Saturday, May 2, 2015

Blasphemy.

Titus, Democrats finally seeing light on Obamacare


Democrats believe Obamacare needs fixing after all.
They’ve figured out that the Affordable Care Act is not remotely affordable. Obamacare has increased health insurance costs for most Americans, not cut them. Far from allowing Americans to keep their existing health insurance and doctors, the law instead has wiped out the policies of millions of Americans and forced them to find new providers through worse coverage.
Of course, this is exactly what Republicans warned the law would do. Democrats, including Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., ignored those warnings and the opposition of most Americans and passed the bill anyway. And Democrats, including Rep. Titus, have defended the law ever since its 2010 enactment, criticizing the frequency of GOP votes to repair, roll back and repeal Obamacare.
So it was refreshing this week to see Democrats, still smarting from last year’s Obamacare-caused election shellacking, get behind their own Affordable Care Act repeal. A group of House Democrats, including Rep. Titus, wants to scrap Obamacare’s 40 percent “Cadillac tax,” which will hammer high-priced insurance plans starting in 2018. Democrats justified the tax five years ago by claiming it would affect only the wealthiest Americans. But Rep. Titus, along with Reps. Joe Courtney of Connecticut and Donald Norcross of New Jersey, say the tax is unfair because it also targets middle-class Americans who live in regions that have a high cost of living, such as the Northeast and West Coast, and, more importantly, union health plans.
“For companies that provide good insurance, for unions who have negotiated and accepted increases in health coverage instead of increases in wages, this comes back as a double hit on them,” Rep. Titus said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Back in 2008, unions were critical in delivering the Democratic majorities that passed Obamacare, but unions didn’t turn out in 2014, partly because of the Democrats’ refusal to provide unions with exemptions from the law unions championed. Democrats need labor turnout in 2016 to keep the White House and have any chance of recapturing the Senate. Platinum union plans, negotiated through collective bargaining over many years, will take a huge hit because of the Cadillac tax.
The Cadillac tax, like almost all of the Affordable Care Act, is bad policy. Although Rep. Titus and company should be applauded for bringing this idea forward, Democrats should go further. The Affordable Care Act is broken and never should have been passed in the first place. Instead of providing unions with relief — and defunding part of the law — Democrats should work with majority Republicans to give all Americans a break and repeal the entire law, then start over on health care reform.

Maybe she's up for re-election.

6 comments:

  1. What really drives health care insurance costs? Warning, the real answers are not that simple, but here are the answers.

    http://actuary.org/files/2015_Premium_Drivers_Updated_060414.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope. Only government involvement makes things more expensive.

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    2. Who is covered—the composition of the risk pool
      Who determines who is in the risk pool?
      Can the Insurance company ask more for higher risk?

      Projected medical costs
      Who determines how often a person can go to the doctor?
      Is there a co-pay to make people think if a visit is really necessary?
      Who determines what the co-pay deductible will be?
      Who determines what will be at no cost?

      Other premium components
      Who set the amount that insurance companies must pay out?

      Laws and regulations
      Who passes laws, establishes regulations?

      Underlying growth in health care costs
      Outside of inflation, could supply and demand be a factor?


      Seems many factors from innovation, new services and of course government intervention in the market has an effect on price. What's amazing is government believes by paying providers less healthcare will cost less. Ready for a pay cut MAX?

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    3. Emergency room visits have increased under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act despite the law’s promises and efforts to curb them, ER room doctors say.

      Three-quarters of emergency physicians say that emergency visits are going up, according to a new poll by The American College of Emergency Physicians. It’s a significant jump from just one year ago when less than half reported increases.

      The jump is driven by more covered Americans under PPACA, especially since the law’s individual mandate took effect, and a continued shortage of primary doctors to care for them.

      Specifically, 28 percent report “significant increases” in all emergency patients since the requirement to have health insurance took effect. Only 3 percent of doctors reported any decrease in ER visits. In addition, more than half (56 percent) said the number of Medicaid emergency room patients is increasing.

      “America has severe primary care physician shortages, and many physicians will not accept Medicaid patients because Medicaid pays so inadequately,” Dr. Michael Gerardi, president of ACEP, said in a statement. “Just because people have health insurance does not mean they have access to timely medical care.”

      Doctors also said they are largely unprepared for more ER patients, with 70 percent saying their ER is not “adequately prepared for potentially substantial increases in patient volume.”

      When asked what would happen if federal subsidies for health insurance coverage were to be eliminated in their states in the King v. Burwell case, 42 percent of emergency physicians said they expect emergency visits to increase. Additionally, 65 percent expect reimbursement for emergency care will decrease if those federal subsidies are eliminated.

      http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/05/04/er-visits-keep-climbing-under-ppaca?eNL=5547b6a0140ba095568cf3c6&utm_source=BenefitsProNewsAlert&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=BenefitsPro_eNLs&_LID=157610069

      What ever would we do without emergency rooms?

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  2. News Flash we democrats have always known that Obamacare needs tweaking. It was never presented as a total solution to American Healthcare but as a starting point to fix our healthcare issues. We WILL have universal healthcare like every other civilized country before it is all over.

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    Replies
    1. Yes the uncivilized US that spends over half of government spending on entitlement programs needs to spend more.

      Like all civilized governments we need a national sales tax to pay for national healthcare system that is as broken as other countries, a VAT Tax to supplement the national sales tax as well as making all doctors government employees as well as all hospitals nationalized with the pharma companies.

      Government can then dictate the cost of healthcare as we all know that when government pays doctors and provides less it certainly lowers the cost of healthcare.

      Dreams of my father come true even if it was a work of fiction.

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