Obamacare ... more of what's in it

[Uncle Bill]

Here's a gem about just how good the Fed govt will be at running exchanges:

Thank you so much for keeping us in the 'knowledge' loop on this boondoggle of all time, Gerry. I appreciate your efforts very much. Lord knows we need someone with the intelligence to seperate the wheat from the chaffe. But come to think of it, there's very little 'wheat' involved, eh?

But with your posts and threads on this matter, even the most ardent Nancy Pelosi fools have to be opening their eyes to what this ineptocracy is foisting on the American people. Even thise that 'think' their insurance is coming to them as a freebie, will eventually wake up and discove it;s just another fed corrupt program to get their votes. The sheeple will have been sheared.

UB

[charly_t]

Thank you so much for keeping us in the 'knowledge' loop on this boondoggle of all time, Gerry. I appreciate your efforts very much. Lord knows we need someone with the intelligence to seperate the wheat from the chaffe. But come to think of it, there's very little 'wheat' involved, eh?

But with your posts and threads on this matter, even the most ardent Nancy Pelosi fools have to be opening their eyes to what this ineptocracy is foisting on the American people. Even thise that 'think' their insurance is coming to them as a freebie, will eventually wake up and discove it;s just another fed corrupt program to get their votes. The sheeple will have been sheared.

UB

Agree with UB 100%, Gerry.

UB, I been wondering when some people would admit their mistake in voting for Obama. I think they must be related to moles not sheep though..............bring something out in the light and they can't seem to see it. Maybe we got a cross between those two animals running around loose and producing more and more of them. Of course I always thought that moles had pretty good noses but these people ( ? ) can't seem to smell the rotten stuff going on.

[Gerry Clinchy]

More unions finding out about what is NOT in the law:
[QUOTE]
"When we backed Obamacare, we were told that if we had good health insurance and wanted to keep it, we could. What happened to that?" -- Rick Charette, who leads a coalition of five unions representing grocery workers, responding to the grocers plan to drop coverage and send these low-income workers to the government Exchange, Working In These Times, March 1, 2013.[QUOTE]

From a labor union publication: "Union leaders and grocery chain managers are back at the negotiating table in New England today in a bitter and messy attempt to adapt existing health insurance programs to the new realities of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. ... Standing in the way of an agreement at this point are certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act set to go into effect in 2014. "It's a nightmare' that has been created not by corporate pressure to cut labor costs, but by the fumbling bureaucratic requirements of federal health law," says a labor union leader. Due to Obamacare eliminating medical benefit caps, health insurance increases over the next three years for Stop & Shop grocery will be $250 million.

Enrolling the Masses

The Unaffordable Care Act will fail unless Obama's troops conduct nationwide "search and enroll" missions. The missions begin this July through open enrollment on October 1, 2013. His "Organizing for America" election campaign has been recommissioned to "Organizing for Action." OFA is raising millions to send "Enroll America" troops to hold enrollment events, run phone banks to enroll people and descend on towns going door to door to enroll Americans into Obamacare. The administration has just released a 60-page list of the questions people will be asked to enroll in the Exchange (consent agreement for data sharing not yet released - p. 4), and the 21-page application. To make enrollment into federal subsidies easy, the Act requires states to accept telephonic signatures.

I can't even begin to imagine the amount of fraud this can lead to! Suppose you could sign up for welfare or unemployment with a "telephonic signature"?

Initially, many small employers facing Obamacare penalties, taxes and sticker shock will self-insure, says John Torinus. Going self-insured means employers become insurers. But the future may look very different. The company uses its own bankroll to pay for employee medical costs, and uses a "third party administrator" to process the payments. Mr. Torinus , CEO of Serigraph Inc, and former business editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, also shares this colorful prediction:

"The AON/Hewitt survey high-lighted the continuing financial pain from rising health costs. They predicted hyper-inflationary increases of 8% to 10% over the next three to five years and a doubling of costs over the next five. Ouch! ... The $2000 fine per employee under ObamaCare for dropping coverage will prove to be a pittance compared to costs that double in five years. Many companies will take the fine and offer a defined contribution to their employees for purchase of individual policies. They will say: "Here's $5000 for you and your family; go to the exchange and buy your own policy; and use whatever subsidies the government has to offer as well. We're done with managing health care. We can't stand it any more."

Many of us have discussed that employer-sponsored health insurance may not have been the best way to handle it in the past, but for those insureds who will now be cut loose into the exchanges, it will be a traumatic experience, for sure.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Interesting ... Gov. Scott of FL decided to set up a state exchange for FL & accept the Fed funds (via Obamacare). That could not be accomplished without the FL legislature agreeing to do it. The legislature voted "no".

[charly_t]

Interesting ... Gov. Scott of FL decided to set up a state exchange for FL & accept the Fed funds (via Obamacare). That could not be accomplished without the FL legislature agreeing to do it. The legislature voted "no".

That is very interesting. Thanks for posting it.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Just worth mentioning here ... originally Obamacare was "supposed" to cost $900B. The latest estimate is that the cost will be $1.6 Trillion. Just about 100% under-estimated. Yup, Mrs. Pelosi, we just HAD to pass it to find that out! Most of us could have guessed based on the history of Medicare. Now what?

The regulations for Obamacare, thus far, total 20,000 pages, and it hasn't fully begun yet. Seems like it will give the Tax Code some competition.

[mngundog]

Just worth mentioning here ... originally Obamacare was "supposed" to cost $900B. The latest estimate is that the cost will be $1.6 Trillion. Just about 100% under-estimated. Yup, Mrs. Pelosi, we just HAD to pass it to find that out! Most of us could have guessed based on the history of Medicare. Now what?

The regulations for Obamacare, thus far, total 20,000 pages, and it hasn't fully begun yet. Seems like it will give the Tax Code some competition.

Almost sounds like Pelosi was using Lawrence Lindsey as an adviser.

[Gerry Clinchy]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...oyees_now.html

This could be one of the scariest things in this law. It's one thing to have an electronic health record to treat you effectively. It seems quite another to use that record to deny you treatment. You'll be forced to pay for health care insurance, but simultaneously could be denied treatment for many ailments. At least the healthy people will no longer be able to complain that the people with unhealthy lifestyles are responsible for all the costs ... since those with unhealthy lifestyles won't get any piece of the pie. The situation will be reversed, you might say.

We keep talking about the privacy issue of not telling parents if a minor wants an abortion; but there is no privacy for other health issues in this law? Would the next step be requiring mandatory sterilization if you are deemed genetically unfit to reproduce?

What happens if it is determined that a gay lifestyle is deemed unhealthy due to high risk of STDs and AIDS? Will gays be denied treatment? Oops, no, they are a "protected" class, so you couldn't discriminate against them. Or could you?

We talk about de-criminalizing marijuana, while we are approaching the point of criminalizing the use of tobacco products and sugar! Alcohol is high in sugars. They tried criminalizing that once, and it didn't work out too well. Maybe drug abuse will also come to be considered unhealthy?

Here are just a few quotes in the posting:

In the U.K., overweight patients or those who smoke are branded "undeserving" and denied treatments like cataract surgery (without which they could eventually go blind) and knee and hip surgery, leaving some who don't qualify for the surgery in agonizing pain. Some of the U.K.'s "trusts," which regulate the national health care system for various zones of the country, go farther, denying all operations to those who don't meet the government's weight dictates except for lifesaving surgery on their hearts, brains or to remove cancer. (Wonder if the "undeserving) patients are also denied meds after the surgery?)

A recent study shows that a majority of the U.K.'s doctors think the national health system should go farther still and deny all non-emergency care to patients who don't meet certain weight and health criteria. By law, they still must pay for their health care, of course, even though they are denied the ability to get treatment.(Why did they become doctors? This sounds like bureaucrats speaking.)

Given all of this, it is chilling that the collection of each patient's BMI was so important to U.S. Health and Human Services that it was one of the first directives the department issued after ObamaCare passed in 2009. There is a reason for that.
It is clear that liberal elites and the Obama administration intend to take Americans down the same path as Europe. The apparatus to handle federally mandated "health interventions" into people's lives is already being put in place.

Given all of this, you can also begin to see the reasons behind the obsessive push from the White House to demonize not just obesity, but the food that causes it. This new obsession with dividing America into classes by weight and health will manifest itself in other ways outside the doctor's office, where the costs of obesity will be the justification for regulation and punitive taxation of foods government disapproves of. In a recent Reuters story, doctors were already calling for bans on certain foods, restrictions on food portions, and taxation not just of fattening foods, but of "empty-calorie" foods that don't contain nutrients or protein.

Nobody wants to advocate for an unhealthy lifestyle, but is there any limit to which the govt can intrude on privacy to decide and dictate so many facets of your life? I have to imagine that there are still some chubby, cigar-smoking bureaucrats in the UK and Canada that still get their health care just fine

[Julie R.]

The more I learn of this nightmare foisted on the unsuspecting American public, the scarier it is. The reasons health care costs have gone up so much in the past decade were never even addressed. In fact, all Obamacare has done to date is to increase costs and as more provisions go into effect, the increases appear to be exponential. A shame Congress and the executive branch all have their little golden parachute of benefits--if they were all forced to abide by the same rules as the rest of us, Obamacare would never have become law.

[Eric Johnson]

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/2...surance-costs/

http://tinyurl.com/c48o4md

By: John Hayward
3/27/2013 07:46 AM

A watershed moment in the ongoing disaster of ObamaCare, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally admits that health insurance premiums are rising because of the President’s health insurance takeover, per the Wall Street Journal:

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage.

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