Health insurance numbers creep up on Obamacare exchanges
Maggie Fox NBC News

1 hour ago
About 137,000 people managed to buy health insurance on HealthCare.gov in October and November, HHS says
Jon Elswick / AP
About 137,000 people managed to buy health insurance on HealthCare.gov in October and November, HHS says
About 365,000 people have managed to get health insurance on the new state and federal websites so far, federal officials announced Wednesday. The numbers are just a trickle compared to what officials had forecast and hoped for, but show that the balky federal website is better than it was at rollout on Oct. 1.

In the first two months the exchanges were open, 137,204 people signed up for health insurance on the federal exchange, being operated for 36 states, while 227,478 have signed up on the 15 state-run exchanges, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the exchanges, said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-insurance-numbers-creep-obamacare-exchanges-2D11724261
The numbers do not include people who got signed up in December.

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Obama’s Health Care Promise Named “Lie of the Year”
By Rob Garver
4 hours ago

He apologized on network television, and his aides have been doing damage control for weeks, but President Obama’s repeated assertion that under his signature health care law, “you can keep your health plan” continues to haunt him.

This week, the political fact-checking website PolitiFact named the president’s statement, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the organization’s “Lie of the Year.”

Related: Top Tier Hospitals Excluded from Obamacare

PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan wrote, “Boiling down the complicated health care law to a sound bite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief.  Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-health-care-promise-named-203400459.html

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The rate of participation in the online insurance marketplaces was much higher in Democratic
leaning states that are running their own online exchanges and have expanded Medicaid
compared to Republican controlled states that have refused both to run their own exchanges or
accept additional Medicaid funds.

Americans who live in Republican states, especially the working poor,  will be forced to go with out
health care due to Republican hatred  of President Obama.  The one thing that these Republicans
fear most, is a country that will try ObamaCare and like it, after they spent the last 5 years
fighting against their constituents having any health care plan

About that Medicaid expansion:

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. http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....tended-Consequences#

if you have value you must decide where to put that value....

Quoted from Box A Rox

After 5 years of GOP obstructionism, a failed opening month of ObamaCare, unemployment near 7%,
Obama's falling poll numbers, and the constant drone of racist anti Obama rhetoric...
The country still blames G Worst Bush for our economic mess.  


Washington Post Poll
Q: Who do you think is more responsible for the country's current economic problems
- (Barack Obama) or (George W. Bush)?


Barack Obama  38%
George W. Bush  50%
Both equally 7%
Neither 4%
No opinion 1%

Only Boxy could cherry pick the one thing he thinks is 'good' in a epically disastrous poll for Obama and the Democrats in general.

Obama officially now has 'sub-Bush' numbers with only Nixon having a lower approval rating at this time of his presidency.

I'm sure Boxy just forgot to provide the link to the entire poll....I'm sure he'll find a way to blame Bush or the GOP for his forgetfulness.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....13b17dac97_page.html

I was surprised by the poll.  Americans have short memories, yet they still put our economic
problems where they belong.
G Worst Bush!

So, Obama's reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act?

Quoted from senders

Erm...Ok?

Don't know what a clip from a terrible movie has to do with Obama and the Dems.

But hey, at least it isn't a Serenity clip

Most of senders posts are from outer space!

the time keeper is a regulator of your worth....

you two live in a paper bag....

Obamacare Enrollment Surges In California As 50,000 Sign Up In 3 Days

More than 53,500 people enrolled in Covered California in the last three days, topping the
total number of enrollments in October by nearly 60 percent.