What an Obummer.
"In rural Ga., sticker shock on US health insurance site" by Jordan Rau | Washington Post, February 06, 2014
ALBANY, Ga. — If Lee Mullins lived in Pittsburgh, he could buy mid-level health coverage for his family for $940 a month. If he lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., he would pay $1,405.
But Mullins, who builds custom swimming pools, lives in southwest Georgia. Here, a similar health plan for his family of four costs $2,654 a month.
This largely agrarian pocket of Georgia, where peanuts and pecans are major crops, is one of the most expensive places in the nation to buy health insurance through the online marketplaces created by the federal health law. The only place with higher premiums is the Colorado resort areas around Aspen and Vail, a high-cost-of-living area unlike Georgia.
‘‘We’re not real happy with the way things are going in our neck of the woods,’’ said David Hardin, Mullins’ insurance broker.
Maybe we could send Liz Warren there.
All the dynamics that drive up health costs have coalesced here in southwestern Georgia, pushing up premiums.
Premiums are going up everywhere thanks to the disaster that is Obummercare.
Expensive chronic conditions such as obesity and cancer are common among the quarter-million people in this region. One hospital system dominates the area, leaving little competition.
Only one insurer is offering policies in the online marketplace, and many physicians are not participating, limiting consumer choice.
Until these elements are brought under control, it will be challenging for the Affordable Care Act to fully live up to its name, not just here but in other parts of the country where premiums are high. Other expensive places include rural Nevada, parts of Wisconsin, most of Wyoming, southeastern Mississippi, southwestern Connecticut, and Alaska.
See: Obummercare Driving Me Crazy
It's enough to make you cry!
In these places, government subsidies are shielding people with low and moderate incomes from the full cost of the premiums. Randy Gray, a flower shop owner in Albany, is paying just $32 a month, with taxpayers picking up the remaining $805.
But for those earning too much to get federal help, the premiums can be overwhelming. A 60-year-old making $47,000 in Albany would have to pay a quarter of her income for the least expensive mid-level ‘‘silver’’ policy, the level most consumers are buying.
Even some people who qualify for federal assistance, such as Stacie Brown, owner of a pottery shop, are balking.
The cheapest ‘‘bronze’’ plan for Brown, her husband, and son would cost the family $300 a month but not begin paying medical bills until they exceeded the $6,300 individual deductible. The cheapest silver plan would cost $508 a month but not start paying until a $3,000 individual deductible was met.
Who wrote and devised this plan? The in$urance indu$try?
Her son’s pediatrician was not in any of the networks, and that was the one medical service she felt sure her family would use.
Brown ultimately bought a $256-a-month Assurant Health plan for her son — sold outside the marketplace — that covers his pediatrician and unlimited office visits. She and her husband have decided to forgo coverage for themselves, even though they may face a tax penalty of $700.
The one part of the damn thing the emperor hasn't waived.
‘‘I can’t afford the affordable health care,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t know anyone in this area who can afford it, and I do pretty well in life.’’
Then Obummercare is a FAILURE!
All the ingredients for heavy health care needs — both medical and socioeconomic — are common in southwestern Georgia’s 12 counties, which are being treated as a distinct region in the insurance market.
They used to call that redlining and it used to be illegal discrimination.
One in four children lives in poverty, and one out of every three people here is obese.
Isn't that where Honey Boo Boo lives?
Babies are more likely than those in most parts of the country to have low birth weights, according to data compiled by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
The lowest premiums in the country are around Minneapolis, known for its healthy population. Yet other parts of the country face the same kinds of health challenges as southern Georgia and have significantly lower insurance premiums.
In a cluster of five South Carolina counties that the University of Wisconsin data show have demographics similar to those in southwestern Georgia, the lowest-priced silver plan is 39 percent less expensive.
Many insurance brokers and residents place the blame for high premiums on the Phoebe Putney Health System, the nonprofit group that runs six hospitals in southwestern Georgia.
The Federal Trade Commission and Georgia’s attorney general unsuccessfully tried to reverse Phoebe’s 2012 acquisition of Palmyra Park Hospital in Albany because it made the system so dominant that they said Phoebe could essentially dictate prices.
See: Memory Hole: Why the Nation Doesn't Need Massachusetts Health Care
I warned you way back when!
In a settlement, Phoebe was allowed to hold on to Palmyra, giving it 86 percent of the regional health care market.
It is challenging to assess hospitals’ prices here because, as in most places, contracts between insurers and hospitals are kept private. Morgan Kendrick, president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, the only insurer in the marketplace, said Phoebe is ‘‘slightly more expensive’’ than hospitals in other markets, but the insurer has no other options.
And neither does the patient.
‘‘There are not many choices from the provider perspective,’’ Kendrick said. ‘‘They deliver the care in that area, period, stop.’’
Remember when Obummer lied and said you could keep your doctor?
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Talks on hospital merger break down" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff, February 15, 2014
With the region’s hospital industry already in flux, merger talks between Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and two other major health care organizations have collapsed, adding more uncertainty over the future shape of the marketplace.
Just the idea of health being considered a market bothers me.
The potential alliance of Beth Israel, Lahey Health, and the Atrius Health consortium of doctors groups was considered a key part of a regionwide move toward consolidation into a few dominant health care systems.
Centralization has failed at all levels, sorry.
But the negotiations stumbled over issues such as who would lead the new organization and serve on its board of directors, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The parties declined to comment.
The arguments are over who gets a $lice of the goodies since board members make good pay!
For months, it appeared that three major players were emerging on the Eastern Massachusetts health care scene: Partners HealthCare System, Steward Health Care System, and a combination of Beth Israel, Lahey, and Atrius. But the breakdown of the three-way negotiations, disclosed in e-mails to employees Friday, changes the script.
Oh, it's all a script now!
Other moves in the market are also becoming more complicated. Expansion plans by Partners’ HealthCare System have run into a roadblock, while expectations that Steward Health Care System would soon be bought by a national company are being dashed by the company’s chief executive....
Related:
Partners Shoring Up Share of Mass. Hospitals
Partners Pisses Off Menino
The New Steward of Massachusetts Health Care
Catholic Caritas Makes Deal With the Devil
No small irony there when you consider the Church sex scandal.
The reshaping of the state’s hospital industry matters to patients because it will determine where they receive care and how much it costs.
Meaning you could one day find yourself in Georgia or New Hampshire, citizen of Massachusetts -- in a manner of $peaking.
Meanwhile, every health care leader in the region is closely following developments at Partners, Steward, and Beth Israel, even as much of the activity takes place behind closed doors in a flurry of negotiations, exploratory talks, and regulatory probes.
****************
Patients, meanwhile, are coming face to face with the changing health care market in a number of ways, all of which are aimed at saving money and coordinating care.
New team-based models feature social workers, nutritionists, and other caregivers who work with primary care doctors; new insurance plans limit which doctors and hospitals people can go to, or force them to pay more for out-of-network care.
Remember the Obummer whopper about being able to keep your doctor?
At the same time, hospitals are becoming stingy about making outside referrals in an effort to keep patients within their own systems.
And while the pace of consolidation will eventually slow, such moves to improve efficiency and cut costs will gain momentum for years to come, said Marc Bard, principal at MB2 Consulting in Newton.
It's called RATIONING, folks!
“These systems that claim to be integrated haven’t even scratched the surface,” Bard said. “It’s going to take a generation.”
Will you survive to see it, readers?
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How to fix it, how to fix it:
"Penalty delayed again on employers in health law; Changes seen as political; small firms to benefit" by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar | Associated Press, February 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — Angling to avoid political peril, the Obama administration Monday granted employers another delay in a heavily criticized requirement that medium-to-larger firms cover their workers or face fines.
Big businesses and small businesses also got an exemption.
Never mind that the waivers and exemptions are unconstitutional. He's supposed to administer the law, not make it.
In one of several concessions in a complex Treasury Department regulation of more than 200 pages, the administration said companies with 50 to 99 employees will have an additional year to comply with the coverage requirement, until Jan. 1, 2016. The mandate was originally scheduled to start Jan. 1, 2014 but was delayed for one year last summer.
Why does it have to be so damn complicated?
For businesses with 100 or more employees, the requirement will still take effect in 2015.
But other newly announced provisions, affecting technical issues such as the calculation of working hours, may help some of those firms.
More than 90 percent of companies with 50 or more employees already cover their workers without the government telling them to do so, but the debate has revolved around the potential impact on new and growing firms.
Most small businesses have fewer than 50 workers and are exempt from the mandate. However, employer groups were also uneasy with a requirement that defines a full-time worker as someone averaging 30 hours a week.
Republicans trying to take control of the Senate in the November elections have once again made President Obama’s health care law their top issue, casting it as job killer.
Time for the handkerchief.
They want to use the employer mandate to build that case, with anecdotes of bosses reluctant to hire a 50th worker or slashing the hours of low-wage workers who need to pay household bills. Monday’s moves by the administration seemed calibrated to reduce that risk.
They are not anecdotes, and the only health Obummer cares about is his political health.
This is making me sick!
The reaction of business groups was mixed.
‘‘These final regulations secured the gold medal for greatest assistance to retailers, and other businesses, and our employees,’’ said Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation.
The US Chamber of Commerce was unimpressed, calling it more of a respite than a fundamental change.
‘‘This short-term fix also creates new problems for companies by moving the goalposts of the mandate modestly when what we really need is a time out,’’ president Thomas Donohue said in a statement.
What we need is for Obummercare to be scraped, but someone's ego is in the way!
In Massachusetts, lawmakers last year repealed the state’s penalties for noncomplying employers in anticipation that the federal mandate would kick in on Jan. 1. After the Obama administration initially delayed implementation last summer, the state decided against restoring its penalties.
I will be dealing with Massachusetts below.
The Obama administration still hasn’t issued rules for reporting requirements on business and insurers, the nitty-gritty of how the coverage requirement will be enforced.
And how your alleged subsidy will be calculated!
Administration officials and the law’s supporters said the concessions were the sorts of reasonable accommodations that regulators make all the time when implementing major new legislation.
Pfffft!
Right, they rip up legislation all the time to accommodate complaints, uh-huh!
The Treasury department said Secretary Jack Lew was well within his legal authority in making the changes.
So says this lying, lawbreaking government.
‘‘This common sense approach will protect employers already providing quality insurance, while helping to ensure that larger employers are prepared to meet their responsibility to their hard-working employees,’’ said House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.
That's why they needed exemptions and delays? What has she been smoking?
But Republicans said they smelled fear....
I do, too.
In other provisions announced Monday, the administration said:
■ Companies will not face fines if they offer coverage to 70 percent of their full-time employees in 2015, although they will have to ramp that up to 95 percent by 2016. The law defines ‘‘full time’’ as people working an average of 30 hours a week per month. That concession is expected to help firms who have a lot of workers averaging right around 30 hours.
When are you going to help patients, 'er, workers?
■ Volunteer firefighters and others who give of their time will not be considered employees under the law. Some volunteer fire departments worried they might have to shut down if forced to provide health insurance.
■ Adjunct faculty members at colleges will be deemed to have worked 2 hours and 15 minutes for each hour of classroom time they are assigned to teach. Officials said that means someone teaching 15 hours a week in the classroom would be considered ‘‘full time’’ and eligible for coverage, but someone teaching 12 hours may be considered part time.
That is not a good match for me.
■ A requirement that employers offer coverage to dependents of full-time workers will be delayed a year. Companies that are working to meet the goal will have until 2016 to comply.
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Looks like the only thing left of the law is the tax penalty!
Related: 3.3 million enrolled on health marketplaces, including more young people, government says
Like we would believe anything this government says at this point.
Obamacare study bodes well for health insurance market
So says the Boston Globe.
Looks like the only thing left of the law is the tax penalty!
Related: 3.3 million enrolled on health marketplaces, including more young people, government says
Like we would believe anything this government says at this point.
Obamacare study bodes well for health insurance market
So says the Boston Globe.
Not doing so good in Massachusetts, either:
Murray criticizes health care site
That is going to make someone cry!
"50,000 filings for health coverage in limbo; State may need months to process paper applications" by Michael Levenson | Globe staff, February 14, 2014
About 50,000 health insurance applications, many filed by low-income Massachusetts residents, have yet to be processed by the state’s troubled insurance marketplace, officials disclosed Thursday, and it may take months to get all these people enrolled in subsidized plans.
What?
For several months, residents have been encouraged to file old-fashioned paper applications because the state’s insurance website has been hobbled by error messages and has crashed frequently since it was revamped in October to comply with the more complex requirements of the federal health care law.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Obummercare ruined the Massachusetts model!
Frustration with the broken Massachusetts Health Connector website and the paperwork backlog was evident Thursday, when Jean Yang, the agency’s executive director, wept as she told the Connector board how demoralized her staff is....
Awwwwww! Poor $tate $hitter!!!!
You can SHOVE the TEARFUL attempt at SYMPATHY!!
I'll bet she has health care, and her staff have paychecks coming in!
Sarah Iselin, a health insurance executive whom Governor Deval Patrick last week put in charge of fixing the website, said the state is bringing in 300 people from Optum, a private contractor, to process the applications.
And HOW MUCH will taxpayers be ON the HOOK for that?
The state is also working to develop a faster data-entry system, though that task alone could take three weeks, she said.
Or longer.
Currently, it takes two hours to enter each application into a computer database. Each application may represent a family or an individual.
“We’ve got to catch up,” Iselin said at the Connector board meeting. “That’s priority number one.”
The website was working smoothly until it was overhauled by the tech firm CGI in a botched attempt to comply with the federal Affordable Care Act.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Obummercare ruined the Massachusetts model!
Since then, the state has resorted to off-line workarounds and has put many people into temporary health plans. But an unknown number of other people may be uninsured because their applications have sat untouched.
And if they think they have it and go to the hospital?
Yang’s unusual display of emotion at a meeting normally focused on dry policy discussions came a day after she, Iselin, and other state health insurance officials were grilled by angry legislators who complained bitterly that many of their constituents have been unable to find coverage.
Yang said those concerns have been driving her and her staff to lose sleep....
Awwwwwww!
Imagine how sleepless the people without health insurance are!!
Dolores L. Mitchell, a Connector board member, thanked Yang.
“A shaky voice every now and then sends a powerful message about how much you care,” Mitchell told her. “You’re going to get it right. I know you are.”
Readers, I am SICK of imagery, illusion, and the sending of messages form government!
When are you guys going to get something right for a f***ing change?
Despite the many problems, officials said they had received some encouraging news: On Wednesday night, federal officials granted a three-month extension for 124,000 people with subsidized health insurance who were set to lose their coverage on March 31 because it did not comply with the federal law.
Oh, yay, the feds to the rescue!
The state had requested a six-month extension, but Iselin said the three months will give the state extra time to enroll those people in plans of their choosing.
That's encouraging, thus sayeth Obummer the dictator!?
There was something else he wouldn't waive for Massachusetts, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe I should see a doctor about my memory.
Iselin said another 32,000 people with insurance that is not subsidized and whose coverage expires March 31 are being mailed paper forms that will allow them to “sign, pay, and enroll” in plans that comply with the federal law, without having to use the faulty website.
They could have done that without the law!
The state has also opened a command center in Quincy where state Medicaid officials and Connector staff are working with CGI and Optum, which was hired to make fixes. Iselin said staff are there around the clock, although she could not say when the website will be operating properly.
Oh, the state has a command center. All is now well!
See: State health care site official blasted
They don't when it is going to be fixed (if ever).
At least the politicians got a good photo-op fooley looking all mad and stuff.
Optum is being paid $9.8 million for the first month of services, but is expected to work through the end of the year.
They are going to be getting $10 million a month?!
See: State hires firm for $10 million to fix insurance website
Related: States Agree CGI Computer Software Sucks
And because of that the snowplow drivers get stiffed!
“There’s clearly been a failure of the actual coding of this beast,” said Jonathan Gruber, a Connector board member and MIT economist.
Even the guy who helped design the whole thing says so!
How come bank ATMs are the only places where the coding seems to be fine?
Board members floated the idea of hiring a “dream team” of computer programmers to help Optum, with the promise that they would be showered with praise for their work.
And HOW MANY MORE MILLIONS would that cost the austerity-strapped taxpayers of Massachusetts?
Connector staff said they would explore the idea, which is based on last year’s “tech surge,” when the Obama administration enlisted engineers from Google and other firms to help Optum repair the troubled HealthCare.gov website.
Except it HAS NOT BEEN FIXED!
The FLAT-OUT LIES are enough to make you bawl like a baby, isn't it?
In the meantime, the Connector is operating a call center with 270 staff members fielding questions about insurance coverage from anxious residents, up from 65 several weeks ago....
Wait time is approximately 60 minutes -- if you are not disconnected by then.
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How to fix it, how to fix it:
"Nintendo, the video game maker, will enter the health care industry. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata didn’t give details of what he called his ‘‘quality of life’’ business plans, except that Iwata displayed his typical stubbornness in brushing off criticism about how the maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games should update itself for the era of smartphone and other mobile devices. The popularity of such devices has been drawing consumers away from consoles devoted to games but Nintendo has resisted changing its business to incorporate tablets and smartphones. Nintendo reported Wednesday a $99 million profit for April through December, down from $415 million a year earlier as sales of Wii U home consoles and 3DS hand-held devices languished."
I gue$$ that's why they are going to try and $ell you a health plan. Gotta fix those thumbs of yours!
And look at the Valentine I got today!
