Health Care Thread

Ishad

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Which wouldn't work if there were an excess of doctors. If you skipped a job this year to hopefully get a better job next year, all that would happen is those jobs would be filled by better qualified grads next year just like this year. But since there is an excess of jobs and shortage of grads, there are always open spots and cherry picking residencies is possible.
That's true, no one can argue that having more graduates then quality job slots works out well, just look at lawyers.
 

fanaskin

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NPR Reporter Frustrated by WH on Obamacare Site Fixes | Mediaite

While the White House is indicating that a number of goals it set for itself have been met, National Public Radio's health policy correspondent Julie Rovner said she found verifying the Obama administration's claims "frustrating." She added that the administration has not provided reporters with "independent access" to the data they claim shows that they have largely repaired the federal insurance exchange portal.
 

Vaclav

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That list probably includes vulnerabilities that were found and fixed, definitely something you want in the public domain for hackers to know...

Its a pretty ridiculous 'issue' - try making a policy and see if it functions was the fail marker before, seems a pretty good fix marker too.
 

fanaskin

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more likely they reduced the functionality of the website and arranged it so people are doing the work of the more complex functions behind the scenes instead of computers while they rewrite the back end. I've heard that strategy mentioned many times as a possible way to handle the situation. if that's what they are doing they could of just said that, but this administration seems to favor hiding things which is probably why they restrict access to verifiable data that would make it obvious.
 

Asshat wormie

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more likely they reduced the functionality of the website and arranged it so people are doing the work of the more complex functions behind the scenes instead of computers while they rewrite the back end. I've heard that strategy mentioned many times as a possible way to handle the situation. if that's what they are doing they could of just said that, but this administration seems to favor hiding things which is probably why they restrict access to verifiable data that would make it obvious.
If the information is restricted and hidden, how do you know about it?
 

Kreugen

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If this doesn't annoy or at least greatly concern you then you are so hopelessly brainwashed that you should never vote ever again:Some states fought to lower Obamacare premiums - Dec. 2, 2013

tl;dr- blue states aggressively negotiated with insurers to keep premiums down. Red states rubber-stamped whatever rates came across their desk because Fuck You, we want people to hate Obamacare. Politicians, working for themselves while fucking you.

These rate hikes were of course magnified by these states likely being more loosely regulated to begin with. aka the "$50 a month premium that covers fucking nothing" plans. So if anything, these states needed the most aggressive negotiations to keep premiums down because the new regulations affected them the most. But no, fuck you, we want premiums to be high because we want angry people voting for us, even though we're actually working against them. Plus, we're the hands-off party, right? Just let them set whatever price they want, the non-existent competition will keep prices down. And this is how you wind up with states like North Carolina with its $300 average premiums but only $40,000 average wage, while California is $250/$50,000 and so on.

I honestly hope that the article turns out to be complete bullshit and only the handful of obvious cases (Florida, North Carolina, Texas) turn out to be guilty of this crap. Maybe North Carolina tried to negotiate rates down but were just really bad at it. Because I don't enjoy being angry about something completely out of my control - it's fucking pointless.

Politicians purposefully fucking people for votes is pretty much highest on my list of shit I hate about politics.
 

Vaclav

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I'll crosslink it later but there's a Forbes article from my other Debate forum that had a map of the highest rate hikes, and it certainly looks widespread across red states. MD was the worst blue state I can recall at 41% with some blue getting down to -40% (NY) with many red states in the 80%+ range I want to say Arizona was 147% or so.
 

BoldW

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So if we're looking at a 41% average increase, and insurers must spend 85% of premium dollars on actual care and "activities to improve health care quality", have costs just gone through the friggin roof? Should we be taking out the "Affordable" part of the ACA?
 

Vaclav

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Read my article and Kreugen's together... they paint a very interesting picture...
 

BoldW

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Homework? I no time homework!

So, correct me if I'm wrong, it's all about the 3x higher limit vs 6x higher costs? That differential has to be picked up by us young bucks, increasing overall premiums to pay for the asshole baby-boomers that fucked us all up to begin with?

Bring on the death panels, I say.
 

Vaclav

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Yes, but almost entirely in red states that apparently just let the insurance companies offer them high rates and took it. For many of the blue states they actually negotiated parity or substantial savings because they hardballed the insurance companies. Only a handful are at that average that I saw MD (41% at the average), OR and MA and the the only ones far above is New Hampshire (Waaaaay above) and DE (slightly above) most blue states are in the 10-20 range or even SAVED MONEY.

So it really depends where you're at how much it sucks or not - NY policies are costing 40% less on average with greater coverage. You should be praising Jesus for it in NY - but in Nevada where it's 170-something% more expensive because the government people in charge with negotiating just took the first ridiculous offer the insurance companies made and lapped it up on the other hand, it sucks because the red state politicians went out of their way to allow it to be shitty for political points rather than doing their fucking jobs.
 

Algiz

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So if we're looking at a 41% average increase, and insurers must spend 85% of premium dollars on actual care and "activities to improve health care quality", have costs just gone through the friggin roof?
The cash prices of prescription drugs are all over the fucking place. A number of drugs have jumped from "affordable without insurance" to "batshit insane" in the past few months at the pharmacy I work at. As an example, I fully expect Vicodin "generics" to jump in price in 2014. That will lead to some fun discussions. I assume that fluctuations in actual medical services are more drastic.

So... Fuckin' Obama?
 

B_Mizzle

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What New Obamacare Problem Got Megyn Kelly So Angry? | Mediaite

So with no payment mechanism in place for policies bought on obamacare websites, guess what obummer has decided to do. Insurance companies are going to estimate costs and bill the fed directly, and at some later point the administration is going to calculate the actual costs. If it wasn't my tax dollars being wasted I might laugh.
 

Vaclav

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Modern Conservatives: Complaining that the website doesn't work when it's complicated... complains again when it's less complicated and working because it's not complicated enough...

The cognitive dissonance is deafening...

Protip: I almost guarantee the "estimates" are within the range that they would start a fraud investigation if they were out of bounds of. It's not like the insurance companies can go "Durrr! I guess a billion dollars is what you owe us for these ten policies, durr-dee-durr" like she implies in her faux rage.