The people behind Obamacare are not stupid. They have wanted this day for a hundred years. Loading up Anerican business (or indirectly through government taxes and subsidies) will greatly reduce American competitive advantage compared with countries that have universal health coverage.
Moving to Illinois with a job that doesn’t include group health insurance was a risk, but one I was willing to take. Despite having no chronic health care problems, on no medications and zero health care expenses in two years, Humana turned me down cold without even offering a rated individual policy. Instead, I wound up using the Illinois run HIPAA plan that I was able to transfer from CT (I’m paying about $600 a month for Blue Cross/Shield with a HSA with a $2500 deductible) – I’ve been continuously insured since 1986 – I’m not a “freeloader” expecting to only buy insurance after I get sick.
Today, Illinois CHIP emailed me the official notice that the state run plan, which currently has 51,000 subscribers will be ending because of Obamacare. The details are now becoming clearer in line with the law and the release of regulations this week
The national web site
http://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace
The Illinois site
http://becoveredillinois.org/
It’s the middle of June – entities that wish to remain in the insurance business must join the health exchanges – offering guaranteed issue policies (they can’t turn you down for health reasons), with rates that do not include existing health conditions – and also are gender blind – women and men will pay the same rate. Premium subsidies from the Federal government are an important part of this, as well as expansion of Medicaid eligibility to remove limits on asset tests.
In October, the doors of the health exchange swing open – either a state run exchange or the Federal one if states choose to not partcipate and relinquish control of their states to the Feds. With open enrollment starting in October, every American not covered now by employer insurance or Medicaid/Medicare will be rushing to sign up to pay premiums, especially the dope smoking 25 year olds still living at home.
Employers will have the option to drop their own plans and dump their employees into the health exchanges, but they’ll still have to pay some portion of the costs to the health exchange to create that premium subsidy. Employers who don’t currently offer coverage (like mine) will be forced to pay into exchange pool or shrink to have fewer than 25 employees – or they can arrange for group coverage – even if a large portion of the cost is paid by the employee.
Obamacare is not going away. It’s here and it’s real. It probably will fail, and that’s on purpose. Once private insurance companies go bankrupt or voluntarily close, government run single payer health care is the “end game”
Republicans lost big in 2012. Conservatives can stomp their feet, hold their breath until they turn blue and make up theories on what the Founding Fathers would have had God whisper in their ears, but none of that matters. Our laws are made by the people we elect. The Supreme Court has ruled that Obamacare is legal. Conservatives don’t want courts “legislating from the bench” and overriding laws passed by Congress. John Roberts gave them what they wanted.
The circle is complete. While I strongly disagree with almost every aspect of Obamacare, it is pulling away my existing coverage at the end of the year. Republicans fighting this now are just introducing uncertainty in the future. Rapidly, opponents of Obamacare become my adversary – and that was the plan all along. If you want to repeal Obamacare, you need a better alternative and the ability to put it into law by the end of the year over the veto of the President – no plan is not a plan.
Really? Death Panels (IPAB) – No coverage costs $4000 a year in fines – The ability to manage your own health gone? Doctors refusing MedicAid/MediCare patients – Almost anything – including anarchy – is preferable to me.
No – I don’t want Obamacare. I don’t want Obama. I really do not recognize the planet I am living on. The sham of ramrodding this crap through was absorbed by the masses with nary a burp. Truly, I do not understand the human race at this point.
Democracracy sucks, don’t you agree? The Constitution has failed to protect us.
I realized it was game over once the US Supreme Court ruled that a elderly terminal cancer patient growing medical marijuana for personal use could be arrested and jailed by the federal government because that personal used was subject to federal jurisdiction under the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution.
With that in mind, watch how fast you inhale and exhale carbon as that the federal government can regulate carbon emissions and anything else under this clause.
The solution is to go back to having the state governments appoint the Senators – that change to the Constitution is the root of the federal government we have with unlimited powers. We need to follow Constitutional limits of power. It is all about limits.
Time for a musical interlude:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItlY6oIfRVg
How do we get 67 senators to vote to put themselves out of a job?
The push back about states calling for a Constitutional Convention to amend (or replace) the Constitution per section V are that there is no clear description of the process or what its limits are – but we may be approaching the point that people are willing to take that risk – but are 34 states prepared to call for something that could cause the end of revenue streams of transfer payments that are now a large part of their state finances and have been used as collateral to back debt the states were not supposed to do in the first place?
A Convention is too dangerous for most to favor- there would be people seeking Amendments on abortions, guns, speech, privacy, the internet and more.
Most favoring Amendments favor a controlled introduction such as the Equal Rights Amendment from the 1970s.
2nd the motion on what CC said about any Constitutional Convention. Bad idea. Hells Bells, if ‘they’ ever got the chance to change our Constitution it would end up being 3,000 pages or more. As things stand nowadays I Hope we get a 2nd, peaceful, chance to stop the train wreck we are headed for now.
Are there any Constitutional restrictions on where the convention has to be held? does each state get an equal vote? Majority wins?
It would be interesting if Republicans proposed a Constitutional Amendment to require that the two senators from each State be one man and one woman, phased in during the next class of senators. I don’t think Karl Rove is smart enough to propose that.
Instead of residents of the 50 geographical states, I propose the House consist of 13 virtual states that citizens may choose for their virtual residency, with proportional representation for each virtual state based on its virtual population.
“…Obamacare is not going away. It’s here and it’s real. ”
Well, Horse’s ass .
Back on the hate train
Parrott
Hate is such a pointless emotion. Let’s go back to looking for Obama’s birth certificate!
Bill Ayers was trolling Conservatives yesterday, saying that Barack Obama should be dragged to the Hague and put on trial for war crimes (see Really Clear Politics). Hopefully most radio hosts have read Rules for Radicals by now and won’t spend the next month choking on the bait
I am not a Bill Ayers fan, but I respect him much more than I respect the lying hypocrites that are on C-Span most of the day.
He said that the sane is true of every President of the last 100 years. I wonder what Gerald Ford’s crimes were…? I wonder if the same opinion applies to Fidel Castro?
Obamacare is much bigger than how one person pays for their health care expenses. Any activity that requires humans to do today will face pressure to replace humans with automation or having the customer do more work.
Doctors may completely withdraw from 3rd party payment (which would be a good thing) – that will then have to be made illegal. Medicaid and Medicare become unviable if they can’t cost shift onto private insurance and private pay – that’s a huge part of the root cause. Government money in health care is the problem, not the solution – but we’re never going to end the intergenerational wealth transfer called Medicare. Enjoy your total hip replacement surgeries and liver transplants!
What about the Medicare knee replacements? .. and the power scooters that are advertized on TV with free help to get Medicare to pay?
A high percentage of a person’s lifetime healthcare costs occur in that person’s last year of life… and a lot of it is expensive costs like these, or other extensive surgery that extends life by only a few months.
The cost-benefit or value of these procedures always favors performing them when they are performed courtesy of OPM (Other People’s Money). Most seniors would not elect to spend their life savings on a knee replacement when the money could be used to pay for a grandchild’s college education instead.
Several (5+) people I knew when cooking in South Florida (that’s where I got my New York accent) regularly flew to San Juan, Costa Rica for non-emergency medical. A few have closed their businesses here and live there now (about to renounce). My current business has me trapped here or I’d be there in a heat beat. Dayyyyy-o Daaaayyyyy-o ‘Bama come and I want to go home…….
If money is an issue, consider McAllen, or El Paseo, Texas. Low cost of living and quality medical care walking distance from the border for 10 % of the cost on the US side.
I once got sick while working in Mexico City and walked over to a pharmacy. I used the few words I knew in Spanish to talk with the pharmacist and buy a month’s worth of antibiotics for 5 USD. In the US, my copay would have been several times that with my insurance and it would have required a doctor visit to get the script. When I got the meds, I saw they were manufactured in New Jersey.
LOL New Jersey, well it could have been in Cherry Hill NJ and Baxter may have made them, That plant was sold to Ward Pharma and they still make antibiotics there. Or Perdue Pharma in Totowa, NJ. They make a plethora of medicines including Oxycontin. (very popular with the welfare crowd)
Novartis has a plant in Suffern,NJ. They made some hard core stuff, but I lost contact with them in the 2000-01 range. A lot of manufacturing has been lost and I blame Obo.
Parrott
Gotta look at this over at ZH, “Secret Treaty Says “This … Hands The Sovereignty of Our Country Over to Corporate Interests”
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-19/first-congressman-allowed-read-secret-treaty-says-%E2%80%9C-hands-sovereignty-our-cou
Congressman Alan Grayson is the only ‘outsider’ allowed to read the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). An international treaty being negotiated in secret which would not only crack down on Internet privacy much more than SOPA or ACTA, but would actually destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. and all other signatories.
Democratic Senator Wyden is the chairman of the trade committee in the Senate … the committee which is supposed to have jurisdiction over the TPP. Wyden is also on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and so he and his staff have high security clearances and are normally able to look at classified documents. And yet Wyden and his staff have been denied access to the TPP’s text.
Congressman Alan Grayson is the only one to be allowed to read this, so far. He says, “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”
The first Soviet Union (in Russia) failed. Our Washington Comrades will not fail with the Second Soviet Union here. A great day, comrades, a great day.
Our leader yesterday was standing on former Stasi ground when he spoke of spying on Germans and Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Chickens always go home to roost. Ask Jeremiah Wright if that ain’t so!