Associated Press: Medicare official tells the House Budget Committee that President Obama's health care law won't hold down costs and that it won't let everyone keep their current health insurance — even if they like it.
Federal judge rules against Obamacare: A U.S. judge in Florida issues a ruling on a lawsuit by 26 states against President Barack Obama's health care reform. The judge said Congress exceeded its authority to require Americans to buy health insurance.
Younger patients would be more likely than older ones to get the best kidneys under a proposal being considered by the nation’s organ transplant network.
The new policy would replace the current first-come-first-served system and is intended to provide better matches between the life expectancies of recipients and the functional life of donated kidneys.
“Right now, if you’re 77 years old and you’re offered an 18-year-old’s kidney, you get it,” said Dr. Richard N. Formica, a transplant physician at Yale University and a member of the panel that wrote the proposed policy. “The problem is that you’ll die with that kidney still functioning, while a 30-year-old could have gotten that kidney and lived with it to see his kids graduate from college.”
Under the proposal, patients and kidneys would each be graded, and the healthiest and youngest 20 percent of patients and kidneys would be segregated into a separate pool so that the best kidneys would be given to patients with the longest life expectancies. The remaining 80 percent of patients would be put into a pool from which the network that arranges for organ matches, called the United Network for Organ Sharing, would try to ensure that the age difference between kidney donors and recipients was no more than 15 years. News of the latest proposal was first reported in The Washington Post.
The proposal is supported by many transplant surgeons and medical ethicists, but it faces an uncertain reception by kidney transplant patients and legislators. A previous proposal to better match the health of patients and donor kidneys was scrapped in 2005 after the network was flooded with negative comments. The network is hoping that this effort, which relies on a less complex formula than the earlier one, will get a better reception.
Donation systems for livers, hearts, lungs and other organs have already been reformed or changed in recent years, said Anne Paschke, a spokeswoman for the organ network. However, kidney donations are by far the most common.
The kidney proposal does nothing to fix geographic disparities that cause patients in New York and Chicago to wait years longer than those in Florida. Such local distribution results not only from concerns that far-away organs might not arrive in time but also because of distribution issues and turf battles between transplant centers.
Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the McLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said she opposed the new kidney transplant policy because “the biggest problem is geography, and they’re doing nothing to fix that.” Dr. Ross said she also worried that any policy that favored young patients for the provision of kidneys from dead donors might reduce or redirect to the elderly donations from living donors, who are unaffected by the proposed policy.
Dr. Trent Tipple, a 37-year-old neonatologist from Columbus, Ohio, who got a kidney transplant when he was 21 and is again on a transplant waiting list after his donated kidney failed, said he favored the proposal. As the scope of kidney transplants expanded in recent years, older patients began to crowd out younger ones from waiting lists, “and I think there has to be some degree of reset,” he said. Dr. Tipple would benefit under the new proposal.
Dr. Ross was even more blunt: “Under this policy, if you’re 65, you might as well give up before you even get on the wait list.”
They think they are gods. Who is to say that the last 15 years of an elderly person isn't worth more than 40 of the younger? What if the younger person is a bastard that cheats and steals, and the granny helps her grandchildren with their homework?
It all comes down to liberals obsession with taxing people. Granny likely collects Social Security, you can't tax that to build a bullet train or bailout another failed union pension. But with the younger person there is a chance they'll make enough money you can steal a few off them. Plus the sooner Granny dies the sooner you can steal half her life's earnings with the death tax.
U.S. Appeals Court Rules Against Obama's Health Care Law: The decision is a major setback for the White House, which had appealed a ruling by a lower court judge who struck down the entire law in January. But given that another appeals court, in Cincinnati, has upheld the law, it is increasingly clear that the Supreme Court will have the final say.
Steven Rattner was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. Writing in the New York Times, he argues for death panels:
unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.
But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical procedure or pharmaceutical....
Take Britain, which provides universal coverage with spending at proportionately almost half of American levels. Its National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence uses a complex quality-adjusted life year system to put an explicit value (up to about $48,000 per year) on a treatment’s ability to extend life.
At the least, the Independent Payment Advisory Board should be allowed to offer changes in services and costs. We may shrink from such stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable.
At least 140,000 Minnesotans who buy health insurance on their own are being notified that their plans will no longer be available under the new federal health care law, adding to the national furor over canceled policies that has overtaken the health care debate.
Unlike many states, Minnesota guarantees renewability of health insurance plans, meaning that technically, no policies are being canceled. Some who are being offered different plans, however, say that’s a distinction without a difference.
Just when you thought you've seen everything, along comes what's called a "Healthy Ho's Party."
As reported by CNN Money, this is what a "sex worker" in San Francisco called her effort to register others in her "profession" in ObamaCare.
[ 3-minute CNN video of the party ]
Organized by "Siouxsie Q," a Bay Area sex worker, the event was meant to encourage other sex workers to enroll in the new insurance exchanges. It was a rousing success: Nearly 40 men and women attended and almost all of them filed enrollment paperwork.
In the all-cash, off-the-books sex industry, workers can be particularly high risk and insurance is often out of reach. Many sex workers -- a broad term that can refer to a number of services, including sexual massage, prostitution, and escort and dominatrix work -- consider themselves self-employed entrepreneurs who can't afford to purchase healthcare. But that could all change with the Affordable Care Act.
Volunteers from Siouxsie's weekly podcast, The WhoreCast, staffed the event. "Jolene," another sex worker who had already enrolled through the California exchange, was also on hand to talk users through the process. A key detail for the crowd: Enrollment doesn't require users to report their employment.
Before you just chuckle at the absurdity, consider that these folks are going to be getting subsidies for their policies because of their income:
Individuals making less than $46,000 are eligible for a tax credit to offset their monthly costs. Many of the sex workers at the event file W-2s for their legal work, whether it be a part-time job or sex work that falls within the law. Sex workers interviewed by CNNMoney estimated this income to be less than $45,000 a year.
One of the sex workers interviewed said she'd be receiving a credit of $211 a month.
So healthy young people beyond subsidizing unhealthy older people will also be helping to get prostitutes cheap health insurance.
Is that what Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant when she said we'd have to enact ObamaCare to find out what's in it?
____________________________________
Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
This just again manifests what Obamacare --and more broadly,liberalism as a whole!-- has done for the last 50 years. It subsidizes and encourages bad behavior (in this case, prostitution and high-risk sexual behavior), guaranteeing there will be more of it, by encouraging and not deterring the behavior.
Likewise single mothers, and children born out of wedlock. Likewise food stamp, Medicaid and other welfare abuse. Likewise FEMA and other federal programs, that subsidize rebuilding of beachfront properties when disasters occur, and actually punishes people who prepare and are self-reliant in these storms, giving all kinds of free stuff to those who DIDN'T prepare. This type of liberal policy with Fannie/Freddie and other housing and financial institutions is what set us up for the 2008 collapse, and is currently setting us up for an even greater collapse.
I fully believe this is Obama's intent, basic Cloward and Piven strategy: To overwhelm the system with debt and deliberately bring about a financial collapse (that he'll later blame on others, like every previous disaster he has supervised). And amidst the orchestrated crisis, he'll roll in the tanks and establish a redistribution of power amidst the chaos that preoccupies the news. The system is already in danger WITHOUT Obamacare. I believe Obamacare is the final weight that can prematurely collapse what has already been building for many years.
Gregory, Woodward Grill Axelrod on Obama’s Broken Promise: “[Obama] said, ‘Period, this is absolutely. . . everyone’s going to keep their insurance’ — why not correct?” Woodward further pressed. Axelrod admitted that the White House “didn’t anticipate this one glitch.”
Oops. Obamacare might not cover your pre-existing condition: Key to understanding this distinction is that having “health coverage” is not the same as actually obtaining “health care.” The insurance plan has to take anyone who wants to enroll, regardless of their health status or health history – but they don’t have to provide the same treatments, the same doctors, or the same medications that a patient has been receiving. For someone in the middle of a cancer treatment, or someone with a chronic condition, this can be almost equivalent to losing insurance entirely.
WHAT EDIE SUNDBY LEFT OUT OF THAT WALL STREET JOURNAL OP-ED
The Wall Street Journal has published a health care op-ed that's getting a great deal of attention. It's by a California woman named Edie Littlefield Sundby, who's been fighting stage-4 gallbladder cancer for seven years and now has lost a health insurance plan she wanted to keep. Sundby says that, thanks to President Obama, there's no affordable alternative that gives her access to her doctors:
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits....
Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University's Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.
Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team.
Sundby has a PPO policy? That's curious, because last November, when she was profiled in AARP The Magazine, we were told the following (emphasis added):
In July 2007, [a surgeon] cut a 14-inch incision from Edie's breast to her pelvic bone and removed her gallbladder, a substantial portion of her liver and several lymph nodes.... For nearly four more years -- while technically in remission -- Edie continued to receive chemotherapy (79 treatments in total, 836,000 milligrams of chemicals pumped into her body). She was able to do this in part thanks to her insurance, a catastrophic medical policy that covered 80 percent of the cost of her treatment. (Being self-employed, she and Dale had opted for this plan, which is generally less expensive than overall health coverage.) Even so, the 20 percent out-of-pocket copayments amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.
Was this story mistaken while the Journal op-ed is correct? Or did Sundby switch plans only in the past two years, while implying in the op-ed that she was covered by a PPO for the past seven?
I'd also like to point out that Sundby and her husband, Dale, aren't exactly typical Americans struggling with a health crisis while punching a clock and hoping that an inadequate paycheck will stretch to the next payday:
Dale ended up heading IBM's Palo Alto office just as the Silicon Valley was taking off, and Edie accepted an executive position at AT&T in San Francisco. But in 1984 they decided to leave their corporate jobs and venture out as software entrepreneurs, settling in San Diego, where, in 1988, they had their twin girls. They experienced huge business successes, as well as some failures, and never lost their drive. In 2007, with Whitney in college and Stefanie taking a year off, they were optimistic about their next project: developing a financial-services platform using software developers in Ukraine.
You can read about some of Dale Sundby's Clinton-era dot-com ventures, and the millions of dollars of venture capital he burned through, here and here.
Many Americans, hit with a situation like this, are already stretching their income to the breaking point. The AARP story tells us that Edie Sundby first experienced symptoms when "she'd just returned to Southern California from Chennai, India, where she and one of her identical-twin daughters, Stefanie, then 18, had spent five weeks volunteering at an elementary school." (Stefanie, by the way, was "wrapping up a neuroscience degree at Stanford" -- not an inexpensive school -- at the time the story was published.) And Edie's husband, upon learning of her diagnosis,
ultimately decided to walk away from the Ukraine project, knowing he couldn't commit while assisting Edie in her battle. The results, financially, were "traumatic," Dale says. "But we are, as a family, willing to go to the end, to spend whatever it takes. That's what vows and commitments are all about."
Whenever Edie suffered a setback, she took what she calls "a spirit quest" into the wilderness. Weary from chemo in the summer of 2009, she and Dale traveled by camper van through national parks in the West. "The wilderness helps me forget everything," Edie explains. "I don't think about cancer; I feel healthy there." Twice more they headed out on camping trips, the last time in 2011 when the cancer returned.
In this country, it's rare that a husband and wife can just choose to clear time from work while one of them battles cancer. It's not always possible even for the patient to stop working. Edie, however, just rejuvenates her spirit by traveling as far afield as Alaska and Fiji, as she explains in this post at the "Well" blog of The New York Times.
She never intended to stop working however, as the AARP story noted:
Early in 2013 she hopes to launch Skin Jolie, a beauty line she's been developing.
I bring all this up not to criticize the Sundbys for taking advantage of a certain amount of material wealth, but to point out that Edie Sundby is, in all probability, not like you, and not like the people you know who sometimes have to choose between medicine and food, and whom the Affordable Care Act was designed to help.
I'd also like to point out that Sundby and her husband, Dale, aren't exactly typical Americans struggling with a health crisis while punching a clock and hoping that an inadequate paycheck will stretch to the next payday…. They experienced huge business successes….Edie Sundby is, in all probability, not like you,….
I thought liberals were supposed to be compassionate. You'd think they would recognize that Sundby's story calls not for an attack but for a show of compassion, even if they don't really feel it.
It is pretty loathesome how M E M, quoting other loathesome liberal blogs, tries to demonize a woman for surviving cancer, just because she was fortunate enough to be financially successful and have some degree more resources to fight the battle.
But THE POINT is, even with those resources, the thin difference between life and death for Edie over the last 8 years has been her PPO health plan, that Obama is now depriving her of.
Rich or poor, disease is the great equalizer. And good insurance can be the difference between living or dying.
Obama is basically trying to turn the U.S. into Logan's Run, where old people have to be deprived of treatment and eliminated, so their money and benefits can be given to the young (and poor).
You guys are screwed if the argument is based on compassion. Lots of middle and lower income people (young and old) are going to end up with life saving coverage they didn't have. Your fine with a system that covers less why?
You'll have to apply that to yourself G-man. More people will have coverage and you'll still be against Obamacare. Yes, coverage is life and death for many people. If you go back to the old status quo you will end up with more and more uninsured.
A single mom from Washington State who was cited by President Obama as an Affordable Care Act success story now says she’ll go uninsured and calls the program a “treadmill of bureaucracy.”
Washington State Wire reports that Jessica Sanford, 48, discovered that she is no longer eligible for a large subsidy that would have lowered her monthly premium to $169 per month. Instead, Sanford would now be forced to pay nearly four times as much, $621, for coverage.
Sanford told the paper she believes the government should shut down the entire healthcare.gov site until the site’s issues are resolved. “In my opinion they ought to shut it down and just get all of it straightened out.”
That's a complete 180 from what Sanford thought she was signing up for last month when Obama touted her as an Affordable Care Act success story.
During a White House Rose Garden ceremony on Oct. 21, Obama read an email from Sanford in which she thanks the president for offering her help in obtaining a low-cost, high-quality coverage plan.
"I recently received a letter from a woman named Jessica Sanford in Washington state,” Obama said. “And here's what she wrote: 'I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed. And I haven't had insurance for 15 years because it's too expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so much stress lifted.' "
Sanford works as a court reporter and says she makes just under $50,000 a year. Her 14-year-old son requires a monthly prescription that is expensive because it must come from a compounded pharmacy. She said she thought the originally promised $452 monthly premium subsidy would help her close the financial gap.
“To think I would finally be covered if anything happened – I was so relieved,” she told the Washington Wire.
However, CNN reports that in the days following Obama's Rose Garden ceremony Sanford received a letter telling her that her tax credit had been taken away, meaning she won’t be able to afford coverage. Officials reportedly told her that they made a mistake in calculating her benefits. Sanford is reportedly one of 8,000 people in Washington State who have received letters informing them that their promised subsidies have been reduced or removed.
“This is it. I'm not getting insurance," Sanford told CNN. "That's where it stands right now unless they fix it."
A representative from Washington State’s HealthPlanFinder said they are looking into Sanford’s case and will try to help her find a more affordable plan.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
That horror story of the Obamacare fail for the Federal Way mom isn’t the horror it was made out to be. They usually aren’t.
By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
Another day, another Obamacare horror story. Only this one was different, because it came from right here in Washington state. One of the few places Obamacare was supposedly working.
“Obamacare Under Fire: EXCLUSIVE,” blared CNN last Monday morning. A reporter did a live stand-up in front of the White House.
“Single Mom Touted by President Loses Insurance,” read the crawl.
The story, which you have probably heard by now, involved a Federal Way woman, Jessica Sanford. She and her teenage son had been hailed last month by President Obama as an Affordable Care Act “success story” because they were going to get insurance for the first time in 15 years.
“Now finally we get to have coverage because of the ACA for $169 a month,” she wrote to Obama. “I was crying the other day when I signed up. So much stress lifted.”
Except later, the state said it had goofed and calculated her income wrong. No big subsidy after all (she makes $49,000 a year). She then wrote on Facebook that she was “screwed” and “priced out” of the market and — faster than you can say “Fox News” — her story of Obamacare love gone sour was rocketed around the world.
“A health care success story that isn’t,” said Politico.
“Another Lie: The Story of Jessica Sanford,” said Rush Limbaugh, with his usual nuance.
Piled on Dori Monson, a host at Seattle’s KIRO-FM: “The meltdown continues for the debacle that is Obamacare.”
Except there’s a key detail none of these media outlets mentioned.
Which is: Sanford’s son was discovered to qualify for Medicaid coverage at a cost of just $30 a month. He has ADHD and, according to Sanford, it costs them $250 a month for prescription drugs alone. Which will now all be covered.
It’s true the rest of her insurance won’t get a big discount, as she had first thought.
“That mistake is totally on us,” said Bethany Frey of the Washington state health exchange.
But a bronze-level policy for a 48-year-old woman making $49,000 can be had on the state exchange for $237 a month, and a silver-level policy for $313.
So here’s a family that was totally uninsured for 15 years because it had always cost at least $500 to $600 a month for skimpy policies to cover them both. And what they can get now is full coverage for $30 a month for the son and scantier coverage in the $250 to $300 a month range for the mom.
How is that a horror story? Yet it prompted a live scandalcast in front of the White House by a national news network — which didn’t know, or maybe didn’t want to say, that due to the state health exchange the son now is getting essentially free health care.
Sanford says it’s still too steep for her to pay, so she’s upset, and that’s her call. But I just filled out my annual enrollment here at work, and my insurance, for a family of four, is $1,377 a month (of which the Times thankfully pays 70 percent). Health insurance is grotesquely expensive, and has been for years. The point is: If you can get it for $300 or so a month for two people — especially with a pre-existing condition — that’s no debacle, folks. It’s a deal.
Obamacare does have some real problems that rate national news coverage. Beyond the incompetent rollout, the biggest is that there are no cheaper plans for people who don’t want rich coverage. Later, these “rate shock” issues are going to hit some businesses.
And then there’s the fact that some states have rejected the Medicaid expansion, setting up health-care deserts for poor people in those states.
Those problems are hard, but probably fixable — if there was any interest in fixing them. But talking about them admittedly makes for a very dull stand-up outside the White House.
M E M, you can't try to portray any coverage of Obamacare's failure as misrepresentation or lies. About 100,000 nationwide have signed up for Obamacare, while over 5 million have had their policies cancelled out from under them to force them into exhanges, with new policies at on average DOUBLE their former insurance rates.
Among those are thousands who were in chemotherapy for life-threatening cancer, and have had their treatment ended or diminished by the DELIBERATE (even as Obama alleges it was unforeseen) cancellation of millions of policies. You can dig for a technicality to try and kill the messenger. But it's an absolute fact that Obamacare is hurting millions of people.
The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.
“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce,” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.
The Cleveland Clinic is reducing its 2014 budget by $330 million.
“We offered early retirement to 3,000 employees,” Sheil said, but noted that the early retirement option recently offered to staff was “voluntary” for eligible employees.
“The $330 million cut is not all layoffs,” Sheil said, noting that the Clinic is also cutting operating-room expenses and paying less to vendors.
“We’re taking money out of vendors, renegotiating contracts, looking at where we can reduce duplications, improve supply chain efficiencies…how we can scale back and use less. How we can take costs out of our operating rooms,” Sheil said.
“We were able to take 23 percent out of common operations procedure by doing things more efficiently,” Shiel said.
The Cleveland Clinic is a Top 4 U.S. hospital for 2013-2014, according to U.S. News and World Report rankings. In 2008, Clinic surgeons performed the nation’s first near-total face transplant.
The DC has extensively reported on Obamacare’s effect on hospitals, including hefty fines and other penalties facing nonprofit hospitals like the one that treated the final Boston Marathon bombing victim.
Anyone remember this Democrat piece of crap, Rep. Alan Grayson?
And yet... it is Democrats who phrased the language in a way that forces millions to lose their coverage, including many who are in a dire situation, having their cancer treatment interrupted by the cancellations. Obamacare's irony unveiled: it is in truth Alan Grayson and the Democrats want you to die quickly!
Democrats who cheer this on don't seem to realize that Obamacare is fleecing middle-class and poor Americans who have already seen their incomes decline by $4,000 annually on average nationally, doubling their healthcare bills under Obamacare, to pay for the 30 million policies for the poor and uninsured. While guaranteeing the insurance giants billions in profits, by essentially turning them into public utilities and forcing everyone to buy their product.
If Obamacare succeeds, the insurers make billions. If it fails, the government pays for the bailout with tax dollars, further fleecing the middle class and poor, and the insurance giants make billions.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.
“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce,” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.
The Cleveland Clinic is reducing its 2014 budget by $330 million.
“We offered early retirement to 3,000 employees,” Sheil said, but noted that the early retirement option recently offered to staff was “voluntary” for eligible employees.
“The $330 million cut is not all layoffs,” Sheil said, noting that the Clinic is also cutting operating-room expenses and paying less to vendors.
“We’re taking money out of vendors, renegotiating contracts, looking at where we can reduce duplications, improve supply chain efficiencies…how we can scale back and use less. How we can take costs out of our operating rooms,” Sheil said.
“We were able to take 23 percent out of common operations procedure by doing things more efficiently,” Shiel said.
The Cleveland Clinic is a Top 4 U.S. hospital for 2013-2014, according to U.S. News and World Report rankings. In 2008, Clinic surgeons performed the nation’s first near-total face transplant.
The DC has extensively reported on Obamacare’s effect on hospitals, including hefty fines and other penalties facing nonprofit hospitals like the one that treated the final Boston Marathon bombing victim.
Quote:
Fox Blames Obamacare For Fictional Layoffs At Cleveland Clinic Blog ››› November 25, 2013 3:51 PM EST ››› TYLER HANSEN 109 Print
Cleveland Clinic
Fox News reported that the Cleveland Clinic was instituting "massive layoffs" due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but when asked about the reports, a Clinic spokesperson told Media Matters, "We're not."
On November 25, The Daily Caller published an article titled, "Top U.S. hospital laying off staff due to Obamacare." On Fox Business' Markets Now, host Connell McShane reported on the "massive layoffs." America's Newsroom host Bill Hemmer claimed that the Cleveland Clinic was going to "shed workers." Later, during the America's News HQ, Fox reporter Chris Stirewalt claimed that the layoffs "rocked the community there in northeastern Ohio."
But there's one problem: the Cleveland Clinic is not laying off any employees. Eileen Sheil, Cleveland Clinic's Executive Director of Corporate Communications, said in an e-mail to Media Matters, "There have been several mis-reports and they keep mentioning that we're laying off 3,000 employees. We're not." Sheil explained that Cleveland Clinic is offering voluntary retirement to 3,000 eligible employees and that the Clinic is also "working on many initiatives to lower costs, drive efficiencies, reduce duplication of services across our system and provide quality care to our patients." Sheil continued, "Many of these initiatives do not impact our employees."
Sheil told Media Matters that Fox had been notified of its error and that the Cleveland Clinic requested Fox's future reporting on the issue more accurately present the Clinic's plans. According to a Media Matters search, Fox had not corrected its mistake by the time of publication.
Despite Fox's reporting, Sheil reiterated the Clinic's support for the Affordable Care Act, stating:
We believe reform is necessary because the current state is unsustainable. The ACA is a step toward that change and we believe more changes will come/evolve as there are still many uncertainties. Hospitals must be responsible and do what we can to prepare and support the law.
Fox's continued focus on the Cleveland Clinic is due, presumably, to President Obama's frequent praise of the hospital. In September, host Greta Van Susteren acknowledged the network's flawed reporting on the Cleveland Clinic after it was cited by U.S. Sen. John Barasso (R-WY) on her program.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's an older, costlier crowd that's signing up so far for health insurance under President Barack Obama's law, according to government figures released Monday. Enrollments are lower for the healthy, younger Americans who will be needed to keep premiums from rising.
Young adults from 18 to 34 are only 24 percent of total enrollment, the administration said in its first signup figures broken down for age, gender and other details. With the HealthCare.gov website now working, the figures cover the more than 2 million Americans who had signed up for government-subsidized private insurance through the end of December in new federal and state markets.
Enrolling young and healthy people is important because they generally pay more into the system than they take out, subsidizing older adults. While 24 percent is not a bad start, say independent experts, it should be closer to 40 percent to help keep premiums down.
Adults ages 55-64 were the most heavily represented in the signups, accounting for 33 percent of the total. Overall, the premiums paid by people in that demographic don't fully cover their medical expenses. Some are in the waiting room for Medicare; that coverage starts at age 65.
Some questions remained unanswered.
For example, the administration is unable to say how of many of those enrolling for coverage had been previously uninsured. Some might have been among the more than 4.7 million insured people whose previous policies were canceled because they didn't meet the law's standards.
"The uninsured folks for whom the law was intended don't seem to have signed up in nearly as high numbers," said Richard Foster, a former statistics chief for the Health and Human Services department. "There is still a huge unknown aspect to this."
But even if the age mix remains tilted toward older adults, "it's nothing of the sort that would trigger instability in the system," said Larry Levitt, an insurance expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums would go up next year for the overhaul, along with taxpayer costs per enrollee, but not enough to push the system into a "death spiral" in which rising premiums discourage healthy people from signing up.
Levitt and other experts expected older, sicker people to be more heavily represented in the early numbers. They would have had strong motivation to persevere in the face of website dysfunction.
Still, he said "it underscores a need to heighten outreach efforts to young people." Adults ages 18-34 represent 40 percent of the target group for the health care law, according to a recent Kaiser study. Open enrollment ends March 31.
Considering that the federal health care website was down most of the time in October, administration officials said they were pleased that the percentage of young adults was as high as it was.
"We think that more and more young people are going to sign up as time goes by," said Gary Cohen, head of the HHS office in charge of Obama's push to cover the uninsured. And there's a hammer, too: Those who fail to sign up face a tax penalty in 2015 for being uninsured.
With Monday's numbers, a fuller picture has started to emerge of who's signing up.
Some of the highlights:
- The administration continues to play catch-up. Originally, officials hoped to sign up more than 3.3 million people through the end of 2013, nearly halfway to the goal of 7 million enrollments by the end of March. Instead, enrollment as of Dec. 31 was not quite 2.2 million.
- Fifty-four percent of those who signed up were women, a slightly higher proportion of females than in the population.
- Nearly four out of five who signed up got financial help with their premiums.
- The most popular coverage option was a so-called silver plan, which covers about 70 percent of expected medical costs. Three out of five people picked silver. One in five picked a lower-cost bronze plan. Only 13 percent picked gold, which most closely compares to the typical employer plan. Another 7 percent went for top-tier platinum plans, and about 1 percent picked skimpy "catastrophic" plans available only to certain groups of people, including those under 30.
- A few states accounted for a huge share of the enrollment. California alone had 23 percent of the signups. California, New York, Florida, Texas and North Carolina accounted for nearly half the total.
Officials remain confident they'll be able to get young adults interested. Insurers, nonprofit groups, and advocates are moving ahead with marketing campaigns that were put on hold when the federal website that serves 36 states was struggling.
Administration officials said that in the coming weeks they plan to increase outreach to young people in 25 communities located in states served by the federal website. That effort includes a national youth enrollment day on Feb. 15 and targeted outreach by sororities and fraternities, as well as Voto Latino, which focuses on Hispanic youth.
In Miami, 19-year-old college student Stacy Sylvain was one of the last-minute online signups as 2013 drew to a close. In about an hour, the part-time waitress signed up for a plan with a $158 monthly premium, with the feds kicking in $48. She has a $2,500 deductible. Sylvain said she had no trouble navigating the website.
"Many people have a preconceived notion that young people are healthy and don't need to go to the doctor," said Sylvain, who suffered a minor injury when she fell and hit her head during an indoor soccer class in 2012. "Not having to worry about being uninsured and the what-ifs has made an incredible impact on my life."
In other words, everything is moving according to Obama's original plan.
The plan is intended to collapse, requiring a federal bailout of Obamacare. Which is an end-run to a federally controlled single-payer system, what Obama and his Politburo wanted all along.
Comrade Obama again shits on the Constitution and rule of law, manipulating into law what he could never have passed by legislation. Even when the Democrats controlled both hauses of Congress up till the moment Obamacare was rammed through against the will of 53% of the American people.
Again proving that Democrats always campaign promising one thing and do another. Relying on deceit to move forward their hidden agenda.
1) the fine that is $95 this year, goes up to over $600 by 2016. And the authoritarian nature of it, that the federal government puts a gun to your head and forces you to buy it, at a hyperinflated cost, with absolutely no regard for the quality of care.
2) that socialized medicine in France has no similarity whatsoever to Obamacare.
3) That Obamacare enriches healthcare insurance giants while not actually providing care.
Obamacare numbers coming in huge: Here's a guide to GOP excuse-making
By Michael Hiltzik
March 31, 2014, 10:36 a.m.
Against all odds and expectations, enrollments in health plans qualified under the Affordable Care Act are surging Monday toward -- and maybe beyond -- the 7-million figure projected by the Congressional Budget Office before Oct. 1, when the open-enrollment period began. The deadline for starting enrollment applications for 2014 plans is midnight Monday.
The surge is creating a big problem for the "train wreck" narrative of Republican opponents of the ACA, who have been holding out hope for Obamacare's utter failure. So the excuse-making has begun.
Before we examine those excuses: You will recall that the budget office reduced its projection of enrollments on individual insurance exchanges to 6 million earlier this year to account for the botched launch of healthcare.gov, the federal enrollment website. Enrollments blew past that mark days ago. If exchange enrollments meet or exceed the original projection of 7 million despite the loss of some six weeks in website functionality in October and November, that would be a testament to the public's latent desire for effective healthcare coverage.
Photos: The battle over the Affordable Care Act
We won't know the final March 31 tally for days, possibly weeks, but that indispensable enrollment tracker Charles Gaba is projecting 6.78 million exchange enrollments, with a chance of topping 7 million.
That figure covers enrollments in private healthcare plans via healthcare.gov and the individual websites offered by 14 states and the District of Columbia. As my colleague Noam Levey is reporting, the Rand Corp. estimates that another 4.5 million previously uninsured adults have signed up for Medicaid in states that expanded that program under the ACA. And about 3 million young adults have obtained coverage through an ACA provision allowing them to stay on their parents' employer plans until age 26.
For Obamacare critics, consequently, the enrollment numbers demand debunking. Here's a bestiary of their arguments for why the figures shouldn't be believed, and explanations of why they're off-base.
"How many have paid?" (Also known as "The statistics are full of deadbeats"): We examined this argument a few days ago. We observed that the concern is probably exaggerated and certainly premature, since many people who enrolled late in the cycle, including those in the March surge, may not have payments due for as much as six weeks after enrollment. Many haven't even received their first monthly premium bill yet.
Figures from states that track this metric, including California and Vermont, show that 85% to 90% of enrollees have paid on time, which secures them the coverage they applied for.
"Most of them were already insured": The argument here is that if we've just moved people from one insurance plan to another, we've just been wasting Americans' time and subjecting them to an onerous bureaucratic procedure as well.
The claim is based primarily on a survey in January from McKinsey and Co., which concluded that only 11% of exchange enrollees had been previously uninsured. A McKinsey survey a month later raised that figure to 27% -- still low, compared to expectations.
The major problem with the McKinsey survey is that doesn't say what its hawkers claim. The survey combines on-exchange enrollments and off-exchange enrollments; the latter are likely to heavily skew figures toward the previously insured because those are people merely signing up again with their existing carriers. The goal of the exchange marketplaces, however, is to reach uninsured Americans, and the McKinsey surveys fail to do that.
The few states that do break out their own numbers, moreover, contradict McKinsey. Kentucky says that some 75% of its exchange enrollees were previously uninsured. New York says that about 60% of its exchange enrollees were previously uninsured. That number has been rising over time, raising the prospect that the March surge will include an even higher ratio of uninsured customers; Gaba, who has calculated a time series of New York enrollments based on the state's monthly news releases, calculates that of enrollees in mid-February, at least 92% had been uninsured.
"'Young invincibles' aren't signing up": This is related to the oft-mentioned threat of a "death spiral" in the insurance market -- if the enrollees are predominantly older and sicker consumers, they'll drive up premiums, which will discourage younger and healthier people from enrolling, which drives up premiums, which discourages, the young, etc., etc.
Federal officials have set an informal target of 40% of enrollments in the 18-34 age range. The latest figures from various states put the enrollment rate at the mid-20% level. But it was always expected that younger people would be among the last to enroll, and reports from the states suggest that's happening.
Even if the statistics remain fixed in the mid-20s, however, the death spiral won't be happening. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that even if the young enrolled at only 50% of expected levels, premiums for 2015 would have to be raised a couple of percentage points. That's nowhere near enough to set off a death spiral.
Moreover, as we explained way back in October, the ACA has a corrective to the death spiral written in. It's called risk adjustment, and it works by paying a subsidy to insurance companies that end up with older or sicker customer bases than they anticipated. The money comes from payments made by carriers that end up with favorable customer profiles. Republicans know this arrangement will keep Obamacare stable. How do we know? Because in a majestically cynical move spearheaded by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., they tried late last year to kill it, calling it an insurance "bailout."
"More people got cancellations than signed up": The numbers never supported this claim, and the latest estimates make it even more of a fantasy. It's based on the wave of reports late last year of insurance companies canceling old policies that didn't meet ACA standards, which led to hysterical claims that as many as 17 million Americans were being left uninsured.
Rand's figures support earlier estimates that fewer than 1 million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because of cancellations. Insurance companies that issued the cancellation notices say they've retained "the vast majority" of their old customers, mostly by moving them into new, compliant, plans.
"The White House is 'cooking the books'": This is the last refuge of scoundrels like Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who made the claim this weekend on Fox News Sunday while the slack-jawed host, Chris Wallace, sat silently by.
That is blatantly one-sided partisan-liberal journalism, that ignores the huge problems with every stage of Obamacare. To name just a few:
1) Democrats ramming it into law against the will of 53% of the people, buying the 3 Senate votes theey needed to push it over the top with billions in perks using (ironically) the tax dollars of the majority who oppose the law.
2) Three and a half years after passage, and yet with all this time to plan, the launch has been completely half assed.
3) The Obama administration spent almost 700 million to build the Obamacare website, and even despite this absurdly high website expenditure, the thing still doesn't work.
4) McAfee, the creator of the world's most-used antivirus software, has has called the Obamacare website "an identity thief's wet dream".
5) The only way Obamacare has reached 6 million enrollments is by deliberately creating a system that forced over 6 million policies (and still counting) to be cancelled, thus FORCING millions of Americans to sign up for less favorable Obamacare policies, with far higher premiums and ridiculously high deductibles as high as $10,000. Sec. Sebelius initially defined 9 million as the number of enrollments as the minimum necessary to sustain the program, then lowered to 7 million, and they are now calling it a great success with barely 6 million enrolled. And journalists on all sides are saying that about 20 to 25% of that 6 million have only signed up and either haven't paid or have already cancelled because they decided they couldn't afford it.
6) When you consider the number of policies cancelled out from under people, FORCING them to sign up for Obamacare, without the enrollment numbers exaggerated and fudged by HRS and the Obama cock-slurping media, you really have maybe 5 million signed up, and about 6.2 million policies cancelled (so far) and that is a net LOSS of about 1 million-plus policies. Of those signed up for Obamacare, only about 10% did not previously have insurance coverage.
It is a lie and a sham. And the partisan liberal media has taken sides as part of the Obama propaganda machine.
Obamacare hits enrollment goal with 7.1 million sign-ups, President says By Jim Acosta. Tom Watkins and Kevin Liptak, CNN updated 6:45 PM EDT, Tue April 1, 2014 Your video will play in 19 secs STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: President Barack Obama says administration hits initial sign-up target More than 4.8 million visits to HealthCare.gov were made on Monday alone Enrollment in health care program steadily grew after rocky rollout The surge in sign-ups includes a good number of young people, official tells CNN
Washington (CNN) -- A last-minute enrollment surge enabled the White House to meet its original sign-up target for the Affordable Care Act, a surprising victory for the Obama administration after a rocky rollout of the program that has become a political hot potato for Democrats and a rallying cry for Republicans.
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that 7.1 million people had signed up on federal or state exchanges for coverage under the health care law now often known as Obamacare.
The enrollment period began anemically in October with a faltering federal website and ended with a crush of people trying to beat Monday's deadline to get coverage. Not everyone who has selected a health plan has paid for it yet, officials said.
Nevertheless, Obama claimed victory at a White House ceremony, saying the program approved by Congress in 2010 -- with no Republican support and vilified relentlessly by the GOP as government overreach -- has been a force for good. Obamacare sign-ups reach 7 million W.H. reports a surge in enrollment Is Obamacare second-rate insurance? Analyst: Low expectations for Obamacare
He said it wasn't perfect, acknowledging the early difficulties in selecting a policy on HealthCare.gov, and he predicted more hurdles in carrying it out.
But the overall goal of starting to narrow the gap between those with health coverage and those without it has begun, and millions of Americans are embracing it, Obama said.
"That's what the (law) is all about, making sure all of us and all our fellow citizens can count on the security of health care when we get sick," he said, noting that the "law is doing what it's supposed to do. It's working."
The numbers
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office originally projected the 7 million enrollment target for the October through March period, which was adopted by the administration.
Expectations plummeted throughout the fall and into this year after the early website problems, which Obama called "several lost weeks."
But signs of a pickup began in late January and continued into February and early March despite a fierce campaign by Republicans to demonize the law as unworkable.
Administration officials said an absolute crush of people pushed the program -- Obama's chief domestic accomplishment -- over the finish line at the 11th hour. More than 4.8 million visits were made to HealthCare.gov on Monday alone.
Officials stressed that the 7.1 million figure represents only those who signed up for coverage. Those who came in late and encountered technical problems have until mid-April to complete the process. Private insurers are providing the coverage.
Health of Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told an Oklahoma TV station on Monday that insurers were reporting that 80% to 90% had paid so far.
The law also includes expanded Medicaid insurance for the poor in many states, but those participants are not part of the sign-up total. ...
Obamacare May Cut Auto Insurance Rates, Study Says
By Richard Davies
Apr 10, 2014 9:14am
Morning Money Memo…
Obamacare may lower the cost of car insurance. A new study from the respected RAND Corporation says the price of several different types of coverage, including business liability, workers’ compensation and auto insurance may be reduced.
That’s because those policies often pay for treating injured people who don’t have medical coverage.
The Affordable Care Act has increased the share of people covered by private health insurance and Medicaid. The changes “can generate potential cost changes as high as 5 percent or more in particular states and insurance lines,” says the RAND report.
As coverage grows, insurers won’t have to put as much money aside to pay for accidents involving uninsured accident victims.
Obamacare Sign-Ups Hit 8 Million In Remarkable Turnaround Posted: 04/17/2014 3:54 pm EDT Updated: 04/17/2014 7:59 pm EDT
In a remarkable rebound from the botched rollout of Obamacare, 8 million people have signed up for private health insurance via the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act since October, President Barack Obama announced during a press briefing at the White House Thursday.
March and April saw an uptick in the share of young people signing up for private plans using the exchanges. These people, who are presumably healthier, are needed to balance out the medical costs of older, sicker consumers. About 35 percent of people who signed up throughout the open enrollment period were under 35 years old, including children, Obama said. Twenty-eight percent were between the ages of 18 and 34, according to a White House fact sheet.
The official six-month enrollment period ended March 31, but the federal government and most states accommodated people trying to complete applications in April amid a last-minute surge for subsidized private coverage and Medicaid benefits.
"This law is working," Obama said. "This law won't solve all the problems in our health care system. We know we've got more work to do, but we now know for a fact that repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit, raise premiums for millions of Americans, and take insurance away from millions more." ...
