behaves that way. Insurance is the problem, not the solution:

1) Insurance locks people into certain doctors, clinics, and hospitals, preventing competition with the rest of the healthcare universe.
2) Insurance conceals and distorts information on cost, which is generally totally invisible to economic actors.
3) Insurance encourages the performance of services that generate payments.
4) Insurance provides a safety net that encourages bad behavior.

Healthcare costs are going to continue skyrocketing because nothing has changed.

Continue? well, they have all but leveled off for now, and the premiums are 16 percent lower than estimated. I am agast at how people who hate Obama Care aren't even trying to pay attention to the facts.


The interesting thing here is that I was the only one to have actually checked the plans, when I posted problems I have with the preliminaries I got a pile of people saying "see? we told you, it won't work, it can't work it is a baaaad law" but not a one has gone to the trouble to check out the law, depending wholely on the spin machine, that very machine that has proven itself to be inaccurate time after time after time during this entire debate, for their "facts".

No wonder the right claims that the majority wants the law repealed, they have managed to convince that majority of enough of it's lies that they actually believe it. Interesting as well that the right is all for the will of the people - when it comes to obama care, but around the same percentage of people who don't want obama care DO want national background checks for weapons purchases - I don't see that same set of Republicans rushing to comply with that particular majority preference. I havn't seen the Repubs vote 42 times to get background checks on the books - gee, do you suppose that their actions really have little to do with public preferences?

 

[canndo]

i dont give a shit about your Copy/Paste bullshit.

it can safely be assumed to be lies if posted by you, unless you provide the source jackass.

"With the frenzy of lobbying in the last quarter of 2009, the two-year total will go well beyond $1 billion.

The drug industry alone has spent $199 million on lobbying in the first nine months of the year, which CRP said was the largest such amount ever spent by any industry on any issue. The drug lobby negotiated a deal with the White House in the spring to limit to $80 billion over ten years the amount that the drug companies would have to accept in discounts and rebates as their “contribution” to paying for the health care overhaul. Efforts by some Senate and House Democrats to impose greater costs on the industry, as much as $200 billion, have been beaten back with the support of the Obama administration."

~ http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/12/lobb-d22.html

The MLR ratio is not a lie - read the law

 

[FreedomWorks]

ObomberCare is too expensive. How come nobody ever talks about the debt? Its almost like a trillion dollars a year over budget is normal. How long do you think we can keep going on like this?

 

[Dr Kynes]

Some people have failures of recall. How wonderful america was? Gays and blacks lynched, polio, poisoned air, rivers that caught fire, thousands of kids brain damaged because they didn't wear helmets, thousands impaled on the dashboards of their cars, child labor, detention camps, black lung disease asbestosis, mercury poisoning, lead in the paint, families going bankrupt because their child got sick, families destitute because the father got sick - on the job perhaps - yeah, we can tell our children just how "wonderful" this place was.

it's amazing the human race survived before the Democrats arrived to save us from ourselves.


also, asbestos causes mesothelioma. (use the googles)

black lung is caused by breathing in coal dust, and only afflicted coal miners, fire stokers in coal fired furnaces, and coalyard workers. (use the gooogles)

the cuyahoga river did not "catch on fire" in 1968, thats a bullshit story ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID333140_code517200.pdf?abstractid=333140&mirid=1 )

Polio was not cured by government action (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk)


blacks were lynched BY THE GOVERNMENT (use the googles) not just redneck crackers.

there has as yet been no statistical evidence that kids bicycle helmets do shit to reduce injury, merely assumptions and assertions.

nobody gets "impaled" by a dashboard. you can be "impaled" by a steering column, if you hit moving at a high enough rate of speed, and nobody has been ab/e to come up with a way to prevent it. F=MxV... and if the steering column is where you hit, your getting speared.

detention camps were created and operated by DEMOCRATS in positions of power in GOVERNMENT, notably FDR...

and finally it seems as if you are implying that The One has signed some law making "getting sick" a thing of the past...

 

[Dr Kynes]

The MLR ratio is not a lie - read the law

how do i know it's not a lie?

he did not source his copy/paste.

as such his assertions can be safely assumed to be LIES.

Edit: and why should i read the law when the congress still hasnt?
NOBODY is sure whats in that 2000 pages of crap yet, i read it before and i got more useful information from a chinese phone directory.

 

[ChesusRice]

December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the "Contract With America," Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America's majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol's strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

 

[ChesusRice]

i didnt have a source for the current numbers, but even the World Socialist Party thinks that Obamacare is a RACKET designed to profit the politicians and the insurance companies.


thats some rich creamy irony right there.

Edit: also it was an opportunity to demonstrate how you quote a sourc3 and attribute it, cuz cheezy cant seem to figure that out.

I agree with the world socialist party
Lets have universal healthcare with the option of private insurance

 

[tokeprep]

Continue? well, they have all but leveled off for now, and the premiums are 16 percent lower than estimated. I am agast at how people who hate Obama Care aren't even trying to pay attention to the facts.

I'm talking about any insurance scheme, not just Obamacare. Insurance costs will continue skyrocketing with or without it. You want facts? In 2003--just ten years ago--the cost of healthcare for a family was $10,168, according to the Milliman Medical Index (published by an actuarial consulting firm). In 2008, that cost was $15,609; in 2013, that cost is $20,030.

The interesting thing here is that I was the only one to have actually checked the plans, when I posted problems I have with the preliminaries I got a pile of people saying "see? we told you, it won't work, it can't work it is a baaaad law" but not a one has gone to the trouble to check out the law, depending wholely on the spin machine, that very machine that has proven itself to be inaccurate time after time after time during this entire debate, for their "facts".

No wonder the right claims that the majority wants the law repealed, they have managed to convince that majority of enough of it's lies that they actually believe it. Interesting as well that the right is all for the will of the people - when it comes to obama care, but around the same percentage of people who don't want obama care DO want national background checks for weapons purchases - I don't see that same set of Republicans rushing to comply with that particular majority preference. I havn't seen the Repubs vote 42 times to get background checks on the books - gee, do you suppose that their actions really have little to do with public preferences?

It doesn't matter how affordable the premiums are today because they will go up. My point was that real reform--whether it was competition or single payer--would have resulted in a better outcome. I would rather have single payer than Obamacare or the insurance system Obamacare extended.

 

[Dr Kynes]

December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the "Contract With America," Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America's majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol's strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

still more unattributed copy/paste.

still irrelevant.

 

[ChesusRice]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page2.html
Detailed Timeline of the Healthcare Debate portrayed in "The System"
[h=4]Events following Clinton's Healthcare Address to Congress through March
1994[/h]

 

[Dr Kynes]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page2.html
Detailed Timeline of the Healthcare Debate portrayed in "The System"
Events following Clinton's Healthcare Address to Congress through March
1994

see was that so hard?

including the link allows the reader to gain context. and IN CONTEXT the implication you are making fails.

how this relates to Obamacare i neither know nor care, but the fact remains, clinton's "reforms" would have divided the nation nearly as bitterly as Obamacare, and yes, when a policy proposal is opposed by a political party they seek to overturn it.

the author of the cited narrative is crafting an illusory nefarious scheme based on political avarice as the only reason Republicans might oppose Hillarycare (and i suppose by extension, Obamacare) but what you forget is that Republicans are REPUBLICANS, believers in a republic, not populists, federalists, or washington madarins.

hiullarycare, just like obamacare is a vast powergrab by the federal government, in direct opposition to the ideals of republicanism, and thus also the Republican Party, who admittedly are not the best guardians of the Ideals of a Republic, but they are better than the Democrats.

you are so partisan it's hard to believe anything you might say, and your perplexing inability to append an attribution to a copy/paste is straight up Redonk.

 

[Red1966]

Actually the Republicans wrote Obamacare

Liar. The ACA was written by Nancy Pelosi's unqualified staff, with the "input" of various campaign donors and rushed into a vote without study or debate to get it passed before they lost any votes.

 

[Red1966]

Some people have failures of recall. How wonderful america was? Gays and blacks lynched, polio, poisoned air, rivers that caught fire, thousands of kids brain damaged because they didn't wear helmets, thousands impaled on the dashboards of their cars, child labor, detention camps, black lung disease asbestosis, mercury poisoning, lead in the paint, families going bankrupt because their child got sick, families destitute because the father got sick - on the job perhaps - yeah, we can tell our children just how "wonderful" this place was.

Never seen a gay or black lynched, never met anyone with polio, air is much cleaner now than 20 years ago, so are rivers, children wearing helmets is just paranoid, you can't get impaled on a dashboard steering columns are better designed now, child labor is illegal, there are no detention camps, black lung and asbestosis doesn't happen anymore, leaded paint is no longer manufactured, bankruptcy eliminates all those bills, and there are numerous government safety nets that enable even the poorest to live better than the wealthy of just a few generations ago. The problems of a previous generation are all but gone now. I don't know where you're at, but you should move to the USA.

 

[Red1966]

Continue? well, they have all but leveled off for now, and the premiums are 16 percent lower than estimated. I am agast at how people who hate Obama Care aren't even trying to pay attention to the facts. The interesting thing here is that I was the only one to have actually checked the plans, when I posted problems I have with the preliminaries I got a pile of people saying "see? we told you, it won't work, it can't work it is a baaaad law" but not a one has gone to the trouble to check out the law, depending wholely on the spin machine, that very machine that has proven itself to be inaccurate time after time after time during this entire debate, for their "facts". No wonder the right claims that the majority wants the law repealed, they have managed to convince that majority of enough of it's lies that they actually believe it. Interesting as well that the right is all for the will of the people - when it comes to obama care, but around the same percentage of people who don't want obama care DO want national background checks for weapons purchases - I don't see that same set of Republicans rushing to comply with that particular majority preference. I havn't seen the Repubs vote 42 times to get background checks on the books - gee, do you suppose that their actions really have little to do with public preferences?

Funny how you actually checked the plans when they weren't yet published. "16 percent lower than estimated" is based on estimates far higher than current, and is still a large increase. Your "facts" are lies. Complain about " the spin machine' while you spin like crazy.

 

[Red1966]

December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the "Contract With America," Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America's majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol's strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

The Clinton plan was written by person never elected to any office what-so-ever, in complete cooperation with healthcare profiteers that made it a crime punishable by imprisonment to go outside it for care, even if you went to another nation. Is that your idea of better healthcare?

 

[UncleBuck]

Never seen a gay or black lynched

there's still time for you to complete your bucket list, red.

not so much for your wife and kids, may they RIP.

 

[ChesusRice]

The Clinton plan was written by person never elected to any office what-so-ever, in complete cooperation with healthcare profiteers that made it a crime punishable by imprisonment to go outside it for care, even if you went to another nation. Is that your idea of better healthcare?

OMG the stupidity of your reply is astronomical
Like so dense it could be a singularity

Opposition to the plan was heavy from conservatives, libertarians, and the health insurance industry. The industry produced a highly effective television ad, "Harry and Louise", in an effort to rally public support against the plan. Instead of uniting behind the President's original proposal, Democrats offered a number of competing plans of their own. Hillary Clinton was drafted by the Clinton Administration to head a new Task Force and sell the plan to the American people, a plan which ultimately backfired amid the barrage of fire from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and considerably diminished her own popularity. By September 1994, the final compromise Democratic bill was declared dead by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell.

 

[Canna Sylvan]

The One.

You said you were a farmer, not McCain's former campaign manager.

What you failed to realize at the time, is The One's voting base already knew that. You were preaching to the choir.

[video=youtube;mopkn0lPzM8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8[/video]