Now that penalties are coming in for not purchasing health insurance — that coupled with the “huge” for poorer people deductible ($3000-$6000!) before they can get any care — that they simply cannot pay — making the insurance worthless to them — means that the poorest people will now not only not benefit from Obamacare but will be charged for being too poor to pay.
Have I got it right? ???
I know people in this spot who have to rely on relatives for their deductibles so I don’t buy that subsidies ar the automatic answer — they don’t seem to work for many.
Depending on your definition of poor people you could have it totally wrong or partially right.
One day people will understand the only difference between a low premium/high deductible policy and a high premium/low deductible policy is that the low premium people save money if they do not have a medical problem.
Scaring people with the deductible amounts is silly without adding up the premiums and the deductible. And as silly as it is, it is a main weapon of the ACA deniers who totally avoid that those costs are not the result of the ACA, they are the result of our health care system.
Go through thee Kaiser report and you will find that the average premium cost for a family with employer based insurance is over $15gs a year. Deductibles on those policies are over $1800.
So the average US family with employer based insurance pays $16,800 a year for health insurance before the insurance company pays a dime. Now compare that to the costs of the ACA and stop using big numbers to make points for the RWDWs of the world.
EMichael,
I sounds to me like you are using a fairly decent income family in your Kaiser example. I am talking people who would have to rob a bank to come up with a $2,000 a year deductible. ACA is of no use to them at all. Now they will have to pay a fine too?
Admit I am confused about details of ACA. But reading Brill’s A Bitter PIll. Ordered from Amazon when I realized there were 35 people ahead of my at the library for 3 books (figured it must be worth the money 🙂 ).
As far as I am told by low income users, the subsidies only cover premiums, not deductibles — which deductibles I know could never be refunded anyway because they could not come up with the “small fortune” first. I am really concerned about the impossible trap this seems to create for the poorest people.
Provided the insured signs up for a Silver Plan, there are subsidies for deductibles if you are 250% (or less) FPL. Between 250% and 400% the deductibles can not exceed 9.49% (2014). We went over this in one of Maggie’s posts.
Once again, you have to tell me what you consider low income people. As an example, all of those who qualified for the Medicaid expansion(138% of the poverty level) have no deductibles to worry about.
At the same time, you have to take into account the total cost(premiums and deductibles) to figure out the total burden, while always remembering the simple fact that the deductible is paid if someone actually gets sick(preventative care is free). And if that happened to people without insurance, that is devastating to poor people.
There is what must look like a magic wand to the Obamas and Clintons of the world — it’s called leadership (or megalomaniaship — or whatever makes you think you should explain to the world how the world should really should work — comes easy to my profession: cab drivership 🙂 ).
Obama or a Clinton just has to direct their personal efforts to explaining to the world what Steven Brill or Senator Warren or David Cay Johnston, etc., are saying. That’s all. They don’t even have to do the original, costly research (like the drug companies often don’t) — they just have to pass it on from their highly visible perches.
I did do so silly and with facts. Read further rather than answer with no knowledge which is typical for you. Read it again and read Maggie’s posts and comments again.
I read Maggie’s post here and engaged in a lengthy (for AB) dialogue with her. I learned something from her. I doubt she learned anything from me.
NO ONE is THE “place to go for real knowledge.”
Leadership “alone” can’t “make” anyone do what it wants. But it’s what we hire a President for. You seem committed to half connected facts. I can’t help you.
Run75441
speaking of half connected facts, if you think you answered Denis then you think he can read your mind in the same detail that you can read it. Including the details you skip.
Why you have chosen to make an enemy of me is your business.
“Leadership “alone” can’t “make” anyone do what it wants. But it’s what we hire a President for. You seem committed to half connected facts. I can’t help you”
linking to the NYTimes is not the same as having an actual argument. In fact it is exactly the kind of half-thinking that I was complaining about.
but i am reminded of a story about an office where everyone had worked together and told the same jokes for so long that no one bothered to tell a joke anymore. they just called out the number of one the old jokes and everyone fell on the floor laughing.
this of course was in the days before the internet. now people save their own time and effort by just “click on this link.” saves me the trouble of having any thoughts of my own, or even understanding the very link i am sending you down.
and that brings to mind Orwell’s 1984 in which language was “simplified” to the point where it became impossible to have complicated thoughts. hah! if only Orwell had known about links.
or even “read Maggie” or “read Mao” or “read Marx”
yep. save a powerful lot of thinking.
but for those of you who need links:
Advocates Fear Obama Can’t Be Trusted In New Social Security Fight
President Obama has been notably silent on the Republican stance on Social Security, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds and ups the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016.
Read more
when you had that operation recently, did you notice if they put any chips in your brain?
i see that Angry Bear is no longer “slightly left of center” but rather quietly getting behind the right wing agenda. easy to do when you don’t actually know what you are talking about.
Denis links to a column that links to a column which talks about Obama moving away from “leadership” on income inequality. Yet the column links to:
“After making fighting income inequality an early focus of his second term, President Obama has largely abandoned talk of the subject this election year in a move that highlights the emerging debate within the Democratic Party over economic populism and its limits.
During the first half of this year, Obama shifted from income inequality to the more politically palatable theme of lifting the middle class, focusing on issues such as the minimum wage and the gender pay gap that are thought to resonate with a broader group of voters.”
you are missing about everything. If you consider what you offer an example of “leadership” you don’t understand leadership. You have described exactly what Denis was complaining about.
Indeed, you seem completely confused about what you are talking about.
People did not respond at all to income inequality. They do respond to talk about minimum wage and the gender gap. There is a relationship between those three things. I don’t know, fighting income inequality is a herculean task. One way around it is redistribution. And no President in my lifetime has done it more than Obama. You can look it up. Let me know when you find a President who raised the marginal tax rate of the richest Americans by more than 60%, and used it to pay for health insurance for the poorest Americans.
I never cared much for speeches, I cared for actions. The list of Obama’s accomplishments are pretty substantial(I gave you a nice link for them), and considering the obstruction of the GOP, pretty incredible.
As I look at the posts in here, I see nothing substantive from anyone other than Run and myself. Just the basic Loser Liberalism that is a huge cause of Rep majorities, and may even cause the disaster that will result from those majorities and A GOP President.
because you think you agree with Run you think his comments are substantive. all i see are cheap personal shots which i suspect come from his belief that i disagreed with him about something.
just for the sheer intellectual pleasure of it you should try to organize exactly what you think you are saying and what you think he is saying and what you think i am saying.
i will say that i don’t have any idea what you are saying. it seems self contradictory to me in a sloppy kind of way.
as for “loser liberalism” i might have applied that term to the idea of taxing the rich to pay for Social Security if i cared more about cute soundbites than i do about the simple fact that the workers can pay for their own Social Security, as their parents did, by increasing their own payroll tax eighty cents per week. and they get the money back with interest.
i am reasonably sure the same idea (worker pays) would fund Medicare (all of it) and place it beyond the reach of damn politicians.
but i don’t want to argue with you. you seem to think you are saying something, but i can’t figure out what it is.
In 2-3 sentences on subsidies for deductibles and premiums and a recommendation to go back and read Maggie’s posts and comments was all it took. You on the other hand have make us suffer through multiple posts and in some cases high-jacking other people’s posts with your incessant babbling that lacks clarity in many cases. Even on Social Security you have difficulty getting your point across when talking to Bkrasting without multiple posts. You are the last person who should be critiquing other people’s words.
Now that penalties are coming in for not purchasing health insurance — that coupled with the “huge” for poorer people deductible ($3000-$6000!) before they can get any care — that they simply cannot pay — making the insurance worthless to them — means that the poorest people will now not only not benefit from Obamacare but will be charged for being too poor to pay.
Have I got it right? ???
I know people in this spot who have to rely on relatives for their deductibles so I don’t buy that subsidies ar the automatic answer — they don’t seem to work for many.
Dennis:
No, you do not have that right.
Huge deductibles fit with FSA’s.
The impression I had was PPACA discouraged huge deductible plans?
I think somebody told me that subsidies don’t cover deductibles anyway. Probably the same folks who rely on family to cover them.
Denis,
Depending on your definition of poor people you could have it totally wrong or partially right.
One day people will understand the only difference between a low premium/high deductible policy and a high premium/low deductible policy is that the low premium people save money if they do not have a medical problem.
Scaring people with the deductible amounts is silly without adding up the premiums and the deductible. And as silly as it is, it is a main weapon of the ACA deniers who totally avoid that those costs are not the result of the ACA, they are the result of our health care system.
Go through thee Kaiser report and you will find that the average premium cost for a family with employer based insurance is over $15gs a year. Deductibles on those policies are over $1800.
So the average US family with employer based insurance pays $16,800 a year for health insurance before the insurance company pays a dime. Now compare that to the costs of the ACA and stop using big numbers to make points for the RWDWs of the world.
oops
link
http://kff.org/state-category/health-costs-budgets/
EMichael,
I sounds to me like you are using a fairly decent income family in your Kaiser example. I am talking people who would have to rob a bank to come up with a $2,000 a year deductible. ACA is of no use to them at all. Now they will have to pay a fine too?
Admit I am confused about details of ACA. But reading Brill’s A Bitter PIll. Ordered from Amazon when I realized there were 35 people ahead of my at the library for 3 books (figured it must be worth the money 🙂 ).
As far as I am told by low income users, the subsidies only cover premiums, not deductibles — which deductibles I know could never be refunded anyway because they could not come up with the “small fortune” first. I am really concerned about the impossible trap this seems to create for the poorest people.
Dennis:
Provided the insured signs up for a Silver Plan, there are subsidies for deductibles if you are 250% (or less) FPL. Between 250% and 400% the deductibles can not exceed 9.49% (2014). We went over this in one of Maggie’s posts.
Once again, you have to tell me what you consider low income people. As an example, all of those who qualified for the Medicaid expansion(138% of the poverty level) have no deductibles to worry about.
At the same time, you have to take into account the total cost(premiums and deductibles) to figure out the total burden, while always remembering the simple fact that the deductible is paid if someone actually gets sick(preventative care is free). And if that happened to people without insurance, that is devastating to poor people.
Opps; that’s America’s Bitter Pill
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/bill-6
Yeah, reinventing the American healthcare system is really hard. Yeah, the costs are out of hand.
I got it.
Amazing people think there is a magic wand out there that politicians just refuse to use.
There is what must look like a magic wand to the Obamas and Clintons of the world — it’s called leadership (or megalomaniaship — or whatever makes you think you should explain to the world how the world should really should work — comes easy to my profession: cab drivership 🙂 ).
Obama or a Clinton just has to direct their personal efforts to explaining to the world what Steven Brill or Senator Warren or David Cay Johnston, etc., are saying. That’s all. They don’t even have to do the original, costly research (like the drug companies often don’t) — they just have to pass it on from their highly visible perches.
Obama made a speech recently at a high school about inequality being “the defining challenge of our time” — lighting up the blogosphere with the topic ever since — and abandoned it personally when it didn’t immediately poll well.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/07/Internal-Democratic-Polls-Prompt-Obama-to-Abandon-Income-Inequality-Message
oboy
Last I looked, Presidents were not dictators able to shine a Green Lantern to light the way forward.
I think I detect just the faintest sign of cynicism in you — if you’ll forgive me. 🙂
You did..
It is silly to think one person can make decisions for the US government.
Even the most powerful single person in the government has restrictions on their abilities.
FDR could not make lynching a federal crime despite huge majorities in both houses. He could also not change the Supreme Court.
We have seen the last(a long time ago) or Presidents with the power FDR had, and yet he still could not do everything.
EMichael
I don’t think Denis was imagining the president could dictate policy. He was asking for “leadership.”
Run et al.
cute half answers don’t really help anyone.
why not try to answer Denis’ concern. “Go read it all in Maggie” is not an answer.
coberly:
I did do so silly and with facts. Read further rather than answer with no knowledge which is typical for you. Read it again and read Maggie’s posts and comments again.
Cob,
Explain to me how leadership alone can make a legislature and a Supreme Court do what the leadership wants.
In terms of healthcare in this country, Maggie is the place to go for real knowledge.
If you ignore it, it reflects badly on you.
EMichael
I read Maggie’s post here and engaged in a lengthy (for AB) dialogue with her. I learned something from her. I doubt she learned anything from me.
NO ONE is THE “place to go for real knowledge.”
Leadership “alone” can’t “make” anyone do what it wants. But it’s what we hire a President for. You seem committed to half connected facts. I can’t help you.
Run75441
speaking of half connected facts, if you think you answered Denis then you think he can read your mind in the same detail that you can read it. Including the details you skip.
Why you have chosen to make an enemy of me is your business.
“Leadership “alone” can’t “make” anyone do what it wants. But it’s what we hire a President for. You seem committed to half connected facts. I can’t help you”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/obamas-legacy-chait.html
EMichael
linking to the NYTimes is not the same as having an actual argument. In fact it is exactly the kind of half-thinking that I was complaining about.
but i am reminded of a story about an office where everyone had worked together and told the same jokes for so long that no one bothered to tell a joke anymore. they just called out the number of one the old jokes and everyone fell on the floor laughing.
this of course was in the days before the internet. now people save their own time and effort by just “click on this link.” saves me the trouble of having any thoughts of my own, or even understanding the very link i am sending you down.
and that brings to mind Orwell’s 1984 in which language was “simplified” to the point where it became impossible to have complicated thoughts. hah! if only Orwell had known about links.
or even “read Maggie” or “read Mao” or “read Marx”
yep. save a powerful lot of thinking.
but for those of you who need links:
Advocates Fear Obama Can’t Be Trusted In New Social Security Fight
President Obama has been notably silent on the Republican stance on Social Security, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds and ups the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016.
Read more
i see my link didn’t take. try this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obama-republicans-social-security-disability-fight
Run75441
when you had that operation recently, did you notice if they put any chips in your brain?
i see that Angry Bear is no longer “slightly left of center” but rather quietly getting behind the right wing agenda. easy to do when you don’t actually know what you are talking about.
You don’t want a leader, you want a cheerleader.
Yell louder is not much of a political strategy.
Denis links to a column that links to a column which talks about Obama moving away from “leadership” on income inequality. Yet the column links to:
“After making fighting income inequality an early focus of his second term, President Obama has largely abandoned talk of the subject this election year in a move that highlights the emerging debate within the Democratic Party over economic populism and its limits.
During the first half of this year, Obama shifted from income inequality to the more politically palatable theme of lifting the middle class, focusing on issues such as the minimum wage and the gender pay gap that are thought to resonate with a broader group of voters.”
am I missing something here?
EMichael
you are missing about everything. If you consider what you offer an example of “leadership” you don’t understand leadership. You have described exactly what Denis was complaining about.
Indeed, you seem completely confused about what you are talking about.
Right.
People did not respond at all to income inequality. They do respond to talk about minimum wage and the gender gap. There is a relationship between those three things. I don’t know, fighting income inequality is a herculean task. One way around it is redistribution. And no President in my lifetime has done it more than Obama. You can look it up. Let me know when you find a President who raised the marginal tax rate of the richest Americans by more than 60%, and used it to pay for health insurance for the poorest Americans.
I never cared much for speeches, I cared for actions. The list of Obama’s accomplishments are pretty substantial(I gave you a nice link for them), and considering the obstruction of the GOP, pretty incredible.
As I look at the posts in here, I see nothing substantive from anyone other than Run and myself. Just the basic Loser Liberalism that is a huge cause of Rep majorities, and may even cause the disaster that will result from those majorities and A GOP President.
oops
half of it
EMichael
because you think you agree with Run you think his comments are substantive. all i see are cheap personal shots which i suspect come from his belief that i disagreed with him about something.
just for the sheer intellectual pleasure of it you should try to organize exactly what you think you are saying and what you think he is saying and what you think i am saying.
i will say that i don’t have any idea what you are saying. it seems self contradictory to me in a sloppy kind of way.
as for “loser liberalism” i might have applied that term to the idea of taxing the rich to pay for Social Security if i cared more about cute soundbites than i do about the simple fact that the workers can pay for their own Social Security, as their parents did, by increasing their own payroll tax eighty cents per week. and they get the money back with interest.
i am reasonably sure the same idea (worker pays) would fund Medicare (all of it) and place it beyond the reach of damn politicians.
but i don’t want to argue with you. you seem to think you are saying something, but i can’t figure out what it is.
coberly:
In 2-3 sentences on subsidies for deductibles and premiums and a recommendation to go back and read Maggie’s posts and comments was all it took. You on the other hand have make us suffer through multiple posts and in some cases high-jacking other people’s posts with your incessant babbling that lacks clarity in many cases. Even on Social Security you have difficulty getting your point across when talking to Bkrasting without multiple posts. You are the last person who should be critiquing other people’s words.
Run
keep up the good work. see if you can find a sixth grade grammar teacher to help you out with your first sentence there.
if you don’t want to read my posts, don’t.
and don’t try to rewrite them.
it is unlikely i will write any more posts for AB in any case. the pay is too low.
you and Krasting have a nice day.