Obamacare’s success stories
Commenter “Paul in Boston” links to this piece by Kevin Drum claiming that there are many Obamacare success stories. “Paul in Boston” writes that:
After reading them they sound like the ads that appear in the comments section of lots of websites. “You can earn $8000 a month in your spare time at home”¦”.
My response is that I never had any doubt whatsoever that there will be many Obamacare success stories and relative success stories.
People who had trouble getting insurance before because of losing a job and having pre-existing conditions (especially if they waited too long to purchase new insurance).
People whose income was too high for Medicaid but who now qualify for it, especially if they were uninsured before.
People whose income was too high for Medicaid but who will now get hefty subsidies on the exchange.
That there will be some success stories is not the issue. The issue is how many will be hurt by Obamacare (“failure” stories), and how those pluses and minuses balance out, as well the feeling of betrayal engendered by the false pretenses under which the ACA was sold to the American people. Also, the fact that the American people never really “bought” Obamacare; the Democrats in Congress did.
But make no mistake about it, there will be success stories, and those stories will be touted to the skies. Another problem for Obama, though, is that he had hoped the success stories would come before the failure stories rather than after them.
The problem, of course, is what the White House considers a “success” — taking money out of a producer’s pocket to pay for a non-producer’s health insurance.
“People whose income was too high for Medicaid but who now qualify for it, especially if they were uninsured before.”
Intended consequence; Fine print: State can seize your assets to pay for care after you’re forced into Medicaid by Obamacare
OK, let’s nip this “does it help more than it harms” stuff right now. If I kill some rich guy and distribute his wealth to five poor people, my helps/harm ratio is 5/1. That doesn’t make it right. Conservatives must start to insist that any discussion of one citizen’s obligation to another include defining limits to that obligation. Income redistribution is currently about 14% of GDP and 33% of all government spending. That comes to $30,000 each person in the bottom 1/4 of the population. Is that enough? If not, what is enough?
“Is that enough? If not, what is enough?”
Though disingenuous, the left’s purported premise is that full equality of outcome is ‘enough’.
“From each according to his means, to each according to his need”.
Since the takers always outnumber the givers, there is never ‘enough’, so to minimize that reality, an elite is needed to control the distribution, so as to ensure ‘fairness’…
As proof of my assertion; CBO Shows Top 40% Pay More Than 100% of Taxes
“The Congressional Budget Office has published a study, The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010, which shows that the top 40 percent of income earners paid 106.2 percent of total federal income taxes, while the bottom 40 percent paid -9.1 percent.”
Yeah, I suppose. Whatshisname made the trains in Italy run on time. Or so they say.
You only say that because you are not a fascist … or a utilitarian either, apparently. If you were, you would gladly embrace the individual mandate. For others at least.
Click through to the original articles not just the quotes provided by Drum. He cherry picked the success stories, most of the outcomes are not good and the reporting is principally about the troubles.
I’m also suspicious of the claims to have successfully enrolled through the exchanges when Henry Chao admitted that the payment system hadn’t even been written a month ago.
In any program designed and administered by sentient humans — you know, the kind who walk on their hind legs — there *ought* to be success stories.
I’m reminded of when one of my offspring was fairly little. He’d made an egregious mistake regarding something or other, where he should easily have known better, and I scolded him for it. He came back with some variant of no one’s perfect, we all make mistakes.
*I* came back with yes, we all make mistakes, including me. *BUT* . . .
Let’s say you have a math quiz, and let’s say the questions are all “1 + 1 = ?” or “2 + 1 = ?”: neither you nor I should *ever* make *any* mistakes on that quiz. Some mistakes must never get made.
Analogously with ACA. There *ought * to be success stories (this is where I began, isn’t it [smile]), but there must *not* be mistakes like we’re reading about daily. And so many of them! If they were few and far between, we could handle them individually, with a customer-satisfaction smile.
We don’t get kudos and high praise just for doing our jobs, just for getting routine things right. It *ought* to be ho-hum.
What we’re experiencing should never be happening, winners and losers aside, social/political desirability of asset redistribution aside. In any program designed and administered by sentient humans, there *ought* to be success stories. Ho-freakin’-hum.
Oh yeah, *that*’s where I began.
Probably most of those who will benefit from those “success stories” were already Obama supporters and they’re not going to gain any traction from them.
OTOH, at least some of those who will be hurt by ObamaCare will likely receive a rather nasty surprise from cancellations, increased cost, and unavailability of favored providers. They will have a difficult time spinning this to their advantage in the face of cold, cruel reality.
Neo starts her commentary on Obamacare success stories with “Many success stories”, then later says, “Some success stories”, and ends her piece saying “success stories”. My wry.
I don’t give a crap about success stories whether many or few, if they come at the (pretty obvious) cost in money and care (i.e., failure, the inverse of success) of the very large majority. We do ourselves no favors by observing and commenting on propaganda. Better to fight it.
Every con game needs a few winners so that the marks will play, thinking they can win. In three-card monte, the ‘shill’ plays the part of the winner while the ‘tosser’ moves the cards around face down. The player tries to pick which of the tree cards is the Queen.
From no less an authority than Howstuffworks.com:
“The shill blends in as part of the crowd — in fact, the shill will appear to be the opposite of the tosser. If the tosser is wearing a dirty T-shirt and a baseball cap, the shill might be dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. The shills job is to act as a player or an involved spectator.
“Before others join the game, the tosser lets one of the shills win a couple of times. The tosser doesn’t switch the cards [replacing the Queen], so the game looks easy to any spectators. When people see the shill winning so easily (or losing by making a dumb choice), they want to play themselves.”
In a large operation, there is also a lookout who protects the operators from the police. There is also a ‘roper’, someone who brings people into the game, including some of the shills.
In the case of ObamaCare, the press played both the part of the lookout and the roper. They were wary of opposition commentary and provided a distraction. They also touted the benefits to the uninsured and to unsuspecting people who supported the bill and are now being hammered by the law.
Let’s NOT conflate a mandated insurance program that force-feeds the Insurance-Cartel — with actually getting attention from the Medical-Pharma Cartel.
For, that is what we’re now dealing with: Cartels … cartels that couldn’t exist for one-day if the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was applied.
In the VAST majority of the counties, there is only ONE, perhaps TWO insurance writers to ‘shop from.’
That’s a far cry from the NYSE — or any other national exchange. It’s more like a ‘bucket shop franchise’ scheme.
No additional talent has been mobilized to attend to the newly insured. Quite the contrary is the case: 0-care is being boycotted — more on an ethics protest than an economic protest.
De facto: most of the nation will be going OFF of insured health plans as 2014 rolls by. Medicine will be financed in the manner of 1940: cash on the barrel-head.
I’m not aware of ANY of the premier providers signing on the line that is dotted.
Barry’s wage and price controls don’t work for them — not at all.
Such controls barely survived WWII in one piece — and were roundly violated. Indeed, that’s how, when, and where employer provided health care even got started!!!
For Christmas: give the family a clue bat. It’ll get plenty of use next year.
“If you like your Senator, you can keep your Senator!”
As IF!
neo refers to people who “waited too long”. I believe that refers to the legal requirement that some insurers must issue without regard to pre-existing conditions and must cover those if the app is submitted within sixty-three days of losing credible [group] coverage. If they wait too long, somebody is going to bail them out. It’s not a matter of sixty-five days, but of half a year, until this lump or that hollow feeling in the chest…at which time they’d love to swap $500 a month for $50,000 in treatment. Or a couple of years.
States differ. Michigan has Blue Cross which is required to issue an individual contract no matter pre-ex. But to prevent being gamed, they are allowed to not cover pre-ex for six months. IOW, acne is not covered if you have it going in, but if you fall out of a tree the day after the policy is issued, you are covered.
Some states have high-risk pools which are subsidized and have worked well. Too simple to expand them.
One way or another, it is either expense or reluctance keeping people from being insured. In the meantime, they save money and we bail them out.
Richard Aubrey:
Yes, that is what I was referring to.
Insurance is rather technical and complex, with many regulations and laws of which people are unaware, and if I gave all the details of everything I’m referring to, the posts would be ten times as long. Plus, Obama and company have put forth so many unchallenged (or seldom-challenged) lies about it that many people have misconceptions about the way something like pre-existing conditions used to work before Obamacare.
Some now suffer because of Obamacare. Some may die because of Obamacare. We won’t hear their stories.
Support your (D) congressman or senator. Then you’ll have access to some healthcare.
Chicago way. Get it?
Since not a lot of people work on farms, do people remember how there is this one animal that is trained to go calmly into the back of the truck, causing the rest of the herd to follow along?
I’ve heard it called the Judas goat, since it leads the herd to the slaughter.
Bill West’s example is also interesting.
In this human civilization, there are many “simulations” run for all kinds of goals and purposes. Many of them simulate life, but are not accessible to the normal public, since these simulations are used for training, jobs, and so forth.
Neo.
My intent was to make the point that being uninsured was not necessarily something that descended on the unwary, but a situation that many, or most, could have avoided.
If it were a matter of expense, a means-tested voucher for the premium would have solved a number of issues. Of course, the government could not help itself and would generate a couple of thousand pages of internally-contradicting regs on which policies would qualify.
Pre-ex is generally not an issue with group coverage, since the presumption is that folks get a job as they can, not timing it to pay for the heart transplant, and so are not gaming the system leading to adverse selection. Depending on the company, underwriting might be required for groups of under ten employees, or five. To avoid getting slammed by an outlier, you need the Large Numbers. Above the company’s requirement, no underwriting is necessary.