Good news for us re: Obamacare/ACA

[topekahusker]

Employer provision delayed until 2015

 

Delay the disaster a year until after the mid-term elections. Brilliant!

[Mavric]

Employer provision delayed until 2015

I guess somebody finally read the damned thing.

Apparently Nancy Pelosi doesn't keep up on her reading:

 

“The point is, is that the mandate was not delayed. Certain reporting by businesses that could be perceived as onerous, that reporting requirement was delayed, and partially to review how it would work and how it could be better. It was not a delay of the mandate for the businesses, and there shouldn’t be a delay of the mandate for individuals.”

 

— House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), news conference, July 11, 2013

 

<snip>

 

The Obama administration announced the change last week in an unusual way — with a blog post on the Treasury Department Web site with a title designed to not give away the news: “Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.”

 

The blog post, under the name of Assistant Secretary Mark J. Mazur, announced that the administration, for one year, was delaying employer reporting requirements in order to simplify them and to give employers time to upgrade their systems. So that’s what Pelosi is referring to. But near the end of the post, Mazur adds this:

 

We recognize that this transition relief will make it impractical to determine which employers owe shared responsibility payments (under section 4980H) for 2014. Accordingly, we are extending this transition relief to the employer shared responsibility payments. These payments will not apply for 2014. Any employer shared responsibility payments will not apply until 2015.

 

Washington Post

[topekahusker]

How are the $10 billion in projected taxes for 2014 that were expected from non-conforming employers going to be recovered? This was part of the scoring of the 'savings' by the government.

[JJ Husker]

How are the $10 billion in projected taxes for 2014 that were expected from non-conforming employers going to be recovered? This was part of the scoring of the 'savings' by the government.

 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. None of the arguments previously made to help justify this deal matter now that it has been passed. Silly wabbit, Tricks are for the folks in DC who know so much more than us.

[carlfense]

How are the $10 billion in projected taxes for 2014 that were expected from non-conforming employers going to be recovered? This was part of the scoring of the 'savings' by the government.

Tax increases don't increase revenue, remember? Tax cuts spur such incredible growth that they pay for themselves.

 

Or does that only apply in certain circumstances?

[carlfense]

More good news.

Roni Caryn Rabin and Reed Abelson have an important piece in the New York Times on how Obamacare implementation is going to cause unsubsidized premiums on the individual health insurance market in New York State to fall by about 50 percent. With subsidies in place for many people, that's going to be a huge windfall to the state's residents. The haters are out in force already on Twitter to observe that this is happening due to special state-specific features of New York that won't impact people elsewhere. That's true, but this is a big deal anyway.

 

The first reason is that New York is a really big state. Its almost 20 million residents account for over 6 percent of the American population. In terms of the number of people impacted, a huge improvement in the health insurance market in New York is a bigger deal than a huge improvement in New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, D.C., Vermont, and Wyoming combined. So it's true that if you live outside New York state this is not good news for you, personally. But if you're capable of some human empathy, then it's good news for an awful lot of people and you might care about that.

http://www.slate.com...it_matters.html

[Ziggy]

More good news.

Roni Caryn Rabin and Reed Abelson have an important piece in the New York Times on how Obamacare implementation is going to cause unsubsidized premiums on the individual health insurance market in New York State to fall by about 50 percent. With subsidies in place for many people, that's going to be a huge windfall to the state's residents. The haters are out in force already on Twitter to observe that this is happening due to special state-specific features of New York that won't impact people elsewhere. That's true, but this is a big deal anyway.

 

The first reason is that New York is a really big state. Its almost 20 million residents account for over 6 percent of the American population. In terms of the number of people impacted, a huge improvement in the health insurance market in New York is a bigger deal than a huge improvement in New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, D.C., Vermont, and Wyoming combined. So it's true that if you live outside New York state this is not good news for you, personally. But if you're capable of some human empathy, then it's good news for an awful lot of people and you might care about that.

http://www.slate.com...it_matters.html

 

Only 17,000 New Yorkers currently buy insurance individually. 2.6 million are uninsured. I think a lot of the smaller parts of the bill are defiantly a good thing. My biggest problem is the mandate requiring people have insurance. I never understood why people could shop for insurance regardless of what state they lived in, or have competition between insurance companies. But I am sitting on the fence on most of the bill to see if the premium reductions are not just short term to get lots of people into the plans, and then prices go back up again. I guess I don't trust the insurance companies very much, or most big business either.

[carlfense]

My biggest problem is the mandate requiring people have insurance.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the premiums are falling in New York.

A lot of it seems to trace back to a law passed in 1993, which required insurance plans to accept all applicants, regardless of how sick or healthy they were. That law did not, however, require everyone to sign up, as the Affordable Care Act does.

 

New York has, for 20 years now, been a long-running experiment in what happens to universal coverage without an individual mandate. It’s the type of law the country would have if House Republicans succeeded in delaying the individual mandate, as they will vote to do this afternoon. The result: a small insurance market with very high insurance premiums.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/17/heres-why-health-insurance-premiums-are-tumbling-in-new-york/

[sd'sker]

My biggest problem is the mandate requiring people have insurance.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the premiums are falling in New York.

A lot of it seems to trace back to a law passed in 1993, which required insurance plans to accept all applicants, regardless of how sick or healthy they were. That law did not, however, require everyone to sign up, as the Affordable Care Act does.

 

New York has, for 20 years now, been a long-running experiment in what happens to universal coverage without an individual mandate. It’s the type of law the country would have if House Republicans succeeded in delaying the individual mandate, as they will vote to do this afternoon. The result: a small insurance market with very high insurance premiums.

http://www.washingto...ng-in-new-york/

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

[carlfense]

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

Yep.

[Ziggy]

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

Yep.

 

While I disagree with that statement, I am complete agreement with you about many of the good things that came out of the bill. I actually am interested to see why you think it is so unfeasible for a law to be passed to pass every good part of the "obamacare" without the mandate. Maybe I am just seeing it from the wrong angle.

[Ziggy]

My biggest problem is the mandate requiring people have insurance.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the premiums are falling in New York.

A lot of it seems to trace back to a law passed in 1993, which required insurance plans to accept all applicants, regardless of how sick or healthy they were. That law did not, however, require everyone to sign up, as the Affordable Care Act does.

 

New York has, for 20 years now, been a long-running experiment in what happens to universal coverage without an individual mandate. It’s the type of law the country would have if House Republicans succeeded in delaying the individual mandate, as they will vote to do this afternoon. The result: a small insurance market with very high insurance premiums.

http://www.washingto...ng-in-new-york/

 

Your original article point to another part of the bill that is producing the possible decline in prices.

 

Supporters of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, credited the drop in rates to the online purchasing exchanges the law created, which they say are spurring competition among insurers that are anticipating an influx of new customers. The law requires that an exchange be started in every state.

[StPaulHusker]

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

Yep.

 

While I disagree with that statement, I am complete agreement with you about many of the good things that came out of the bill. I actually am interested to see why you think it is so unfeasible for a law to be passed to pass every good part of the "obamacare" without the mandate. Maybe I am just seeing it from the wrong angle.

Because there is no line item veto any longer. So you have to take the good with the bad

[sd'sker]

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

Yep.

 

While I disagree with that statement, I am complete agreement with you about many of the good things that came out of the bill. I actually am interested to see why you think it is so unfeasible for a law to be passed to pass every good part of the "obamacare" without the mandate. Maybe I am just seeing it from the wrong angle.

because, without the mandate there is no reason for healthy people to join the pool. then you have a pool of only unhealthy people and the insurance company will either fail to be profitable or have outrageous premiums.

[Ziggy]

it seems pretty simple. you cannot have all the good stuff in obamacare (no more preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, etc.) that everyone likes without a mandate. it is just unfeasible.

Yep.

 

While I disagree with that statement, I am complete agreement with you about many of the good things that came out of the bill. I actually am interested to see why you think it is so unfeasible for a law to be passed to pass every good part of the "obamacare" without the mandate. Maybe I am just seeing it from the wrong angle.

because, without the mandate there is no reason for healthy people to join the pool. then you have a pool of only unhealthy people and the insurance company will either fail to be profitable or have outrageous premiums.

 

I would counter and say that many healthy people have insurance already, and more would if insurance companies had to fight each other for every person who wants coverage. Most people I know who want coverage but don't have it are because the costs are so high. If companies have to fight for participants, like in the exchanges, they have to offer better pricing.