Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

20 thoughts on “Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen”

  1. “Diabetes kills one person every six seconds, new estimates show.”

    I had no idea that it was that severe.

  2. “In the vast majority of states the ObamaCare exchanges will offer less, not more, insurer competition than the state’s current individual market [and the plans are] something akin to Medicaid managed care for the middle class.”

    Really now, how could the proponents of this law not see this coming?

    “Happy tweet from the White House (“Thanks to ObamaCare, more than 500,000 Americans have already signed up for health coverage”) gets a Pinocchio from the Washington Post.”

    To quote another Democratic president, “It depends on what your definition of signed up is”.

    1. Coverage offered on the exchanges is going to be terrible. I’m sure they’ll figure out someway to “fix” the problem by offering Medicaid to people who lost their providers. But isn’t that what they always wanted? Single payer?

  3. “Medicaid expansion was certainly part of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, but Medicaid enrollments were not part of the original 500,000-person estimate disclosed by the AP.”

    We should all be very worried about the expansion of Medicaid. Medicaid enrollees consistently suffer significantly worse health outcomes. With the coming addition of millions more on its doles, these problems will only get worse.

    1. True, although there is the mitigating factor of increased reimbursement rates, that should help some. But, this isn’t good for the public, it just means we’ll be spending more money.

      1. I recently read an article that doctors couldn’t keep their doors open if they only served medicaid patients. There should be a tax incentive for doctors to see these patients. The reimbursement rates do nothing but hurt the tax payer.

    2. Merely covering people with insurance does not equal access to health care. If Medicare pays poorly, Medicaid pays abysmally. While most doctors are willing to treat the underprivileged, you have to limit to keep up overhead, not to mention the travesty of the paperwork involved.
      Addtionally, we know lower socio-economic status is heavily associated with poorer health and outcomes for a myriad of reasons, only one of which is access to care. Again, while many physicians and hospitals are willing to essentially donate time and effort, there’s only so much that can be done without major changes in the patient’s societal standing.
      Hospitals that are caring for many of the Medicaid population now are being penalized, likely for measures beyond their control. This further erodes any “safety nets” we may have in place.
      Health Care Reform and Health Insurance Mandates are two entirely different things. Until this is addressed, we will continue to spiral downward.

  4. “Exactly. It’s 12 million people, about a third of which will end up paying more under this law. And that as you said in the introductions sort of the idea. We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.

    The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate, is about four million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance.”

    Wow. Jon Gruber is nuts. He is unabashedly proclaiming that the purpose of this system is to create “equality”, not to help people. This what the left always does. They don’t care if people are better off! They just want to make everyone “equal”!

    1. What I find amusing about lefties is that they actually think that they can create equality. Like they are intelligent enough to manufacture a society that corrects for “God’s mistakes”.

    2. At the expense of those who have a hard work ethic and persevered through higher education to create the wealth that the left wants to take away and give to those who didn’t work that hard.

    3. I guess the point is that it is ok to discriminate against people based on factors that they were born with, as long as you are the government. What is wrong with these idiots that they don’t understand that they are the ones that discriminate? How perverse is our society that we actively and institutionally discriminate against people IN THE NAME OF TREATING EVERYONE EQUALLY.

  5. Gruber is an arrogant wonk who has been accused of overbilling the govt for his consulting on the ACA….

    but leaving him aside, there is an interesting question here.

    In all other lines of insurance, life-disability-commercial, good risks pay lower premiums than poor risks.

    However — there is a safety net for bad risks.

    In life and disability insurance, there is the Social Security system. Commercial lines have high risk pools funded by the industry.

    Conservatives have a decent argument for letting markets set the rates. However, Republicans in Congresses and state houses have often been very stingy in setting up high risk pools and similar safety nets.

  6. Jon Gruber: Genetic “lottery winners” have been paying an “artificially low price.”

    How it is an artificially low price if they’re being charged a premiums that’s a function of their expected risk? In fact, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say genetic lottery winners have been paying an actuarially fair price and the less healthy enrollees in the Health Exchanges will be paying an artificially low price?

  7. Previous governments have dealt differently with their population of “genetic winners”.

    At least one prominent government in the 20th century focused its attention on “genetic losers” and left its genetic winners mostly alone. That government’s final solution was to exterminate its genetic losers.

    I don’t think – or even suggest – Herr Gruber is at this stage. But the threshhold to this nightmare concept is affixing the labels of genetic superiority and genetic inferiority on Americans. Gruber is perilously close to that. I think his statements are scurrilous.

  8. The article on carrier participation in ACA is long, but fascinating. “Medicaid for the middle class.” Wonder if the MSM will give this much play.

  9. In some ways the ACA is seeing the same fight that has been going on in America for 50 years

    Democrats want to help the less fortunate by “mainstreaming” them. Disruptive children are to be taken out of special schools and brought into regular classes. Slum dwellers are to be given subsidized housing in better neighborhoods. Handicapped employees are to be given special considerations. High-risk insureds are to be given standard health insurance premiums.

    Republicans in general want to escape from the less fortunate. This is understandable.

    Democrats seem to make sure that the costs of all this inclusion do not fall on them personally. Prof. Gruber’s personal health premiums may go up, but the increase will be assumed by his university. Nancy Pelosi’s premiums will go up a little, but she is a millionaire and will not notice it.

    Democrats ignore all the people in flyover country who have to pay for their programs. With the flap over cancellations, this finally caught up with them.
    Democrats are tone deaf

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