freeman3 wrote:I think a president should be given leeway to explain programs--whether tax cuts, health care reform, anything--in terms that should describe the effect on most Americans, without having to be accurate in how the programs affect every American.

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Interesting 'killer' quote there. But that could easily be a line out of context. What was the 'it' in the sentence? What was the 'exchange' in which this was part?

Was 'it' the ACA? Or was 'it' "discouraging people to work" (which is a more general question)?

Not playing this game. It's the ACA or the results of the ACA (discouraging work). Either way, it's the ACA. If you want to prove he was talking about something else entirely, look up the context and have at it.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Interesting 'killer' quote there. But that could easily be a line out of context. What was the 'it' in the sentence? What was the 'exchange' in which this was part?

Was 'it' the ACA? Or was 'it' "discouraging people to work" (which is a more general question)?

Not playing this game. It's the ACA or the results of the ACA (discouraging work). Either way, it's the ACA. If you want to prove he was talking about something else entirely, look up the context and have at it.

I have already looked it up and watched the exchange. The words I put in quotes were Grassley's in the question that Elmondorf answered. I thought it was odd to have such a sentence floating there. Grassley was verging on the incoherent, by the way.

freeman3 wrote:Medicare Part D was unpopular until almost a year after the enrollment period started. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... ar-obamac/
Now 90% of seniors are satisfied with the program. http://www.@#$!.com/story/survey-medica ... 2013-09-17

The Massachusetts Obamacare exchange has been awarded a three-month extension from the Obama administration to fix its broken website and get customers enrolled, exchange officials announced Thursday.

Jean Yang, head of the flailing Massachusetts Health Connector, wept at a Thursday board meeting over her staff’s demoralizing struggle to prevent residents from losing coverage in the face of a broken website and mountain of paper applications to be processed, the Boston Globe reports.

The state had requested a six-month extension from the Affordable Care Act’s requirements. Massachusetts already had an exchange-based health care system similar to Obamacare.

Staff is working on a backlog of 50,000 paper applications, exchange officials announced at the board meeting, which Yang said would take two hours each to process.

The stress left Yang in tears at the board meeting as she described her staff’s malaise.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/13/massa ... z2tJa2tdzG

Fifty-five percent of voters wish the health care law had never passed. That includes majorities of young people under age 30 (55 percent) and those with annual household incomes under $50,000 (52 percent), as well as more than a quarter of Democrats (28 percent).

Some 37 percent are glad the law passed.

The poll also finds that by a 51-42 percent margin, people think in the long run the law will be bad for the country.

Overall, 64 percent of voters don’t think the law would have passed if we knew back in 2009 what we know today. Majorities of Republicans (74 percent), independents (68 percent) and even Democrats (54 percent) say it wouldn’t have passed.

Most Republicans (80 percent) and independents (60 percent) think the health care law is about government controlling our lives. A third of Democrats agree (33 percent).

Meanwhile, only nine percent say their family is better off under the new law. Nearly three times as many say they are worse off (25 percent), while a 65-percent majority says the law hasn’t made any difference to their family.

Before the law went into effect, 21 percent thought their family would be better off, 35 percent worse off and 39 percent thought it wouldn’t make much difference (October 2013).

Fully 76 percent of voters overall and 61 percent of Democrats blame the Obama administration for mismanagement of the roll-out and implementation of the new health care system.

freeman3 wrote:here is some polling from that "liberal" pollster Rasmussen...http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... h_care_law

To me the most significant polling questions have to do with how the person feels about something at that moment. When you start asking them to project into the future, their political biases come through. The significant responses to the poll were that 81% of people thought they received good health care and 74% liked their health care coverage, but only 41% of uninsured liked their health care.

So essentially people with health care coverage are not seeing their coverage or their care being adversely affected thus far, so their opinions about the ACA have little or nothing to do with their own personal circumstances. On the other hand, those without health care are not very happy.

Until we see people getting dissatisfied with their health insurance or their care, then the unpopularity of the ACA has little substance to it. If those numbers stay the same, the ACA will get popular as more and more people get insured and people with insurance find that the ACA is not going to negatively affect them. And here at least I'm not saying which way things are going to go--all I'm saying is that until people's start getting dissatisfied with their health care coverage and health care, then these polls regarding the popularity of the ACA don't mean a lot.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the Political Class believe the health care system will get better under Obamacare. Just as many Mainstream voters (68%) expect the system to get worse under the new law.

Most voters still view the health care law unfavorably and continue to believe it will raise the cost of health care in this country.

In several Southern states, the health care law is even more unpopular than it is nationally, and early looks at Senate races in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina suggest that senators who supported the law may be in trouble.

American physicians, worried about changes in the health care market, are streaming into salaried jobs with hospitals. Though the shift from private practice has been most pronounced in primary care, specialists are following.

Last year, 64 percent of job offers filled through Merritt Hawkins, one of the nation’s leading physician placement firms, involved hospital employment, compared with only 11 percent in 2004. The firm anticipates a rise to 75 percent in the next two years.

Today, about 60 percent of family doctors and pediatricians, 50 percent of surgeons and 25 percent of surgical subspecialists — such as ophthalmologists and ear, nose and throat surgeons — are employees rather than independent, according to the American Medical Association. “We’re seeing it changing fast,” said Mark E. Smith, president of Merritt Hawkins.

Health economists are nearly unanimous that the United States should move away from fee-for-service payments to doctors, the traditional system where private physicians are paid for each procedure and test, because it drives up the nation’s $2.7 trillion health care bill by rewarding overuse. But experts caution that the change from private practice to salaried jobs may not yield better or cheaper care for patients.

“In many places, the trend will almost certainly lead to more expensive care in the short run,” said Robert Mechanic, an economist who studies health care at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

. . .

But many of the new salaried arrangements have evolved from hospitals looking for new revenues, and could have the opposite effect. For example, when doctors’ practices are bought by a hospital, a colonoscopy or stress test performed in the office can suddenly cost far more because a hospital “facility fee” is tacked on. …

Hospitals have been offering physicians attractive employment deals, with incomes often greater than in private practice, since they need to form networks to take advantage of incentives under the new Affordable Care Act. Hospitals also know that doctors they employ can better direct patients to hospital-owned labs and services.

“From the hospital end there’s a big feeding frenzy, a lot of bidding going on to bring in doctors,” Mr. Mechanic said. “And physicians are going in so they don’t have to worry — there’s a lot of uncertainty about how health reform is going to play out.”

freeman3 wrote:If you're 55-64 and don't have health insurance, the ACA is very beneficial...
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4803302? ... d%3D443661

Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and those suffering from other neurological disorders, told Fox News senior reporter Jim Angle that patients with serious pre-existing conditions like MS and lupus could be facing crippling drug costs under Obamacare due to something known as a "closed drug formulary."

"So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication," said Kantor. "That's a possibility under the new Obamacare going on right now."

Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) says that medicines not included on a pre-approved list receive zero coverage. Worse, drugs for some diseases like MS do not have generic versions available.

"You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn't count against your deductible, and it doesn't count against your out of pocket limits, so you're basically on your own," explains Gottlieb

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both fronts.

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes

rickyp wrote:Good for the economy?

From the Wall Street Journal. Noted socialist rag.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both fronts.

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes

.

1. Are you saying Jeffrey Sparshott, the author of the Op-Ed, is a conservative? If so, do you have evidence?

2. Are you claiming the overall effect of Obamacare is positive based on those stats?

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/ ... tab/print/

Doctor Fate wrote:1. Are you saying Jeffrey Sparshott, the author of the Op-Ed, is a conservative? If so, do you have evidence?

2. Are you claiming the overall effect of Obamacare is positive based on those stats?

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:1. Are you saying Jeffrey Sparshott, the author of the Op-Ed, is a conservative? If so, do you have evidence?

No, he is not saying that. He is sarcastically suggesting that the WSJ is not particularly left wing. There is a difference between not being a socialist, and being a conservative, for those of us who are aware that the world is not completely based on binary logic

2. Are you claiming the overall effect of Obamacare is positive based on those stats?

No, he is not. He is pointing to stats that show that Obamacare has contributed to economic growth, which suggest that it has at least in part been beneficial. Whether there have been other effects (social, health, fiscal etc) may result in a different view.

Thing is, if you read what ricky wrote there, and what he linked to, you can see what he said and claimed, without needing to ask dumb questions.

The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway so far in signing up Americans who lack health insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal.

A pair of surveys released on Thursday suggest that just one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private health plans through the new marketplace have signed up for one….

One of the surveys, by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., shows that, of people who had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces by last month, just one-fourth described themselves as having been without insurance for most of the past year.