Gannett (owner of USA Today) finally takes a stab at doing journalism.
They did an analysis taking a hypothetical person making just above the subsidy cutoff and see if the cheapest of the cheapest plans meets the requirement that the policy cost less than 8% of income for a 50 year old. (roughly $50k * .08 / 12 = $333 a month). In large areas of the country, you can’t – and that’s before the last minute changes allowing many healthy people to not buy the new ACA policies – fully expect the policy I just bought to zoom up in price as actuarial assumptions are adjusted.
This 8% of income test is one of the “escape clauses” that allows people to remain uninsured and not have to pay the $95/1% of income penaltax.
USA today also chimes in that these low end bronze accounts have $5-$6,000 deductibles that the typical middle class person likely won’t be able to pay – meaning either that they won’t seek medical treatment or they’ll stick the hospital with unpaid bills.
You may notice that nowhere in this story do they use the word “Obamacare” – the new “N” word. By the time this plays out, the media will be telling us the Affordable Care Act was a Republican idea. Republicans really need to stay out of “fixing” Obamacare.
Politicians cost us trillions of dollars per year.
Yes, but they do it because they love us.
The Washington Times has an article stoking the flames (to wild approval if the comments are representative) that something needs to be done about fat people – including the phrase that Rush is warning about – that because fat people “cost us money”, government must be empowered to force fat people to lose weight.
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/27/fat-people-defended-hollywood-and-pc-police/
Once health care is collectivized, no aspect of life will be beyond the justification of government coercion – up to and including incarceration in retraining camps – with the exception of anal receptive sex with multiple partners, of course.
In unrelated news, the Chinese government has announced it is disbanding its system of reeducation forced labor camps and relaxing the one child per family rule. Pro life groups in the United States will be dancing in the streets this weekend (except those prohibited from dancing by their church)
Bicycle accidents cost “us” an estimated $4.5 billion dollars a year.
http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/injury_and_death_statistics/Pages/EstimatingtheCostsofUnintentionalInjuries.aspx
Stop the insanity. If humans were meant to ride bicycles, God would have given us wheels instead of feet.
And it goes without saying that skateboards, pogo sticks and roller skates have to go.
But, but, but then what will happen to the popular tv show, “The Biggest Loser”? People like to see obese people sweating and losing weight.
Rush had a representative of some insurance company call the program from time to time to explain, from their perspective, what was going to happen with ObamaCare. They were alerting anyone who cared to listen that the MANDATES were going to cause premiums to skyrocket. Plus, the consumer would be covered for lots of medical procedures they would never use, but the procedures they would most likely need would first go through a panel that would approve or deny coverage.
Plus all the paperwork crap. There was another caller who also worked for more than one company and she explained that much of what is supposed to be covered has no logical path for the flow of the money from the insurance company to the health care provider. The whole system being setup is totally screwed-up. Further, wait for the IRS scrutiny of political opponents. Get ready.
The AMA (whuch represents only a small portion of practicing doctors) recently declared obesity to be a disease. Once it is a diagnosis of a disease, there is not much of a limit on how much Blue Cross might be forced to pay for treatment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/ama-recognizes-obesity-as-a-disease.html?_r=0
Internet addiction is the next on their list. Let the health care dollars flow,
Obamacare’s collapse will come from this: the people who are needed to support it, the young and healthy, will not sign up because they are young and healthy. It is pure idiocy and cannot sustain itself.
“USA Today: Obamacare policies unaffordable”
Dumb-asses, Did Gannett actually listen to Pelosi and believe her line of crap? They deserve to go out of business.
A lot of stupidity out there
parrott
I don’t think it was a sudden aha! moment at all. The people behind Obamacare are not stupid – they knew the insurance companies have too much money and power to willingly put themselves out of business.
The private involvement of insurance companies in health insurance is about to hit a brick wall. USA Today is just greasing the skids for single payer, aka Obamacare II.
Who could have known? Didn’t we have to try it to see if we’d like it? lol
Most Republicans are too stupid to stay away from “fixing” the ACA. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi play the Reps. like a cheap violin. 2014 should be a slam dunk election for the Repubs. to maintain the House and secure the Senate. But they already screwed up 2008 and 2012, so I have little confidence that they have learned anything.
What kind of party would spend 4 years badmouthing Obamacare, then nominate the father of Obamacare to run against President Obama?
Is it possible to ask too many rhetorical questions?
What about strawmen only posing as rhetorical questions?
They mainstream media is not big on mentioning that both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were Republicans.
Inverting the calculation, my $511 / month cheapest bronze plan (@ age 58, not the bait and switch 50 year old price) means that to be “affordable” for me, my income should be $76,650. That’s plausible if I went to work full time, but not likely.