Topic: . - page 21. (Read 46178 times)

I'm not sure. I think the website is just a central place to compare plans, plans you could also get directly from the insurance company. Once the site was working it was easy to compare plans. But all I really care about is that next year I have an extra $2.5K to spend.

I am curious, what does this mean exactly?  Is it a way for the US government to sort of take credit for you finding a cheaper plan?  Could you have done the same thing by just calling and checking several insurance companies?

UPDATE:

well I finally got around to checking prices at the Obama care website. I did find a better plan for less money, about $200/month better. I'm buying it tonight. So even though the website exploded on the launchpad, it did save me a lot of money.

I don't even see any reason to label recent events here as an "effort to fix the insurance system".

A power grab to take over one sixth of the nations economy is likely best viewed as well, just a power grab to take over one sixth of the nations economy.

I sympathise that efforts to fix the insurance system have made it even worse for you and yours.

No, it doesn't bother me that some people get similar treatment for less.  Most markets vary with region or other factors.  People in Argentina get well made beef steak for about a fifth what I pay.  I get petrol for about 20% less than people in California pay.  So what?  What bothers me is that some people get special treatment as some kind of class of people to be favored by government largesse.  My premiums didn't go up because the real costs of my plan went up, or even because of the number of children in my care; my premiums went up so much because the regulatory overhead increased so dramaticly.  I don't benefit from Obamacare, and I don't know anyone who would.  My nephew and his family couldn't afford insurance before Obamacare, and they can't afford it now' and yet my nephew's newborn son was in Childrens' Hospital intensive care for weeks, and was recovering from his second surgery when he died at four months old.  Even the funeral service was paid for by others.  The medical bills & funeral costs were funded by several charities that exist for the benefit of young, struggling families like my nephew's.  Obamacare didn't make any difference to them whatsoever.  It didn't make any difference for my mother-in-law's triple bypass heart surgery either; likewise paid for by charities that exist to support people like my mother-in-law.  Government had nothing to do with it, insurance had nothing to do with it, and taxpayer funds had nothing to do with it.  Hell, her heart doctor did the surgery for free, and the primary charity was his own creation.  I would suspect that he gets quite the tax break for doing such things, and that the hospital does as well.  More power to them all.

So you are happy with your insurance based model.  The idea that other people get the same treatment for less doesn't bother you in the least.  

That means you are a typical American.  And as I said, as long as you guys are happy to pay more, well, more power to you.  

That's just nonsense.


Value is always subjective.  What is 'overpay' is also relative.

That's comparing apples to oranges, and you know it.  It matters a great deal what the perspecives of the researchers are towards what 'efficient' means in the context of health care.

I would love too, but the politicos keep wanting to get more into my personal business.


We all had access to health care before.  Again, health care access is something different than heath care insurance.  Only now, my own health care insurance plan nearly tripled in premium costs from 2013 to 2014 to cover myself, my wife and five children.  And no, I didn't have to go onto any exchange to get it, it's exactly the same as it was before, only more expensive.

Obamacare is an extension of the existing insurance based system and since Americans seem to be happy to overpay, its your right to do so.  Comparative surveys show that the single payer systems are more efficient than what you have but that doesn't mean single payer is the best possible basis for a system.  Perhaps at some point when the waste of money bothers enough American voters, you might make something better.  Meanwhile, at least all of you have access to health care now.

Verily, however heath care is distinct from health insurance.  The health care system in the United States is, undeniablely, first rate.  The great debate is not about quality of care, or even access to said care, but who gets to pay for that care.  I don't contest that the way this was/is done in (generally) in the United States prior to Obamacare was unjust, unfair and generally 'un-American'; but that doesn't mean that greater socialism (in a society that prizes individual responsibility and merit) is a path to improvement.  Quite the contrary, I would argue that most of that afore mentioned un-American distribution of heath care funding was largely due to the decades of government intrusion into the health care market since WWII.  If you think that single-payer style heath insurance, as can be found in many other former colonies of the British Empire, is somehow more eifficient, more "fair" or more advanced; you are free to believe such things, and free to move there if it matters that much to you.  But the facts don't support your position.

Surely a decent health system is infrastructure? 

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/obamacare-rules-threaten-torch-volunteer-fire-departments


Count volunteer fire deparments among the Obamacare-victimized.

Rules governing the health-care reform law championed by President Obama could inadvertently suck in volunteer firefighting companies, meaning the departments or the towns that support them might be forced to offer health insurance coverage or pay a penalty if they don't.

According to Firehouse.com, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) has asked the Internal Revenue Service, which has partial oversight of the law, to clarify if current IRS treatment of volunteer firefighters as employees means they fall under Obamacare rules.

Though the IAFC has been working on the issue with the IRS and White House for months, the question is largely flying under the radar.

"I thought the kinks were worked out of Obamacare at the first of the month," Central Florida volunteer firefighter Carl Fabrizi told Sunshine State News Friday. "Man, oh, man, this could potentially destroy some real good companies in Florida."

Republican Congressman Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania is pushing to get clarification from the IRS. "In Pennsylvania, 97 percent of fire departments are fully or mostly volunteer firefighters," Barletta told Firehouse.com. "It's the fourth highest amount in the country."

Spokesmen for the IRS didn't return Firehouse.com's phone call, nor did they return SSN's.

Firehouse.com claims the IAFC's interpretation of the situation goes like this:

Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees (full-time employees are those who work more than 30 hours a week) to offer health insurance. Companies with fewer than 50 don't have to offer insurance. Employers who don't offer health insurance have to pay fines.

Sounds simple, but the requirement is complicated by differing interpretations about the status of volunteer firefighters within the federal government. Apparently the Department of Labor classifies most volunteers as non-employees, but the IRS considers all volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel to be employees of their departments.

On its website, the IAFC says, "If the IRS classifies volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel as employees in their final rule, fire departments may be unintentionally forced to comply with requirements that could force them to curtail their emergency response activities or close entirely."

Barletta fears the IRS will count volunteer hose companies as one department in towns with more than one hose company, or as part of a town's workforce. Definitions like that could push the total numbers beyond the 50-employee threshold and require offering coverage that towns or hose companies can't afford, he said. The IRS must also define what sort of volunteer duty counts toward the 30-hour-a-week limit.

Barletta wrote a letter urging the IRS to write a rule that labels volunteer firefighters as non-employees.

"There needs to be clarification because this could be serious," he said. "That's all we're looking at and that we haven't heard anything concerns me."

Bruce Moeller, head of safety and emergency services for Pinellas County, is also chairman of a task force for the fire chiefs group. Moeller said the problem cropped up because the IRS already considers volunteers as employees and requires all departments to issue W-2 forms for any sort of compensation for volunteers. He's sure Congress did not intend to require volunteer fire departments to offer health insurance when it passed the health law.

"Welcome to federal regulations," he said. "It's one of those quirks."

Taxes are supposed to be for infrastructure and defense, not individual needs.  Do you have a right to food?  Would food insurance, subsidized by your taxes, be a good idea?

If you pay taxes, why wouldn't you have a right to healthcare?

I don't know, since the US has done this pretty much consistly for 100 years, but we don't have a 'right' to healthcare.

lol what sort of fucked up country doesn't provide healthcare for the poor and sick?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5amu536rZWY

http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/08/msnbc-host-equates-obamacare-with-n-word/

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry suggested the term “Obamacare” and the N-word are interchangeable, claiming both were “conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed to . . . render [a black man] inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.”

HARRIS-PERRY: “I want to talk today about a controversial word. It’s a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.

“President Obama has been labelled with this word by his opponents, and at first he rose above it, hoping that if he could just make a cause for what he’d achieved, his opponents would fail in making their label stick. But no matter how many successes that he had as president, he realized there were still many people for whom he’d never be anything more than that one disparaging word — a belief he knew was held not just by his political opponents, but also by a significant portion of the American electorate.

“And so he decided if you can’t beat them, you’ve got to join them. So he embraced the word and made it his own, sending his opposition a message they weren’t expecting: ‘If that’s what you want me to be, I’ll be that.’

“Y’all know the word that I’m talking about. Obamacare! That’s right! I said it and I’m not ashamed, and neither is President Obama!”

--------------------------------------------

This is what the American Pravda looks like my dear comrades 
 

Well, duh....

WHO, exactly, can afford to pay these new premiums that are double what they were before?

I don't personally know of many people with that kind of disposable income.

And yes, they are trying to use the IRS as the new jack booted enforcement threat and intimidation thugs.

The only question is exactly how people will react to this - if they realize soon enough that it is actually happening.

...and we are seeing right here exactly how very, very different the actions of obama et. al. are from bush, aren't we.  Ah, how nice were the good old days, when libertarians could claim that one mainstream politician was exactly the same as the other whichever party they hid in....

i bet CNN will have a panel of "political strategists" and they'll try to instigate a fight or imply that there's some heat between clinton and obama.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/cancer-patient-who-spoke-out-against-obamacare-now-being-audited/


Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to ObamaCare and couldn’t pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the ObamaCare fine, going without health insurance and “letting nature take its course.”

He went on FOX News where his story was picked up by C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker who helped him keep his insurance.

Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited back to 2003.

That’s a rather strange coincidence.