'Obamacare' to the rescue

joesmalls · Dec 9, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...-praise-of-obamacare-20111206,0,6794828.story

By Spike Dolomite Ward

December 6, 2011
I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he'd worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family.

By the time the COBRA ran out, my husband had decided to go into business for himself, so we had to purchase our own insurance. That was fine for a while. Every year his business grew. But insurance premiums were steadily rising too. More than once, we switched carriers for a lower rate, only to have them raise rates significantly after a few months.

With the recession, both of our businesses took a huge hit my husband's income was cut in half, and the foundations that had supported my small nonprofit were going through their own tough times. We had to start using a home equity line of credit to pay for our health insurance premiums (which by that point cost as much as our monthly mortgage). When the bank capped our home equity line, we were forced to cash in my husband's IRA. The time finally came when we had to make a choice between paying our mortgage or paying for health insurance. We chose to keep our house. We made a nerve-racking gamble, and we lost.

Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured").

"I'm not a deadbeat," I blurted out. "I'm a good person. I have two kids and a house!" The clerk was sympathetic, telling me how even though she worked in the healthcare field, she could barely afford insurance herself.

Although there have been a few people who judged us harshly, most people have been understanding about how this could happen to us. That's given me the courage to "out" myself and my family in hopes that it will educate people who are still lucky enough to have health insurance and view people like my family as irresponsible. We're not. What I want people to understand is that, if this could happen to us, it could happen to anybody.

If you are fortunate enough to still be employed and have insurance through your employers, you may feel insulated from the sufferings of people like me right now. But things can change abruptly. If you still have a good job with insurance, that doesn't mean that you're better than me, more deserving than me or smarter than me. It just means that you are luckier. And access to healthcare shouldn't depend on luck.

Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver perhaps literally.

Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."
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Surprised there aren't more stories like this out there. (*)(*)(*)(*) happens in life. Glad Americans are benefiting from the Affordable Healthcare Act.

waltky · Jan 21, 2012

Not gonna save the economy...

CBO: ObamaCare-Like Programs Don’t Save Money or Reduce Costs
January 20, 2012 – Health care reform programs that are similar to those promoted by the ObamaCare law do not save the government money or reduce health care costs, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The report examined 10 major demonstration projects conducted by Medicare in which managed care programs and value-based payment programs are evaluated. The two types of health care reforms are key features of ObamaCare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010. In the managed-care programs – where care-management companies were hired to coordinate care between doctors and patients with chronic diseases like diabetes, sending nurses to monitor whether patients were following doctor’s orders – the CBO found that the programs did not reduce costs enough to save the government money. “The evaluations show that most programs have not reduced Medicare spending: In nearly every program involving disease management and care coordination, spending was either unchanged or increased relative to the spending that would have occurred in the absence of the program,” the report said.

In the case of value-based payment programs – where hospitals are paid based on whether they achieve better outcomes for their patients – the CBO again found that all but one of the programs assessed did not reduce health care costs enough to save Medicare any money. “The bundled-payment demonstration achieved savings for the Medicare program, but the demonstrations that paid bonuses to providers on the basis of their quality scores, estimated savings, or both, produced little or no savings,” reported the CBO. Bundled payments refer to when Medicare pays a hospital a single lump sum for one type of service – in this case, heart surgery – instead of paying for each surgery individually, as it normally does.

The CBO noted, however, that this single demonstration project only saved money because Medicare was able to negotiate a bundled payment that was lower than the total cost of making individual payments to doctors – not because the hospitals were more efficient. “The Heart Bypass demonstration yielded savings because Medicare was able to negotiate bundled-payment rates with the seven hospitals and the relevant physicians on their medical staffs that were lower than the separate payments that they otherwise would have received,” it reported. Both managed-care and value-based payment reforms are key parts of ObamaCare. The CBO noted that the law empowers the government to conduct more demonstration projects and to take them national immediately if officials believe they could save significant amounts of money – in effect, changing Medicare without congressional approval or action.

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See also:

Sebelius Upholds Obamacare Rule that Religious Institutions Must Cover Birth Control
January 20, 2012 -- The Obama administration on Friday refused to change an Obamacare rule that will require religious universities and hospitals to pay for birth control or contraceptive drugs — including those that could cause an abortion -- for their women employees.

“This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. Under the rule, set forth by the Affordable Care Act, most women employed in the U.S. will have the cost of their birth control covered with no co-pay. However, the administration did delay the effective date of the rule by one year. “This proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services,” Sebelius said in a statement.

The rule is currently the subject of two lawsuits -- one filed on behalf of Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, and the other filed last month on behalf of Colorado Christian University in suburban Denver. Both suits claim the regulation violates their right not to go against their own conscience. “This is a shameless attempt to kick the can down the road in an election year,” says Hannah Smith, senior legal counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing both colleges. “Religious colleges, universities, and hospitals will never pay for abortion drugs in violation of their religious beliefs -- this year or any other year.”

The announcement comes just one week after the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision involving the right of churches to select their religious leaders. In EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor, the Court unanimously rejected the Obama administration’s position that the government had the right to to decide whom churches could employ as a minister. “The administration has seen the writing on the wall,” Smith said. “They know that this mandate cannot survive constitutional scrutiny any more than their ‘extreme’ position in Hosanna-Tabor did. So the administration is trying to delay the inevitable judgment day.” Churches and other places of worship are exempt from having to cover contraception for their employees, if they morally object to the practice.

Source
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'Obamacare' to the rescue

joesmalls New Member

waltky Well-Known Member

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'Obamacare' to the rescue

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