Affordable Care Act Timeline, or...

*Cuts off a solid hunk of my cynicism, and eats it with butter and jam*

Well, they don't look enough like Poison Ivy to be nymphs, really, do they?

Well, find a goddamned nymph, and get her to run.

Yes, it is that easy.
Some goddamned blogger dug up Sarah Palin out of nowhere.
You're some goddamned blogger.
You can dooo eeet!!!

No, now I'm a goddamned editor. One of my subordinates would find her, and I'd cover her with red highlighter pen ink and make him find another one.

Something for the Trickle-Down Economics crowd:

"Today, we are announcing that thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more than 6.3 million seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare have saved more than $6.1 billion on prescription drugs since the health care law was enacted three years ago. This is the result of the law’s closing of the prescription coverage gap known as 'the donut hole.'

"Nearly 3.5 million people with Medicare saved an average of more than $706 each on their prescriptions in 2012."

When you consider that rather than 40 million people, there were really only about 10 million Americans (out of 310 million) who didn't have health care insurance because they could not afford it then the old system was a model of efficiency.

Take out noncitizens, those already eligible for existing govt. programs and everyone making over 50,000 a year who does not buy health insurance and the number drops quickly.

Another alternative viewpoint sure to be ignored by Obama groupies.

http://www.american.com/archive/200...-contents/what-do-we-know-about-the-uninsured

I'll see your op-ed from 2008 and raise you links to 41 articles indicating that, not for the first time, you're uniformed.

The wikipedia? Really?

It is useful for some things like celebrity bio, movie synopsis and background on noncontroversial topics.

Otherwise most serious people consider it a joke.

"The" Wikipedia?

Clicked through every one of the endnotes, did you?

Lifelong Republican Buys Obamacare Silver Plan And Says: "I'm So Happy That This Came Along"

I'm not getting this thread. Is it intended to be a factual timeline of Obamacare milestones and events, or just a sanitized and propagandized version?

Oh, look, now she's graduated to Shotgun ARgu

It's from garamet; therefore, propaganda. They really should be paying her; fortunately for them, the 'useful idiot' type is usually only too happy to do it 'for de modderlend.'

Indeed, it is propaganda. Moreover, it's the most effective kind of propaganda there is: WELL DOCUMENTED & VERIFIABLE FACTS ABOUT THINGS THAT HAVE ALREADY OCCURRED!

FTFY

The big thing about the PPACA in this regard is that it makes a whole lot of preventative care no-copay. That makes a huge difference in whether or not people bother with preventative care. Even small copayment requirements end up, in practice, severely limiting participation. People are basically terrible at calculating odds and always think they can beat the odds even if they can calculate them, so whether a copayment is five or twenty dollars on an HIV test or screening for diabetes makes surprisingly little little difference. But free is something people understand.

Making a whole lot of preventative care free is a tremendous public health gain and cost control measure from the PPACA.

So, in other words, someone's scrubbed-down and de-odorized version of events.

"Free" anything is a fantasy. You can make the cost zero to the patient, but someone else is picking up the slack somewhere.

The other assumption is that the patient will act on their diagnosis, which isn't true in every circumstance. If the person getting a no-cost diabetes test under Obamacare discovers he's borderline Type II and continues drinking two liters of Mountain Dew a day anyway, then the overall cost of health care for that person has increased by the price of a diabetes test. To guarantee lower costs you would have to implement a system which forces the patient to act on their diagnosis, which is another method of controlling people, and something most people opposed to Obamacare saw coming a mile away.

Garamet is your Dayton, and she lives rent free in your head.
Pwned.

Feel free to refute any of the facts posted thus far.

Why It Is So Difficult to Kill the Death Panel Myth

That's easy: Because the IPAB exists.

IPAB is tasked with developing specific proposals to bring the net growth in Medicare spending back to target levels if the Medicare Actuary determines that net spending is forecast to exceed target levels, beginning in 2015.

With regard to IPAB's recommendations, the law says "The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria."[10] The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must implement these proposals unless Congress adopts equally effective alternatives. The board is also required to submit to Congress annual reports on health care costs, access, quality, and utilization. IPAB must submit to Congress recommendations on how to slow the growth in total private health care expenditures.[11]

Every year on September 1, IPAB must submit a draft proposal to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. On January 15 of the next year IPAB must submit a proposal to Congress. If IPAB fails to meet this deadline, the HHS must create its own proposal. Congress must consider this proposal under special rules. Congress cannot consider any amendment to the proposal that does not achieve similar cost reductions unless both houses of Congress, including a three-fifths super majority in the Senate, vote to waive this requirement. If Congress fails to adopt a substitute provision by August 15, HHS must implement the proposal as originally submitted to Congress.[11]

In Castle's defense, he's clearly a pathological compulsive liar, and probably cannot help himself.


Oh, and he's also a moron, and a terrible writer.

If I remember correctly, Techman had free healthcare access due to his military service, and still sat on his ass through the heart pain. We know how that ended.

I hope i'm wrong, but I don't see this curing human nature's collective mentality of being bulletproof. It just adds more fees for those that don't need those service....which is why pre-Obama health care was so damn bloated to begin with.

It's true, but I think it's predominantly a Guy Thing, and I wonder if as more screenings and services become cheaper there won’t be a change in those numbers. The rest is about education. Even before the ACA, several insurers and health clubs were offering incentives to people who lost weight, went on a regular exercise regimen, that kind of thing. But Ron White’s right – you can’t fix Stupid. The thing is, people who don’t take care of their health die sooner. That was the driver behind the reform, the idea that it’s cheaper and easier to screen for something and either prevent it or catch it early enough to treat it effectively.

I thought a persistent problem in American healthcare was that TOO MANY tests are conducted and that Americans are OVER medicated.

Isn't Obamacare (if it is implemented as planned) likely to make those two things worse?

No.

There are appropriate screenings and unnecessary screenings.

• Someone with a familial history of certain illnesses, for example, should be screened for them.
• Conditions that affect large percentages of the population – diabetes, hypertension, breast and prostate cancer – should be screened for.
• Smokers and the obese are at a greater risk for lifestyle-induced diseases that cost the healthcare system obscene amounts of revenue at the back end.
• Conditions whose likelihood increases with age should be screened for at age-appropriate benchmarks.

Unnecessary screenings are a result of a confluence of doctors thinking “Oh, what the hell; his insurance will pick this up!” and insurers who decide “Yeah, we’ll cover these ‘cause it impresses the shareholders, and we’ll pass the costs on to all of our customers.”

You know how your side’s always citing the “If you tax corporations more, they’ll just pass those costs on to the consumer”? That thinking is based in part on the historic fact that publicly traded corporations like insures pass all of their costs on to the consumer.

The ACA requires insurers to provide certain screenings at no cost to the customer. That’s designed to make them reexamine their list of covered screenings and decide which ones are truly necessary on a medical, not a revenue, basis.

I do not believe that the government, private insurance, emergency rooms or anyone else should have to pay for treatment of diseases that are clearly and obviously "lifestyle induced".

Sure, that probably would've meant my grandfather might've died in 1987 instead of 1989 but those last couple of years were hellish anyway.

Aren't you on medication for diabetes?