Yeah, wow.

Passing a law that forces us all to pay private insurers.

As if that took any spine.

"Forces"?

I get a tax break for donating to charity... it doesn't mean they force me to do it.

*findthumb

A different thumbnail image for this video could not be found for findthumb request by lucky760.

Won't play for me.

Good stuff. But don't stop until there's a single-payer system.

The player also doesn't work for me. It should probably be replaced. Here's a YT version of what may be the same video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cHuQG2MRYw

>> ^Psychologic:
"Forces"?
I get a tax break for donating to charity... it doesn't mean they force me to do it.


Time to expand your horizon a little bit (from Ted Rall):

Under the Obama/Senate plan, the poor--individuals who currently earn under $14,500--would be required to go on Medicaid. Unless they don't qualify for whatever reason, in which case they would have to pay at least two percent of their income to private insurers, or get dinged $750 a year.

The working poor, meanwhile, would get charged a percent of their income on a sliding scale. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, federal subsidies for poor workers would be too low. People who earn between $14,500 and $43,000 a year would pay between four and 12 percent of their annual income to private insurers. (That's right: someone who makes $43,000 would have to shell out $430 a month. If they live in a high-tax place like New York,that would leave them about $2,000 a month to live on after taxes.)

And let's not forget about deductibles.

(.....)

Under the Senate bill, for example, a family of three earning less than $27,000--we're talking poor people here--would be fairly well covered. ObamaCare would cover 97 percent of their bills. But a family of three earning between $45,000 and $73,000 would only have 70 percent coverage. In other words, they'd have to pay a third of their medical bills out of pocket.

>> ^lucky760:
The player also doesn't work for me. It should probably be replaced. Here's a YT version of what may be the same video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cHuQG2MRYw


Swapped your embed in, apparently the socialist White House player doesn't agree with VideoSift.

It doesn't force anyone to buy health insurance unless you consider a $95/year tax on uninsured families 'forcing'. My family will get free(paid by taxes) medicaid for now since our total income is less than $29,000 and we will get really cheap insurance(2-9.5% of income) if we make more than that but less than $88,000. How are insurers going to survive with premiums capped at 1/10th or 1/20th of what they charge now? Does anyone here know if there will be regulations as to what the insurers have to cover and how high their deductibles can be?

The figures I mention in my post is from CBS news site today... I don't know what the actual bill says...

whats the deal with using all the pens ? wtf is up with that?

depending on which web site I go to I get vastly different versions of 'what this will mean for you' the numbers especially seem all over the place. Anyone got a good source?
-Karl

The pens have special ink including the DNA of the president and the number of them is so they can give some away and some to save for historical purposes I think. I bid $5 on a pen that was used to sign this bill.
-Karl

Here's how you can figure out what the bill means specifically for you:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/what-health-bill-means-for-you

(via here)

Ezra Klein is possibly the best place for any info re: HCR

Two cents from Dennis Kucinich:

"This is reform within the context of a for-profit system. And the for-profit system has been quite predatory — it makes money for not providing health care."

"My concern was that this bill was hermetically sealed to admit no opening toward a not-for-profit system, no competition from the public sector with the private insurers. Which makes the claims of a government takeover such a joke. You know, those who claim that this is socialism probably don't know anything about socialism — or capitalism."

Why does he sign with fifteen different pens? That seems weird. He just scribbles the same little doodle in the same place. Very odd.

>> ^swedishfriend:
How are insurers going to survive with premiums capped at 1/10th or 1/20th of what they charge now? Does anyone here know if there will be regulations as to what the insurers have to cover and how high their deductibles can be?


Insurers aren't eating the cost, that "cap" is actually how they're defining the government subsidy. In other words, insurers charge rate X, people receiving the subsidy pay as much of the premium as possible, up to the "cap", and the government picks up the rest of the tab, so that the insurer gets the full X.

There are also caps on how much of your income the insurer is allowed to ask you to put up in terms of deductibles and copays, and the insurers are required to spend 80-85% of every dollar they collect in premiums on medical care for their customers.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^swedishfriend:
How are insurers going to survive with premiums capped at 1/10th or 1/20th of what they charge now? Does anyone here know if there will be regulations as to what the insurers have to cover and how high their deductibles can be?

Insurers aren't eating the cost, that "cap" is actually how they're defining the government subsidy. In other words, insurers charge rate X, people receiving the subsidy pay as much of the premium as possible, up to the "cap", and the government picks up the rest of the tab, so that the insurer gets the full X.
There are also caps on how much of your income the insurer is allowed to ask you to put up in terms of deductibles and copays, and the insurers are required to spend 80-85% of every dollar they collect in premiums on medical care for their customers.


Got a source on that?

Doesn't the cap on how much of our income the insurer is allowed to ask for have something to do with a national average?

Here's an explanation for the pens. Basically it's a tradition for major legislation and the pens are given away to the people who helped make it happen which in this case was allot of people I expect. President Johnson used 75 pens for the 1964 Civil Rights legislation and gave the first one to Martin Luther King. Reagan apparently went cuckoo-bananas with the practice.

@rougy, I'm generally going by this for detail on the bill. That's the original Senate bill, the reconciliation fix will alter specific percentages, dollar amounts, and some of the fine details, but for the most part that's the bill.

There are two main subsidies for people under 400% of FPL. One subsidy is for premiums, and is set up as a maximum percentage of your income you will have to pay for insurance premiums. The final bill has a scale that goes from 2% at or below 133% of FPL, to 9.5% at 400% of FPL. Insurance still sets its own prices for insurance plans, which may cost more than that "cap" -- if it does, the subsidy covers the cost of your premium above that cap.

The other one is a little more complex, meant to offset out of pocket costs. It's probably best explained by example.

If you're an individual making $14,500, and you bought a plan that expects you to pay 30% of medical costs out of pocket. According to the subsidy, you should only have to pay 10%. This subsidy pays for the difference between what the insurance company expects you to pay out of pocket, and what the subsidy says you should pay out of pocket.

In both cases, the insurance company collects the amount of money they expected to get from it. The government is making up the difference between these "caps" and what the insurance company charges.

There's a lot of stuff aimed at getting insurance companies to bring down prices, but because everyone's afraid of teh socialisms, there are no prices directly set by the government, nor are there prices negotiated by government on the behalf of the people.

The closest we come to that is the requirement that insurance companies spend at least 80% of the money they collect from premiums on medical care (i.e. a minimum "medical loss" ratio).

Mostly the cost-cutters are about changing incentive structures, and encouraging competition via the exchanges.

I'd be happier with a public option and/or a Medicare buy-in to let us at least put these market-loving reforms against some good old fashioned European socialism and see which one really is more popular, but for now this is a huge step in the right direction.

>> ^NetRunner:

There are also caps on how much of your income the insurer is allowed to ask you to put up in terms of deductibles and copays, and the insurers are required to spend 80-85% of every dollar they collect in premiums on medical care for their customers.


I'm still concerned about the flimsiness of the medical loss ratio. Unless the bill clearly defines what constitutes medical care, it's not very meaningful. As an extreme example, public service announcements could be claimed as part of medical care, as a form of education...while in actuality being more of a commercial. Don't laugh, I've seen at least one class-action lawsuit get settled such that SW Bell was allowed to "refund" the victims by offering them free services (like call-waiting and forwarding) for 2 months, which exactly duplicated what they did several times previously as an ad campaign.

Unless there are very strict watchdogs, the insurance companies are going to run wild with this. And even with watchdogs, it really doesn't do anything to slow down prices. If anything, it gives them incentive to raise rates and pay providers more, just to increase the actual value of their 20%.

@Stormsinger, I totally agree that enforcement will matter, just like it does with any other regulation (like, say, financial regulation).

I'd also like to see the medical loss ratio returned to the 90% it started at when the minimum requirement was originally proposed.

@NetRunner:

"...but for now this is a huge step in the right direction."

No, it is not.

The Democrats better not break their arms trying to pat themselves on the back for this.

This is like occupying France in WWII and declaring victory without marching to Berlin.

This is like promising a new car, delivering an old VW, and acting like it was a Mercedes.

The Democrats had a truly remarkable opportunity to install real "Health Care Reform."

What we have here is "Medical Insurance Reform" and a half-assed example of it.

There is a significant difference between the two concepts.

@rougy, it's like going from having 50 million starving people to having only 18 million starving people.

It's not the end of what needs to be done, but it is a monumental step in the right direction.

Politically, it's the first time since Reagan we've had a major new government program. It sets the stage for people being constantly reminded that government action can and does have a huge and positive impact on their lives.

We're never going backwards from this point. This plan to campaign on repeal is going to go down in flames, assuming the GOP is stupid enough to really make that the centerpiece of their campaign strategy this fall.

As problems arise from the plan, people will want problems fixed, not a return to what came before, and we won't let them forget who it was that stood in lockstep opposition to it passing in the first place.

If the market reforms don't actually reign in costs, people won't be calling for the subsidies to disappear. They'll want government to take further action to bring prices in line, and directly negotiating prices will be on the table in a big way.

But I only care about that political shit as a means to an end. I think this will vastly improve a lot of people's lives, and that's more than worth a little celebrating.

@NetRunner:

I hope you're right, but I think that you're taking a lot for granted.

You seem to constantly forget that what the people want is secondary to what the industry wants--for both the DNC and the RNC--and I fail to see how you believe that, in the future, that paradigm is going to change.

Never underestimate the power of GOP stupidity, especially when they hold the reigns of the propaganda horses and when, in our next two elections, corporations can spend as much money as they want on any and all campaigns.

I don't care what you say. This is no time for a victory dance.

Unless the momentum of what can be called the spirit of this bill carries forward for at least the next two years, nobody can say what will happen.

@rougy, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going to stop doing what I can to keep moving the ball down the field. We scored a touchdown, I'm gonna dance in the endzone before the next play gets called.