ObamaCare: From $54 A Month To $591 A Month

From CBS News:


Story from the Weekly Standard HERE.

As I mentioned in this post last week, many Kaiser Permanente policy holders are being impacted by ObamaCare — sometimes by reducing hospitals available instead of or in addition to premium hikes.

The Leftist Narrative About The ACA Is Ramping Up

As Pastorius predicted a few days ago here at IBA:

You just watch: In the next few month the un-affordability of the Affordable Care Act will crystalize coalesce into a new Left narrative. The new narrative will be:

1) GREEDY CAPITALISTS, AT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES AND DRUG COMPANIES, ARE DRIVING UP THE COST OF HEALTHCARE.

2) WE MUST ELIMINATE GREEDY CAPITALISTS FROM THE EQUATION BY MOVING TO A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM.

Previously, I had thought the move to a Single Payer System would take a good ten years. But I gotta give credit where credit is due. Barack Obama and his cronies so ingeniously designed this piece-of-shit system to fail that the general population will believe we have no choice but to eliminate Capitalize within three years.

This is Cloward-Piven on Crack.

From the DailyKos:

Your health plan changing? Employers, insurers largely to blame

Read the rest HERE.

Whoa! Kaiser Dumps The Five Most Important Hospitals In Fairfax County, Virginia

From Inova, which provides the majority of medical care here in Northern Virginia:

A note to our patients about Kaiser Permanente

As of October 1, 2013, Inova facilities and physicians do not have contracts with Kaiser Permanente to provide in-network services. That means that Kaiser members, including health insurance exchange plan members, will no longer be allowed non-emergency access to Inova facilities, physicians, or outpatient services. The only exceptions to this fact are: Kaiser members who require emergency care; any Kaiser member who is part of our lung transplant program; and any Kaiser member who was receiving inpatient care or recurring outpatient care at an Inova location before October 1, 2013.

With our five hospitals and 140 additional locations in northern Virginia, including urgent and emergency care centers, physician offices and physical therapy centers, Inova offers convenient access and choice to the communities we serve.

If you would like to rely on Inova for your health and medical needs and are able, please consider choosing a health plan that gives you access to Inova. We participate with many of the leading commercial insurance plans.

If you have any questions, please contact your benefits administrator, Kaiser member services, or your physician.

More details about the Inova system HERE.

 Fairfax Hospital is part of the Inova system:

Inova Fairfax Hospital is the largest hospital in Northern Virginia and the flagship hospital of Inova Health System. Located in Fairfax County, Virginia, Inova Fairfax Hospital is one of the largest employers in the County.  The hospital campus includes the only heart institute in the region, the 156-bed Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, as well as the Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children. Northern Virginia’s only Children’s Hospital – largest Neonatal Intensive-Care Unit in the region, dedicated Pediatric intensive care, oncology unit, adolescent unit, cardiac surgery and pediatric surgery center.

The above change in accessing Inova will affect Fairfax County employees and retirees as well as innumerable others.

More Serfdom Via ObamaCare

From the New York Times on August 12, 2013:

A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law

WASHINGTON — In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.

The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014.

[...]

The health law, signed more than three years ago by Mr. Obama, clearly established a single overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for each individual or family. But federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs....

Read the rest HERE.

A rude awakening is coming, that's for sure. But the time the awakening occurs, individuals and families will be far along the road of serfdom.

And the Obamamaniacs continue to sing his praises. Unbelievable!

ObamaCare And Insurance Premiums

I just got notification of my new health-insurance premium amount.

A 25% rate hike, and I barely ever use the policy, a policy of a catastrophic nature with zero pharmacy coverage and a high deductible.

Didn't Obama say that the reforming health insurance according to ObamaCare would keep health-insurance costs down?

Pfffft.

To top it all off, my longtime physician (not a gold digger by any means) is now advising that his patients pay  $40.50 every month so as to have the guarantee of timely appointments, access to medical records and referrals at no additional charge, and quick responses to emails and phone calls.

ObamaCare Realities

Let us understand some of what ObamaCare requires by 2014, unless, of course, one chooses to pay the tax instead of ponying up for health insurance.

 I did research on the topic of availing this household of the "cheap ObamaCare policies" in 2010, shortly after ObamaCare was thrust upon our nation by Congress and the Obama administration. At that point in time, Mr. AOW was paying $584/month, and I, in the same age bracket, was paying $256/month for our separate private policies. The difference in those premiums is attributable to Mr. AOW's having pre-existing conditions even before his stroke [We have had health insurance all of our married lives, some 40 years], whereas I do not have any pre-existing conditions. Each of our policies at that time had an in-network deductible of $2500/year with a maximum of $5000/year in-network out of pocket. No prescription coverage whatsoever was included. 

Those ever-touted-by-the-Left "cheap" health insurance policies" mandated by ObamaCare and subsidized by the government in 2010 went begging, that is, people were not signing up.  It's easy to understand why if one considers the above.

So, how do those "cheap ObamaCare" policies scheduled to go in force in 2014 work?  What I have gleaned so far about taking preemptive action in advance of 2014....


Read the rest at Always On Watch.

The Medicare Maze

I spent most of yesterday trying to understand and navigate the complexities of Medigap coverage.

You see, this week Mr. AOW's Medicare card arrived in the mail.

Even though Mr. AOW will not reach the age of sixty-five for nearly three more years, he is automatically enrolled in Medicare thirty months after the qualifying event that disabled him in 2009 and has confined him to a hospital bed with a bedside commode in our living room.

Frankly, we've been looking forward to Medicare: Mr. AOW's private health-insurance premiums have risen from $500 a month to $700 a month over a two year period. The next premium hike for Mr. AOW is scheduled for June 2012, at which point the premium will be $908 a month. Mind you, the private health-insurance policy that Mr. AOW has is of the catastrophic type without prescription coverage and with a high deductible — two features which keep the premium far below that of gold-plated health insurance.

So, what's the point of this post? Shouldn't I be dancing for joy that, in a few months, Mr. AOW's health-insurance premium will drop from hundreds of dollars a month to $117.00 a month? Not exactly....

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

Those Mounting ObamaKare Waivers

So much for "liberty and justice for all," huh?

A little personal perspective on the above....

Back in January 2008, Mr. AOW lost his full-time job after nearly twelve years of working for that particular employer. In part, Mr. AOW's job loss was due to the economic slowdown. But something else played a larger part in the job loss, namely, the company's policy about employees carrying employer-based health insurance: enrolling in the health-insurance plan was optional. The result: only those employees with significant pre-existing conditions enrolled in the health plan, thereby making the plan more and more expensive.

As most of my readers must know, I do not support ObamaKare. That said, the realities of insurance involve having both low risk and high risk insureds in the same pool. Indeed, that very concept of a diversified-risks pool is the basis of all insurance.

So, just how is ObamaKare going to function with only higher risk insureds in the plan?

Obama: Mandatory Health Insurance Wasn't A Tax, But Now It Is

Yet another example of the Obama's administration's CHANGE!

From Ace of Spades, citing the New York Times (July 16, 2010):

...In a brief defending ["minimal essential coverage"], the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Return for a minute to these exact words from Obama, back in September 2009 when he was pushing for health-care reform:

"For us to say you have to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase."

We shouldn't be surprised. After all, the electorate did vote for change. That change apparently includes changing semantics too.

America, you've been had, bad, by the scam known as Barack Hussein Obama.

ObamaKare And Family-Insurance Plans

Much ado was made of Obama's warning health-insurance companies not to raise costs.

And I personally know of several people who supported ObamaKare because they believed that ObamaKare would help them to keep their children on the family's health-insurance plan until those children reach age twenty-six. Quite the attractive carrot for Obama's health-insurance reform, apparently.

Surprise! There's no such thing as a free ride!

From this June 27, 2010, article in the Washington Post:

It is among the top early selling points of the health-care overhaul -- a new rule that has particular appeal for middle-class, middle-age voters: Young adults who lack health insurance will soon be able to remain on their parents' plans until age 26.

But although Obama administration officials note that the provision will help millions, the benefit is proving less immediate than many families expect.

The administration's success in convincing dozens of insurers to comply with the provision earlier than the law requires has left many parents with the impression that their adult children will be eligible for continuing coverage far sooner than is likely to be the case, experts said.

Furthermore,

Many military families are also just learning that the young adult children provision -- and the rest of the overhaul -- won't apply to TRICARE, the Defense Department health plan serving 9.6 million active and retired service members and their families.

[...]

Many military families are also just learning that the young adult children provision -- and the rest of the overhaul -- won't apply to TRICARE, the Defense Department health plan serving 9.6 million active and retired service members and their families.

[...]

The years to come could bring further rude awakenings for parents as employers and insurance companies look for ways to offset the added costs of covering these workers' children longer into adulthood, experts say.

For instance, roughly half of employer-based insurance plans currently charge a blanket family rate regardless of how many children are included on the plan. But the survey by Mercer found that one in five are now strongly considering or likely to start charging on a per-child basis.

Similarly, while Mercer found that on average employers cover more than two-thirds of the cost of family plans, 16 percent said they are strongly considering or likely to require their workers to start contributing a greater share.

ObamaKare - smoke and mirrors, and utopian fantasy that cannot possibly be fulfilled.

And now that the bill has been passed, we who bear the burden of the costs of ObamaKare are finding out more and more of the ugly details. More such ugly details to come. Quite the reality check is looming.

The List of Obamacare Taxes

Check out the list HERE, from Heritage.org (hat tip to Brenda Bowers).

Taxed enough already?

This administration doesn't think so.

The Beginning of the End of Health Insurance Companies

From Sonic Charmer:

Seems pretty clear that one major effect (whether intent or not) of this “healthcare” “reform” will be to eliminate health insurance companies from the market. It takes a true economic retard to sincerely believe in most of the claimed good effects of the bill. And it doesn’t take an economic genius to discern that companies cannot long survive (unaided) if they are forced by the government to sign money-losing contracts with anyone who asks them to.

Now as far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on exactly how insurance companies will be eliminated from the market. Will they just go bankrupt and fold? Some of them perhaps. More likely though I think is that they will just become de facto if not literal arms of the government (thus, the “market” as such will just disappear as everyone ends up under the government umbrella).

The trajectory is pretty clear: a couple years down the road, when insurance companies have been abiding by these “reform” diktats, and losing money, and ratcheting up premiums as much as they can, but it’s not enough, and people paying the higher premiums complain (to politicians), and politicians grandstand, and hearings are held, and pressure is put back on the insurance companies….sooner or later the insurance companies will go to the government hat in hand. Government (“to preserve our historic health reform and patients’ health rights”) gives them a “bailout”, which is another term for buying them out.

... So the obvious question is what can be done by people opposed to all this. Step 1, I think, involves rediscovering the concept of “insurance”, and resurrecting it – but with a new name. As my most devoted reader(s) know, the thing we have today that we call “insurance” is not insurance. Like the term “liberal”, the word “insurance” has by now been so misused and abused that it is unrecognizable as its former self.

Go read the whole thing over at Rhymes with Cars and Girls.

The Democratic Progressives ACCELERATE under reality

Image by Truthout.org via Flickr

Recently my wife had surgery.

We just received the bill.

Suffice it to say that given our medical back grounds JUST SINCE 1995 - of the same cancer Justice Rehnquist had (12 surgeries, radiation), veinous disease (3 surgeries), and one near fatal and heart attack we have become aficionados of health insurance, treatment and costs. After a rigorous due diligence we decided, that ASIDE from SOME KIND of tort reform, and MOST IMPORTANTLY (having lived in several places with VERY different rules) cross state wide open competition among the 1300 health insurance companies in the nation .. the best way to bring pressure to bear on rising costs is a combination of some kind of health savings accounts and high deductible insurance.

And then we got this bill.

We had a FINE surgeon. She spent ONE HOUR doing it. Her personal bill for that hour was $3000. Our tally was $125.01. So who cares, right? I can't get a TUNE UP for $125 of my own money.

But if MANY of us, ten of millions with health savings accounts, had to spend our own money would that bill not raise enough hackles out there for some surgeons to lower that price?

I do not dispute that she ought to get all the market bears. But the way this market is constructed is such that the consumers only NOW consider their responsibility. And only in a foggy diluted fashion.

That change above would be called health care reform.

And thus we come to Joel Benenson's (Obama pollster) INCREDIBLE, DEATH DEFYING column on his belief that Americans, who like me WANT REFORM, want this reform before the congress.

It is ironic that Democratic pollsters Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen felt "compelled" to "challenge the myths" about public attitudes on health care by simply restating one of the most commonly stated -- and patently wrong -- Republican myths [Washington Forum, March 12].

No pollster, including me, could look at the recent data and responsibly say anything other than that the American public is closely divided when it comes to supporting or opposing various health-care plans

Various health care plans?

Only one is under consideration, and NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN IT, because no one has read it. And if they did, best of luck reducing 2700 pages to an intelligible argument.
PS.. only 7 of 535 representatives in the House and Senate ever read the 2003 Intelligence estimate of Iraq before they voted on war.

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Continue reading The Democratic Progressives ACCELERATE under reality.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln: The Constitution “Charges Congress With the Health and Well-Being of the People” So We Can Force Americans to Buy Health Insurance...

Shockingly, the words "health" and "well-being" appear nowhere in the Constitution....

Click on the link above to get the whole story from Weasel Zippers.