Conservatives are having fun with stories like the following:
Ian Hodge, 62, is one of nearly 13,000 central and eastern Pennsylvanians who will soon need to shop for health insurance because Highmark Inc. is discontinuing their coverage at the end of the year.
Highmark has announced it is withdrawing five of its insurance plans that don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, key parts of which take effect Jan. 1.
The new regulations, for instance, prohibit insurers from denying coverage to applicants who have pre-existing health problems….
Highmark’s Classic Blue is a guaranteed-issue plan, meaning the Hodges and other customers were not required to inform Highmark of their health status to get coverage. But applicants couldn’t count on coverage for any pre-existing condition for their first 12 months under the plan….
Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning Jan. 1, all insurers must issue policies regardless of an applicant’s health history.
(updated a math error)
WereBear
Conservatives love half-truths. They love whole lies even more!
kindness
Stop saving money for citizens or they will show you and end up liking Obamacare.
Isn’t that why Republicans hate it?
RosiesDad
Richard:
Thank you for taking the time to put great information on these pages. What comes through the general media is, as you know, not particularly informative and does more to misinform and stoke panic than anything else.
I live in PA where the market is dominated by relatively few players–the Blues, Aetna, United Healthcare–and as a small business owner, I have seen our premiums increase by double digits on average over the past 15+ years. What will come as a result of the implementation of the ACA cannot possibly be any worse than what we have had since the mid 90’s and I look forward to the options that will open up once the small business exchanges go online. This past year, Aetna’s premiums increased by over 20%, necessitating a switch to a higher copay/higher deductible plan. It is still probably gold level coverage by the standards of the ACA but I viewed it as Aetna’s sticking it to us one last time before the jig is up.
Mezz (fpa Michael2)
It’s really tragic, and I suppose an indictment, that it takes a blogger posting on a (no offense, Cole) small corner of the universe to actually generate useful information. Too bad reporters and media members in general are either too lazy, too stupid, or too venal to do anything helpful or useful like this. The ease which the misinformation of the #TCOT bullsh** trickles into the public’s consciousness I see when I talk to my folks and they voice these fears or talking points.
It’s so frustrating! Anyway, excellent post.
OzarkHillbilly
Overheard at my Doctors office this past Friday:
“I hope this Obamacare helps me to get insurance.”
Spoken by a 55+ man with a pre-existing condition (I overheard enuf to determine that) in the heart of Red Country.
Once the ACA is fully implemented, there will be no going back. Hence the air of desperation in Ted Cruz’s voice.
dmsilev
@OzarkHillbilly:
This. Conservatives have known this for a long time; Bill Kristol wrote a memo along those lines back in the nineties to convince the GOP to torpedo the Clinton health-care initiative. Fuck, Reagan recorded an anti-Medicare screed back in the late Sixties trying to scuttle _that_.
aimai
And yet people over at Kos, who actually support the aCA, are still shrieking that because there is going to be a change in plans in their state (in this case NH) that Obama lied because they are being forced to change plans/doctors. Thank you for explaining the nature of some of the changes people are seeing. They see it as “Obamacare won’t pay for the network that my doctor was in formerly” but its more complex than that since networks are only part of the issue–although a big part of the cost/coverage issue is hidden inside the network issue.
raven
Littlr dip shit George Will thinks it will just fail if they let it take effect.
Soonergrunt
Another great post, Richard. Thanks!
I don’t need the health care exchange because I work for the federal government and I have VA disability and great insurance, but I can’t find anything about the healthcare exchange in Oklahoma. I know that our state is trying desperately to not have one, even after the Governor’s commission recommended that she enact one. Mary Fallin is basically Jim Inhofe in a skirt, so I don’t expect the state to do anything but the bare minimum, the whole time complaining about federal intrusion.
@aimai: I am so done with those idiots over there.
NonyNony
@dmsilev:
And of course the GOP forgot lesson number one: Bill Kristol is always wrong!
What they needed to do was not avoid the issue but get in front of it. If W had pushed for an ACA-like structure that was more sympathetic to the health insurance industry the Republicans would have owned this part of the debate. They could have spun it entirely as “this is the free market solution to the problem”. It probably would have sucked – look at what they did with Medicare Part D – but it likely could have been better enough than the status quo for them to gain goodwill for “trying” to do something. And then the Democrats wouldn’t basically own the whole “party who actually understands that regular people have problems and at least pays some attention to those problems” mantle.
But no – instead they follow Bill Kristol’s advice which is basically “When in doubt, ask yourself: What Would Doctor Doom Do?” and go into mustache twirling cartoon-villainy mode.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: George Will is an idiot. An intelligent idiot, but still an idiot.
PaulW
So, he’s being dumped from a bad policy… and he’s got options before him with better policies that are at roughly the same cost of the insurance policy he’s being dumped from?
gogol's wife
Could somebody please replace Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, the Meet the Press guy whose name I can’t remember, oh yeah David Gregory, and the entire staff of Politico with Mr. Mayhew? Please?
aimai
@Soonergrunt: Yeah, I agree. I only read a few diaries these days and never read down into the comments. I made the mistake of reading down a thread on emergency room care because I had my own emergency room horror story and stumbled on what is really standard issue “memememism” about the ACA.
Narcissus
These healthcare threads are super informative.
Suffern ACE
Y’all are misunderesrumating how much people like their bad insurance policies.
MikeJ
You used 400 words and 2500 characters to tell the truth. The lie can fit into a tweet.
WereBear
You are utterly correct.
‘Tis a sad sad sad day when we look back at W as the “smart” one.
Schlemizel
I think we have accidentally stumbled on another of the foundation principles of the modern GOP. All change is bad no matter what. The only change permitted is that undoing any change made in the last 70 years of progress (well, 35 years of progress followed by 35 years of devolution and pillage).
It really is an old persons disease, fear of change.
Baud
@raven:
Hate to defend George Will, but that a good argument for him to make right now to try and convince House Republicans to not blow up the government and country.
wvng
@MikeJ: Exactly right. And it will always take more space to debunk than assert.
Feudalism Now!
Between Kay and Richard I can always count on some information packed rational argument. Thank you.
The ACA involves change. Once the change occurs and becomes the new norm, there will be no scare tactic to return to pre-ACA extortion. In fact, it would be more change and people will be adverse to it. The last grains of sand are trickling out for the Wingnut issue de jeur.
raven
@Baud: Coburn is basically calling Cruz a liar. Jesus, now he’s lauding “wonderful government employees”!
Patrick
@RosiesDad:
It is not up to the general media to inform us. According to Chuck Todd, it is up to the White House and the Republicans to give us their ads/talking points. And, whoever does a better job, is the one we should trust (according to CT).
Baud
@raven:
I saw that Politifact recently called Cruz a liar for stating that Obama had exempted Congress from Obamacare.
Patrick
@aimai:
That website just goes to show that there are extremists in both parties. I am a Democrat but I agree with pretty much nothing they say over there. I am sure there are Republicans who say the same about the teabaggers.
fka AWS
I’m amazed that conservatives have figured out how a hashtag works.
Josie
Richard – Thanks for finding and writing about the details so clearly. Maybe you can explain something to me. My son, a 28 year old professional musician making less than $6000.00 per year in Texas, needs insurance. I looked at the calculator, and, if I understood it correctly, he does not qualify for a subsidy, since he does not make 100% of the poverty level income. I don’t understand the reasoning of this. Am I reading the rules incorrectly? Is this a glitch because Texas did not expand its Medicaid coverage?
Nedinwc
@RosiesDad: Here I was going to comment, and Rosie’s Dad took the words from my mouth nearly verbatim. I too run a small business in SE PA, and have been waiting for years for a solution like the ACA to come along. I wanted more of course, but I will be thrilled to have the regulated and subsidized options staring next month. Lancaster county is part of the Pennsyltucky we all know, I’m sure Mr. Ian Hodge wouldn’t believe you if you showed him that he would be better off, because he knows Obamacare is death itself, and nothing will change his mind.
RosiesDad
@Patrick: Chuck Todd can suck a bag of salted dicks.
I have come to the conclusion that Obama realized some time ago that he cannot win the messaging war in the current (pathetic) media environment and has given up trying because it is just a waste of his time. So he does what he is going to do and if he gets credit, great. If he gets criticized for being weak, so what? It isn’t going to affect his future electoral prospects and once he’s gone from office, his performance over 8 years will be appreciated or it won’t be. (I think history will view him much more kindly than public opinion does now.)
Linda Featheringill
@Josie:
That doesn’t seem right. Must be some confusion somewhere.
ETA: I have no idea who to go to in Texas to get some good information.
WereBear
Me too, but I put it down to high motivation:
Less than 140 characters just off the top of my head? Sign me up!
OzarkHillbilly
@Linda Featheringill:
I hear the local bartender is about as good a place to start as anyone else.
Chyron HR
@RosiesDad:
Pffft, you wish, Obot. I have in on good authority from many True Progressives that history will judge Obama to be a failure at best, especially compared to champions of peace and liberty like Franklin “We have nothing to fear but American citizens of the wrong race” Roosevelt and Lyndon “How many kids did you hug today” Johnson.
lol
@RosiesDad:
It’s why Obama has always spent so much time dealing with local media directly. People see a much different story in their local press (that they actually pay attention to) than on the Sunday morning talk shows and it drives the Beltway types nuts.
Patrick
@RosiesDad:
Absolutely. People are not exactly the great judges of policy to say the least. About 2/3 of the American electorate favored attacking Iraq in 2003. Need anything else be said?
Obama has done an awesome job so far as President, especially considering the mess he had inherited.
PhoenixRising
Richard, how many times do Republicans have to repeat their point before you get it?
That family will be better off only if the 62 year old man and his wife get health care.
If they follow the GOP plan, which is to die of a treatable disease’s effects because they can’t afford a doctor, they’ll be better off with no insurance. Financially. While their plan works.
amk
You are a great addition to this blog.
WereBear
It’s a two-fer!
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Quick: Name a conservative idea that can’t be described in less than 140 characters.
Angela
@Soonergrunt: this. I have a good friend in OK with heart problems. They make too much for Medicaid, too little for self employed insurance. I am so mad at your state and the calculated ineptness of Rrpublicans I could spit.
batgirl
@Josie: Yes it is because Texas didn’t expand Medicaid. The very poor in the states that have refused the Medicaid expansion are being fucked by the GOP thanks to Robert’s attempt to split the pooch and give something to his Republican brethren.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: True. I got mine, screw you can even be shortened by one letter with a different word.
WereBear
@batgirl: Austin should secede. I’m sure another state would love to have such an outpost.
Pamoya
@Josie: I strongly suspect with that income level, he is already eligible for Medicaid. If not (and if not, that’s on Texas) he won’t have to buy insurance because there are no plans that will cost less than 9% of his income. If he wants to buy insurance, at least he has more options now. He would qualify to purchase a catastrophic plan, which is better than nothing. Any insurance plan, even a catastrophic plan, would have to cover preventive services for free. I don’t know what it would cost, but with a $6000 annual income, any health care plan, either before or after ACA, is going to be unaffordable.
Belafon
@Josie: I would suggest going to the phone numbers and web sites listed in the letter described in this diary. Not all of the information may apply, but it is a start.
Richard Mayhew
@Josie: You’re son is screwed to allow Perry et al to pander to the Teabaggers.
He is screwed because Texas did not accept Medicaid Expansion which would have covered him. He can not get subsidies because the law as it is was written had no expectation that Medicaid Expansion would be made optional by the black robed douchebags because Expansion was too good of a deal for a state to turn down and thus “coercive”. Therefore the law as written only allowed subsidies for individuals above 100% FPL as it assumed that anyone below 100% FPL would be Medicaid qualified.
Nedinwc
@Josie: Maybe he could qualify for medicaid, but it won’t happen in Texas. I would suggest using your address and getting coverage in your state. Sad but true.
Richard Mayhew
@Nedinwc: I would very, very, very strongly recommend against Medicaid fraud. Get the kid to move out of state to a MA expansion state is a good idea, but mis-reporting state of residence for access to care is a felony.
Josie
Thanks to all who answered. I am disappointed that he can’t use the exchanges, but I am happy that my reading skills are not impaired. I thought surely I was mistaken since it is so unfair, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised seeing as how it is my wonderful Governor Perry responsible. He has catastrophic insurance through his musician’s union, so I guess we’ll just stick with that.
mai naem
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s easy.
“GOP medicine:Die, die quickly”
I think it’s under 140 characters. I’ve been busy at work so don’t know if this has been mentioned here already. Ari Fleischer tweeted about whether the @Barack Obama twitter handle had special privileges because @Barack Obama supposedly tweeted a tweet >140 characters. He was apparently counting the handle name in the number of characters in the tweet and had to apologize. Also too, @Barack Obama is not longer the handle of the prez(OFA took it over.) But, anyway, our political discourse is down to not the content of but the number of characters in a tweet.
The Pale Scot
@Josie: “Is this a glitch because Texas did not expand its Medicaid coverage?”
Yes, exactly that. Here FL it’s the same, From CBS Miami
The Pale Scot
@Pamoya:
Here in FL, to be eligible for Medicaid you must be under 18 or above 65, pregnant or declared disabled by the SSA. Just being broke isn’t a metric.
Josie
@The Pale Scot: Same in Texas.
WereBear
I never thought the state one lived in could be a matter of life or death.
But I do now.
piratedan
@OzarkHillbilly: don’t they all boil down to “fuck you, I got mine and I want yours too!”
Tone in DC
@The Pale Scot:
Governor Goodhair and Lex Luthor did this shit to their respective constituents?
Holier than thou ratfuckers think alike, big surprise. Right now, many people in Texas and Florida are saying, “At least kiss us first, this time.”
rdldot
@Josie: Call and bitch at Perry’s office. I’m sure they won’t care, but you may feel better. And it is true – he can’t get into the exchange because the Medicaid expansion was turned down. I live in Texas, too, and looked into that because I am unemployed so do have any ‘income’. I found out that I can take some money out of my 401K so I can qualify. Even with the penalty I will get better insurance. Assuming there is anything left in my 401K after the next month, that is.
rdldot
That should have been ‘do NOT have any income’. Sorry – that changed the whole meaning of the sentence when I left out the ‘NOT’.
Chris Andersen
There has been similar stories in Oregon this past week. Apparently several Regence/Blue Cross individual plan customers received notice that their plan costs were going to go up as much as 50%. So naturally some of these customers took to the letters to the editor section of The Oregonian to voice their complaints. Nicely enough, The Oregonian followed up with a front page story two days later in which it was revealed that these plans had very high deductibles and only covered a few catastrophic conditions and, like the Penn. story noted here, were no longer sufficient under the ACA provisions.
Regence/Blue Cross had to add new coverage to the plans, which naturally resulted in an increase in rates. However, a few of these “sticker shock” individuals actually took the time to go onto the Oregon exchange web site (CoverOregon I believe it is called) and discovered that there were comparable plans for significantly lower rates. Some even lower than what they had previously paid.
I expect to hear more of these “sticker shock” stories in the coming weeks. I would hope that the reporters who cover them will do as well as The Oregonian in digging beneath the scare head lines.
Chris Andersen
@Suffern ACE: People don’t like change. That’s really what it comes down to.
And I understand. My company recently switch plans and our dentists is no longer part of the new plans network. This sucked as my wife had been going to him for nearly 20 years. But the problem is not the change in plans. The problem is the whole concept of networks itself.
Elizabelle
@Josie:
Write letters to several Texas newspapers. Your local and nearby ones, and big city newspapers too.
Some of the audience will say “g-damned musician — doesn’t deserve coverage — get a job!”
Most will say: “$6,000/year and this guy does not qualify for health insurance or Medicaid because it’s not there! That’s awful.” Lot of people in that boat.
The wingnuts and crackpots write letters to the editor all the time.
You need to tell Texans what is happening.
Elizabelle
@RosiesDad:
Good point, but I still think Obama should have repeatedly requested time on network TV and taken his case to the American people, on the economy and on healthcare reform.
Maybe the networks would not have wanted to allow it, even though those are “public airwaves”, but I know lots of people who would have watched (but don’t make time for online viewing after the fact).
You cannot get any kind of good information second-hand through network and CNN — they are not reliable sources, and explaining the economy and h/care are not 2-minute segments.
Obama obviously needs to go over the heads of the chattering and dissembling classes.
There’s too much false information out there, and people making money distributing it.
Yatsuno
@rdldot:
Every hospital administrator in Texas has already done this I can guarantee it. Hospitals want the expansion because their uncompensated care will drop to near zero thanks to some nifty new rules like presumptive eligibility. But Goodhair is on a mission from Wingnut Jeebus, and no helping out poors and browns that can’t help themselves.
Elizabelle
Maybe Wendy Davis can turn this into a huge issue — the consequences and poor financial outcome of turning down Medicaid expansion, once people see Obamacare working in other states and understand the issue better.
Maybe Texas will see a lot of gain after this pain.
Medicaid expansion is an issue in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, too. I’d not known that.
Josie
@Elizabelle:I will write to Wendy about it. Since it seems that Florida and Texas both have this problem (don’t know about other states) maybe a front pager could post about it. Hint, hint…..
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness:
DING DING DING DING DING!
The Rethugs are terrified that people, once they find out what Obamacare actually is, will love it.
They are right to be terrified. Obamacare encompasses their doom.
JustRuss
@Chris Andersen:
True, and count me as one of them. But you know what? I have one of those cushy state jobs with great benefits, and every year our insurance goes through radical changes because the insurance companies we contract with jack up their rates and jigger their benefits around and everyone gets to spend a few hours to pick a new plan. Every. Damn. Year. And it ‘s been going on for long before Obama took office.
I’m getting so tired of the “Obama is forcing us to change our insurance!!!” meme. The damn insurance companies have been doing that for decades, but nobody seems to remember that. I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, thanks for letting me vent.
gratuitous
Boy, you libruls are really scraping now, aren’t you? You’re having to resort to facts to try to argue your pathetic case. As that great philosopher Homer Simpson observed, you can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true. And that’s just not how we do things in Amurika, you commie bastards.
DavidTC
@NonyNony:
What they needed to do was not avoid the issue but get in front of it. If W had pushed for an ACA-like structure that was more sympathetic to the health insurance industry the Republicans would have owned this part of the debate. They could have spun it entirely as “this is the free market solution to the problem”.
Hell, they could have done this as late as 2008, when it became obvious it would be an issue again. And _possibly_ even won the election.
Failing that, they could even have done it in 2009, taking credit for the plan the Democrats were passing, and put in a lot more of their policy choices. ‘Thank goodness the Democrats are _finally_ coming around to the plan we proposed back in 1993. BTW, we’re the experts in this plan because we invented it, so you should listen to us.’
Of course, right there was exactly the moment that the right-wing media machine, which had been their toy for a decade, decided to stab them in the back for outrage-based ratings, and invented the Tea Party.
So trying to figure out what they ‘should’ have done makes no sense. The Republicans have been operating under the sword of Damocles for a decade, without any options that their out-of-control media machine didn’t allow. Yes, it’s entirely likely that had Bush tried for something like the ACA, it would have worked out, but that would require the Republicans to have enough self-awareness _of_ the media problem in 2006 or so, and they didn’t.
It probably would have sucked – look at what they did with Medicare Part D – but it likely could have been better enough than the status quo for them to gain goodwill for “trying” to do something.
All the program really would have had to do is to be big enough to mostly work, and too big to entirely dismantle. It could have been a giant bloated mess with giveouts everywhere that people had to go back and fix later, and all anyone would remember is that the _Republicans_ passed it.
DavidTC
@Josie:
Richard – Thanks for finding and writing about the details so clearly. Maybe you can explain something to me. My son, a 28 year old professional musician making less than $6000.00 per year in Texas, needs insurance. I looked at the calculator, and, if I understood it correctly, he does not qualify for a subsidy, since he does not make 100% of the poverty level income. I don’t understand the reasoning of this. Am I reading the rules incorrectly? Is this a glitch because Texas did not expand its Medicaid coverage?
It is worth mentioning, and I suspect this will become more well known, is that there is nothing stopping people from legally increasing their income under the law.
Firstly, you can report a lot more stuff as income than is commonly reported. Professional musicians often get free food and stuff, he can estimate the value of that and report those in addition to his income.
Second, remember, he can itemize deductions instead of taking the standard deduction…and then fail to actually _list_ any deductions. There’s no rule saying you have to take a deduction, or that you have to take a standard deduction if your itemized deductions are less than it. That right there will bump his income up by a lot.
Third, he’s your son, and if you have the money you can give him gifts. He doesn’t have to report gifts totaling less than $5000 a year…but he _can_. He can also add up the estimated costs of any birthday and Christmas gifts.
Fourth is, uh, a little dubious, and I’d like to see some lawyer chime in on it.
Basically, your son needs to find someone else in the same boat as him. He needs to hire that person to do something like mow his lawn or something, for $4000. Then that person turns around and hires him to mow that person’s lawn, also for $4000.
Tada. Both people have, entirely within the law, increased their income by $4000. Be sure he creates and sign a contract for it, and keep documentation he actually did the work.
_As far as I can tell_, it is not only legal to report that as income, he’s actually _required_ to report that as income.
Mark
There will be winners and there will be losers, and there is no question that ACA contains taxpayer subsidies for those who can’t afford coverage. But this will help replace the “ER as primary care physician for the uninsured” cycle that costs more than $1,000 per year per taxpayer, which contributes to why healthcare costs are almost twice as high in the US when compared to other advanced Western countries. And that doesn’t take into account the fact that ACA will put an end to the worst insurance company abuses. Everybody has a child or a friend or a colleague or relative (or themself) who can’t get medical insurance on the conditions that they need to see doctors for on a regular basis because of medical underwriting and pre-existing condition exclusions. They giev you an umbrella, and then take it away as soon as it starts raining. I have an adult child who would be uninsurable for life but for ACA. That’s what this is about. And when those people — including many people who are concerned about ACA based on all of the fearmongering — find out that the scare stories were grossly overstated, the GOP brand will suffer yet another wound that will never heal.
Grace
@Soonergrunt:
Here is the he link regarding the plans (when they become available) for people living in non-compliant states – https://www.healthcare.gov