What Lies Beneath Obamacare
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
Some things you read makes it seem as if the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 is the best policy ever created.
Other things you read makes it seem as if it’s an impending train wreck. I wish I had a crystal ball and could look ahead a couple of years.
But from what I’ve seen, those who are optimistic about Obamacare are optimistic based on some future expectation.
And the ones who are pessimistic point to some pretty basic and obvious problems surfacing within the law.
Here are a few examples:
Why bother?
If you are a person who is mostly healthy, why would you even bother signing up for insurance?
If you don’t sign up, the first-year penalty is $300. I can tell you without hesitation it will cost you a lot more than $300 per year for health insurance under Obamacare – even if your employer is kicking in.
So why not just forego having insurance?
Just pay as you go if you have a sore throat or some stitches. You can afford that.
But if something serious comes up, like cancer or heart disease, then go out and get insurance.
Remember, you can’t be turned down because of pre-existing conditions.
If enough people catch on to that little ruse, Obamacare is going to face some serious funding challenges.
Even Howard Dean has reservations.
You remember Howard Dean – Democrat governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002 and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s currently a strategic adviser to an international law firm, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.
He has a medical degree, too, by the way, so one would think he knows a little bit about health care.
Suffice it to say, this guy is no conservative, right-wing Obamacare hater.
He wrote a piece for the New York Times. In it, he says overall he likes Obamacare, but that there are major problems with parts of it.
One such part is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board.
His words:
The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.
... Rate setting — the essential mechanism of the IPAB — has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes ... is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients.
Now, isn’t this precisely what Sarah Palin was talking about when she coined the rather inarticulate phrase “death panel”? I guess “health-care rationing body” does seem to have a nicer ring, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Dean says the IPAB’s reason for existing is to control costs.
But, he concludes:
The IPAB will cause frustration to providers and patients alike, and it will fail to control costs.
He’s urging Congress to kill that part of the bill.
Doctors are skeptical and confused.
According to a new survey doctors are very wary and largely clueless about Obamacare.
Shane Jackson is president and chief operations officer of LocumTenens.com That’s the outfit that conducted the survey.
Only 11 percent of doctors believe their states’ health insurance exchanges will meet the Oct. 1 deadline.
Beyond that, a 65-percent plurality of doctors also say they are “not at all familiar” with how those exchanges and plans will work. For the most part, doctors are clueless with regard to plan benefits levels, contracted rates with insurers, patient coverage terms and the claims process.
This is a problem because the financial health of these physicians and their patients depend on these things working smoothly.
Jackson told CNBC’s Dan Mangan that patients, “expect to a large degree that their doctors understand how this is all going to work.” This lack of understanding threatens one of the basic tenets of Obamacare – that legions of the previously uninsured would enroll in the exchanges and improve the finances of doctors.
Jackson characterized "the major lack of awareness" among both doctors and patients as ”troubling."
That’s because docs who don't get it could be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Under the rules, a patient can go up to three months without paying premiums before their coverage gets dropped. But the insurer doesn’t have to pay claims from the second and third month if the insured isn’t paying premiums.
Doctors could end up eating the cost of care they’ve already provided.
Ouch.
Obamacare as a bankruptcy tool.
As Detroit plods through its bankruptcy proceedings, the idea of the dumping all its employees’ health care obligations on Obamacare has been proposed.
If that happens, what is to stop virtually every municipality in the country from doing the same thing?
And if that happens, can Obamacare – read that the U.S. taxpayers – bear the strain?
It pays to work less.
Also on CNBC, I saw this little gem of a story that showed how working too much could hurt you with regard to Obamacare.
"Working more can actually leave you worse off. It’s sort of an absurd scenario," Jonathan Wu, ValuePenguin.com's co-founder. "It's something for people to be aware of."
If your boss asks you to work a little overtime, for example, your or your family’s income could rise above income maximums set by the government. If that happens – even by just $1 – you will lose all subsidies available to buy health insurance under Obamacare.
It works like this:
If a 50-year-old Connecticut couple makes $62,040 or less they would receive a $6,575 subsidy from the government lowering their second-cheapest “silver” Obamacare premium to $5,893. The premium if they made any more than $62,040 would more than double to $12,468.
Maybe then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she said Congress had to pass the law to find out what’s in it.
Problem is, what’s in it is becoming increasingly troublesome.[[In-content Ad]]
Some things you read makes it seem as if the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 is the best policy ever created.
Other things you read makes it seem as if it’s an impending train wreck. I wish I had a crystal ball and could look ahead a couple of years.
But from what I’ve seen, those who are optimistic about Obamacare are optimistic based on some future expectation.
And the ones who are pessimistic point to some pretty basic and obvious problems surfacing within the law.
Here are a few examples:
Why bother?
If you are a person who is mostly healthy, why would you even bother signing up for insurance?
If you don’t sign up, the first-year penalty is $300. I can tell you without hesitation it will cost you a lot more than $300 per year for health insurance under Obamacare – even if your employer is kicking in.
So why not just forego having insurance?
Just pay as you go if you have a sore throat or some stitches. You can afford that.
But if something serious comes up, like cancer or heart disease, then go out and get insurance.
Remember, you can’t be turned down because of pre-existing conditions.
If enough people catch on to that little ruse, Obamacare is going to face some serious funding challenges.
Even Howard Dean has reservations.
You remember Howard Dean – Democrat governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002 and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s currently a strategic adviser to an international law firm, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.
He has a medical degree, too, by the way, so one would think he knows a little bit about health care.
Suffice it to say, this guy is no conservative, right-wing Obamacare hater.
He wrote a piece for the New York Times. In it, he says overall he likes Obamacare, but that there are major problems with parts of it.
One such part is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board.
His words:
The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.
... Rate setting — the essential mechanism of the IPAB — has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes ... is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients.
Now, isn’t this precisely what Sarah Palin was talking about when she coined the rather inarticulate phrase “death panel”? I guess “health-care rationing body” does seem to have a nicer ring, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Dean says the IPAB’s reason for existing is to control costs.
But, he concludes:
The IPAB will cause frustration to providers and patients alike, and it will fail to control costs.
He’s urging Congress to kill that part of the bill.
Doctors are skeptical and confused.
According to a new survey doctors are very wary and largely clueless about Obamacare.
Shane Jackson is president and chief operations officer of LocumTenens.com That’s the outfit that conducted the survey.
Only 11 percent of doctors believe their states’ health insurance exchanges will meet the Oct. 1 deadline.
Beyond that, a 65-percent plurality of doctors also say they are “not at all familiar” with how those exchanges and plans will work. For the most part, doctors are clueless with regard to plan benefits levels, contracted rates with insurers, patient coverage terms and the claims process.
This is a problem because the financial health of these physicians and their patients depend on these things working smoothly.
Jackson told CNBC’s Dan Mangan that patients, “expect to a large degree that their doctors understand how this is all going to work.” This lack of understanding threatens one of the basic tenets of Obamacare – that legions of the previously uninsured would enroll in the exchanges and improve the finances of doctors.
Jackson characterized "the major lack of awareness" among both doctors and patients as ”troubling."
That’s because docs who don't get it could be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Under the rules, a patient can go up to three months without paying premiums before their coverage gets dropped. But the insurer doesn’t have to pay claims from the second and third month if the insured isn’t paying premiums.
Doctors could end up eating the cost of care they’ve already provided.
Ouch.
Obamacare as a bankruptcy tool.
As Detroit plods through its bankruptcy proceedings, the idea of the dumping all its employees’ health care obligations on Obamacare has been proposed.
If that happens, what is to stop virtually every municipality in the country from doing the same thing?
And if that happens, can Obamacare – read that the U.S. taxpayers – bear the strain?
It pays to work less.
Also on CNBC, I saw this little gem of a story that showed how working too much could hurt you with regard to Obamacare.
"Working more can actually leave you worse off. It’s sort of an absurd scenario," Jonathan Wu, ValuePenguin.com's co-founder. "It's something for people to be aware of."
If your boss asks you to work a little overtime, for example, your or your family’s income could rise above income maximums set by the government. If that happens – even by just $1 – you will lose all subsidies available to buy health insurance under Obamacare.
It works like this:
If a 50-year-old Connecticut couple makes $62,040 or less they would receive a $6,575 subsidy from the government lowering their second-cheapest “silver” Obamacare premium to $5,893. The premium if they made any more than $62,040 would more than double to $12,468.
Maybe then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she said Congress had to pass the law to find out what’s in it.
Problem is, what’s in it is becoming increasingly troublesome.[[In-content Ad]]
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