Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)

[Jocephus]

hey least we can all agree on lies and politicians! there's something!

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

See, we all agree. We don't like liars.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

[/youtube]

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

hey least we can all agree on lies and politicians! there's something!

hooray!

[Socnorb11]

Unfortunately, I don't even think this was a lie. I think he was just to naïve to know any better.

WMD's........... now THAT was a lie to beat all lies.

[Jocephus]

he also got to pretend to be a fighter pilot

[Mary1966]

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/ ... ryxml.html

It wasn’t the moonlight, holiday-season euphoria or family pressure that made Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn, both 62, suddenly decide to get married.

It was the fine print.

As fine print is wont to do, it had buried itself in a long form — Balhorn’s application for free health insurance through the expanded state Medicaid program. As the paperwork lay on the dining-room table in Port Townsend, Prins began reading.

She was shocked: If you’re 55 or over, Medicaid can come back after you’re dead and bill your estate for ordinary health-care expenses.

The way Prins saw it, that meant health insurance via Medicaid is hardly “free” for Washington residents 55 or older. It’s a loan, one whose payback requirements aren’t well advertised. And it penalizes people who, despite having a low income, have managed to keep a home or some savings they hope to pass to heirs, Prins said.

Prins, an artist, and Balhorn, a retired fisherman-turned-tango instructor, separately qualified for health insurance through Medicaid based on their sole incomes.

But if they were married, they calculated, they could “just squeak by” with enough income to qualify for a subsidized health plan — and avoid any encumbrance on the home they hope to leave to Prins’ two sons.

Over the past month, as lawmakers began hearing from worried and angry constituents, state officials began exploring what it would take to fix this collision of state rules with the ACA.

Late Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee’s office and the state Medicaid office said they plan to draft an emergency rule to limit estate recovery to long-term care and related medical expenses.

They hope to be able to change the rules before coverage begins Jan. 1.

Fixing the problem will cost the state about $3 million a year, said Dr. Bob Crittenden, Inslee’s senior health-policy adviser, but it’s the right thing to do.

I visited my uncle on Monday and he said that he remembered when they rolled out Medicare in 1965 they had similar hiccups. January 1, 2014 will be an interesting New Year's Day.

[Mary1966]

Someone got themselves some interesting "Obamacare":

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/21/us/heroin ... ?hpt=hp_t2

What do heroin and Obamacare have in common?

Nothing -- save for more than 1,200 packets of heroin that had the words "Obama Care" and "Kurt Cobain" printed in red on the packaging that Massachusetts State Police say they uncovered in a drug bust.

State police said the labels are nothing more than marketing ploys.

"It's a branding by the particular drug dealer so when the drug gets out to the population, you know what it is," said Police Lt. Daniel Richard. "It's just a branding so you can say if this brand is good or bad. It's like putting Pepsi or Coca-Cola on a bottle."

[pioneer98]

Someone got themselves some interesting "Obamacare":

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/21/us/heroin ... ?hpt=hp_t2

What do heroin and Obamacare have in common?

Nothing -- save for more than 1,200 packets of heroin that had the words "Obama Care" and "Kurt Cobain" printed in red on the packaging that Massachusetts State Police say they uncovered in a drug bust.

State police said the labels are nothing more than marketing ploys.

"It's a branding by the particular drug dealer so when the drug gets out to the population, you know what it is," said Police Lt. Daniel Richard. "It's just a branding so you can say if this brand is good or bad. It's like putting Pepsi or Coca-Cola on a bottle."

Appropriately seized in Massachusetts where they have Romneycare.

[pioneer98]

Peeps be buzzin about the health care spending slowdown. The health care industry shed 6,000 jobs in that (terrible) jobs report that came out last week. This is the first month of any since 1990 that the health care industry lost jobs. Also, health care spending is growing slower than the overall economy for the first time since 1997. No one knows exactly why. And the slowdown on health care has been global, not just in the USA. The recession likely has something to do with it, because countries hit hardest by the recession are also on the leading edge of this slowdown. But it could also be a number of different things, like high-deductible plans and possibly Obamacare's changes to Medicare:

You have to give doctors incentives to offer better care too. More cost-effective care. Right now, we have a "fee-for-service" model where doctors get paid more the more tests they perform, regardless of whether those tests were necessary.

Obamacare tries to change that by changing Medicare. It's set up doctor networks called Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that try to coordinate care to make it more efficient—along with offering bonuses for keeping costs below target. Now, we don't know if this is going to work, but there are already some encouraging signs. Medicare's hospital readmission rate, for one, has already fallen well below its 2007-11 average now that they have a financial reason to do so. In other words, hospitals are making sure patients keep getting the care they need after they leave, so they don't need to come back. It's not sexy, but getting a million little incentives like this right will be the difference between "bending the cost-curve" or not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... wn/282964/