More Obamacare TRUTH

Only reason, because too many are in the Obama Care Hole. They earn too little(unbelievable) to qualify for a "premium subsidy", even where when they do have a job and could afford insurance if given the subsidy. And earn too much to get Medicaid under the States current Medicaid plan. Therefore, hospitals and doctors can only treat the patient if they can pay for the treatment themselves. So, since Hospitals make their money by treating patients and doctors feel obligated to care for patients but want to get paid for their services, they have no choice but to back the expansion of Medicaid to cover those in the Obama Care Hole.

IMO, the States that didn't pass Medicaid expansion should develop a State Wide plan for these individuals and families, sending coverage out for bid to the Insurance Companies licensed in the State, all would be provided the identical benefits for the identical individual or family premiums. Cost effective for the State, the Insurance Company(s) selected and the insured's. This would cost the State and hence the Tax Payers less and keep the Federal Government out of State finances.

 

The needless deaths of 45,000 per year due to lack of insurance was a blood tax that right wingers delighted in seeing every year. Thankfully, ACa has relieved that terrible burden.



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Obamacare Drives Uninsured Rate To Lowest On Record

Source: Huffington Post

The percentage of Americans without health insurance fell to a new low in recent months, according to the results of a Gallup poll released Thursday.

Specifically, the uninsured rate fell to 13.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014. That's down from its peak of 18 percent in the third quarter of last year, and it's the lowest quarterly average that Gallup has seen since it began tracking this type of data in 2008.

The percentage of uninsured Americans has fallen steadily since the beginning of Obamacare's open enrollment period for buying insurance in October. President Obama's health law mandates that nearly all Americans either have health insurance or pay a fine.



Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/uninsured-rate-gallup-new-low_n_5575196.html


THIS is why the GOP desperately wanted to kill Obamacare in its infancy.





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20 Million New Voters Vote Out GOP Against ObamaCare



About 20 million Americans have gained health insurance or enrolled in new insurance under the health care reform law, according to a new report.

The report from the Commonwealth Fund, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, credits President Barack Obama’s health reform law with an estimated 20 million enrollments as of May 1.

The report looks at both people who gained coverage through insurance marketplaces, and people who gained coverage due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act (such as those qualifying for Medicaid and those now covered through the Children’s Health Insurance Program).

http://time.com/#2950961/obamacare-health-care-obama/

Republican Governors have to go, Vote Them OUT, to get insurance for the Middle Class and Poor people need to Vote in the Mid Term to resolve this issue, Run On OBAMACARE, just ask Kentuckians, Kentucky's success makes a mockery of GOP Obamacare foes

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...success-makes-a-mockery-of-GOP-Obamacare-foes





ACA = saving money and lives every day!

 

http://www.theliberaloc.com/2014/07/11/obamacare-cuts-number-of-uninsured-in-california-by-50/



Obamacare cuts number of uninsured in California by 50%


Before Obamacare, 22% of Californians lacked health insurance; after Obamacare, its down to 11% according to this report by KPCC Public Radio.

From the story: “The survey of more than 4,400 people by the Commonwealth Fund, a national healthcare foundation, also found that nationwide, the uninsured rate fell from 20 percent to 15 percent during the same period.

Recent national polls have recorded similar drops in the rate of the nation’s uninsured under the Affordable Care Act. A recent Gallup poll found that in April, the national uninsured rate stood at 13.4 percent, the lowest number since the organization began tracking it in 2008.

The Commonwealth Fund survey found that 61 percent of those who were newly insured said they felt better off thanks to their new coverage. And nearly four out of five said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new coverage.

Obamacare is far from perfect, but getting uninsured health insurance, especially those previously denied coverage, is very important. Perhaps if Republicans had ideas on getting the remaining 11% insured instead of repealing a good idea over partisanship, they’d give voters an excuse to vote for them.



Contrary to the lies of the america hating far right, ACA = saving money and lives every day!



ACA = The greatest embodiment of true PATRIOTISM in the USA today.

 

Tell that to your physicians/surgeons and emergency room staff next time you need their care. You are directing your anger at the wrong providers of medical care. You should be directing your anger at the Federal Government that through their arbitrary regulations and laws have caused the cost of "providing health care" to rise. In other words, the cost of doing business for private practice physicians and small group practices, you obviously know nothing about how health care is provided for and paid for in this country. It is health insurance companies that went unregulated for decades that contributed to this problem, secondly, the failure of the Federal Government to properly manage the Medicare, V.A. and Medicaid health care programs and then the "new developments" in testing equipment, drugs, surgical instruments and the like. All of which cost millions to develop, test, get approval for before they can ever be used on patients. You are clueless. Go Fish!

 

Bad proof of bad news for Republicans - 20 million Americans covered:



New England Journal Of Medicine: 20 Million Covered Under Obamacare

Source: New England Journal Medicine/Talking Points Memo

A report published last week in the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine provided an overview of Obamacare's first year, its successes and the challenges ahead. It also offered a yet another estimate of the number of people covered by the law: 20 million.

The NEJM report pulled a wealth of information, much of it already known by those closely following the law's implementation but presented together by the journal, from think tanks and government agencies. It covered a range of topics, including the number of people covered, 2015 premiums, and the adequacy of provider networks for plans offered through the law.

But its bottom line was that millions of people have become insured under Obamacare.

"Taking all existing coverage expansions together, we estimate that 20 million Americans have gained coverage as of May 1 under the ACA," the authors wrote. "We do not know yet exactly how many of these people were previously uninsured, but it seems certain that many were."

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/nejm-obamacare-progress-report






That's the patriotic TRUTH that right wingers hate.

 

More ACA patriotic TRUTH:



Hospitals See Troubles In RED STATES That Snubbed Obamacare's Medicaid Deal

While record numbers of Americans sign up for the larger Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, financial issues are emerging for medical care providers in the two dozen states that didn’t go along with the expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Reports out in the last week indicate the gap between those with health care coverage is widening between states that agreed to go along with the health law’s Medicaid expansion and those generally led by Republican legislatures and GOP governors that are balking at the expansion.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceja...states-that-snubbed-obamacares-medicaid-deal/

The moves against expansion are “beginning to hurt hospitals in states that opted out,” a report last week from Fitch Ratings said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human services has said Medicaid enrollment in the 26 states and the District of Columbia that agreed to go along with and implemented the expansion by the end of May “rose by 17 percent, while states that have not expanded reported only a 3 percent increase,” HHS said in an enrollment update for the Medicaid program.

“We expect providers in states that have chosen not to participate in expanded Medicaid eligibility to face increasing financial challenges in 2014 and beyond,” Fitch said in its July 16 report. “Nonprofit hospitals and healthcare systems in states that have expanded their Medicaid coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have begun to realize the benefit from increased insurance coverage.”

 

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/24/3463602/obamacare-premium-savings/


Obamacare Has Helped Americans Save Nearly $2 Billion On Their Insurance Premiums



Millions of Americans can expect to get a refund from their insurance companies this year, at an average of about $80 dollars per family, thanks to a little-known Obamacare provision that’s helping people save money on their premiums. According to a new report released by the Health and Human Services Department on Thursday, Americans across the country have received a total of $1.9 billion dollars in rebates since this provision first took effect in 2011.
Obamacare’s medical loss ratio provision — which is also frequently referred to as the “80/20 rule” — requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of every American’s premium costs on their medical care, rather than on the company’s own profits or administrative overhead. If insurance companies don’t hit the right balance, they have to issue a refund check to their customers to make up for it.
According to HHS’s calculations, 6.8 million Americans will save $330 million in refunds this year because of the 80/20 rule. Insurance companies are required to provide those reimbursements by no later than the beginning of August. Not everyone will actually receive a physical check in the mail; insurers are allowed to apply the reimbursements to future premiums, so the savings could show up that way.
In a press release announcing the new data, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said that the health reform law is giving Americans a “better value for their premium dollars.” The whole point of the 80/20 rule is to encourage insurance companies to operate more efficiently and cut down on their overhead — and it’s slowly working. The portion of premium dollars allocated to insurers’ profits and administrative costs dropped from 15.3 percent in 2011 to 11.7 percent in 2013.
HHS estimates that if insurers weren’t making those type of changes, Americans would have likely paid about $3.8 billion in additional premiums in 2013. Altogether, since the medical loss ratio took effect three years ago, the administration calculates that it’s averted $9 billion dollars worth of unnecessarily high insurance premiums.
The 80/20 rule isn’t the only Obamacare provision that seeks to keep premium costs affordable. The health law also extends federal subsidies to help Americans purchase plans on the individual market in the new state-level insurance exchanges, something that allows millions of people to buy health care for less than $100 each month. However, under a lawsuit against the health law that could make its way up to the Supreme Court, those subsidies could be put into jeopardy in the majority of states in the country. If that happens, insurance premiums could increase by about 75 percent.





ACA = saving money & lives every day.

 

I got my rebate last week.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/..._5618279.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics



For months, journalists and politicians fixated on the number of people signing up for health insurance through the federal exchange created as part of the Affordable Care Act. It turned out that more than 5 million people signed up using Healthcare.gov by April 19, the end of the open-enrollment period.

But perhaps more surprising is that, according to federal data released Wednesday to ProPublica, there have been nearly 1 million transactions on the exchange since then. People are allowed to sign up and switch plans after certain life events, such as job changes, moves, the birth of a baby, marriages and divorces.

The volume of these transactions was a jolt even for those who have watched the rollout of the ACA most closely.

"That's higher than I would have expected," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "There are a lot of people who qualify for special enrollment, but my assumption has been that few of them would actually sign up."

The impact of the new numbers isn't clear because the Obama administration has not released details of how many consumers failed to pay their premiums and thus were dropped by their health plans. All told, between the federal exchange and 14 state exchanges, more than 8 million people signed up for coverage. A big question is whether new members will offset attrition.

ProPublica requested data on the number of daily enrollment transactions on the federal exchange last year under the Freedom of Information Act because the Obama administration had declined to release this information, a key barometer of the exchange's performance, to the public. The administration also has not put out any data on the exchange's activity since the open enrollment period ended.

The data shows so-called "834" transactions, which insurance companies and the government use to enroll new members, change a member's enrollment status, or disenroll members. The data covers the 36 states using the federal exchange, which include Texas, Florida, Illinois, Georgia and Michigan.

When Healthcare.gov rolled out last fall, insurance companies complained that the information in the 834s was replete with errors, creating a crisis at the back-end of the system.

Between April 20 and July 15, the federal government reported sending 960,000 "834" transactions to insurance companies (each report can cover more than one person in the same family). That includes 153,940 for the rest of April, 317,964 in May, 338,017 in June and 150,728 in the first 15 days of July. The daily rate has been fairly stable over this period.

It was not immediately clear how many of the records involved plan changes or cancellations and how many were for new enrollments.

An insurance industry official estimated that less than half of the transactions are new enrollments. The rest are changes: When an existing member makes a change to his or her policy, two 834s are created 2014 one terminating the old plan and one opening the new one.

Charles Gaba, who runs the website acasignups.net that tracks enrollment numbers, estimates that between 6,000 and 7,000 people have signed up for coverage each day on the federal exchange after the official enrollment period ended. Gaba's predictions were remarkably accurate during the open enrollment period.

"That doesn't account for attrition. That doesn't mean that they paid," Gaba said. "That's been based on limited data from a half dozen of the smaller exchanges, extrapolated out nationally."

The federal data obtained by ProPublica confirm some other facts about the rollout of Healthcare.gov, which was hobbled initially by technical problems. The slowest day was Oct. 18, when no 834 transactions were sent. That was followed by Oct. 1, the day the website launched, when a grand total of six records were sent to insurers.

By contrast, the busiest day was March 31, the official end of open enrollment, when 202,626 "834" reports were sent to insurers. The entire last week in March was busy.

About 86 percent of those who signed up for coverage on the federal exchange were eligible to receive government subsidies to help lower their monthly premiums. Those subsidies are being challenged by lawsuits in federal court contending they aren't allowed by the Affordable Care Act.

Two federal appeals courts came to conflicting decisions Tuesday on the permissibility of the subsidies (one said yes; the other no). They will remain in effect as the cases proceed in the courts, the Obama administration said.

The next time that the general public can sign up for coverage through the exchanges is from November 15 to February 15, 2015.




ACA = it works!

 

More health care coverage in Kentucky:




MAP SHOWS HOW KYNECT & OBAMACARE HAVE DECIMATED KENTUCKY WITH PROTECTIVE BLANKET OF INSURANCE COVERAGE [*UPDATED*]


BY DAVID M. F. SCHANKULA • JULY 25, 2014

For everyone concerned about how Obamacare and Steve Beshear’s Kynect health care marketplace would lead the entire Commonwealth straight down the road to hell where we would all exist in Obama-controlled internment camps, this map of expanded insurance coverage since the introduction of Obama’s Affordable Care Act should terrorize you:









That's the patriotic TRUTH that delusional right wingers refuse to see.

 

Another innocent dies because her state refused to expand Medicaid:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...69e-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html?hpid=z3



On July 1, the hospital in rural Belhaven, N.C., closed — a victim, in part, of the decision by the state’s governor and legislature to reject the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.

Six days later, 48-year-old Portia Gibbs, a local resident, had a heart attack. The medevac to take her to the next-nearest hospital (as many as 84 miles away, depending on where you live) didn’t get there in time.

“She spent the last hour of her life in a parking lot at a high school waiting for a helicopter,” Belhaven’s mayor, Adam O’Neal, said outside the U.S. Capitol on Monday, holding a framed photograph of Gibbs.

A week after Gibbs’s death, O’Neal began a 15-day, 273-mile walk to Washington to draw attention to the outrage in Belhaven, which he blames on the combination of an “immoral” hospital operator and the failure of Republican leaders in his state to accept the new Medicaid funding the hospital needed to stay afloat.

What makes the mayor’s journey all the more compelling is he’s a white Southerner and a Republican officeholder who has conservative views on abortion, taxes, guns — “you name it,” he told me. But ideology and party loyalty have limits. “I’m a pretty conservative guy, but this is a matter of people dying,” he said.

Republicans nationwide have abandoned any consideration of offering an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, figuring that their complaints about President Obama’s selective implementation of the law, and lingering unease about the legislation itself, will be enough to motivate conservative voters in November. But as O’Neal points out, this political calculation has a moral flaw.

“If the governor and the legislature don’t want to accept Medicaid expansion, they need to come up with another program to assure that rural hospitals don’t close,” the 45-year-old mayor said. Otherwise, he continued, “they’re allowing people to die to prove a point. That is wrong, and I’m not going to be a party to that.”

O’Neal is no fan of Obamacare, but during his journey, he sent a letter to Obama asking for a meeting. “I am a conservative Republican and I understand some of the suspicions political leaders in my party have,” he wrote. “But those concerns do not trump the need to maintain health services in struggling communities. Rural citizens dying should not be soldiers of the South’s defiance to the new health care law.”

Inexplicably, the White House didn’t reach out to O’Neal. The mayor did, however, get a place on the calendar of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who is facing a strong challenge from Thom Thillis, the state House speaker who helped block the Medicaid expansion.

The law cuts subsidies to hospitals that treat the uninsured, under the assumption that the gap would be offset by increased Medicaid funding. But half the states rejected the federal Medicaid money. On top of that, small hospitals such as Belhaven’s shuttered facility, Vidant Pungo Hospital, face market pressure to consolidate.

Studies have forecast that states’ refusal to expand Medicaid will mean thousands of preventable deaths each year, and the victims aren’t just the poor. O’Neal said Portia Gibbs had health insurance — but it didn’t do her any good without a hospital.

“Ladies like Portia Gibbs are dying all across this country right now,” O’Neal, tanner and a bit less pudgy than when he began his trek, told an audience outside the Capitol. In his Southern drawl, the mayor introduced Justin, the deceased woman’s son, and promised that “we’re going to fight as hard as we can to keep this from happening again.”

O’Neal arrived on Capitol Hill carrying his hiking pole and wearing trail shoes, shorts and a “Save our Hospital” T-shirt. He was accompanied by about 250 supporters, most affiliated with labor unions, and by civil rights leaders. The hospital closure disproportionately affects African Americans. But Gibbs is white, and so is Crystal Price, who, with her young son, joined the mayor on the stage.

Price, 27 and an employee at Wendy’s, has no health coverage and spoke tearfully about her cervical cancer. “They don’t want to expand Medicaid, so families like mine . . . have to decide if we’re going to pay for our children’s health care or our own,” she said. “How many have to bury their loved ones, and how many children like my own will have to grow up without a parent because you want more money in your pockets?”

For O’Neal, any ideological doubts about Obamacare are dwarfed by the disgrace of a young working mother unable to get cancer treatment.

“I mean, that’s wrong,” he said. “Conservatives — everybody — should think that’s wrong.”






This is MURDER. And that is the undeniable TRUTH.

 

MS Gov Blames Obama For Jump In Uninsured After Refusing To Expand Medicaid

By DANIEL STRAUSS Published JULY 28, 2014, 10:50 AM EDT

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) blamed President Barack Obama for a reported increase in uninsured Mississipians. The problem is, Bryant didn't acknowledge that he's been a staunch opponent of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare and refused to encourage enrolling in private coverage through Healthcare.gov.

Bryant directed his blame at Obama in response to a question about a WalletHub study that showed an increase in the percentage of uninsured Mississippians. The study found that the uninsured rate increased by 3.34 percentage points to 21.46 percent of Mississippi's population, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

"If statistics show that the ill-conceived and so-called Affordable Care Act is resulting in higher rates of uninsured people in Mississippi, I'd say that's yet another example of a broken promise from Barack Obama," Bryant said.

An estimated 137,800 people in Mississippi were left uncovered by health insurance because the state did not expand Medicaid.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/phil-bryant-uninsured-mississippi-blame-obama-expand-medicaid





Easy solution: EXPAND MEDICAID.

Any real patriotic governor or politician would demand no less.

 

And all of the tax credits that only benefit those earning less than $150,000.00/year? The tax shelters benefiting the wealthy, basically apply only to those families earning far more than $150,000.00/yr. So, the upper middle class get not "freebees" and can't afford to take benefit of t he "Tax shelters" of which you speak. Sorry, but a family of four earning between $150K-$200k getting few if any free credits that those earning in the lower bracket and unable to take advantage of the "so called shelters" that those earning $500,000 up can take; are screwed! They get no deductions for college costs, out of pocket health care costs, and many other deductions because "they earn too much", yet; they don't earn enough to invest in tax shelters that the extremely wealthy can invest in to reduce their taxable income.

When it comes to the PPACA, more may be covered on paper but their deductibles and copays are so high that more find it would be cheaper not to pay for insurance and pay their medical care costs up front. Until the required coverage portion of the ACT is changed, allowing people to pay for the coverage they need, and deductibles are lowered and more inline with the cost of premiums; more and more individuals, families and small businesses with drop coverage. Until the business mandate kicks in we will not see first hand the full negative effect this law will have.

 

Krugman: Liberals really should be celebrating. California shows how Obamacare can and should work..





Stealth Single Payer

So it now appears that most of California’s uninsured — 58 percent of the total, or well over 60 percent of those eligible (because undocumented immigrants aren’t covered) have gained insurance in the first year. Considering the complexity of the scheme, that’s really impressive, and it strongly suggests that next year, once those who missed out have had a chance to learn via word of mouth, California will have gotten much of the way toward universal coverage for legal residents.

But there’s something else the Kaiser report drives home: most of those gaining coverage are doing so not via the exchanges (although those are important too) but via Medicaid. And that’s important as an answer to critics of Obamacare from the left.



There have always been critics complaining that what we really should have is single-payer, and angry that subsidies were being funneled through the insurance companies. And in principle they’re right; the trouble was that cutting the insurers out of the loop would have made the plan politically impossible, both because of the industry’s power and because of the unwillingness of people with good coverage to take a leap into a completely new system. So we got this awkward public-private hybrid, which I supported because it was what we could get and despite its impurity it dramatically improves many people’s lives.

But it turns out that many of the newly insured are in fact being covered under a single-payer system — Medicaid. And as I’ve pointed out before,

Medicaid is actually the piece of the US system that looks most like European health systems, which cost far less than ours while delivering comparable results.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&





ACA is working - and that's the TRUTH right wingers refuse to see.

 

Hospitals Benefit From Big Drop In Uninsured Patients Under Obamacare



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hospitals-drop-uninsured-obamacare-bloomberg

Hospitals Benefit From Big Drop In Uninsured Patients Under Obamacare

By Dylan Scott
PublishedJuly 31, 2014, 10:02 AM


Hospitals continue to report a significant drop in their number of uninsured patients as Obamacare coverage takes full effect, boosting their bottom lines, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

Hospital Corporation of America, the biggest for-profit hospital network in the country, reported a 6.6 percent decrease in uninsured patients across its 165 hospitals, according to Bloomberg. And in the four states where HCA operates that expanded Medicaid, the drop was 48 percent.

LifePoint Hospitals reported that the percentage of its patients paying for their own care declined from 7.1 percent to 4.8 percent over the last year, according to Bloomberg.

Those trends have led to a brightening financial outlook for the companies, according to Bloomberg. Both HCA and LifePoint increased their fiscal forecast recently as the increase in paying customers became clear. LifePoint specifically estimated that Obamacare added $13 million to its total earnings in the second quarter, 40 percent above its expectations.

Hospitals were one of the key stakeholders backing health care reform during the legislative debate, and the law now seems to be paying dividends for them. These new uninsured figures track with some previous reports from hospitals which, particularly in the Medicaid expansion states, have seen a steady decline in their uninsured patient population since January.






More coverage, more lives saved, more money saved, people go back to work when their medical needs are met, higher income for hospitals, higher income for insurers, greater social productivity, increased tax revenues - all proof that ACA is working!

 

'''“The thing I’m thrilled about most of all is that this is going to make Kentuckians so much more healthy over the long term, and it`s going to move our state so far up in the rankings we are going to leave a lot of these states in the dust that are refusing to face reality,” '''


http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceja...id-as-care-contrasts-emerge/?partner=yahootix



More lives are being saved EVERY day thanks to ACA.

And that's the patriotic TRUTH that delusional right wingers refuse to see.

 

You certainly can charge whatever you want but if you are like most healthcare providers you obtain all of your patients that are insured with the plans you are contracted with and they as a whole determine the cost of each service you provide for your patients. Your charges mean absolutely nothing when your insurance contract fee schedule determines the actual cost.

 

The situation doctors find themselves in is so sad. Nothing makes me feel as bad as seeing all those doctors in their white coats having to use food stamps in the supermarket line.

Having been one of those people who could not obtain insurance due to a preexisting condition and as a result I was charged four to five times what doctors were paid by Medicare and by private insurance I will probably never be able to sympathize with doctors. What goes around comes around. And before I learned I was so naive that I thought when I negotiated and the doctors lowered my costs 25% they were sacrificing to help me. In reality all they were doing was screwing me a little less.

 

You are correct. And, Unfortunately, they have physicians over the barrel. If you refuse to sign up for these low paying plans, you lose many of your patients. And the new patients covered by these plans may cost more to treat than you are reimbursed. If things get worse I fear many doctors will be forced to accept payment upfront and refuse to accept insurance. They will file the claim for the patient only.

 

Look at the latest news, many people who signed up didn't pay.

 

and others who reportedly didn't actually did

 

GOP Attacks On Obamacare Fizzle In Key Senate Races (many Americans are benefiting from the law)

Tue Aug 19, 2014

Obamacare is fading as a cudgel against Democrats in key battleground races poised to determine control of the Senate, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg News.

Since the law's botched rollout last fall, Republicans have been licking their chops over the prospect of riding Obamacare failures to victory in the 2014 elections. But now that the law has recovered and is providing insurance coverage to millions of Americans, issue ads involving the health care law are slowly disappearing in key states like North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas.

In North Carolina, Obamacare was mentioned in 54 percent of issue ads in April; it fell to 27 percent in July, per data from Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.

In Louisiana, Obamacare fell to 41 percent of top five issue ads in July; in Arkansas it dropped to 23 percent, according to CMAG. The issue dominated the airwaves in both states in April.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obamacare-attacks-fizzle-in-key-senate-races


Obamacare Losing Power as Campaign Weapon in Ad Battles
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...g-punch-as-campaign-weapon-in-ad-battles.html

(snip)
The shift -- also taking place in competitive states such as Arkansas and Louisiana -- shows Republicans are easing off their strategy of criticizing Democrats over the Affordable Care Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the measure is unlikely to be repealed.

“The Republican Party is realizing you can’t really hang your hat on it,” said Andrew Taylor, a political science professor at North Carolina State University. “It just isn’t the kind of issue it was.”


Why Republicans Have Stopped Talking About Obamacare In Campaign Ads


(snip)
357,584 signed up for coverage the the federal exchange; 73,898 were determined to be eligible for Medicaid coverage. According to WalletHub, North Carolina’s uninsurance rate dropped by 2.96 percent from 19.64 percent to 16.68 percent.

(snip)
Arkansas
43,446 signed up for coverage through the federal exchange; 63,465 were determined to be eligible for Medicaid coverage. According to Gallup, “the rate of people without health insurance fell from 22.5 percent in 2013 to 12.4 percent in mid-2014.”

(snip)
Louisiana
101,778 Louisiana residents signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, but most of those enrollees already had coverage. According to one survey, “the percentage of uninsured in Louisiana dropped from 22.41 percent to 20.91 percent. That still leaves more than one of every five residents in the state with no insurance.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/201...lly-accepting-that-obamacare-is-here-to-stay/




ACA saving lives every day - Thank you Mr Obama!

 

Physician and surgeons incomes have decreased yearly since the mid 1990's. What you should be worried about is whether there will be a hospital willing to admit you and a doctor or surgeon that can afford to treat you. You apparently give other professionals more credit than you do those that treat your illnesses and keep you alive. It takes a special person to care for those with life threatening illness, holding their lives in their hands and subjecting themselves to lawsuits whether justified or not and performing surgical procedures. Think you could have graduated from Medical School, completed a medical or surgical residency, started your own medical/surgical practice and actually treated patients or performed surgeries? The profit margin for a private practice is between 10-20% on average. Not the big bucks you think.
50% of earnings goes out the door on "cost of doing business". This is increasing due to more Government regulations that cost $1000's/year to comply with. You don't know the facts or what you are talking about. You have no first hand knowledge. You have no clue. And, why should a private doctors or private hospitals fees be regulated when attorney, accountant, plumber, electrician, insurance agent; fees are not?

 

[SUB][/SUB]

Several points;

1) Yes I could have been a doctor had that been a profession that interested me.
2). I am not sure who you think regulates doctors fees. If they don't like what medicare or or insurance pays they are free to not do business with these groups.
3) By design there is no transparency in doctors fees which make comparison shopping difficult if not impossible.
4) Much of what doctors do could be done by others except for doctors efforts to maintain a monopoly.
5) If the medical profession made any effort at self regulation much government regulation whole not be necessary.

And if you believe that being a doctor is necessary to participate in the discussion suggest you post your degree and what is your medical speciality.

 

Doctors starting salaries. Don't think I will cry for them.

http://www.physician-salary.org/