Because Of ObamaCare, Uninsured People Won’t Be Able To Buy Health Insurance Until November
Once again the Affordable Care Act meets the Law Of Unintended Consequences
The Associated Press reports on another unanticipated consequence of the Affordable Care Act, the fact that you probably won’t be able to buy health insurance until November if you don’t have it already:
Americans thinking about buying health insurance on their own later this year, or maybe switching to a different insurer, are probably out of luck. The policies are going off the market as a little-noticed consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
With limited exceptions, insurance companies have stopped selling until next year the sorts of individual plans that used to be available year-round. That locks out many of the young and healthy as well as the sick and injured, even those who can afford to buy without government subsidies.
“Now they’re stuck,” said Bonnie Milani, an independent insurance broker in Los Angeles, who says she warned her customers last year that the change was coming. “It just closes everything down.”
The next wide-open chance to sign up comes in November, when enrollment for 2015 begins in the government-run insurance marketplaces created by the health care law. Companies are following that schedule even for the plans they sell outside the federal and state exchanges.
There’s nothing in the law that says that you can’t buy insurance year round, of course, but the insurance industry says that the laws requirements are the main reason that thereis not likely to be much of a marker for their products during the seven month period between April and November:
The law, which requires nearly all Americans to be insured or pay a fine, bans insurers from rejecting customers because of poor health. The companies say that makes it too risky to sell to individuals year-round.
“If you didn’t have an open enrollment period, you would have people who would potentially enroll when they get sick and dis-enroll when they get better,” said Chris Stenrud, spokesman for insurer Kaiser Permanente. “The only insured people would be sick people, which would make insurance unaffordable for everyone.”
The change makes individual policies work more like the job-based plans that already cover far more Americans.
(…)
Insurance broker Steve Bobiak of Frackville, Pa., said he learned only a couple of weeks ago that insurers were cutting off new policies.
“It’s lousy communication out there,” he said. “If we don’t know, my God, how do they expect other people to know? It’s terrible.”
A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation in mid-March found that 6 out of 10 people without insurance weren’t aware of the Affordable Care Act deadline of March 31. The Obama administration, insurance companies and nonprofit groups scrambled to spread the word, often with messages that focused on the savings available to many people through government-subsidized plans sold on the marketplaces.
There wasn’t much public discussion about people who prefer to buy policies outside the state or federal marketplaces, sometimes finding better deals or options more to their liking.
Health and Human Services spokesman Aaron Albright pointed to a note buried on the HealthCare.gov website: It says “in some limited cases some insurance companies may sell private health plans outside the marketplace and outside open enrollment” that satisfy the law’s coverage mandate. It doesn’t say how to find any companies doing that. Albright had no further comment.
Gary Claxton, a health law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it’s “highly unlikely” that companies will offer such coverage after the deadline window fully closes. Some do still offer temporary plans, lasting from a month to a year. But those plans don’t cover pre-existing conditions and don’t get buyers off the hook for the law’s tax penalty.
Nate Purpura, spokesman for eHealthInsurance.com, which sells policies from 200 companies across the nation, said at this point he knows of none planning to offer major medical insurance after this month, except to people with qualifying life events.
The linked article is unclear what a “qualifying life event” that would allow someone to purchase insurance outside of the open enrollment period might be, but it’s not too hard to think of the situations where the need would arise. Someone who is no longer eligible to be covered under a parents plan due to a birthday that happens to fall between April and November, for example, would need to find a policy and likely be unable to. The same goes for someone who changes jobs, becomes unemployed or self-employed, or otherwise loses access to employer-provided coverage. More broadly, the unknown number of people who decided not to get health insurance before April 1st were likely not aware of the fact that they probably will not be able to do so for the next seven months. At the very least, this possibility was never discussed in the news media or made clear by the Obama Administration in the run up to the March 31st deadline. I also don’t recall ever seeing this fact mentioned during my admittedly brief perusals of the Healthcare.Gov website. One suspects that many people are going to be in for a nasty surprise.
As I noted, the law does not bar insurance sales outside of the open enrollment period. However, that’s exactly what is happening thanks to the incentives that the law’s requirements create. The White House and those Members of Congress will no doubt tell us that they didn’t intend for this to happen, but that hardly matters. As with any complex piece of legislation, the PPACA is replete with unintended consequences that we’ve only come to know about once the law started to come into effect. In some sense, Nancy Pelosi was correct when she said that we’d have to pass the law to find out what’s in it. The problem is that while precise consequences aren’t always clear before a law like this is passed, the inevitability of unintended consequences of some kind is something that should have been anticipated. Indeed, I suspect that this is only the beginning of what we’ve really only seen the beginning of what we’ll learn about Obamacare’s impact on our health care system and our economy.
All these situations you have decided will not qualify as “qualifying life events” are absolutely standard reasons for changing or obtaining coverage outside of open enrollment periods. For example, last year my writer’s guild coverage ran out and I switched to University of California’s coverage. This was outside of the open enrollment period… but it was because my old coverage ran out. QLE.
And frankly, I’m a little stunned to see you complaining about this. It is absolutely the same as the terms of just about every employer-based health insurance policy. You can’t just change plans whenever you feel like, and if you’ve opted out in the past, you can’t just decide to opt in simply because you’ve changed your mind — you have to wait for the next open enrollment period.
This is just another example of the right wing seizing on a flaw in our longstanding system of health coverage and blaming it Obama. Have you honestly never had to deal with insurance on your own? Are you really this naive?
Doug, I hate to go all C. Clavin here but this piece is… Um… Well, let’s just go with under-researched.
The example you give, aging out of a parent’s policy, is a qualifying life event and the open enrollment system under the ACA is the same open enrollment system I’ve been dealing with getting insurance through my employer for my entire life. There’s nothing here that people who were insured prior to ACA didn’t have to deal with.
People who can’t get overage now either put it off too long or, wrongfully, thought they could game the system. I’ve seen similar situations with dumb co-workers who thought they could game our employer’s insurance and I’m just as unsympathetic now as I was then.
Of course, prior to the Affordable Healthcare Act many uninsured people were uninsured, so this is a big change.
I’ll bet you a thousand bucks I can switch policies tomorrow.
Actually, I guess it’s worth noting that all the examples you gave, from the birthday to “someone who changes jobs, becomes unemployed or self-employed, or otherwise loses access to employer-provided coverage” are qualifying life events. About the only thing that isn’t is voluntarily dropping coverage.
Poor Doug. He is just like all those conservatives blind sided by the enrollment success of the ACA: scrambling around desperately for bad news.
Even if what Doug says is true-and it isn’t- the next enrollment period is in seven months. Now, Doug at times I went YEARS without health insurance- because I couldn’t afford it. There are millions of folks that prior to the ACA couldn’t get health insurance. For such people, I can assure you waiting seven months is just not that big of a deal. Thank God that those people can soon get health insurance , thanks to subsidies, expanded Medicaid, the ban on discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions, and other ACA provisions.
That’s the problem with ACA haters like Doug. Now that the ACA is being fully implemented, millions of people-people those ACA haters didn’t give a d@mn about- are getting health insurance, without the sky falling. The best the haters can do is yell “Squirrel!” and point to glitches.
Meanwhile, Doug, what is your alternative to the ACA? Nothing? Relying on magic free market pixie dust to do what it has never done? Alrighty then.
I think Doug’s point is that even though these potential changes are “qualified life events,” the individuals taking part may not be able to buy insurance because the insurance companies will not be selling the coverage until November.
It’s not that the law forbids them from doing so, but rather that the Insurance companies don’t have the market necessary to continue selling policies until November.
Tell me if I read that incorrectly.
Here is some context from Professor John Gruber, someone who actually helped design the ACA:
Maybe, Doug, if you read beyond right wing propaganda sites like UnitedLiberty.org and Reason.org, you might get some perspective on this.
Doug, I can only assume that the article you linked to has been updated since you originally read it since to me it seems that there is a bit of clarity as to what is a qualifying life event.
@Michael Petry:
You may be correct on this, but so what? We’re still talking about waiting a few months. If we balance the vastly increased options offered by the ACA against a minor unintended consequence, then the proper conclusion is draw is that the ACA was worth it, not that the ACA should be dismantled because of this unintended consequence. In any case, this creates opportunity for some small, nimble footed insurer to sell insurance to people caught between enrollment periods, no? And if not, maybe expanded Medicaid can pick up the slack. And if THAT doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to revisit the possibility of the public option. Lots of possible fixes.
I was under the impression that you could enroll year round using the exchanges, assuming you had a qualifying event. I checked and the Washington State one does. It’s most likely the same for companies selling outside the exchanges.
Ah, I see…..so it’s another example of a company making a decision and the government getting the blame.
Convenient.
Doug’s argument is once often advanced by libertarians against big government programs. It runs, “Big, complex government programs, by their nature, produce unintended consequences, many of which are bad-so, let’s not do big, complex programs”.
Of course, what if it’s a big, complex program that libertarians like? Then, somehow, then it’s always worth it, despite negative unintended consequences.
Now Doug likes NASA, although it doesn’t really fit the libertarian “minimal government” paradigm. Anyway, Doug likes NASA. in 1966, a negative unintended consequence of NASA was that three astronauts burned to death in a fire. Would Doug have agreed with those that then that called for scrapping NASA because of that tragic unintended consequence? Well, heck no. He likes NASA, so he would have argued that that the federal government made the correct decision to push on.
I might add that there will quite likely be POSITIVE unintended consequences of ACA implementation-just as there was of NASA (better semi-conductors, for example). Maybe a copywriter tires of his job at an ad agency, and , thanks to the ability to buy health insurance on the federal exchange, quits his job, and writes the Next Great American Novel. Maybe an entrepreneur buys health insurance on the ACA as he starts up the Next Big Thing in Silicon Valley. Maybe an unmarried mother in Appalachia takes her sick child to a clinic thanks to expanded Medicaid, and that child survives to build the first working fusion reactor.
I’m so very tired with this whining about every little flaw in Obamacare. I mean, really, it’s getting old all this complaining about PEOPLE ACTUALLY GETTING HEALTH INSURANCE! If you’ve got a better plan, please write about it. We’d all love to know. If not, don’t you think it’s time to just stop complaining and start offering improvements?
@Michael Petry:
I can’t see this being the case, though. As I’ve been arguing with Doug about on Twitter, open enrollment isn’t a new thing. It’s how health insurance has been sold to a majority of Americans for decades. Insurance companies, prior to the ACA, didn’t stop offering policies outside of open enrollment periods. I can’t see them doing that now with the pool of people growing.
@beth:
Amen, sister.
Decades pass during which people are routinely tossed off insurance under bogus pretexts, denied coverage, pushed into bankruptcy by illness, and the Right does NOTHING. They offer nothing.
Finally, we start to address the problem, and the same worthless, brain-dead conservatives and pseudo-libertarian a-holes who did nothing and offered nothing are suddenly critics of every single minuscule detail.
A bunch of people who drove the car into the ditch now want to critique the work of the tow truck driver who’s pulling it out.
Not impressed by crocodile tears for the uninsured coming from Republicans.
1) All of the situations you describe will qualify as life changing events. I know you dont read much health care policy, but I do. They qualify. About the only thing that does not qualify is waiting until you get sick to want to buy.
2) Limited enrollment periods are a feature, not a bug. You cannot just wait until you get sick to buy insurance. Limited enrollment periods is one of the reasons the penalty can be kept fairly low. Conservative health care gurus like Pauly have suggested that they could be sufficient by themselves and that mandates/penalties may not be needed.
Steve
Coverage under a parent’s plan continues until December 31 of the year in which the covered individual turns 26. It doesn’t stop on their birthday.
I had heard of this- Jamie Dupree reported this on the Herman Caine show (and, presumably, other Cox news outlets) about a week ago. Not to join the pile on ol’ Doug, but the limited opportunities between enrollment periods are quite standard. But we certainly have a loaded headline at the top of this thread, don’t we?
ObamaCare survives today purely because of an almost criminal lack of exposure to the damage it is doing to people’s lives and livelihood. What is gong on is the equivalent of a breaking news story about a “situation” involving the Titanic, with all the reports and discussions showing pictures of a Caribbean cruise liner and how wonderful the Caymans are to visit.
Like the Titanic, ObamaCare is a tragic disaster; we can only hope it can be done away with before it causes irreparable damage.
@medusa:
That’s a lie.
Show me the damage. But before you do, you have to agree to pay me $100 for each horror story that’s already been debunked. Deal?
It’s perfectly clear what that means, as it’s a legal term. Aren’t you supposed to be a lawyer?
Off topic:
James et al–when viewing this site on this site, my App Store keeps popping up, trying to force me to try a new crappy game. Only happens on this site. Please check how you are handling advertising for mobile viewers.
Back to the thread…
@Neil Hudelson: And let’s not even talk about the auto-playing Noah ad…
@stonetools: “another day, another delay”
Even though this particular ObamaCare horror story is like the vast majority of the others — completely made up crap from willfully under-informed commentators — I lay the blame for each and every unintended consequence that cannot be fixed on one party… the Republicans.
The Republicans are unwilling to allow anything in the law to be fixed. They want nothing short of repeal.
Any large law is going to have some rough edges, and need to be modified as it is implemented. And in a functioning government, the opposition party, after losing the big policy debate, will allow the law to be fixed — perhaps extract a pound of flesh here and there, but generally act in good faith. The Republicans in congress will not do that.
Case in point: there is an error in the drafting of the law, which means that it might be the case that subsidies are only available for people living in states that did not use the federal exchange. It’s clearly not the intent of the law, but arguably, there it is. Will the Republicans in the House draft legislation to fix this? Would the Republicans in the Senate allow a fix to pass without a filibuster? No and no.
They would sooner hurt people than risk having the law be a success. The law which was basically the conservative response to HillaryCare, and which is based on RomneyCare.
The Republicans can go f— themselves.
This isn’t so much an unintended consequence of the law as the law working as designed. Now if this particular detail of the health care reforms wasn’t advertised enough… maybe both of the two major political parties should have been working to help implement the reforms.
@Neil Hudelson: ad block, get it and you’ll never see an ad.
@medusa:
Sadly, I’m getting used to dire predictions and fact-free assertions by conservatives concerning ACA.
Two questions for so-called ‘concerned’ Republicans:
(1) Where were you you guys when for about 15 consecutive years, the cost of health insurance premiums was increasing at an annual rate of over 3 times the rate of inflation? That’s right, regular annual increases ranging from 9% to 18%. I know this because part of my financial management responsibilities was managing our organization’s employee benefit contracts.
(2) Where were you when the Bush Administration authored the Medicare Supplemental Prescription Drug Program, and Republican legislators wrote into the legislation language that expressly prohibits the federal government from negotiating lower prices?
@ al-Ameda
You probably don’t want to hold your breath waiting for an answer.
I don’t get it – we’re saying a law that had a sign-up window of about four months (going from December when most of the website’s issues were cleaned up) has the unintended consequence of now keeping people who ignored those four months from getting insurance?
You realize how asinine a complaint that is? (Not to mention all that’s been said about qualifying life events so far.)
Doug’s ODS is showing .
@Tillman: The sign-up window applied to getting insurance through the exchanges. The insurance that’s the subject of Doug’s post is obtained directly from the insurer and was available outside any sign-up window. Now, because they can’t turn away anyone for already being sick, they have to come up with a way to keep people from just waiting until they get sick and signing up, otherwise they won’t have anyone insured except sick people and would be in dire financial straits. So they are going to institute a sign-up window, too.
The requirement to have insurance isn’t a requirement to sign up through the exchanges. You can get it from any insurer who offers it directly.
So let me get this straight Doug. After months of people swearing to god they won’t comply with ACA for insert-your-reason here, after extending deadlines repeatedly, national informational campaigns and quite frankly being the news one hell of a lot for better or worse – you’re complaining the lazy SOBs who said hell no are victims not of their own making? Do you cry for whiny people who complain they’re being “punished” for not filing their taxes by April too?
Personal responsibility. They don’t have it. They deserve what they get for trying to game the system. Spin the wheel and you know it won’t always land on jackpot. And why are they whining they can’t get health insurance when they’ve been going around swearing they don’t really need it anyways?
If there is so much support for Obamacare why are there only 7 million signed up. Well why? if millions and million of Liberals support this law and the president how come Only 7 million of you enrolled. Please clear that up.
@T. Nagy:
Well, this is progress, I must say. You folks have gone from “No way 7 million will ever sign up!” to “It’s all lies!” to “Okay, but 7 million should be more!”
Next, inevitably, comes, “We were actually just in favor of adjusting O-Care, please ignore the 50 repeal votes.”
7 million was the projection. 7 million was the reality. Live with it.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2014/04/01/the-view-from-the-trenches-puts-the-lie-to-the-medias-gloating-about-7-million-obamacare-new-enrollments/
No added comment required, I think.
just wondering if Doug is ever going to come back to defend this post in the comments.
Doug and other conservatives were always viscerally opposed to the ACA on the ground that the government just shouldn’t be in the business of providing universal health insurance, no matter what. Of course this does not make for a good argument against providing universal health insurance ( and makes you look like a selfish bastard as well) so right wingers have been busy concocting all kinds of reasons why Obamacare must fail ( and of course doing everything in their power to make it fail).
Now that it looks like Obamacare is not collapsing but is at least on track for success, right wingers have really no other option but to nitpick, obfuscate, and come up with the kind of nonsensical arguments advanced by T. Nagy. Meanwhile, the latest polls show show most Americans want to keep Obamacare, not repeal it. I expect Obamacare positives are going to gradually rise, as it becomes clear that the program is actually working as advertised, and as more and more people get covered.
The right wingers who have bet so big on total opposition really have nothing at this point. If the best that Doug can come up with now is that those who didn’t bother to enroll by April 1, after the biggest enrollment push in history, now have to wait till the next period of open enrollment-well, that’s just not that big of a deal.
I’d ask Doug and the other ACA haters to ask themselves again just why they are so viscerally opposed to the government helping millions of people getting health insurance. After all Doug calls himself a libertarian but one of the founding fathers of libertarianism (Friedrich von Hayek) thought that providing universal health insurance was a legitimate function of government and never said a word against the German and Austrian universal health insurance systems he grew up with. Moreover, Ayn Rand, another apostle of libertarianism, ended her life relying on Medicare.
I’m asking for debate here. I’d like Doug and the various right wingers to explain just why they are against the ACA. I’m hoping I get some answers more rational than what I’ve seen so far. Thanks in advance.
@Mikey: A respectable point, but that begs the question of what kind of people were attempting to buy non-exchange insurance plans before.
@Eric Florack:
Here’s the view from an actual news source, as opposed to the right wing BS machine.
I’m afraid the facts are that millions of people have already gained health insurance thanks to Obamacare and there will no doubt be millions more by summer’s end. Now the question for you is why should we repeal Obamacare and take away the benefit of health insurance from those millions.
@T. Nagy:
Imagine what the enrollment numbers would be if the governors and legislatures in Republican controlled state had actually implemented ACA instead of obstructing and refusing to create exchanges? Feel free to dissemble.
@ Eric Florack
We already knew that you have outsourced your thinking to Rush, and that you have a desperate need to feel superior to poor people. but thanks for sharing.
Nothing like a Democrat owned, supported and ran website. Have you ever seen so many Obama cheerleaders/ kool aid drinkers all in the same place? Obama can do nothing wrong in these people’s eyes. Any anti-Democrat shouldn’t even bother posting here.
@adam:
Feel free to return to your fact-free, non-reality based world.
@stonetools: It would be nice to have some rational debate about this. But starting with the misleading headline of this post to the comments on Florak’s link (really, the guy doesn’t like Obama’s “flaring nostrils” and we’re supposed to take it seriously?) it seems like we’re not going to get any from the right. It’s a pity – there are things that could be corrected in the ACA but it seems like we’ll never get to the place where we can get them done.
@al-Ameda: Where’s that immigration reform Obama promised you for 5 years in a row now? There’s a fact for you.
@beth:
Aye, it would be nice if we could have a rational debate about healthcare in this country. However, it’s very hard when dealing with people who fundamentally do not understand the rolls of each branch of government.
Take Adam’s post here.
He’s ignorance and willingness to pin the blame on Obama for Congress not doing their job should tell you all you need to know. While Obama should lead on the issue better, it is not his role as President to do the job of the Congress.
It’s as if he wishes President Obama to come out and issue another executive order just so he and his friends can then spend the time regurgitating the meme that Obama is in fact a dictator not interested in abiding by the laws of the land.
Where does that lead the conversation?
Away from anything constructive.
Wait! I just thought of a scenario where someone could loose coverage through no fault of their own and be totally screwed. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with open enrollment and the person would have to be living in Texas for it to work. Does that count?
@adam:
Again, you might check some reality-based media, if you did you’d realize that a group of Republicans (primarily Rubio) working with Democrats had crafted a compromise immigration bill that included a path to citizenship that a majority of House Republicans want no part of. In fact Speaker Boehner wants to avoid putting most of the provisions of the draft bill to a vote because he wants to avoid controversy and alienating the conservative base in advance of the 2014 elections.
Also, FYI, Obama cannot unilaterally impose an immigration plan. You knew that, right?
If Obamacare problems were as pervasive as billed there’d be at least one commenter discussing his or her own ACA-induced injuries in these threads. The silence is deafening…and pregnant with admission.
@al-Ameda: The king of executive orders cannot bypass congress? LOL!!! He’s bypassed congress many times and passed many things without congress approval already. But then YOU knew that already, didn’t you? Where’s the 2 million shovel ready jobs? There’s another fact for you. One more thing, who cares what the Republicans do? I dont support either of the 2 lying, money hungry and corrupt groups leading our country to hell in a bucket.
@stonetools: When did the L.A. Times become a reputable (read “middle ground”) news source. You are ridiculous!
@adam:
Democrats and Republicans = Nothing but a bunch of theiving liars ripping off the citizens of the United States term after term after term….
@Juan Marichal:
So you have nothing?
@al-Ameda: As I said, BOTH parties are crooks! Only a blind man can’t see that.
@adam: And yet you only criticize Democrats…..
@beth:
Yeah, disappointing really. I can discount the posts of Eric and the various trolls, because I understand the REAL reason they are opposed to the ACA, but I’m a bit disappointed with the original poster. His refusal to defend the OP, and his ongoing lack of explanation as to why he is opposed to the ACA, leads me to conclude the right’s opposition just comes down to politics and sheer bloody-mindedness. “I don’t want the government helping anyone poorer and less fortunate than me getting health insurance” is no good reason to oppose the ACA, but in the lack of any further explanation, I’m going to reluctantly conclude that Doug and the right wing have no better reason.
@adam: “Where’s the 2 million shovel ready jobs? There’s another fact for you”
My wife made me promise I would no longer argue with illiterate morons on the internet, so I’m afraid I can’t respond until you go back to fourth grade and learn the difference between a rhetorical question and a “fact.”
@stonetools: Doug won’t respond in comments, but his next post will be:
BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE, PEOPLE WITH HEALTH INSURANCE ARE STILL DYING OF NATURAL CAUSES.
Here is a great post over at Booman Tribune that sets out in rather pithy language, the right’s dilemma:
@Tillman: Here’s a whole lot of info on the individual insurance market circa 2009:
Huge link from Google
@stonetools: I’ll try to summarize why the thinking people on the right–who, despite the best efforts of many of their political allies, still exist in some small number–oppose the ACA.
1. It makes public a function that belongs in the private sector.
2. It expands government control over a large part of the economy.
3. It moves decision-making over personal health issues from the individual to the government.
4. It will be unsupportably expensive at both the federal and state levels, as Medicare and Medicaid already are.
These points are, of course, all debatable, but they do originate in principle and are consistent with stated conservative aims.
My family has learned from experience that one of the functions of the system is to suck people dry financially, THEN let them die…
@stonetools: @anjin-san: gee, it very simple …no jobs = no work =no money = beg oboma for money = stick your finger up the pig =money = higher taxs =no jobs to pay for pig money = ebt card = more taxs = live off other people = raise taxs = less and less jobs = stick the pig = higher tax =no jobs
kick the bums out and let anerica get back to work . . . from the white house, down, thay are all fingering the hog and get all the gravy, and you donkeys, elepants, tea baggers, left wing, right wing, lib. (the list could go on, but everyone, who work or dont have jobs, find that we are living at the rear of the hog, and you know what you find there and under the blessing of o’bama it gets deeper and deeper, which brings us back to: no jobs – no money -higher taxs and the gan\me keeps repeating . . . obomacare or not you still lose.
@ jetta
Well then, thank goodness we have come a long way back from the Bush crash and have regained a lot of the jobs we lost as a result of it.
Or are you one of these “history began in 2009” conservatives?
Taxes are at historic lows. You can look it up.
@Mikey:
Hi, Mikey, I appreciate your response. Now of course if they do want to make these arguments, then why don’t they make them? Instead we get the equivalent of monkey poo, as advanced by eric, adam, jetta and the rest of the trolls-stuff really not worth responding to. Even the argument advanced by the OP falls apart on analysis-so much so that the original poster can’t even be bothered to defend it.
Even the points you advance really aren’t debatable, given the failure of the private insurers to cover tens of millions of people and the successful prior examples of Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs may be expensive, but there really aren’t any private market alternatives so they’re here to stay and we will find ways to control their costs, and pay for them.
Ramnesh Ponnuru shows the way for conservatives . He says:
In the end, conservatives (like Doug) simply preferred to believe that Obamacare would implode, because they could avoid thinking about an alternative. Now that it hasn’t imploded and isn’t likely to, they just don’t have anything compelling to contribute. A few have started to think of accommodating themselves to an Obamacare world, but most are still in repeal mode-although they can’t think of what to replace it with.
i didn’t buy the obamacare insurance because i didn’t need it. this friday, i just found out i have serious health problem, which will cost over one hundred thousand dollars in care. so now i want to buy the insurance, but no insurance company will sell it to me? insurance companies should be jailed.
You must be crazy. I sell am selling a great health insurance plan every day that is less expensive than “obamacare” and will save my clients more OOP expense with a much broader network of providers. Despite your efforts to mislead…this whole “obamacare” is a fiasco and the real people across this country DO NOT LIKE IT! I speak to small business owners everday and they are not and will not participate in it. They are thankful for the alternative that I offer them…and IT WORKS GREAT for them and their employees.
@jetta:
Wow…epic rant.
Total nonsense.
But epic.
The RAPE of America continues with the Democrats at the helm and has been evident for OVER last 6 + years…. impossible unemployment, history making deficits, never mentioned millions of homeless, spying on american’s phones, computers, email, financial information, stolen billions from our medicare and social security, increased false racism data fed to us by government…Democrat owned media (CFR/TLC brainwashing) to try and put american’s into a false sense of security, allowing over 38 million illegals pushed on our floundering economy, increased racial tensions, have more and more CFR/Trilateral nominee’s appointed and a Supreme Court making laws against Americans, allowing insider trading with the senate, congress, and every “in the know” employee in the fed, propaganda through the AP/Bloomberg/CNN/CNBC/Yahoo/ etc creating more in-fighting , and the violation of our constitution over and over by the individuals we elected and the farce of the Unconstitutional OBAMACARE …As all the VIOLATIONS committed against our Constitution.
$5000 delectable ??? $800 a month premium?? $14, 600 out of wallet a year before insurance kicks in a dime ?? That doesn’t sound like a health care solution to me. It sounds like a scam. Unless you have a catastrophic illness this is just another big sucking sound on the resources of the dwindling middle class. Three on going scams in this country, Healthcare, Higher Education, & Elder Care.
“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him, better take a closer look at the American Indian.” WILL ROGERS
@stonetools: check out how Bill Maher a BIG leftie himself decides to turn the tables on these dems/libs and show why that party and their mentality proves they are the racist party http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1oUAo3aPFc
Bill Maher Trips Up Guests with ‘Racist’ Paul Ryan Quote. Except Michelle Obama Said it
Bill Maher Trips Up Guests with ‘Racist’ Paul Ryan Quote. Except Michelle Obama Said it Bill Maher…
YOUTUBE.COM|BY UC6I7L4FS7UFSEJB9UOU-IDG
@shesalloverit:
Well then, let’s repeal Social Security and Medicare then millions more Americans can be happy and prosperous! Cheers.
@John:
$5,000 will buy a tasty meal.
@adam: Adam, you really ought to ask that question of your Republican buddies who have been holding immigration reform hostage for the past five years.
@shesalloverit:
Because the federal government just showered love and benevolence on native Americans 1776-1900. Good grief, crack a history book, you moron. That was a dumbass quote.
@michele o: @michelle o You were so arrogant that you didn’t feel like you needed to comply with the law because you “didn’t need” insurance. Now you find out you need insurance because you, in fact, are sick and DO need it but you can’t buy it because you blew the deadline. Sucks to be you.
@BOUNO PACHE: @BOUNO PACHE Fox News disciple = psycho right-wing nut-bag. Have a happy life, Dimbulb!
Did Doug just hit a gusher of trolls, or is this one complete loser talking to himself?
@wr: This post had to be linked from somewhere, but we can’t see trackbacks, so I can’t say where.
@Mikey:
1. It makes public a function that belongs in the private sector.
This is just wrong. What makes Obamacare a Conservative Program is that it works within the existing private sector model.
2. It expands government control over a large part of the economy.
The Government already has it’s hands in a huge percentage of Heath care…the increase due to Obamacare is infinitesimal. Remember…every single person who gets insurance through their employer is getting a Government subsidy already.
3. It moves decision-making over personal health issues from the individual to the government.
The Government isn’t making any decisions beyond establishing minimum standards….and preventing scam-level policies.
4. It will be unsupportably expensive at both the federal and state levels, as Medicare and Medicaid already are.
The life of Medicare has already been extended by Obamacare by at least a decade…so I’m not sure what you are talking about.
@C. Clavin: I wasn’t asserting agreement with those positions, just restating them.
It’s just Republican propaganda that Obamacare is anything less than nirvana, shangrila, with every American (and illegal alien) happily enrolling, joyous at paying double and triple their old insurance. And so what if millions remain uninsured? That’s so much better than their inexpensive old insurance that covered what they wanted instead of what Obama wants covered. It’s important to cover 90 year old women for maternity costs. Obama knows what you need. What do you know anyway? obama knows best. Death Panels are good for you. You might want to live when Obama knows you’re worthless. No one who can’t pay taxes should have a right to live. Obamacare is designed to cut costs, and most costs come from the sick. If we just eliminate the sick, and make the healthy pay, then Obamacare will be a major financial success, making money for the federal government. That’s what Obamcare is all about, a money maker for the government, even if the federal government isn’t competent to ever do that. But they’re trying. That’s what’s important. A glitch ridden computer program, with security waivers is what we all want, so our personal information can be sold and put on the internet for all to see. Obamacare is here to stay. Even our Supreme Court found it constitutional. It also found the Fugitive Slave Act constitution, and that law was here to stay. The basic premise of Obamacare is we spend too much money on health care, and this can be solved by eliminating hospitals and doctors. People will die, but that’s natural selection, and Darwin is science. Any alternative is just religion and the conservative idea that human life has value. Humans exists to serve the government and pay taxes, not to live, unless thy are cost effective for the government. @stonetools:
Aside from all other BS in the original article, Doug, you are also accepting insurance company explanations at face value, without strong confirmation.
@jetta:
@BOUNO PACHE:
@shesalloverit:
@chris hume:
You know…I think it’s sad that the Republican commenters who have appeared here, no doubt linked by a right-wing site gleeful over Doug’s negative Obamacare post, are basically fact and logic free.
I mean…certainly there are problems with Obamacare…it’s a big program and it is bound to have bugs and hiccups. But this coming apocalypse mindset is both ridiculous and non-productive.
Most of the regular commenters at OTB are smarter than average and willing to listen to a cogent argument. But you really have to bring something to the table rather than emotional swamp-fever rants based on…well, nothing.
You know…facts…like this…
http://www.gallup.com/poll/168248/uninsured-rate-lowest-2008.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines
@michelle o:
In other words, “I’m cheap and took a chance because I thought I was healthy. Turns out I’m not. Now I realize what everyone always warned about medical bills being overwhelming expensive is true. But I can’t sign my special snowflake self up whenever I feel like it for the program I thought was worthless till I personally need it because of rules that have been around for decades and have nothing to do with ACA itself. It’s someone else’s fault of course”
Too arrogant to be personally responsible and buy insurance, too stupid to understand that a person will inevitably need medical services and the price tag that goes with it, and now too self-absorbed to understand this is YOUR FAULT due to your own actions. Not the insurance company, not the agent, not Obamacare – YOU. You gambled and lost; go cry about it somewhere else.
@KM:
The good news is that when the window opens again (November, I think?) she’ll be able to get insurance. Under the pre-Obamacare status-quo she wouldn’t ever get insurance because of her pre-existing condition.
@Al: On the Aca, some of the states have extended open enrollment as far ahead as June for enrollment to get health insurance. Like one person who posted on this blog said, you have a lot of procrastinators who put off until the last moment to enroll and are the biggest gripers because they ran out of time. How many of us have not run into any website that didn’t have problems not only in the beginning, but are continuing to have problems now? None, I would imagine. Overload of people being on any one web site happens constantly and slows down computers. I have had to have immense patience on web sites that I have visited. I went on Health Care.gov and had no problem what-so-ever enrolling on it. Of course I did it at night and not during peak computer usage times too. To all of the procrastinators in this world….. Break this bad habit now.
The problem with Obama is that, as he clearly proclaimed, his main goal as a Communist is to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” with or without Congress and no matter how many times he has to violate the Constitution. To “fundamentally transform” a nation requires changing or annulling its Constitution. In this case it means doing away with our “inalienable” rights by any and all means possible and transferring all power to the President and those who support the Communist/Islamic overthrow of America. Everything the President does is aimed at accomplishing this primary agenda and Obamacare is his “signature” or most important way of doing that because it allows virtual total control over every U.S. citizen and every aspect of their lives so that any “rights” will be only those granted by those in power and whose goal is to stay in power. The two current freedoms they want most to annul are the 1st and 2nd amendments because they are the ones that we, the people, could use most effectively to stop these totalitarian tyrants. Mao Zedong put it well when he said, “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.” Without the freedom to have and maintain sufficient weapons of the right kind and without the free right to criticize the government or others, the people are powerless to stop the overthrow of America and the freedoms contained in its Constitution.
@M Smith:
Wow…now that my friends is how you throw a fever-swamp rant. Textbook delusion. Well played, sir. Well played.
You do realize that Communism and Islam are antithetical, right? Or not?
@M Smith:
Such pure, uncut, 100% crazy has to be applauded.
Bravo, sir or madam! Bravo! Well done!
All right, who let in all the trolls?
And I bet you anything that what people will do if they’ve missed the deadline is go get some sort of temporary catastrophic health insurance and wait until the next window opens.
It’s what I had to do when I came back from Japan in 2003 and couldn’t get health insurance because there was no record of me within the system.
@M Smith:
The problem with your opening remark is that it is without basis. Other than that, it’s just plain lame.
@C. Clavin:
Imagine the resulting confusion when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan.
@grumpy realist: I’m thinking RedState. Given the general issues with logic, grammar, and spelling, however, I could be wrong; it might be Free Republic.
@Blue Galangal: They hate Doug over at RedState, so I doubt they’d link any of his posts in a positive way.
@M Smith: In your opinion, should delusional people be allowed to own firearms?
@M Smith:
Clavin’s right, I appreciate the honest stupidity of your bizarre rant. It’s good to get an up-close view of just how unhinged you people are. If I could, I would drive you around from contested congressional district to contested congressional district and say, “See? This is a Republican.”
@M Smith: Nice trolling there, Mr. Poe.
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