[smearcase]

Sorry for your loss, speech.

[excon]

Hello s:

Thanks for reminding me of my bad manners..

My condolences, Steve.

excon

[speechlesstx]

Thanks.

[speechlesstx]

So far we're out over $1000 a year more JUST in premiums. And no, I can't afford it.

[cdad]

My condolences for your loss.

[paraclete]

So far we're out over $1000 a year more JUST in premiums. And no, I can't afford it.

Ok now we are at the nub of the problem, there has been a snakeoil salesman loose. Lot's of false promises and rhumatiz medicine. Look I advocate going to the witchdoctor, you have as much chance of being cured of common ailments. if there were fewer visits to doctors and houch remedies perscribed then reality might prevail

[speechlesstx]

Thanks cdad.

[talaniman]

My heart goes out to you Speech, all I got are prayers for you and your family.

[tomder55]

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage. “I couldn’t sleep because of it,” said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.

Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.

Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.

The people affected include not just writers, artists, doctors and the like, but also independent tradespeople, like home builders or carpenters, who work on their own.

Some have received notices already; others, whose plans have not yet expired, will soon receive letters in the mail. It is unclear exactly how many New Yorkers are affected; according to state health officials, as many as 400,000 independent practitioners get health insurance through job-related group plans, but that number also includes people who receive coverage through their spouses’ employers.

The predicament is similar to that of millions of Americans who discovered this fall that their existing policies were being canceled because of the Affordable Care Act. The crescendo of outrage led to Mr. Obama’s offer to restore their policies, though some states that have their own exchanges, like California and New York, have said they will not do so.

But while those policies, by and large, had been canceled because they did not meet the law’s requirements for minimum coverage, many of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable.
Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers “smaller and disproportionately sicker,” and would drive up rates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/ny...als.html?_r=2&

Glad to see it's happening to the liberal elite suck ups . As usual they are all for it if someone else is getting gored . As you see ,it is NOT a matter of getting better policies and it is not a matter of affordability . What they are being offered is inferior plans with less options at higher costs .
They were intentionally screwed.Their policies did meet the minimum coverage standards, and were still canceled as a way "to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable." Too bad this same scenario isn't happening to the toadies in the dinosaur media.

[paraclete]

well the fix is in, big surprise, no? yes? maybe

[talaniman]

This sounds more like the insurance companies antics to drive up prices than a result of the law. I would have no doubt that reporting this to state regulators would be the next course of actions. This would hardly be the first time insurance companies would exploit loopholes in the law and walk a fine line to gain profit or market advantage.

We have seen what they have done in the past, and lets not believe they have gone from profit over people to fair brokers. Drug companies either for that matter.

[excon]

Hello again, tom:

Glad to see it's happening to the liberal elite suck ups .

This is SOOO wrong, on SOOO many levels.

If you're happy about the pain liberals are going through, you must be positively ORGASMIC over the pain repealing the ACA will inflict on the poor..

excon

[tomder55]

This sounds more like the insurance companies antics to drive up prices than a result of the law. I would have no doubt that reporting this to state regulators would be the next course of actions. This would hardly be the first time insurance companies would exploit loopholes in the law and walk a fine line to gain profit or market advantage.

We have seen what they have done in the past, and lets not believe they have gone from profit over people to fair brokers. Drug companies either for that matter.

Make no mistake about it .. What is happening is the inevitable consequences (if I'm being charitable ...I'll call them unintended consequences ) of poor policy and legislation.

[talaniman]

Naw, policy and legislation have to have enforcement or a greedy b@st@d will just steal.

[speechlesstx]

Enforcement? This regime is very selective in its "enforcement" of the law.

[excon]

Hello again, Steve:

This regime is very selective in its "enforcement" of the law.

Selective enforcement of the law isn't just something Obama does.. Right wing sheriff's do it too..

Bwa, ha ha ha.

excon

[tomder55]

Above is an example where a blue state ;one of those foolish ones who went by the emperor's plan and set up their exchanges are struggling with this disaster called the ACA . It is not a matter of greedy insurance companies . It is all a matter of government incompetence .
Maryland ....... Gov O'Malley held a presser saying the exchanges work now when in truth it still sucks .

With so many people — and not just the tea party, but a lot of people — thinking that government is full of slothful boobs, that government is too costly and too often mismanaged, O'Malley can one day present himself to the nation as a competent executive, a man who gets it right.

Unless, of course, Maryland's health insurance exchange goes down as one of the worst in the nation.

Which is how it's still looking, despite O'Malley's claims that the system is "now functioning for most citizens."

O'Malley promise on health exchange don't help consumers - baltimoresun.com

Romneycare was scrapped for the 'Health Connecter ' in Mass. It's a catastrophe !
Mass. may cancel payments for botched Obamacare website | Boston Herald

Washington State is plagued with people getting error messages during sign ups, to the exchanges erroneously debiting people's bank accounts, to small businesses being battered because the state doesn't have a a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) .
These blue states are supposedly the states where Obamacare is working !

[speechlesstx]

Hello again, Steve:

Selective enforcement of the law isn't just something Obama does.. Right wing sheriff's do it too..

Bwa, ha ha ha.

excon

Obama is not enforcing his own laws.

[talaniman]

The baby is not 3 months old, too late to abort though.

[speechlesstx]

Here's a nice hidden consequence of Obamacare. If you have now qualify for Medicaid at and have any assets, the state is going to take them from you when you die to pay your medical bills. In effect, Medicaid at the age of 55 is a loan - and you're children could get screwed out of whatever it is you managed to acquire. I quote of all people, Daily Kos...hardly the right-wing noise machine you keep accusing us of sourcing.

I've been looking into this issue for the last couple of years, and here's something I think is very important that many people don't seem to be thinking about: Medicaid + ACA + Estate Recovery = a mechanism whereby a large number of people in the lower income brackets may be just about to find ourselves paying hugely disproportionate sums for the privilege of being covered by Medicaid, even briefly or intermittently. There's a nicely succinct explanation on this page:

Affordable Care Act of 2010. Estate recovery will be forced on millions of people who might have otherwise gone without insurance. Why? Because the plan is that millions more Americans have health insurance. That would be accomplished by expanding Medicaid and implementing premium assistance (subsidies). When a person is found to be eligible for Medicaid, they will be automatically enrolled into their state's Medicaid program. Those forced into Medicaid will, due to the federal law, also be forced into estate recovery. Their estates will be partly or fully taken over by the federal or state government when they die.

So here's the deal: since 1993 there has been a federal law requiring states to recover at least some of the costs of Medicaid-covered medical care for anyone 55 years old and up, from the estates of those covered.

States enforce this law, with their own laws and policies added in, differently in every state. But the general principle is there. Up until now the usual consequence has been things like this: Medicaid puts a lien on the house of someone in a nursing facility who has run out of money, and after they die, the heirs find they have to buy the house back from the state if they want it.

We haven't had lots of people younger than 65 on Medicaid, because in most states simply earning less than the Federal Poverty Level did not qualify one for Medicaid.

And we haven't had many people with lots of assets on Medicaid, because in most places you have to have less than around $2400 to your name before Medicaid will cover you. You can keep your house and your car, but Medicaid reserves the right to put liens on them and take them when you die.

But now we have the Affordable Care Act, and its expectation that everyone in the lower tier of income will end up in the Medicaid system. To accomplish this, they have dropped the asset test. So now we will have lots of people ages 55-64, who have assets but not a lot of income right now, for whatever reason, on Medicaid.

The kicker of it is, if you make the right amount to qualify for a subsidized health insurance plan, your costs are going to be shared and subsidized by the government. But if you go on Medicaid, you owe the entire amount that Medicaid spends on you from the day you turn 55.

And that amount is not just what is spent on your doctor visits and your treatments, whatever they may be. No, there is also something called a "capitation charge." For each enrollee, a base cost is assigned to the entity that administers the program. How much will that charge be? It varies by state, and as far as I can tell by other variables as well, but it could be hundreds of dollars per month, or more. (If you have specific information on this, please do share it!)

How will this play out? No one knows, as far as I can tell. But it is easy to see how this could become a real problem. If someone is low income and goes on Medicaid, will Medicaid put a lien on their house? If they need to sell their house and move, will they then lose all their equity in paying off the lien? Will people get hit with bills and liens for many thousands of dollars, even if they were healthy and hardly ever went to the doctor?

Why is it that Medicaid is pretty much cost free to use up to age 54 if you qualify, and suddenly becomes a collateral loan at age 55, for which a state agency will do its best to collect payment in full for every cost assigned? It seems clear that the Estate Recovery law did not anticipate the current circumstance with the ACA, and that putting the two laws together makes for a terribly unfair situation for some. What can we do to remedy this situation?

The fact that practically no one is talking about this makes me uneasy. (It has been mentioned a few times, for instance the comments section of the diary here.) At the very least what we are getting set up to do is implement an arbitrary, capricious, and regressive tax, that will only be paid by older, low income people. And we are putting this in motion at a time when there are lots of other difficulties to be worked out. I would like to make sure that we are not forgetting those who will find themselves stuck between their need for health coverage and the implications of the Medicaid Estate Recovery laws and programs.

I suspect this is part of that we have to pass it to find out what's in it fine print. Good to see Dems are really looking after the poor in this country.