Obamacare ... more of what's in it

[Marvin S]

I don't often post here, but let the roast begin.
I am also employed in the benefits industry. I personally feel if you smoke and you are over weight you should be forced to pay more for insurance from the gov or private industry. Our citizens have forgotten about personal responsibility of their health. My family and I do our best to stay healthy. We make individual choices to do so.

Doctors can longer say "you are obese and you need to do something about it" If you want to see what my good health is paying for take a minute to visit a hospital or chemo treatment center. America has had to make extra wide sturdy chairs. Our Medicare pays for chemo after chemo after chemo after chemo until the smoker dies.

Lack of personal responsibility is costing everyone too much heartache and money.

Erik, I don't disagree - but doctors are not always right, they have the stats but some folks don't fit the stats. As for someone abusing themselves, plant them.

Don't you mean Medicaid?

[Pete]

[QUOTEIs it kind of interesting that Obamacare wants to make sure that women can get free contraception and abortions, but nobody has yet felt it necessary to give free smoking cessation and weight-loss/maintenance aids? How about alcohol cessation? It would seem that the latter would be as instrumental in cost savings as the former?
][/QUOTE]

Population control is a main objective.

[Buzz]

This is kind of interesting ... didn't realize that workers who had union or employer health care would not be eligible for premum subsidies; that subsidies would only apply to workers who had to purchase their coverage themselves. Can see why the unions are pretty upset! Even though the union plans may have waivers for certain rules of ACA, their premiums will be affected as well.

I have been aware of these pro idioms all along. If your employer or union is providing the coverage, why do you need the premium support. If an employer pays below some average salary, they get a credit. I think that is a disincentive for an employer to pay good wages. We will receive no credits because on average we pay too much...

[Buzz]

I have been aware of these pro idioms all along. If your employer or union is providing the coverage, why do you need the premium support. If an employer pays below some average salary, they get a credit. I think that is a disincentive for an employer to pay good wages. We will receive no credits because on average we pay too much...

Damn phone spell checker. I was trying to type "provisions."

[Gerry Clinchy]

I have been aware of these pro idioms all along. If your employer or union is providing the coverage, why do you need the premium support. If an employer pays below some average salary, they get a credit. I think that is a disincentive for an employer to pay good wages. We will receive no credits because on average we pay too much...

I'm guessing the reason is that not all employer plans pay for the entire family premium. Some pay only for the employee, and the employee pays the additional to cover the rest of his family. So, if premiums go up, the employer will be paying more for his portion of the premium, and the employee will be paying more for his portion, too.

If the business happens to be a restaurant, where low-skilled workers are the norm, and turnover of employees high, then it is likely that the wages would be lower than for a civil engineering firm. One could not really expect wages to be equal from one business to another.

[Jason Glavich]

I don't often post here, but let the roast begin.
I am also employed in the benefits industry. I personally feel if you smoke and you are over weight you should be forced to pay more for insurance from the gov or private industry. Our citizens have forgotten about personal responsibility of their health. My family and I do our best to stay healthy. We make individual choices to do so.

Doctors can longer say "you are obese and you need to do something about it" If you want to see what my good health is paying for take a minute to visit a hospital or chemo treatment center. America has had to make extra wide sturdy chairs. Our Medicare pays for chemo after chemo after chemo after chemo until the smoker dies.

Lack of personal responsibility is costing everyone too much heartache and money.

I should not be forced to buy anything regardless of the cost. I could say that people who live an active lifestyle have too many joint problems, or hypochondriacs are a drain on the system, or diabetics should fix their diet to completely control their insulin.

HAD THEY NOT FORCED ME INTO THEIR SYSTEM IT WOULD NOT BE THEIR CONCERN. Now it is, now every citizen(who actually works and pays for insurance without tax credits) will pay for everything.

[Buzz]

I should not be forced to buy anything regardless of the cost. I could say that people who live an active lifestyle have too many joint problems, or hypochondriacs are a drain on the system, or diabetics should fix their diet to completely control their insulin.

HAD THEY NOT FORCED ME INTO THEIR SYSTEM IT WOULD NOT BE THEIR CONCERN. Now it is, now every citizen(who actually works and pays for insurance without tax credits) will pay for everything.

So, who is paying in our current system???

[Buzz]

I'm guessing the reason is that not all employer plans pay for the entire family premium. Some pay only for the employee, and the employee pays the additional to cover the rest of his family. So, if premiums go up, the employer will be paying more for his portion of the premium, and the employee will be paying more for his portion, too.

If the business happens to be a restaurant, where low-skilled workers are the norm, and turnover of employees high, then it is likely that the wages would be lower than for a civil engineering firm. One could not really expect wages to be equal from one business to another.

Gerry, I'm not sure you got my point. I think the cut off for getting credits is that you can't be paying your employees any more than $50k on average. Say I'm an employer and I'm paying on average $49k. I want to give my employees a cost of living raise of 3% which will bring them on average up to $50.5k. So, I'm going to an extra $1500/employee on average, plus my credit is gone - however much that credit is. I wonder how many business owners are going to be announcing that, "well you all were going to get a cost of living raise but Obama made it too expensive for me so I changed my mind...

[Gerry Clinchy]

Gerry, I'm not sure you got my point. I think the cut off for getting credits is that you can't be paying your employees any more than $50k on average. Say I'm an employer and I'm paying on average $49k. I want to give my employees a cost of living raise of 3% which will bring them on average up to $50.5k. So, I'm going to an extra $1500/employee on average, plus my credit is gone - however much that credit is. I wonder how many business owners are going to be announcing that, "well you all were going to get a cost of living raise but Obama made it too expensive for me so I changed my mind...

It seems the employers would be correct in their math.

And is the law indexed for COL increases? If not, the worker gets a worse "shaft" ... no raise & cost of health insurance continues to increase.

It seems inevitable that any law this complex was bound to have multiple instances of unintended consequences ... much like the Federal Tax Code.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Found this on American Thinker:

We start our story with the Bristol (England) Royal Infirmary, which enjoyed a reputation as a world-class surgery center for children with heart problems. When someone began to question that reputation and asked for outcomes data, a cover-up started, just like Watergate.Patient results were fabricated. Potential whistleblowers were intimidated. There were public distortions and denials. Eventually, the British government empaneled a "Commission" (their term for blue-ribbon panel), which released its Bristol Report in June 2001.
After confirming the terrible patient outcomes, the Commission did the unexpected. Instead of blaming specific individuals, the Commission identified the root cause: the system and its culture, one of intolerance and corruption. The system that was supposed to protect the patients protected itself instead, at the patients' expense, literally to their deaths.
A few years later, similar events were made public at the Stafford (England) Trust Hospitals. "Trust" is the word the NHS uses for a division, like the old Cook County Hospital System. Despite outcries over Stafford and reminders of Bristol, there was no change in the system -- just in the names of some players.
In 2010, the chief of the United Lincolnshire (England again) Hospitals Trust was concerned about needless deaths in his hospitals. When he tried to move these concerns up the NHS corporate chain, he was gagged (legally) and then fired. A new cover-up started, which took over two years to see the light of day.
A 14 Feb 2013 headline read, "Deaths, lies and the NHS: Shocking new healthcare scandals emerge in UK." As previously documented in other NHS hospitals, there is evidence of "filthy wards ... understaffing ... excess deaths ... [and] avoidable deaths." The NHS chief, Sir David Nicholson, clearly wanted to protect the system's reputation more than protect sick Britons.
Obvious "insanity" in England, but maybe it is just a British problem? Let's look at a different government-controlled healthcare system to our north: Canada.
In 2010, Dr. Ciaran McNamee, formerly a surgeon in Alberta, now at Harvard, sued the Alberta Provincial Government for similar reasons as at Bristol, Stafford, and Lincolnshire: inadequate allocation of resources, too few doctors and other providers, not enough beds and equipment. Canadians died needlessly and avoidably. Treatments that would have worked were either Not Approved or Approved for some time in the distant future, rather than when the patients needed care. In my new book, Not Right! - Conversations with We The Patients, I call the former death-by-bureaucracy and the latter death-by-queueing.
The recurring pattern is clear. When the government is in control, the budget and rule-following are more important than patient outcomes. When a bureaucrat decides your health care, you lose. The root cause of needless patient deaths is the system, not the individuals.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...#ixzz2LaA6pbiu
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The byline for the author:

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA gave up practicing clinical medicine after the 2012 election, saying, "I cannot practice ethical medicine under ObamaCare." He is the author of Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA gave up practicing clinical medicine after the 2012 election, saying, "I cannot practice ethical medicine under ObamaCare." He is the author of Uproot US Healthcare and Not Right! - Conversations with We The Patients (June 2013) as well as adjunct scholar for the Rio Grande Foundation in New Mexico.