Showing posts with label Health Care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health Care. Show all posts
Monday, September 30, 2013
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
Even Windsocks are more consistent than Mitt Romney (VIDEO)
Do not, REPEAT, do not try to follow Mitt Romney's positions on anything. It just produces migraines.
"MassCare is a model for the nation". "I'd repeal Health Care Reform". "It's great for Massachusetts, where I got healthcare for all". "But it's a bad idea for the Nation as a whole". "It's a part of my plan in 2008". "It's bad now that President Obama has passed it".
Black is white. Up is down. Dogs and cats living together...Mitt Hysteria!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
C'mon, Scalito, Roberts, do it. DO IT! I dare ya...
I hope they spend more intellectual firepower on Obamacare, than they did on Citizens United:
Next month, America’s health insurance plans may lose $1 trillion in revenue.
It won’t have anything to do with a business deal gone awry, or Americans dropping health coverage during the recession. Instead, $1 trillion is the amount of revenue that health insurance plans can expect to lose if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. The Court is expected to issue its opinion in late June.
The figure comes from Bloomberg Government, where number crunchers have taken a look at what happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act and its expected expansion of health care coverage to 32 million Americans. They find that, should the Affordable Care Act be found unconstititional, insurance companies will lose $1 trillion in revenue between 2013 and 2020.
To put that in perspective, $1 trillion accounts for about 9 percent of all revenue that health insurers are expected to earn in the same period. It’s one-half of a percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Add up the annual revenues of America’s five largest banks - Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Wachovia and U.S. Bancorp- and you’re still about $500 billion short of what health plans can expect to lose if the Supreme Court decides against Obamacare.
“It’s the sheer size of the number that was startling,” says Bloomberg Government health care analyst Matt Barry. “I don’t know if people fully appreciate the stakes involved here. It’s not just politics - there’s a lot of money, and a lot to lose.”
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The President's Barnburner of a speech in front of the Associated Press Editors (VIDEO)
Too bad the Associated Press, apparently, declined to listen to any part of it (via TPM):
One of the key moments of President Obama’s Tuesday speech before an Associated Press luncheon came at the end, when he urged reporters not to cast partisan disagreements about the key issues of the day — health care, the environment, the role of the federal government — as a product of equal intransigence on both sides. Republicans, he noted, have abandoned their previous support for Obama initiatives — from transportation funding, to cap and trade, to the health care reforms that comprise ‘Obamacare’ — many of which emerged as conservative alternatives to more liberal policies.
His hosts weren’t listening — and as a result they’ve made Obama’s points about Republicans and the media for him.
“[I]f Republicans have moved to the right on health care, it’s also true that Obama has moved to the left,” reads an AP wrap on the Obama speech. “He strenuously opposed a mandate forcing people to obtain health insurance until he won office and changed his mind.”
It’s true that Obama campaigned against an individual mandate in 2008, only to embrace it — however reluctantly — after he became president. But to say that constitutes a move to the left betrays a lack of understanding about the origins and purpose of the individual mandate, and of Obama’s broader evolution on health care reform.
In the early aughts, as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama strongly supported a single-payer health care system.
Over the years, that position became more tempered by political realities, and by the 2008 Democratic primary, he had embraced the basic framework of what eventually became “Obamacare,” with two glaring exceptions: He supported a public option, and he opposed an individual mandate — the latter of which was crucial to the success of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts.
Obama was criticized by a mix of liberal and conservative technocrats and industry stakeholders for opposing the mandate. By embracing it as president, while dropping the public option, he was arguably moving further right still from his past support for single-payer. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — then the top Republican on the committee that drafted the health care law — said before health care reform turned toxic on the right, “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”
As Obama lurched toward Massachusetts’ plan as a potential framework for bipartisan consensus, Republicans quickly abandoned the pretense of supporting the principle of universal health care of any kind.
Steve Pearlstein: Why we should tell Corporate America to drop dead...
From Eat your broccoli, Justice Scalia, published on March 31st:
My first thought on perusing the briefs filed in the combined cases was to notice what wasn’t there: any involvement on the part of Corporate America.
For the past 20 years, big business has complained endlessly about escalating health-care premiums, which they correctly blamed on “cost-shifting,” including paying indirectly for the free care provided to the workers at firms that did not provide health benefits. They wanted an end to fee-for-service medicine that rewarded doctors for providing more care than necessary. Some even talked of reforms that would begin to move the country away from an employer-based insurance system.
Yet despite the fact that “Obamacare” did all of those things and more, there was not a single brief in support of the law from an organization representing big business.
Small businesses have spent the past two decades complaining that the reason they don’t offer coverage is that it’s too expensive because they don’t get the large-group and community rating advantage. So how did the National Federation of Independent Businesses respond to a law that assured small businesses the benefits of large-group purchasing and community rating and threw in billions of dollars in subsidies to boot? It signed up as one of the named plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of the new law.
It’s hard to know what the business community will demand if the Supreme Court overturns the health-care law. At that point, however, it will hardly matter, since they will have lost all political credibility on the issue, particularly with the Obama White House and anyone who happens to be a Democrat.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Road We've Traveled Official Trailer (VIDEO)
Yeah, kinda looking forward to this.
Nice job by Tom Hanks.
Nice job by Tom Hanks.
Monday, February 6, 2012
As the Catholic Church continues to embarrass itself on Birth Control...
Sarah Kliff, working for Ezra Klein's Wonkbook, published this handy-dandy fact check on the President's new regulations regarding Health Insurance Companies...note: Health Insurance Companies...having to cover contraception under the Affordable Care act.
Religious Institutions who employ people in their religion have an exemption.
Naturally, Religious Institutions who employ people outside their religion are in a snit over the fact that they won't be able to impose their religious values over their employees. (Catholic Hospitals of America...Chris Matthews of Hardall...I'm talkin' to you!)
From today's Washington Post:
Religious Institutions who employ people in their religion have an exemption.
Naturally, Religious Institutions who employ people outside their religion are in a snit over the fact that they won't be able to impose their religious values over their employees. (Catholic Hospitals of America...Chris Matthews of Hardall...I'm talkin' to you!)
From today's Washington Post:
How did this all start?
The health reform law requires that insurance companies cover preventive services for women without any co-pay beginning this summer. It did not, however, specify what services to cover — that was left to the Obama administration. With guidance from the Institute of Medicine on the issue, Health and Human Services published a regulation on Aug. 1, 2011 that included birth control as part of the preventive package. That regulation also had a conscience clause, which allows religious employers who object to birth control — and also primarily employ those of their own religion — to be exempt from the requirement. That would allow churches to opt out of the new requirement.
What’s the fight about now?
Some religious leaders say that the exemption wasn’t wide enough: That the Obama administration should allow all faith-based employers regardless of who they employ, to opt out of the new requirement if they object to contraceptives. This wider definition would exempt, among others, Catholic hospitals. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has lobbied aggressively for this wider conscience clause, as have a number of prominent Catholics who supported the health reform law. But in final regulations last month, the Obama administration did not expand the exemption.
Let’s say the Obama administration had expanded the conscience clause. Would that allow Catholic hospitals not to provide birth control to their patients?
No, it would not. This regulation only applies to the health insurance that a hospital, charity or other employer provides for its employees. It does not regulate the care that a Catholic charity provides to its patients. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote recently in a USA Today op-ed, “our rule has no effect on the long-standing conscience clause protections for providers, which allow a Catholic doctor, for example, to refuse to write a prescription for contraception.”
What happens next?
Two Catholic universities have already filed lawsuits challenging the mandated coverage of contraceptives as a violation of religious freedoms protected under the First Amendment. The Catholic bishops are also looking to file a similar challenge, and some observers expect these challenges could wind their way up to the Supreme Court.
The new rule is starting to play a political role, too, in the 2012 election. Republican candidates have come out against the contraceptive requirement. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted it as “a direct assault of freedom of religion.” The Obama campaign and its allies have repeatedly defended the new requirement, attacking the Republican field as anti-contraceptives.
How have contraceptive mandates been handled previously?
Twenty-eight states currently require insurance plans to cover contraceptives, although two exclude emergency contraceptives from that mandate.
Nine states do not have conscience clause. Four states have what the Guttmacher Institute describes as “narrow” exemptions, similar to the federal one, which allows churches and other institutions that primarily employ those of their own religion to opt out. Seven states have “broader” exemptions that cover other religious institutions, but not hospitals. Then eight states have “expansive” conscience clauses that allow at least some hospitals not to provide contraceptive coverage.
What about if you get health care through your employer?
Approximately 90 percent of employer-based insurance plans cover contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute, although many may charge co-pays for birth control, which the health reform law will eliminate.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Friday, July 29, 2011
A message to the Firedoglakes, Greenwalds, Schultzes and Greens of the world...
From Ezra:
Did you catch that?
I seem to remember the Whiny Left crowd chanting for exactly that when the Public Option fight was going on...kill the bill and start again with Single Payer.
What we're seeing now in the Debt Ceiling fight is the exact same hole you wanted to dig us in during Health Care Reform. So, thanks for nothing.
I'm sure ramming through Single Payer would have made the aforementioned people feel sooooo much better, and accomplished exactly nothing as the whole of Health Care Reform would've gone down in flames.
The very thing so many Lefties are excoriating the Republicans for today, is the very same behavior they are still mad at the President for yesterday.
The purpose of the Speaker, of the Senate Majority Leader, of the President, in a strange way are all exactly the same, even if those three will occasionally come to blows. It is to prepare the caucus for what the deal will look like (yes, disappointment, but with realism), but at the same time do so in preparation for a successful outcome.
The problem I have with the Bill Killers from HCR, with the Ed Schultzes, the Jane Hamshers, the Adam Greens, the Arianna Huffingtons, the Keith Olbermanns (there, I said it), Bill Mahers and the Glenn Greewalds of the world, is that they are very good at sketching out what is their preferred outcome is, while conveniently neglecting to give us any realistic indication of how to get there. Sure they give us 100% Grade-A bullshit like "he should have lead more", or "he's not using the bully pulpit", or "he's really a Republican".
(And for the record, Robert Reich has been through these fights and should know better. I guess he enjoys getting his ass kissed too much by the Huffington crowd.)
I went through the Bush Years with a belief that the Left, the people of my ideological stripe, were at least the one's mired in reality. But the last two years have shown, that that's nonsense. The Left is terrible at Politics. There's a reason they lose as many campaigns as they do. They're lazy and arrogant (lazy because they feel they should just present their ideas and have everyone bow in acquiescence). The problem is the Left hasn't heard that lesson...and multiple defeats at the polls have not taught them otherwise.
My marker is down, and remains down. The only way this President does not win re-election, honestly, is if douchebags, like the ones I've mentioned above don't show up. I am a Liberal, and I will always remain a Liberal in my beliefs, thoughts and actions...
...but I can't stand Liberals. And if they don't show up to support the President in 2012, I will make it my mission to end organizations like MoveOn, like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Like Chris Mattews said yesterday, "I will not forget those who did this..."
But I'm talking about you Professional Left.
I have discovered your mirror opposite, and for some reason...they've been allowed to sit in the House of Representatives.
P.S. Oh, and Conservatives...if that's how I feel about Liberals, imagine how I feel about you?
When Nancy Pelosi served as speaker of the House, her job was conditioning her members for disappointment. It was Pelosi who had to bring them around to a Senate-designed health-care law that lacked a public option, a cap-and-trade bill that gave away most of its permits, a stimulus that did too little, a bank bailout that endangered their careers. Pelosi had to do that because, well, that’s what the speaker of the House has to do. To govern is to compromise. And when you’re in charge, you have to govern.
Lately, Boehner has not been governing. What should have happened Friday is obvious: Having failed to pass a conservative resolution to the debt crisis without Democratic votes, he should have begun cutting the deals and making the concessions necessary to gain Democratic votes. That, after all, is what he will ultimately have to do anyway, as whatever he passes will also require the approval of the Senate and the president.
But Boehner went in the opposite direction. He made his bill less conservative. He indulged his members in the fantasy that they wouldn’t have to make compromises. It’s as if Pelosi, facing criticism for dropping the public option, had tried to shore up her support by bringing a single-payer health-care bill to the floor. Even if that would have pleased her left wing, what good would it have done her? Her job was to prepare her members to take a vote that could lead to a successful outcome. Pretending that that outcome could be far further to the left than it actually could be would ultimately make her job harder.
Did you catch that?
I seem to remember the Whiny Left crowd chanting for exactly that when the Public Option fight was going on...kill the bill and start again with Single Payer.
What we're seeing now in the Debt Ceiling fight is the exact same hole you wanted to dig us in during Health Care Reform. So, thanks for nothing.
I'm sure ramming through Single Payer would have made the aforementioned people feel sooooo much better, and accomplished exactly nothing as the whole of Health Care Reform would've gone down in flames.
The very thing so many Lefties are excoriating the Republicans for today, is the very same behavior they are still mad at the President for yesterday.
The purpose of the Speaker, of the Senate Majority Leader, of the President, in a strange way are all exactly the same, even if those three will occasionally come to blows. It is to prepare the caucus for what the deal will look like (yes, disappointment, but with realism), but at the same time do so in preparation for a successful outcome.
The problem I have with the Bill Killers from HCR, with the Ed Schultzes, the Jane Hamshers, the Adam Greens, the Arianna Huffingtons, the Keith Olbermanns (there, I said it), Bill Mahers and the Glenn Greewalds of the world, is that they are very good at sketching out what is their preferred outcome is, while conveniently neglecting to give us any realistic indication of how to get there. Sure they give us 100% Grade-A bullshit like "he should have lead more", or "he's not using the bully pulpit", or "he's really a Republican".
(And for the record, Robert Reich has been through these fights and should know better. I guess he enjoys getting his ass kissed too much by the Huffington crowd.)
I went through the Bush Years with a belief that the Left, the people of my ideological stripe, were at least the one's mired in reality. But the last two years have shown, that that's nonsense. The Left is terrible at Politics. There's a reason they lose as many campaigns as they do. They're lazy and arrogant (lazy because they feel they should just present their ideas and have everyone bow in acquiescence). The problem is the Left hasn't heard that lesson...and multiple defeats at the polls have not taught them otherwise.
My marker is down, and remains down. The only way this President does not win re-election, honestly, is if douchebags, like the ones I've mentioned above don't show up. I am a Liberal, and I will always remain a Liberal in my beliefs, thoughts and actions...
...but I can't stand Liberals. And if they don't show up to support the President in 2012, I will make it my mission to end organizations like MoveOn, like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Like Chris Mattews said yesterday, "I will not forget those who did this..."
But I'm talking about you Professional Left.
I have discovered your mirror opposite, and for some reason...they've been allowed to sit in the House of Representatives.
P.S. Oh, and Conservatives...if that's how I feel about Liberals, imagine how I feel about you?
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The GOP gets paid to waste your money...
Bear in mind, it is the GOP who's interested in undoing the Affordable Care Act. Bear in mind that it's the GOP who receives the lion's share of Big Pharma and Insurance industry money (Lord knows, Democrats are guilty of that too).
So keep that in mind when you look at this...this is what the GOP wants to see continued, if not expanded.
Created by: Medical Transcription
So keep that in mind when you look at this...this is what the GOP wants to see continued, if not expanded.
Created by: Medical Transcription
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Jonathan Cohn talks about a warning from the Courts to Obamacare opponents...
From today's piece:
At the moment, the case against the law in the hands of the appellate courts. Three sets of cases are pending, each one before a different Circuit Court. Last week judges from the Fourth Circuit, which sits in Virginia, heard the first of these cases. Early next month, judges from the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, are supposed to hear the next one.
The Fourth Circuit judges, all of them Democratic appointees, seemed openly skeptical of arguments that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. But the Sixth Circuit panel will include two judges appointed by Republicans and just one appointed by a Democrat. Most experts figure they will be more sympathetic to the lawsuit challenging the law's constitutionality or, at least, to the parties bringing it.
And maybe they will be. But, on Thursday, the judges sent a letter to lawyers from both parties. In it, they asked the lawyers to write briefs on three procedural questions. Two of them are about "standing" and "ripeness." (Or at least what I understand those concepts to be.)
The first question asks whether the plaintiffs can show they have suffered an injury or face an "imminent injury," even though the law doesn't take effect until 2014. The other asks for details on the penalties for violating the individual mandate and the extent to which they would actually cause "injury and hardship." As legal expert Timothy Jost and journalist Timothy Noah have pointed out, the law specifically prohibits the federal government from using criminal penalties to enforce the insurance requirement.
These questions are critical because, if the plaintiffs can't demonstrate that the Affordable Care Act has caused or will "imminently" cause them hardship, then they arguably have no right to challenge the law. And the Sixth Circuit judges don't seem to be the only ones pondering these issues. The Fourth Circuit judges, in Richmond, made a big deal about this in last week's oral arguments.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Okay, now a D.C. Court has upheld HCR. You know what that means?
...absolutely nothing.
Still goin' to the Supreme Court, where Anthony Kennedy (and probably Anthony Kennedy alone will decide its fate).
Still the decision by Gladys Kessler was welcome news.
Still goin' to the Supreme Court, where Anthony Kennedy (and probably Anthony Kennedy alone will decide its fate).
Still the decision by Gladys Kessler was welcome news.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Before you let Conservatives bull@#$% you into thinking the CBO said that Health Care Reform will cost jobs
Read this piece from Ezra:
The short version is this: If you make health-care insurance cheaper and make it harder for insurance companies to deny people coverage, then a certain number of people who would like to leave the labor force but can't afford or access health-care insurance without their job will stop working.
To understand why, imagine a 62-year-old woman who works for IBM and beat breast cancer 10 years ago. She wants to retire. She has the money to retire. But no one will sell her health care under the status quo. Under the health-reform law, she can buy health care in an exchange because insurers can't turn her away due to her history of breast cancer. So she'll retire. Or imagine a 50-year-old single mother who wants to home-school her developmentally disabled child but can't quit her job because they'll lose health care. The subsidies and the protections in the Affordable Care Act will give her the option to stop working for awhile, while under the old system she'd need to stick with her job to keep her family's health-care coverage. That's how health-care reform can reduce the labor supply. If either case counts as a destroyed job, then so does my winning the lottery and moving to Scotland in search of the perfect glass of whiskey.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Signs you've been in the Senate too long (a not-too-fond farewell to Orrin Hatch)
Courtesy Ezra.
It's not like I ever liked Hatch to begin with, but he is an arrogant bastard. And while it's very likely we wind up with someone like Mike Lee as his replacement, let it be said, Hatch is going down in 2012, and I won't shed any tears:
It's not like I ever liked Hatch to begin with, but he is an arrogant bastard. And while it's very likely we wind up with someone like Mike Lee as his replacement, let it be said, Hatch is going down in 2012, and I won't shed any tears:
Perhaps the most telling moment came when Utah's Orrin Hatch scolded Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who served as Ronald Reagan's solicitor general and considers the mandate easily constitutional, for the quality of his arguments.
The primary flaw Hatch pointed out in Fried's thinking was that, well, Hatch disagreed with it. Despite his preexisting respect for the quality of Fried's legal thinking, the fact that Fried's position differed from Hatch's had left Hatch "shocked" at Fried, not more skeptical of his own thinking. Motivated skepticism in action, I guess.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Affordable Care Act represents the last time Liberals will compromise on Health Care Reform
Conservatives...be damn careful what you wish for. Because this ruling, also makes unconstitutional one of your preferred fantasies.
Ummm, what other thing would you like the Government to make us all go out and buy?
Would it be Stocks and Bonds...with your Social Security money, a scheme known as Privatization?
If you can't stomach the idea of being made to buy Health Insurance, how can you then justify making us all go out and buy stocks and bocks with our Social Security Insurance?
And you do realize that the Affordable Care Act represents something else, don't you?
It's the last compromise.
Yeah, because if you trash this, if you make this law invalid, we Democrats will be left with only one choice when it comes to reforming Health Care...that'd would be something we love, and you hate called: Medicare for all.
Yeah, Single...payer.
Not the Public Option. Not Medicare at 55, Medicare...for...all.
Game on, fellas.
The next big and dangerous lie about Health Care Reform...
You watch it. What's going to happen is that the 26 Attorneys General who sued the Adminstration over Health Care Reform are going to seize upon Judge Vinson's ruling that the Law is unconstitutional, and start saying: "How dare the President enforce his unconstitutional law."
One problem.
Judge Vinson called the Law unconstitutional...sure.
He neglected...for some reason...to put a stay on it.
That's right, for all the hubbub and hoopla over this ruling, the Judge in the matter neglected stop it from being enforced. Mostly likely because he knew it wouldn't stand up in Court for more than a nanosecond.
Still, that won't stop a lot of Conservative douchebags and liars out there from proclaiming that the Law is unconstitutional. (Uhh, you've got two Judges saying it is, I got two Judges saying it is -- meet you at Anthony Kennedy's desk in a little over a year).
Once again, the Rhetoric around Health Care Repeal will escalate to dangerous proportions, because in their zeal to make their argument (which will be that the President is doing dangerous and unconstitutional things), we continue down the road that led to Congresswoman's shooting, only this time the the consequences might be far, far more tragic.
One problem.
Judge Vinson called the Law unconstitutional...sure.
He neglected...for some reason...to put a stay on it.
That's right, for all the hubbub and hoopla over this ruling, the Judge in the matter neglected stop it from being enforced. Mostly likely because he knew it wouldn't stand up in Court for more than a nanosecond.
Still, that won't stop a lot of Conservative douchebags and liars out there from proclaiming that the Law is unconstitutional. (Uhh, you've got two Judges saying it is, I got two Judges saying it is -- meet you at Anthony Kennedy's desk in a little over a year).
Once again, the Rhetoric around Health Care Repeal will escalate to dangerous proportions, because in their zeal to make their argument (which will be that the President is doing dangerous and unconstitutional things), we continue down the road that led to Congresswoman's shooting, only this time the the consequences might be far, far more tragic.
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