Good news for us re: Obamacare/ACA

[ZRod]

Don't you mean SO, SO WHITE AS THE WHITEST SNOW?

[BigRedBuster]

Yeah, they're indistinguishable, except Sasse is by far the biggest douche and says more stuff that makes you scratch your head than the others. So whatever. I just don't want this moron senator getting our state roasted on the Daily Show for some idiotic thing that he says at some convention somewhere. Which seems likely.

 

It's always hard to tell who is truly Tea Party and who is merely a Poser Tea Partier during the primaries. Primaries force GOP candidates to the full retard end of the crazy spectrum, because apparently conservative voters don't understand shades of gray. It's either black, white, or SO, SO BLACK AS THE BLACKEST NIGHT. These guys will do whatever it takes to win the primary because they know they're guaranteed the general election as well in this state

Racist

[tschu]

Ben Sasse and Pete Ricketts won.

 

The universe is trolling me.

[tschu]

Yeah, they're indistinguishable, except Sasse is by far the biggest douche and says more stuff that makes you scratch your head than the others. So whatever. I just don't want this moron senator getting our state roasted on the Daily Show for some idiotic thing that he says at some convention somewhere. Which seems likely.

 

Well sunnovabitch, that didn't take long!

 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/14/3437587/nebraska-sasse-absolute-religious-liberty/

[ZRod]

So sharia law is cool with him then?

[BigRedBuster]

 

And every other employee in the health insurance industry.

 

Jobs will be shifted, not lost to oblivion. Guess what, in single-payer there will still need to be a ton of people dealing with medical billing and "claims." It'll just be specifically for providers and for the government, not for the BS insurance middleman.

 

But not nearly as many people. Let's say you have 10 health insurance companies now. Those 10 companies all have people who basically do the same thing. Now, if you narrow that down to one payer, some of those employees will shift over to the government ran health system but not nearly all. You also have to look at all the employees in doctor's offices and hospitals that now have to deal with all the paper work for health insurance companies. It has been well stated that a major part of the cost of health care in the US is in these employees. If we switch to a single payer plan, the idea is that many of these people would not be needed.

 

Look at it this way, if going to a single payer plan would keep the same number of employees within the system, there wouldn't be much savings. You can sit and wring your hands about insurance company CEO pay and the insurance company profit, but they aren't anywhere close to the cost of all those employees within the current system. Getting rid of many of those is where the real savings is.

[Whistlebritches]

 

 

And every other employee in the health insurance industry.

 

Jobs will be shifted, not lost to oblivion. Guess what, in single-payer there will still need to be a ton of people dealing with medical billing and "claims." It'll just be specifically for providers and for the government, not for the BS insurance middleman.

 

But not nearly as many people. Let's say you have 10 health insurance companies now. Those 10 companies all have people who basically do the same thing. Now, if you narrow that down to one payer, some of those employees will shift over to the government ran health system but not nearly all. You also have to look at all the employees in doctor's offices and hospitals that now have to deal with all the paper work for health insurance companies. It has been well stated that a major part of the cost of health care in the US is in these employees. If we switch to a single payer plan, the idea is that many of these people would not be needed.

 

Look at it this way, if going to a single payer plan would keep the same number of employees within the system, there wouldn't be much savings. You can sit and wring your hands about insurance company CEO pay and the insurance company profit, but they aren't anywhere close to the cost of all those employees within the current system. Getting rid of many of those is where the real savings is.

 

 

I don't understand this line of thinking. If you have to process 10 million patients worth of paperwork it should be roughly the same amount of work if it's 10 million at one location or 1 million across ten locations.

 

The real loss would be in automation of these tasks though from my experience of automation it's just a shifting of jobs.

[tschu]

 

 

And every other employee in the health insurance industry.

 

Jobs will be shifted, not lost to oblivion. Guess what, in single-payer there will still need to be a ton of people dealing with medical billing and "claims." It'll just be specifically for providers and for the government, not for the BS insurance middleman.

 

But not nearly as many people. Let's say you have 10 health insurance companies now. Those 10 companies all have people who basically do the same thing. Now, if you narrow that down to one payer, some of those employees will shift over to the government ran health system but not nearly all. You also have to look at all the employees in doctor's offices and hospitals that now have to deal with all the paper work for health insurance companies. It has been well stated that a major part of the cost of health care in the US is in these employees. If we switch to a single payer plan, the idea is that many of these people would not be needed.

 

Look at it this way, if going to a single payer plan would keep the same number of employees within the system, there wouldn't be much savings. You can sit and wring your hands about insurance company CEO pay and the insurance company profit, but they aren't anywhere close to the cost of all those employees within the current system. Getting rid of many of those is where the real savings is.

 

 

No.

 

CEO and executive salary combined can be as much as 200 times that of your average low-salary worker, so it's significant. It's not that significant, but it helps.

 

Billing/claims jobs will be shifted, with no real loss. The only people who will "lose" will be the insurance underwriters - and these people will have no problem shifting to other work, they are generally smart, good at math, and good at understanding business dynamics.

[Mavric]

The government may be paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the situation.

The problem means that potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve. They are part of a large group of Americans who listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly — either too low or too high — from those on file with the Internal Revenue Service, documents show.

The government has identified these discrepancies but is stuck at the moment. Under federal rules, consumers are notified if there is a problem with their application and asked to upload or mail in pay stubs or other proof of their income. Only a fraction have done so, according to the documents. And, even when they have, the federal computer system at the heart of the insurance marketplace cannot match this proof with the application because that capability has yet to be built, according to the three individuals.

Washington Post

[BigRedBuster]

 

 

 

And every other employee in the health insurance industry.

 

Jobs will be shifted, not lost to oblivion. Guess what, in single-payer there will still need to be a ton of people dealing with medical billing and "claims." It'll just be specifically for providers and for the government, not for the BS insurance middleman.

 

But not nearly as many people. Let's say you have 10 health insurance companies now. Those 10 companies all have people who basically do the same thing. Now, if you narrow that down to one payer, some of those employees will shift over to the government ran health system but not nearly all. You also have to look at all the employees in doctor's offices and hospitals that now have to deal with all the paper work for health insurance companies. It has been well stated that a major part of the cost of health care in the US is in these employees. If we switch to a single payer plan, the idea is that many of these people would not be needed.

 

Look at it this way, if going to a single payer plan would keep the same number of employees within the system, there wouldn't be much savings. You can sit and wring your hands about insurance company CEO pay and the insurance company profit, but they aren't anywhere close to the cost of all those employees within the current system. Getting rid of many of those is where the real savings is.

 

 

No.

 

CEO and executive salary combined can be as much as 200 times that of your average low-salary worker, so it's significant. It's not that significant, but it helps.

 

Billing/claims jobs will be shifted, with no real loss. The only people who will "lose" will be the insurance underwriters - and these people will have no problem shifting to other work, they are generally smart, good at math, and good at understanding business dynamics.

 

 

 

So...let me get this straight. I read over and over again that a large part of why the health care system is so expensive is because all these doctors need to have large staff to process all the different paperwork to all these different insurance companies. I have read where this is the main reason for doctor visits being so expensive. Not because of the actual treatment but for the processing of all the paperwork for insurance companies.

 

Sooo......we go to a single payer plan and those people still are needed in the system?

 

Here is a nice interview of someone who I think knows what they are talking about.

 

LINK

[carlfense]

 

America's uninsured rate appears to have leveled off at 13.4 percent since Obamacare's open enrollment ended, new Gallup data showed Thursday.

 

The uninsured rate for the last quarter of 2013 was 17.1 percent. That means there's been a 22 percent drop over the last five months in people who lack health insurance coverage.

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5782320/the-uninsured-rate-has-plummeted-since-obamacare-kicked-in

[knapplc]

I don't like that "22% drop." That seems misleading to me. It's a 3.7% drop (17.1-13.4).

 

 

Regardless, that's millions of Americans either with insurance or on their way. That's good.

[carlfense]

I don't like that "22% drop." That seems misleading to me. It's a 3.7% drop (17.1-13.4).

Isn't the way that they phrased it completely accurate? (again . . . math. ugh.)

[knapplc]

It's not inaccurate. They could have chosen to describe that number in several ways. I'm certain that sounded better to whomever was describing it than how I described it.

[Mavric]

In its latest report on the law, the Congressional Budget Office said it is no longer possible to assess the overall fiscal impact of the law. That conclusion came as a surprise to some fiscal experts in Washington and is drawing concern. And without a clear picture of the law’s overall financing, it could make it politically easier to continue delaying pieces of it, including revenue raisers, because any resulting cost increases might be hidden.

Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s free market-oriented Mercatus Center, calls the CBO’s inability to estimate the net effect of the law “a real problem.”

“The ACA’s financing provisions were assumed to be effective so as to get a favorable score out of CBO upon enactment, but no one is keeping track of whether they’re being enforced,” says Blahous, a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare. “We receive occasional updates on the gross costs of the law, but none on whether the previously projected savings provisions are producing what was originally projected.”

As a result, Blahous says, “there’s no barrier to continually rolling back the financing mechanisms without the effect on the ACA’s finances ever being fully disclosed.”

When Congress passed the health care law in 2010, the CBO estimated it would reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion over a decade, compared to the agency’s current-law baseline projection of spending, revenue and the deficit. That meant the health care law would, in effect, pay for itself and deliver an additional fiscal bonus.

The CBO based its estimate on the assumption that the law, which included hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Medicare cuts and tax increases to pay for health care subsidies, would be implemented as written. Now, after a chaotic start and a series of delays or adjustments in various provisions of the act, including an employer mandate that was expected to bring in new tax revenue, it’s unclear to what extent those promised savings are being realized.

 

Link