More Obamacare fuckups

[Kembal]

Is it your position the Democrats have delivered comprehensive healthcare reform? Because I'm pretty sure that we had an uninsured population of 50 million in 2008, and that 6 million people got cancelled policies, and that 7 million people added a plan to their shopping cart on healthcare.gov. Meanwhile I don't think quality of care has increased, wait times or ease of access have not gotten better, insurance rates have not gone down, nor has medical cost inflation (the true actual disease from which all the other symptoms arise) abated.

So after spending a trillion we have a net gain of 1 million insured people, why didn't we just write all of them a check? Would have been simpler.

Our country does really need comprehensive healthcare reform. I hope one day we get it, it hasn't happened yet.

Your numbers are off.

I think the RAND health insurance survey is the best number out there:

http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/sur...an-adults.html

Bullet points:

- Of the 40.7 million who were uninsured in 2013, 14.5 million gained coverage, but 5.2 million of the insured lost coverage, for a net gain in coverage of approximately 9.3 million. This represents a drop in the share of the population that is uninsured from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent.
- The 9.3 million person increase in insurance is driven not only by enrollment in marketplace plans, but also by gains in employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) and Medicaid.
- Enrollment in ESI increased by 8.2 million.
- Medicaid enrollment increased by 5.9 million. New enrollees are primarily drawn from those who were uninsured in 2013, or those who had “other” forms of insurance, including Medicare, retiree health insurance, and other government plans.
- According to our estimates, 3.9 million were covered through the state and federal marketplaces as of mid-March 2014. This figure does not fully capture the enrollment surge that occurred in late March.
- For most people the ACA has not changed their health insurance coverage. Among adults, 80 percent still had the same form of coverage in March 2014 as in September 2013. Notably, more than 100 million had ESI before and have ESI now, while 26 million remain uninsured.
- Of those who were previously uninsured but are now insured, 7.2 million gained ESI, 3.6 million are now covered by Medicaid, 1.4 million have signed up through a marketplace, while the remainder gained coverage through other sources.
- Our estimates suggest that only about one-third of new marketplace enrollees were previously uninsured. While this percentage seems low in absolute terms, it is slightly higher than an earlier figure reported by McKinsey & Company.[1]
- Among the 7.8 million people who were enrolled in off-marketplace individual market plans in early 2014, 7.3 million were previously insured; 5.4 million were previously insured through an individual market plan.
- Less than one million who previously had individual market insurance transitioned to being uninsured. While we cannot tell if these people lost their insurance due to cancellation or because they simply felt the cost was too high, the overall number represents less than one percent of people between the ages of 18 and 64.

Bolding mine.

Two caveats:
1. There is a large margin of error on this survey, about 3.5 million. however, at worst, that still means a net gain of 5.8 million insured.
2. The survey did not capture the last minute enrollment surge at the end of March.

With that said, the marketplace enrollment statistic is not the only barometer of how successful the ACA will be in reducing the amount of uninsured. The increased enrollment in Medicaid and the increased enrollment in employer-sponsored insurance (due to the mandate) have to be included as well.

[cwolff]

Do you not remember what posted a few hours ago?

Yes I do. That was to remind you that fundamentally ACA is a GOP plan.

You're the one making it partisan and you're still making it partisan. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have been trying to push healthcare reform over the past few decades but usually the the other party controlled all of or half of Congress and they stopped it because they wanted their party to be the one to push it through. It's just especially ironic because it was just a couple of years before Obama took office that Democrats killed Bush's healthcare plan in Congress, they wouldn't even discuss it or bring it up for a vote then 2 years later Democrats push through their own shitty healthcare plan and Democrats suddenly act like they are the only ones who care about the healthcare of Americans?

Seriously what the fuck? Only someone with the largest blinders in the world on would buy into this absolute garbage.

This plan?

If the Republican-controlled Congress enacted President Bush's entire health care agenda, as many as 10 million people who lack health insurance would be covered at a cost of $102 billion over the next decade, according to his campaign aides.

But when the Bush-Cheney team was asked to provide documentation, the hard data fell far short of the claims, a gap supported by several independent analyses.

Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, academics and the campaign's Web site suggest that under the best circumstances, Bush's plans for health care would extend coverage to no more than 6 million people over the next decade and possibly as few as 2 million.

"There's little reason to expect that there would be any reduction in the overall numbers of Americans without health insurance," Brookings Institution health policy expert Henry J. Aaron said. "We're swimming against a rather swift current in our efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, and the power of President Bush's proposals to move against that current is, it seems to me, very, very limited."

In his bid for a second term, Bush is reprising much of the health care agenda he ran on in 2000, including tax credits for individuals who purchase insurance, and the formation of new, largely unregulated purchasing pools for small businesses called association health plans.

[Wrathbringer]

Do you not remember what posted a few hours ago?



You're the one making it partisan and you're still making it partisan. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have been trying to push healthcare reform over the past few decades but usually the the other party controlled all of or half of Congress and they stopped it because they wanted their party to be the one to push it through. It's just especially ironic because it was just a couple of years before Obama took office that Democrats killed Bush's healthcare plan in Congress, they wouldn't even discuss it or bring it up for a vote then 2 years later Democrats push through their own shitty healthcare plan and Democrats suddenly act like they are the only ones who care about the healthcare of Americans?

Seriously what the fuck? Only someone with the largest blinders in the world on would buy into this absolute garbage.

It's called politics and that's a huge win for the D's. They've got R's pigeon holed as racists against Mexicans and Blacks, and as rich, uncaring haters of the poor via opposition to Obummercare. They're just simply playing the game better right now and with the advantage of a liberally biased media, I'm not sure the R's can recover by 2016.

[Tgo01]

Yes I do. That was to remind you that fundamentally ACA is a GOP plan.

Oh okay.

This plan?

So Bush's plan was just shit, right? So the best course of action is to ignore the plan altogether, demonize it and don't even put it up for a vote and instead scrape it all and start over and shut out Republicans from the process and don't even attempt to work with Republicans to rework the plan to make it better?

But it's only shitty when Republicans do that, right? When Democrats do that shit it's okay and just proves that they are the only ones who care about healthcare reform and make it look like Republicans want Americans to die, right? Look, cwolff, you're not a bad guy, I just think you sip a bit too much of the Democratic kool aid. It's okay to turn off Rachel Maddow every now and then.

It's called politics and that's a huge win for the D's.

I know that and you know that, problem is I don't think cwolff knows that.

[cwolff]

Oh okay.

So Bush's plan was just shit, right? So the best course of action is to ignore the plan altogether, demonize it and don't even put it up for a vote and instead scrape it all and start over and shut out Republicans from the process and don't even attempt to work with Republicans to rework the plan to make it better?

But it's only shitty when Republicans do that, right? When Democrats do that shit it's okay and just proves that they are the only ones who care about healthcare reform and make it look like Republicans want Americans to die, right? Look, cwolff, you're not a bad guy, I just think you sip a bit too much of the Democratic kool aid. It's okay to turn off Rachel Maddow every now and then.

I know that and you know that, problem is I don't think cwolff knows that.

They didn't shut the GOP out of the debate. The republicans pushed Jon McCain's plan in 2009 right after Jon McCain lost his presidential election. This is the time when the GOP should have recognized that they just lost and worked with Obama to hammer out a deal. Even after the ACA passed they still operated on the idea that either Romney would beat Obama or SCOTUS would destroy ACA. Neither thing happened and the result is that the right gambled big and they lost. If they had won they'd be Tea Party heroes, but they didn't win and now you want to re-write history to say that really the GOP were the health care champions.

[Kembal]

So Bush's plan was just shit, right? So the best course of action is to ignore the plan altogether, demonize it and don't even put it up for a vote and instead scrape it all and start over and shut out Republicans from the process and don't even attempt to work with Republicans to rework the plan to make it better?

I was going to respond to this in terms of factual/policy analysis but I just realized I'm not sure what the part in bold is referring to. Bush's plan or ACA? I was assuming Bush's plan, but reading it again, not sure.

[cwolff]

It's called politics and that's a huge win for the D's.... I'm not sure the R's can recover by 2016.

Yes it's a huge win for the Democrats. They finally got something tangible done on healthcare and it's becoming more and more popular. It's not even fully implemented yet and it's already looking good. By 2016 the GOP may have to do a complete 180 on the issue.

[Tgo01]

They didn't shut the GOP out of the debate.

Yes and the Republican plan is for Americans to die quickly.

I was going to respond to this in terms of factual/policy analysis but I just realized I'm not sure what the part in bold is referring to. Bush's plan or ACA? I was assuming Bush's plan, but reading it again, not sure.

Exactly my point.

They finally got something tangible done on healthcare and it's becoming more and more popular.

More and more popular as in more people are liking it or more popular as in more people are signing up for health care? You do realize the latter one is required by law now, right?

[Latrinsorm]

You should be pissed that Democrats didn't want to pass healthcare reform unless it was "their" president doing it.

Democrats supported Nixon's healthcare reforms; specifically, Senators Mills, Ribicoff, and Kennedy. It's not clear if the healthcare bills proposed by Democrats were aligned with Bush's proposals or not, but they certainly made proposals; specifically, Representative Conyers and Senator Wyden.

So Bush's plan was just shit, right? So the best course of action is to ignore the plan altogether, demonize it and don't even put it up for a vote and instead scrape it all and start over and shut out Republicans from the process and don't even attempt to work with Republicans to rework the plan to make it better?

Bush proposed his plan in 2004, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. The Democrats had no ability to "put it up for a vote". I guess you can criticize them for not doing so, though, it is technically true that they didn't.

So after spending a trillion we have a net gain of 1 million insured people, why didn't we just write all of them a check? Would have been simpler.

We haven't spent a trillion, we are spending (on the order of) a trillion over the 10 years from 2010 to 2019. To compound this, as a businessman you are surely aware that costs and revenue are not evenly distributed in a start-up. Operating at a loss is common in the first few years, so measuring 4 years of revenue against 10 years of cost and declaring the business a failure is even more silly.

[Tgo01]

Bush proposed his plan in 2004, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

You spelled 2007 wrong.