http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/201...young-workers/

Gruber then: Obamacare will “for sure” reduce insurance costs...

Gruber now: Obamacare will increase premiums by 19-30 percent...

Originally Posted by Deb C

If the employer was out of the picture, the insurance industry might just have even more power over who gets treated and who doesn't. As it stands now, if an employer has 500 or more employees, insurance is much cheaper for the employee and *everyone* is covered. I shudder to think how many people with pre-existing conditions would simply be without insurance if they and their families were't able to get it through their employer.

Even as it stands today, most employees pay half of their insurance premium, and the employer, the other half. It amazes me just how much it costs most people to be covered by health insurance through an employment situation. If life and car insurance cost as much as health insurance, we would all be in a world of hurt.

Greed reigns supreme when it comes to profits over people. As I mentioned in another post about a time that people had to buy fire insurance and their homes burnt down if they couldn't afford the cost of buying that insurance. I'm afraid the same thing is happening today in regards to health insurance. It would be much worse if we didn't have places of employment providing at least half of our premiums. Everyone purchasing their own insurance would make it even more of a class system, where only some could afford to be covered. This is why we need a health care system like most other industrialized nations; one that is fair and compassionate and includes everyone, including people who already have an illness.

Although I want the employeers out of the business of providing health care insurance, it is also clear that no individual has the clout to negotiate with the current insurance companies. One solution is single payer ( I have already noted that I don't like single anything). Another is a concept loosely modeled on the current federal health care system. This approach allows various groups to be the insurance providers( some are corporations , but many are employee organizations & Unions). It does need to have a national scope and I understand the appeal of the single payer approach. The providers cannot refuse anyone and the individual can select the provider for his/her health care insurance on a annual basis.
I totally agree that we cannot just turn this over to the insurance corporations. I strongly believe in providing a 'balance of power'.
If the insurance companies do not do better, then they would just have to get out of the business as the non-profits take over.

The following is just for reference for anyone not already familiar with the variety of national health care providers available under the FEHBP.

Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees & Annuitants - An FEHBP Health Insurance Plan Comparison Tool
http://www.checkbook.org/newhig2/year12/text.cfm
..."Every Federal employee and annuitant can choose from a dozen or more insurance plan options and most can choose from twenty or more plans. Choices include well-known national plans, such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield; local plans available in many areas, such as the Aetna, Humana, and Kaiser plans; and plans sponsored by unions and employee associations, such as the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the Government Employees Health Association (GEHA). You are free to join most union and association plans, regardless of your employing agency and whether you are an employee or annuitant. At most you must pay annual dues, which are generally near $30."...

Originally Posted by Deb C

If the employer was out of the picture, the insurance industry might just have even more power over who gets treated and who doesn't. As it stands now, if an employer has 500 or more employees, insurance is much cheaper for the employee and *everyone* is covered. I shudder to think how many people with pre-existing conditions would simply be without insurance if they and their families were't able to get it through their employer.

A couple thoughts:

1) This is nothing which, in theory, couldn't be addressed through appropriate regulation. The insurance industry is on record as saying they have no problem pricing a product with no underwriting as long as there is a universal mandate (and no adverse selection), and that's what PPACA wanted to do (and which is being challenged in court).

2) I am of the opinion that if employers didn't start offering health insurance in large numbers during WW2 to get around wage freezes in a tight labor market, we would have had "national health care" many decades ago. But once the assumption was that employers would provide it, and once the overwhelming majority of households received employer-paid health insurance, the issue to nationalize or create universal single-payer never gained traction. Medicare succeeded in 1965 because folks over 65 were assumed to be retired and likely without employer-health insurance -- so they needed it. But since most working-age households had employer-based insurance, there was no strong push to expand it to all people.

It seems that about once every 20 years or so, a significant push for major health care reforms gets out there. Truman floated it, Nixon wanted it, Clinton renewed the push and now we have PPACA. I just hope that whatever we don't get now, won't take another 20 years to materialize. I'd be on Medicare by then anyway, unless they jack up the eligibility age to 67+.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

... I just hope that whatever we don't get now, won't take another 20 years to materialize. I'd be on Medicare by then anyway, unless they jack up the eligibility age to 67+.

-Well. It looks like I get to use this twice in the same day:

Originally Posted by jamesdglick

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/index.html#Retirement


DOB Full Retirement Age

1937: 65yrs
1938: 65 yrs 2mos
1939: 65yrs 4mos
1940: 65yrs 6mos
1941: 65yrs 8mos
1942: 65yrs 10mos
1943-1954: 66yrs
1955: 66yrs 2mos
1956: 66yrs 4mos
1957: 66yrs 6mos
1958: 66yrs 8mos
1959: 66yrs 10mos
1960+: 67yrs

Originally Posted by JDG 66

-Well. It looks like I get to use this twice in the same day:

You can use it twice, but it's totally irrelevant. I'm speaking of Medicare, not SS, which is, and has always been (up to now), set at 65 for eligibility.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

You can use it twice, but it's totally irrelevant. I'm speaking of Medicare, not SS, which is, and has always been (up to now), set at 65 for eligibility.

-Just wait.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

A couple thoughts:

1) This is nothing which, in theory, couldn't be addressed through appropriate regulation. The insurance industry is on record as saying they have no problem pricing a product with no underwriting as long as there is a universal mandate (and no adverse selection), and that's what PPACA wanted to do (and which is being challenged in court).

2) I am of the opinion that if employers didn't start offering health insurance in large numbers during WW2 to get around wage freezes in a tight labor market, we would have had "national health care" many decades ago. But once the assumption was that employers would provide it, and once the overwhelming majority of households received employer-paid health insurance, the issue to nationalize or create universal single-payer never gained traction. Medicare succeeded in 1965 because folks over 65 were assumed to be retired and likely without employer-health insurance -- so they needed it. But since most working-age households had employer-based insurance, there was no strong push to expand it to all people.

It seems that about once every 20 years or so, a significant push for major health care reforms gets out there. Truman floated it, Nixon wanted it, Clinton renewed the push and now we have PPACA. I just hope that whatever we don't get now, won't take another 20 years to materialize. I'd be on Medicare by then anyway, unless they jack up the eligibility age to 67+.

Thanks for the history lesson as to why there wasn't a push for universal health care. It makes sense now that I've read your post.

So what we thought was progress, ended up to be the rod in the spokes of the wheel.

Just for a grin.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

A couple thoughts:

1) This is nothing which, in theory, couldn't be addressed through appropriate regulation. The insurance industry is on record as saying they have no problem pricing a product with no underwriting as long as there is a universal mandate (and no adverse selection), and that's what PPACA wanted to do (and which is being challenged in court).

In effect people are priced into sharing "pre-existing conditions". Eventually everyone ends up with a pre-existing condition even if such is manageable for a long time.

2) I am of the opinion that if employers didn't start offering health insurance in large numbers during WW2 to get around wage freezes in a tight labor market, we would have had "national health care" many decades ago. But once the assumption was that employers would provide it, and once the overwhelming majority of households received employer-paid health insurance, the issue to nationalize or create universal single-payer never gained traction. Medicare succeeded in 1965 because folks over 65 were assumed to be retired and likely without employer-health insurance -- so they needed it. But since most working-age households had employer-based insurance, there was no strong push to expand it to all people.

The elderly devour the bulk of medical costs. Typically the last year of life is by far the most expensive for total medical costs. To be sure that can apply to a fatal cancer or a catastrophic accident in childhood, but most people live past 65 anyway. Insurers did not want the elderly who then had to pay exorbitant premiums just to get medical coverage and usually got priced out of it at the terms available.

The workforce has changed substantially. It used to be more blue-collar manufacturing jobs in mass employers. Now we have a race to the bottom in compensation of all kinds. An employer of a large number of low-paid, expendable employees (such as a fast-food chain) might offer "health-care insurance" best described as a discount. Obviously if one is among the working poor in plutocratic America one gets the shaft.

It seems that about once every 20 years or so, a significant push for major health care reforms gets out there. Truman floated it, Nixon wanted it, Clinton renewed the push and now we have PPACA. I just hope that whatever we don't get now, won't take another 20 years to materialize. I'd be on Medicare by then anyway, unless they jack up the eligibility age to 67+.

We have the most expensive system of paying for medical care in the world. It is terribly corrupt, but corruption always has its own constituency and often influence in the political system.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I am very uncertain about how this will go. It's true that the Republican five have shown a truly remarkable willingness to overturn precedent, e.g. in Heller (throwing out centuries of individual gun control) and Citizens United (throwing out a century of campaign finance regulation.) But are they really willing to wipe out such a key piece of legislation and set a precedent that could undo so much of the last 80 years?

IMHO, it is very likely that after the June ruling comes down that we will be effectively running under the legal precedent that anything Congress passes can be overturned by the SCOTUS for any reason. The Supreme Court is well on its way to becoming an uncontrolled and unaccountable branch of government that will dictate to the other branches of government more or less at will.

There is of course no way of knowing where it will all end up, but considering that we now have such "innovations" as the so called "painless" filibuster effectively paralyizing government it is hard to see how the whole system will not completely break down at some point.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

IMHO, it is very likely that after the June ruling comes down that we will be effectively running under the legal precedent that anything Congress passes can be overturned by the SCOTUS for any reason. The Supreme Court is well on its way to becoming an uncontrolled and unaccountable branch of government that will dictate to the other branches of government more or less at will.

Maybe. Though I will say that this also was a widespread feeling that conservatives had about the Warren Court some 50 years ago. The big difference, of course, is that now presidents go out of their way to find someone ideologically compatible. Warren was nominated by Eisenhower (though Ike would be a liberal by today's standards) and Stevens was nominated by Ford. Of course, the GOP of our fathers and grandfathers is not the GOP of today.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

IMHO, it is very likely that after the June ruling comes down that we will be effectively running under the legal precedent that anything Congress passes can be overturned by the SCOTUS for any reason. The Supreme Court is well on its way to becoming an uncontrolled and unaccountable branch of government that will dictate to the other branches of government more or less at will.

There is of course no way of knowing where it will all end up, but considering that we now have such "innovations" as the so called "painless" filibuster effectively paralyizing government it is hard to see how the whole system will not completely break down at some point.

It's ironic that it is the RW judges are are being the "activist judges".

Someone needs to remind the President we are no longer of an age with just Radio. With 24/7 News and Internet, well, anyone who is anyone can hear and challenge a comment. Good for the 5th Circuit, Court of Appeals to take our Monarch, I mean President to task.

With 20+ unelected Czars and 2 or more un-elected Senator's who voted for the Bill, no one should be called to the carpet of this one.

The following situation happened in our state last September. It's about two stories of very different people that paint a grim picture of class-based medical treatment.


Dick Cheney and Anna Brown

News articles about former Vice President Dick Cheney's heart transplant and Anna Brown's death in St. Louis illustrate the great unfairness in medical and social treatment.

Read more:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion...#ixzz1r4w6UfFV

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...in_113685.html

...And so the Constitution -- and the limits it places on Congress' powers -- is once again part of our politics...since the court in 1942 said the government could limit the amount of wheat farmer Roscoe Filburn could grow on his own land to feed his own animals, it has been generally assumed that the federal government's power to regulate the economy had no limits....


http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/3...l-legal-bubble

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. “The results,” he writes in the May issue of Reason, “were clear and consistent.”Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. “Liberals,” he reports, “were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

Originally Posted by JDG 66

... What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think...

I agree. It's always easier to understand and anticipate rational thought processes than random mythology and emotional rants.

Good point.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I agree. It's always easier to understand and anticipate rational thought processes than random mythology and emotional rants.

You are assuming that the modern liberal or progressive does not have a religion, which is incorrect. They do have a religion, it just happens to be a secular one where government takes the place of god. In fact the progressives of the early twentieth century tended to be pietists who lost or transferred their faith to government.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I agree. It's always easier to understand and anticipate rational thought processes than random mythology and emotional rants.

Good point.

Plus, we all willing to read/listen to what they say or believe vs putting them on ignore.

Originally Posted by Galen

You are assuming that the modern liberal or progressive does not have a religion, which is incorrect. They do have a religion, it just happens to be a secular one where government takes the place of god. In fact the progressives of the early twentieth century tended to be pietists who lost or transferred their faith to government.

Wrong. Liberalism, humanism, and progressivism are not inherently irreligious. They may try to divorce religious devotion from political and economic thought so that they can make their objectives more universal in appeal and relevance. What liberals, humanists, and progressives do not worship is the despotic self and bureaucratic power as ends in themselves. To liberals, progressives, and humanists, even markets are at best methods and not ends.

Originally Posted by Galen

You are assuming that the modern liberal or progressive does not have a religion, which is incorrect. They do have a religion, it just happens to be a secular one where government takes the place of god. In fact the progressives of the early twentieth century tended to be pietists who lost or transferred their faith to government.

You may be falsely identifying world views, values set or values lock with liberals or with religion. Yes, it is very human to have a complex system for identifying how the world works. Yes, many religious and liberal value systems are held as complete and unquestionable by those who hold them. It would be a mistake to think that non-liberals and non-religious types are any less committed to their world views and values.

As I've stated so many times before, people as individuals and societies as groups will cling to existing thought patterns beyond rationality. If one asks what it takes for an honest reevaluation and a major shift in culture, I'd point at incidents like Pearl Harbor, or at the smoking ruins of cities like Atlanta and Berlin. Humans keep fighting for what they believing well past the point of rationality. They can perceive reality only through the filters of their assorted colored lenses.

Turning Theory to me is interesting in identifying the processes through which these irrational but set in cement thought patterns eventually fall when faced with a harsh reality they cannot deal with. Until the harsh reality triumphs though, as a large cliff would triumph over an onrushing train, the riders on the train with think themselves on top of the world.

But political world views are not the same as religious world views. While Stalinist Russia, Fascist Germany or many other political systems might have some of the same elements of religion, it remains possible in most circumstances to differentiate between a church and a political party. To some extent, yes, devout believers in various political and economic systems might have an irrational faith based inability to question how they perceive the world. No, this does not imply religious thinking. This is the norm. This is human thinking. If one is attempting to communicate with someone with a seemingly irrational world view, one should consider that such irrationality is normal for humans and that objectively one's own world view is apt to be considered equally irrational by many others.

Bob Butler 54

Probable less than 2 months away before SCOTUS kills off health insurance for millions so here's a look at what might have been and what will likely be -

For Second Year In A Row, MA Health Insurance Premiums Go Down

By Susie Madrak


So the only thing we have with which we can compare the Affordable Care Act shows that it works to lower the cost of insurance. Kind of a roundabout, convoluted way to provide health care, and nowhere near as cheap as single payer, but at least it does lessen the crushing financial burden of the crazy system we still have:

BOSTON, April 14 (UPI) -- Massachusetts residents who participate in the state's healthcare program are seeing their insurance premiums going down by 5 percent, officials say.

While healthcare insurance premiums have gone up in other states, those participating in the state's Health Connector Commonwealth Care program are enjoying a second year of reduced premium payments courtesy of the healthcare reform act signed into law by then Gov. Mitt Romney, Forbes.com reported.

President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act was patterned under Romney's program in Massachusetts and designed to lower the amount of "free riders," people who don't buy or can't afford healthcare insurance but cannot by law, be turned away at a hospital emergency room if they have a life-threatening illness, by mandating the purchase of healthcare insurance.

Let me point out that the definition of "life-threatening illness" is a narrow one, and varies from hospital to hospital. For instance, if you go to the emergency room with severe pain, they test you and it turns out you have cancer, they don't have to treat your cancer -- unless, for example, a tumor is blocking your lungs and you can't breathe. It doesn't mean they have to remove the tumor, but they might do a tracheotomy. And they only have to treat your life-threatening illness if they diagnose it. (You may have noticed they don't always order the most accurate tests if you don't have insurance.) And they don't really have to "treat" it - they have to stabilize it.

Most importantly, they will send in a social worker to see if they can get you covered under a special federal program for indigent care. This is worth a shot; don't give up. If you're penniless, they can probably help you. (I wasn't poor enough.)

When I made repeated visits to the ER with pancreatitis caused by gallstones, I was sent home -- even though the GI doctor kept telling me my condition was life-threatening. What I learned is that many conditions are only life-threatening if you have insurance that will pay to cover the treatment. And who can blame them when they're trying to keep their doors open? (What a strange, evil system we have.)

Currently, Massachusetts has the highest level of healthcare coverage in the country with more than 98 percent of its residents having healthcare insurance, but ranking as the 48th lowest state in the nation in healthcare expenditures.

The combined saving of last year and this year will save the state approximately $91 million with no benefit reductions or member co-pay increases, the report said.

In Florida, by the way, people who buy their own health insurance are getting rebates. I suspect the more people benefit from Obamacare, the more they're going to like it, because it is an improvement over the previous rape-and-pillage policies:

Floridians who buy health insurance without the help of an employer can expect estimated rebates of $143 to $949 in August because of the federal health care overhaul.

About 157,000 individuals and families qualify. In addition, an estimated $65 million in health insurance rebates are in line to be split among workers covered at 352,000 small businesses, the Sun Sentinel found by analyzing reports filed this month by 15 of the largest insurers in Florida.

Don't expect cash back if you get health coverage from an employer of more than 50 workers. Few of their insurers will owe rebates, and many companies are self-insured and not affected by the health law, insurance experts said.

"This is important for consumers," said Richard Polangin, health care policy coordinator with the advocacy organization Florida Public Interest Research Group. "They already pay extremely high prices for health insurance."

More and more companies don't even offer health insurance to new hires.

Originally Posted by washingtonpost.com

new research from the Employee Benefits Research Institute that shows people aren’t just losing insurance because they’re losing their jobs. Instead, some Americans are losing coverage because fewer employers are willing to foot part of the bill.

In 2002, 72 percent of employers offered health insurance—a number that dropped to 67.5 percent in 2010. Even among those who offered for coverage, fewer employees opted to participate in the program. The take-up rate for employer-sponsored insurance fell just slightly, from 86 percent in 1997 to 86.3 percent in 2010.

“The majority of uninsured workers report that they are not covered by health benefits because their employers did not offer coverage,” EBRI’s Paul Fronstin notes. “In 2010, 58.2 percent of uninsured workers reported that they worked for employers that did not offer health benefits to any employees This is up from 53.1 percent in 1997.”

In 1945 then President Truman proposed a national healthcare law that was defeated largely because most Americans had gotten health care during the wartime boom of 1942 to 1945. It's 2012 and we still pretend that a young and healthy Rosie the Riveter can still get a house call from the friendly doc down the street. A doc, who btw never has to deal with co-pays, or a maze of insurance forms.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinio...amacare/474606

[Congresscritter Ryan] warned that the CLASS Act program in Obamacare was "a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud." Last October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted Ryan was right. She announced there was no "viable path forward" to implement the provision...

Now, Social Security and Medicare trustee Charles Blahous has come forward with a new report detailing another of Obamacare's accounting frauds. Blahous charges that $470 billion of the law's Medicare cuts are used to both: 1) add money to Medicare's Trust Fund and 2) fund new subsidies for buying health insurance. If this "double-counting" is eliminated, Blahous argues, Obamacare would add, not subtract, at least $346 billion to deficits over the next 10 years.

Blahous' study... must have struck a nerve, because the White House immediately attacked the report, calling it "another brand of new math." They turned to the Congressional Budget Office, who has recently certified that Obamacare will reduce the debt by $143 billion through 2019.

But the CBO has also previously acknowledged the "double counting" problem that Blahous identifies... the CBO wrote, "The act's effects on the rest of the budget -- other than the cash flows of [Medicare] -- would amount to a net increase in federal deficits of $226 billion over the same period."

...This is the problem Obama's accountants hoped no one would notice.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I agree. It's always easier to understand and anticipate rational thought processes than random mythology and emotional rants...

-Only if you are rational to begin with. Progressives, apparently, are not.

Your argument isn't even rational on it's own terms. If conservatives and libertarians were the irrational ones, they wouldn't be able to use reason to understand progressive's supposedly superior thought processes.

You once had a moment of rationality:

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

... Try getting the data directly from the Social Security Administration or another government agency like the Bureau of labor Statistics or the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

..but when we discovered that those sources supported my arguments, not yours, you lost interest in reason. Oh well. Conservatism is reality based.

But I've enjoyed your (sputtering) attempt at a cop-out comeback. It proves the original point.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

More and more companies don't even offer health insurance to new hires.

...It's 2012 and we still pretend that a young and healthy Rosie the Riveter can still get a house call from the friendly doc down the street. A doc, who btw never has to deal with co-pays, or a maze of insurance forms.

-And that's an argument for getting government deeper into this...

Originally Posted by JDG 66

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinio...amacare/474606

[Congresscritter Ryan] warned that the CLASS Act program in Obamacare was "a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud." Last October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted Ryan was right. She announced there was no "viable path forward" to implement the provision...

Now, Social Security and Medicare trustee Charles Blahous has come forward with a new report detailing another of Obamacare's accounting frauds. Blahous charges that $470 billion of the law's Medicare cuts are used to both: 1) add money to Medicare's Trust Fund and 2) fund new subsidies for buying health insurance. If this "double-counting" is eliminated, Blahous argues, Obamacare would add, not subtract, at least $346 billion to deficits over the next 10 years.

Blahous' study... must have struck a nerve, because the White House immediately attacked the report, calling it "another brand of new math." They turned to the Congressional Budget Office, who has recently certified that Obamacare will reduce the debt by $143 billion through 2019.

But the CBO has also previously acknowledged the "double counting" problem that Blahous identifies... the CBO wrote, "The act's effects on the rest of the budget -- other than the cash flows of [Medicare] -- would amount to a net increase in federal deficits of $226 billion over the same period."

...This is the problem Obama's accountants hoped no one would notice.

This has been reviewed internally and by other experts, and, with the exception of Blahous, they all agree that the savings are real. Several different metods were used, but the result is the same. Here's one of several comments.