Ray Jay wrote:Forgetting about the issue of whether you like the ACA and/or like Obama, I do find this astounding. I can think of no parallel to enacting a controversial law in one year that passed based on a complex formulas as it relates to both funding and vote getting, and then gutting or delaying key provisions of that law over the next 3 years based on POTUS's economic or more likely political decisions during his next administration.. I've never seen anything like it.

Forgetting about the issue of whether you like the ACA and/or like Obama, I do find this astounding. I can think of no parallel to enacting a controversial law in one year that passed based on a complex formulas as it relates to both funding and vote getting, and then gutting or delaying key provisions of that law over the next 3 years based on POTUS's economic or more likely political decisions during his next administration.. I've never seen anything like it.

rickyp wrote:ray

Forgetting about the issue of whether you like the ACA and/or like Obama, I do find this astounding. I can think of no parallel to enacting a controversial law in one year that passed based on a complex formulas as it relates to both funding and vote getting, and then gutting or delaying key provisions of that law over the next 3 years based on POTUS's economic or more likely political decisions during his next administration.. I've never seen anything like it.

I suspect that complex and difficult laws that affected large groups are always difficult to institute.
A few that come to mind are:
- Government procuremnet
- copyright laws (especially digital media lwas last decade.)
-The National environmental protection Act, which is constantly "fine tuned"
- laws on collecting DNA from Arrestees...

Moreover the temperature of Congress and the purposeful opposition who are willing to obstruct the law, not just oppose it, over heats the affair.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Washington- ... form/40794
(Example above)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off ... -care-law-

The problem is, that once people get used to the benefits, or understand them, republicans have to offer something in return that works as well. There have been town hall meetings lately where those who stand to benefit, or would have beenfitted from ACA have put republicans on the spot. It highlights the problem that the ACA, as imperfect as it is, will still improve a lot of peoples lives. And is demonstrating it as it progesses. But the alternative is , apparently, an unsatisfactory status quo.

Ray Jay wrote:The trajectory of the implementation of ACA is nothing like the implementation of the laws that you have mentioned. And now we'll ignore the issue by blaming Obama's implementation of his own law on Republicans. Dude, it's not being implemented in states with democratic governors.

scooba wrote::

Recent Washington Post piece http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/06/dont-sweat-obamacares-low-approval-ratings/ :

"What really matters for the future of the ACA is whether the exchanges roll out successfully and whether the various reforms and incentives for cost control really work. If so, the law will be secure. No matter what the polls currently say about “Obamacare.”"

My reading of the news is that in those states where the law is less unpopular and where the state government wants it to work then it looks like it's going to work. In those states where the state government wants to undermine the law and where it is (therefore?) more unpopular then it probably isn't going to work.

“It IS happening,” insisted Joseph Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has 1.2 million members. “Wait a year. You’ll see tremendous impact as workers have their hours reduced and their incomes reduced. The facts are already starting to show up. Their statistics, I think, are a little behind the time.”

A woman in Cornelius, Ore., takes care of her disabled 22-year-old daughter. The daughter has cerebral palsy, spina bifida and a condition called automonic dysreflexia. She requires 24-hour care. The mother provides it, receiving for this $1,400 a month. The mother fears—and is apparently right to fear—a provision of the Affordable Care Act that will, as Zheng reports, “largely prohibit guardians from serving as the paid caregiver of an adult child with developmental disabilities.” The mother is afraid this will mean foster care for her daughter, or a lengthy and costly process in which she herself will be forced to transfer legal guardianship to someone else. The provision, the paper says, will likely cause hardship for hundreds of Oregon families in which the guardian and the caregiver are the same person.

Congressional Budget Office, May 14, 2013

Proposed regulations recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of the Treasury expanded the number of people who will be exempt from paying a penalty for being uninsured relative to our previous expectations. CBO and JCT now expect that, as a result of those regulations, between 500,000 and 1 million fewer people will obtain health insurance coverage each year. In our current projections for 2023, the ACA reduces the number of people without health insurance by 25 million, leaving 31 million uninsured (compared with 30 million in our February estimate).

They’re actually having a debate between hurting Americans who will no longer be denied affordable care just because they’ve been sick – and harming the economy and millions of Americans in the process. And many Republicans are more concerned with how badly this debate will hurt them politically than they are with how badly it’ll hurt the country.

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they’ll somehow be sticking it to me. But they’d just be sticking it to you.

Some even say that if you call their office with questions about the law, they’ll refuse to help. Call me old-fashioned – but that’s lousy constituent service. And it’s not what you deserve.

Your health insurance isn’t something to play politics with. Our economy isn’t something to play politics with. This isn’t a game. This is about the economic security of millions of families.

For the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will be higher in the individual exchange than what they're currently paying for employer-sponsored benefits, according to a National Journal analysis of new coverage and cost data. Adding even more out-of-pocket expenses to consumers' monthly insurance bills is a swell in deductibles under the Affordable Care Act.

Health law proponents have excused the rate hikes by saying the prices in the exchange won't apply to the millions receiving coverage from their employers. But that's only if employers continue to offer that coverage--something that's looking increasingly uncertain. Already, UPS, for example, cited Obamacare as its reason for nixing spousal coverage. And while a Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 49 percent of the U.S. population now receives employer-sponsored coverage, more companies are debating whether they will continue to be in the business of providing such benefits at all. . . .

Whether the quality of care in the new market is comparable to private offerings remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: The cost of care in the new market doesn’t stack up. A single wage earner must make less than $20,000 to see his or her current premiums drop or stay the same under Obamacare, an independent review by National Journal found. That’s equivalent to approximately 34 percent of all single workers in the U.S. seeing any benefit in the new system. For those seeking family-of-four coverage under the ACA, about 43 percent will see cost savings. Families must earn less than or equal to $62,300, or they, too, will be looking at a bigger bill. …

“In 16 states that HHS studied, premiums were on average almost 20% lower than what the Congressional Budget Office projected,” Peters wrote in an e-mail.

Premiums may be lower than predicted, but they’re not competitive with what workers are now paying for employer-sponsored care. …

The truth is, Obamacare is doing what it was intended to do: make health care affordable for the nation’s lowest earners by spreading out the costs among taxpayers.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the ratio of part-time to full-time jobs has completely flipped this year from historical trends. Last year, six full-time jobs were created for every one part time job. This year, only one full-time job is being created for every four new part-time jobs.

The shift to part-time has accelerated over the past several months because of the “look back” provision in ObamaCare that sets the baseline this year for the number of full-time workers a company employs to determine their compliance with the employer pay-or-play mandate. …

According to a survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 71% of small businesses say the health care law makes it harder to grow. One-half of small businesses that must comply with the employer mandate say they will either cut hours of full-time employees or replace them with part-time workers. Twenty four percent say they will reduce hiring to stay under 50 employees.

For the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will be higher in the individual exchange than what they're currently paying for employer-sponsored benefits, according to a National Journal analysis of new coverage and cost data

Health law proponents have excused the rate hikes by saying the prices in the exchange won't apply to the millions receiving coverage from their employers. But that's only if employers continue to offer that coverage--something that's looking increasingly uncertain. Already, UPS, for example, cited Obamacare as its reason for nixing spousal coverage. And while a Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 49 percent of the U.S. population now receives employer-sponsored coverage, more companies are debating whether they will continue to be in the business of providing such benefits at all.

According to a 2007 study, about 59% of employers at small firms (3-199 workers) in the US provide employee health insurance. The percentage of small firms offering coverage has been dropping steadily since 1999. The study notes that cost remains the main reason cited by small firms who do not offer health benefits.[63] Small firms that are new are less likely to offer coverage than ones that have been in existence for a number of years. For example, using 2005 data for firms with fewer than 10 employees, 43% of those that had been in existence at least 20 years offered coverage, but only 24% of those that had been in existence less than 5 years did. The volatility of offer rates from year to year also appears to be higher for newer small businesses.[64]

Costs for employer-paid health insurance are rising rapidly: since 2001, premiums for family coverage have increased 78%, while wages have risen 19% and inflation has risen 17%, according to a 2007 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.[

The nation's second-quarter gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic activity -- grew at a 2.5% annualized pace, according to a revised estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's up from a previous estimate of 1.7% and better than what economists were expecting

rickyp wrote:

For the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will be higher in the individual exchange than what they're currently paying for employer-sponsored benefits, according to a National Journal analysis of new coverage and cost data

Nothing has changed...
People buying individual coverage now pay much more than companies buying insurance for their employees on a per person basis ....
Are people likely to want to leave their corporate benefits in order to use the exchanges?? maybe, if they need to transfer jobs and can't get coverage at their new place of employment. Prior to the exchanges ...and ACA that wasn't an genuine alternative if there was a pre-existing condition...

The question is, are the exchanges an improvement for people who currently buy individual insurance or who can't get insurance at all.
Thats a big yes.

Health law proponents have excused the rate hikes by saying the prices in the exchange won't apply to the millions receiving coverage from their employers. But that's only if employers continue to offer that coverage--something that's looking increasingly uncertain. Already, UPS, for example, cited Obamacare as its reason for nixing spousal coverage. And while a Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 49 percent of the U.S. population now receives employer-sponsored coverage, more companies are debating whether they will continue to be in the business of providing such benefits at all.

But this was going on for some time,with small companies ... Which has been one of the problems that the ACA sought to address ...

Its all just noise from barking dogs and offers no alternative solution...

Meanwhile, if the economy was going to take a hit from the ACA ... the evidence is opposite.

The nation's second-quarter gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic activity -- grew at a 2.5% annualized pace, according to a revised estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's up from a previous estimate of 1.7% and better than what economists were expecting

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/29/investi ... index.html

freeman3 wrote:I was reading about the August 16 post where DF complains that guardians may be excluded from being caregivers for the disabled. That is amusing. That has got to be the worst social welfare program out there. Paying untrained family members to take care of family members who have disabilities is not a smart use of taxpayer dollars.

How can these caregivers be monitored to make sure they are actually providing the care?

And who is assessing that the family member cannot take care of themselves?

I know there are people out there who are struggling out there to take care of family members and there was good intent behind the program, but this program is full of potential for abuse. $1,400 a month is about what a minimum wage worker gets for hard work and here we have no way of knowing that the work is being done.