Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security 398
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1. The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report. As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.'They've removed their margin for error,' said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. 'There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.' The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance."
Is anyone really surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
I think too much of this is due to government bidding requirements that put too much emphasis on who you know more than what you know. I have seen too many stories where competence is the last thing looked at for contractors.
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On top of the usual delays they find it hard to guarantee that their IT system is completely free of any security flaws whatsoever. If they manage to scientifically show the system is reasonably secure then I will hope to read the book and the acceptance speech for the Turing Prize. I will not however read the requirement documents. These will be absolute shambles and as thick as a couple of phonebooks.
Best of luck to our fellow geeks in the trenches of this ruddy mess. I've been there
Re:Is anyone really surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They should enlist the aid of the National Security Agency. Nobody can steal data from that place.
Social security numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
"hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance."
Why would anyone provide a social security number to be used for medical purposes?
social security number = ID and citizenship check (Score:3)
social security number = ID and citizenship check
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Re:Social security numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
How else will the IRS verify we are legally enrolled in a plan, and don't have to pay the fine/tax/fine/tax?
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They could simply ask--yes or no--on the tax return, then require people who are audited to bring paperwork backing it up (just like any other claim on a tax return).
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Even supporters should want to kill this thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Obamacare failing doesn't serve anyone's interests. And it won't succeed. Its too poorly set up to do anything but fail.
So if you want socialized medicine... this will only make your idea appear stupid or your political allies too inept to execute such a plan.
If you don't want socialized medical care this will effectively give it to you anyway... but it will be even more expensive... badly run... and generally all the negatives will be more negative.
So lets not do this... kill it and restart the debate on it. Does that mean the supporters will have to ACTUALLY get support for their program this time instead of sneaking it through? Yes. But they should have done that in the first place and this is so screwed up in large part because they broke the rules.
I know what the supporters are going to say... that they followed the letter of the law. Possibly by the narrowest possible definition. But you know damn well that you broke the spirit of the law in half getting there.
That said, that isn't the point of my post. My point is that indifferent to all that, Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that. But causing American insurance premiums to double is not in any one's interest. Stop it.
If you care about the poor. Stop it.
If you care about jobs. Stop it.
If you care about the country. Stop it.
At this point, the only reason to support it is ego... aka fear of looking like a fool after investing so much political capital into the issue... or ignorance.
That's all that's left.
kill the bill with no replacement and sick kids (Score:2)
kill the bill with no replacement and sick kids may get cut off. AS well as others with Pre-Existing Conditions
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Why can't I at least opt for it if I have a "good plan". I have had this "good plan" and actual socialised medicine. I would love to go back to that system. Instead of finding out if my treatment will be covered or not only after it has happened.
A public option should have been made available.
some people think they have good plans. (Score:2)
some people think they have good plans and when they get sick they find out how bad they can be or they hit the cap and get kicked out.
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Obamacare failing doesn't serve anyone's interests.
Sure it does. The insurance companies love it. Why do you think their stocks went up immediately after it was passed? Who could complain about guaranteed customers?
So if you want socialized medicine...
Who wants socialized medicine? Socialized medical insurance would be nice though. Maybe it's why Canadians seem happy and friendly all the time (or maybe that's the effect of too much maple syrup).
Does that mean the supporters will have to ACTUALLY get support for their program this time instead of sneaking it through?
Sneak it through? The biggest political debate of that year, months and months of continual coverage and debate in the media, followed by votes in cong
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Oops, misread "Obamacare failing doesn't serve anyone's interests" as "Obamacare doesn't serve anyone's interests". That rather changes the GP. Must remember not to post before second cup of coffee.
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At least their maple syrup is probably pure and not that HFCS filled crap we eat down here in the states.
Gee, I wonder if that's one reason Americans are so unhealthy in the first place...
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Exactly why the GP (me) advocated moving to a Canadian style system.
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So if you want socialized medicine... this will only make your idea appear stupid or your political allies too inept to execute such a plan.
If you don't want socialized medical care this will effectively give it to you anyway... but it will be even more expensive... badly run... and generally all the negatives will be more negative.
Too bad RomneyObamacare (the Romney MA plan and Obama's plan are basically identical) isn't actually socialized medicine, eh? I wonder what would have happened had Obama created a National Health Service like other civilized countries.
My overall take is that it will suck, but it will suck somewhat less than if it hadn't been created. There is every indication that there will be fewer people without insurance, fewer medical bankruptcies, and less insurance company shenanigans. It's far from perfect, but shou
Progress (Score:2)
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I just don't understand why they had to pass it in such a monolithic form as to make the bad get thrown out with the good.
They should have passed a collection of bills, much like the Bill of Rights, with the following included as individual bills:
1. Abolition of pre-existing conditions clauses
2. Abolition of payout maximums
3. Universal eligibility for coverage
4. Dependent age increase
5. Government subsidized coverage with health insurance exchanges
If you'll notice, #5 is the only one anyone disagrees w
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Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that.
The problem is people like you that are entirely inflexible. There are definitely flaws in ObamaCare - it's a huge bill - but most bills that size would have been updated and fixed a few times by congress. Unfortunately, there are some in congress that would rather not fix it, but just go back and start again.
It's been a few years now since ObamaCare's been passed, where are the better ideas? The only thing we've seen are minor things (e.g. malpractice reform) from Republicans that would do little to
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/opinion/behind-double-digit-premium-increases-for-health-insurance.html?_r=0
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Where did that money go?
What are the odds that 26 year olds were the cause?
Someone is pocketing it and telling you that Obamacare is the reason instead of a good excuse.
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The insurance mandate is the band-aid. The expansion of Medicaid (which is part of the plan) to cover all the population is the achievable route to a universal health care system.
Which is the real intent in the first place.
Note that since Obamacare was announced, the inflation rate of health care services has dropped to record lows.
How much of that is explained by the economy not having recovered after more than 6 years? If no one has extra money for doctor visits, the price isn't going to go up much.
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Which is the real intent in the first place.
I wish. Obama bent over backwards to kill a public option.
P.S. The GP said Medicaid, but it expanding Medicare is a better approach..
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Obama bent over backwards to keep you from realizing that the intent is universal health care, which Americans do not want. He was very successful.
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Obama bent over backwards to keep you from realizing that the intent is universal health care
How fiendishly clever of him - why didn't I realize this before! He said the intent was UHC, knowing that since he's a politician we'd think he was lying, but he really wasn't!
which Americans do not want
Cite?
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keep the good and correct the bad ?
Here's the thing I don't get. What's supposed to be good about Obamacare?
You are saying that healthcare reform is such a complex hard to tackle that we need to get it right from the start. We won't settle for anything better than the current situation if it's less than perfect.
Keep in mind that the earlier pre-Obamacare state worked better. So we have a known state that we can revert to rather than more unknown states starting from a mess. My take is that if the President and Congress had been serious about health care reform, they could have tackled it in incremental bits. For example, dropping tax incentives for health care benefits doesn't need to be done in conjunction with anything else. Reducing what's
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The pre-Obamacare was better how?
You liked them retroactively canceling coverage? Maybe you thought it fun that many folks could not get coverage at all or not at a price lower than their income?
Reducing what is covered by minimal health insurance?
Are you high? They had to increase it since many of those plans took your money and gave you nearly nothing. How would you like to hit a ceiling on lifetime costs when you get cancer?
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You liked them retroactively canceling coverage?
Something which was illegal at the time.
Maybe you thought it fun that many folks could not get coverage at all or not at a price lower than their income?
That's a strong indication that they shouldn't be getting health insurance, but rather health care.
Reducing what is covered by minimal health insurance?
I realize this might be hard for you to grasp. But the more you insure, the more expensive health care becomes. I have found that a lot of the insurance I can get has features that I simply am not interested in or use. So I'm paying for stuff I don't use.
How would you like to hit a ceiling on lifetime costs when you get cancer?
Sucks to be me then. I still see that time as being better than Obamacare.
Another thing, what about the unconstitut
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Sucks to be me you mean. For you will still get care at least ER care, and I will have to pay for it.
The Supremes did not find it unconstitutional. Where did you practice law if you think you know better than them?
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"We will eventually end up with a single provider system, providing minimal, low-quality care."
So what pile of magic fairy dust does Great Britian and Canada have? because they have single provider HIGH QUALITY care...
OR are you simply lying and just another moron?
Drudge much? (Score:3)
Why is it that I'm seeing half the stories on Slashdot, after they spent a day or two on Drudge Report? Especially ones that are only slightly "News for nerds" material?
Are that many /.ers closet Drudge readers?
Just locks-in the current system (Score:5, Insightful)
What's even dumber is the concept of state-level exchanges.
A primary driver of high health-care costs is the balkanization of healthcare across states.
Allow the voluntary harmonization of various states' health care codes, which would in turn allow insurance providers to offer the same plan in several states. The 'health care exchanges' offered in the Obamacare bill would have been a perfect opportunity to allow capitalism to work to lower costs and increase competitive pressures - this plan merely ossifies the state-level segmentation of the marketplace.
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Why voluntary?
Interstate commerce is something the feds are supposed to regulate. If a state has a health care code being used to prevent Interstate commerce make them fix it.
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Make more than $48k, pay same as Bill Gates (Score:2)
Affordable health care, as the fine print in the approved rate sheet linked to from NY Governor Cuomo's press release reveals, can mean annual premium of as much as $35k for a family of 3 (for a 'platinum' plan). So, Congress was no doubt relieved to learn last week that they won't be eating their own health care dogfood after all â" the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has decided to allow the government to subsidize coverage for its employees on the exchanges. If you're curious, plug your numbers
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How is the government subsidizing coverage for its employees any different from private sector employers paying some or all of their employees' premiums as a job benefit?
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And the amount California's insurance cost calculator shows me is $80/month cheaper than what my employer currently pays for me, and over $200/month cheaper than the cheapest plan I could find as an individual when I was unemployed over 5 years ago.
Why is this a federal duty? (Score:3)
Government IT and IS are morons. (Score:3)
Honestly, I have never seen ONE Government IT or IS project that was not staffed by morons and run by bigger morons. Why the hell cant they hire people that have a clue? And on top of that hire people to manage it that have the balls and authority to tell any elected official to "DIAF" any time they suggest something stupid?
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Obama health care plan is less ambitious than the health care plan propose by Richard M Nixon in 1974.
Health care was a lot less ambitious in 1974. That predates open heart surgery, organ transplants, joint replacements, most cancer treatments, MRI, CAT scan, and even the discovery that ulcers were caused by H. pylori.
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Obama health care plan is less ambitious than the health care plan propose by Richard M Nixon in 1974.
Health care was a lot less ambitious in 1974. That predates open heart surgery, organ transplants, joint replacements, most cancer treatments, MRI, CAT scan, and even the discovery that ulcers were caused by H. pylori.
And your point is? If your point is that we'd have been much better off if we'd started UHC in 1974 I completely agree, but it's hard to change the past.
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My point is it may have been more "ambitious" in terms of coverage of available care, but a _LOT_ less ambitious in terms of cost.
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Odd. One has to wonder how does pretty much all of Europe manage to finance that. Is Europe a so much more powerful economy that they can throw such incredible amounts of money into their "socialist" healthcare, or how do they do it? And most of all, can the US copy it?
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Re:Ironic (Score:4, Informative)
If one can look at Europe's huge deficits, debt, and unfunded liabilities - which are not even included in their debt numbers - and say they can afford it...
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Heart surgery was first done in the 50s.
Organ transplants started in the 1900s, but major organs like kidneys in the 1950s.
Joint replacement was a little earlier in the we were replacing hips by 1948.
They were less common, but by 1974 all those were happening.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, that's why I love public health insurance. I don't have to buy a 3rd yacht some insurance exec whose daddy got him a cushy job. I get better health care and CHEAPER then I ever got with my garbage "high end" health insurance in the states. Yeah I may pay a bit more than a poor person(and probably pay some of their share), but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research? Like the fact that the US spends roughly 2x as much(as a % of GDP) than any other industrialized nation(who all have public health insurance) and yet the health outcomes are not any better for all that cash spent. Oh I'm sorry, did I use facts with a Republican? My mistake.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's face it: prevention is not profitable for the medical industrial complex. Waiting for things to be come an emergency means the costs are much higher and the hospitals (all most all owned by huge corporations) either get paid or write off the bad debt to offset taxes. Prevention just can't offer the revenue potential.
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Spoken like somebody who doesn't get it.
Having people refuse to pay for charity care isn't profitable either, but at least with prevention there's less expenditure on health care in the long run. Also, around here one of the biggest health insurance companies is a non-profit.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
In Britain, doctors get paid for patients they have who do not visit. That's a financial incentive to keep people healthy. My health plan (in the US) gives free preventative services. I've lived in Australia and Canada, and they have vastly superior and cheaper healthcare systems than the US -- and that includes preventative services. But my US healthcare, whilst much more expensive, is vastly inferior to what I got in Australia (in particular)
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Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Interesting)
Amusingly, despite the government=bureaucracy equation that many people seem to assume, one of the big benefits is how much less bureaucratic it is, too. When I moved from the US to Denmark, my health care got immensely simpler. In the US, I had to read tons of fine print to buy insurance in the first place; then fill out claim forms, separate ones for each provider (if you end up in a hospital you will be billed separately for the hospital bed, for the anesthesiologist, for the laboratory work, etc.), then lawyer about these on the phone as they were inevitably filled out incorrectly and various claims were denied until the second or third try.
Now everything Just Works and I don't have to fill out a damn piece of paper ever. Well, I had to fill out one: when I moved to the country I had to fill out an application for the health-insurance card. It took about 15 minutes, and came in the mail two days later.
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Sometimes I'll be all fine and dandy but end up getting a surpris
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Sigh, do some research. In case people wonder why I'm so opposed to conservatives, this ignorant tripe is why.
Sounds like you have a bad insurance company and or live in a state with inadequate regulation of the industry. Around here, mistakes like that are relatively few and far between. And BTW, I have a non-profit health insurer, so any yachts being purchased are minimal.
As for the blood pressure, get a better health insurer, I have no problem getting an appointment with mine. Just because some insurers
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Informative)
The effective income tax rate (i.e. taking into account exclusions and the different brackets) is more like 35-40% for a middle-class family. You don't pass even a 50% effective rate until you're making well north of €200k/yr.
And note that this rate includes health-care, which in the U.S. is billed separately. It also includes university education, which in the U.S. is billed separately. If you add up what a typical American pays for [federal income tax + state income tax + payroll tax + student-loan payments + healthcare premiums/copays], it's higher than what most Danes pay if you're in a middle-class bracket. The comparison is even more favorable to Denmark if you're an entrepreneur: once you add in that self-employed Americans have to pay double payroll taxes (15.3%) and have to buy individual health insurance, Denmark starts to look a lot cheaper!
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the taxes in that country are untenable
That may be, but taxes pay for a lot more than healthcare. Total healthcare expenses in Denmark are less than 2/3 of what they are in the US (%/GDP). They also have universal coverage and few to no people going broke due to medical bills. Any way you slice it, it's we 'muricans who are getting ripped off. I'm in favor of "socialism" for health insurance not because of any ideological leanings, but because I'm a cheap bastard.
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Scandinavia is where things work.
Scandinavia is magic! Of course nothing like UHC could work in US, any more than it could work in the rest of Western Europe, or Canada, or Japan or Australia or ... uh wait, I meant it couldn't work in 'merica. Yeah, that's it, the rest of the developed world is magic. What a shame 'merica isn't.
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Problems with your argument:
- GP didn't say what party (if any) he was affiliated with;
- Obamacare does nothing to enforce a ceiling on health care costs-- it just forces you to a lowest-common-denominator pool if you can't afford it,
- The GP didn't say the current system was OK, so you've created a false dilemma by claiming that if he doesn't like Obamacare, then he must be OK with the status quo.
- Obamacare is not single-payer, so claiming that we will get results similar to nations with single payer is s
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but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Are you aware of the expense ratios of private and non-profit insurance companies? I'd gather, no, because this information is publicly available, and the range is 3-7%. That's the amount of profit (vs. expense of payouts). So if you want to take the 'yacht cost' out of of those plans you'll save less than that.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research?
Agreed.
Like the fact that the US spend
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The only article that even seems to come close is one from the Daily Mail. As usual they do not cite their sources nor do they get commentary from anyone but an alarmist charity.
How about some actual citations?
The Daily Mail has had people make up stories to fit their viewpoint.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/173261/daily-mail-reporter-cant-explain-how-false-report-got-published/ [poynter.org]
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
The other option of course being what we have in the USA that people simply die from lack of treatment.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/insurance-24-year-dies-toothache/story?id=14438171 [go.com]
Before you claim that man was stupid try to remember the pain he was in. No one makes good decisions in that kind of state.
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At least that is an attempt at treatment. I am speaking about someone dying because they had to decide between a painkiller and an antibiotic.
In the USA if left to the states the whole middle of the country would have no health care for those that could not afford it. Neither would the south.
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Nationalized, rationed healthcare is no problem while you are healthy. But when you get sick (and sooner or later you will), you face things like this:
Since when do private insurance companies not ration care? Many have yearly and lifetime limits on coverage amounts. Many will deny or try to weasel out of paying for covering treatments. It's quite easy to find numerous cases of people dying because their insurance company denied them coverage.
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Go fly to the UK, Mexico, and India to one of their international hospitals to get treatment. They aren't the "local hospital" the internationals are coming, they are international hospitals designed for international customers. Oh, many of these also accept US health insurance. And for some procedures, the insurance company will actually encourage and pay for you and one other to fly, stay, and get the procedure done in a foreign country. That kind of says it all.
See how many people go to these places
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Interesting)
Please explain what is so different about the USA that Obamacare-like systems work in pretty much the entire civilized world except the USA.
Is the rest of the civilized world so incredibly brilliant, is the USA so incredibly retarted, or is it just you?
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For one thing because we effectively subsides the rest of those systems and Obummer care is going to make the subsidy bigger; especially when they start to pull things like the tax on device makers out of it.
All of those systems effectively impose price controls on device vendors and drug producers. This keeps costs to the system down; meanwhile those companies extract super premium margins from American consumers (because demand for healthcare products is inelastic) which they turn around and fund their R
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For one thing because we effectively subsides the rest of those systems
How generous of us. Being a cheap bastard though, I propose we adopt their system and stop getting ripped off.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
The current system is a bigger clusterf**k than anything you're imagining.
which they turn around and fund their R&D with.
They'd like you to believe that. And it seems that you do. Sure, some do some R&D. But all use a lot of that money for fat bonuses for their execs, and other dubious purposes such as advertising. I have not heard of insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield doing any research at all. Those who do, don't do much basic R&D. Instead they lean on publicly funded institutions of higher education for that. They get a free ride there. What good is the heavy advertising they do for name brand drugs? Why are these ads aimed at patients? Most patients are not medical professionals. Then, what of the money they spend on "intellectual property" to "protect" their precious drugs? Some of the monies that should be spent on our health goes towards lobbyists whose jobs are to persuade or bribe government to shore up monopolies and destroy competition. And the whole thing is aided and abetted by people like you who blindly believe in Big Pharma and friends.
Formerly free society? You talk like our current health care system is some paragon of competitive efficiency. It's not. It's full of fraud and waste. It's dirty pool. Price controls? There's an excellent method of price control: Competition. Too bad there isn't much competition, not that there's scope for it in all areas. But where there could be competition, there isn't. A person who needs emergency medical treatment obviously has no time or opportunity to comparison shop. Such people are the perfect captive consumers who routinely get bilked. It is no coincidence that our care is geared towards emergencies and not prevention. Obamacare has a lot of flaws, not least thanks to Republican attempts to deliberately screw it up. But it's a start. The medical community has only themselves to blame for bringing this upon them. They've had decades to demonstrate the effectiveness of the current system. Instead, they've abused their position of authority, their power, to bleed us all.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please explain what is so different about the USA that Obamacare-like systems work in pretty much the entire civilized world except the USA.
The only thing wrong here is your assumption that there are other Obamacare-like systems elsewhere in the world.
is the USA so incredibly retarded
This. Due to the massive cost increases in health care that Obamacare encourages, I'm not even sure it'll succeed in its alleged primary goal, improving health care coverage.
And the law is so bad that allies of the people who passed the law are trying hard to get out from being covered by the law. There's been a series of waivers of various provisions of Obamacare that went to allies of the President and certain congresspeople. I'm sure we all appreciate the passage of laws which are supposed to be for our own good and for which the allies of the people who advocated the laws are at least partially exempt.
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You assume that the single-payer systems in the "entire civilized world except the USA" are even remotely close to what the Affordable Care Act established.
They aren't. The Affordable Care Act (panned as Obamacare) requires individuals to purchase private health insurance or pay fines (Sorry, a "tax" according to the Supreme Court) to the Federal Government.
If we wanted to do what other countries had, we would have erased the language "65 or older" from the existing Medicare statute; but there's no way tha
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I am still amused by people that complain that ACA will suddenly put their health care decisions in the hands of bureaucrats. Apparently they don't understand how it works now.
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Damn right, I think people should have the freedom to choose whether they want to eat or whether they want to keep the tooth to do that.
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As with almost any IT Project if you have a few high up officials determined to make your project fail, they will find a way to make it fail.
These exchanges should have started development right when the law was passed. However with all political posturing and moving from court to court, and the right bashing it left and right. It made it hard to get the project going. Why start the Supreme Court will knock it down.
So in essence due to politics, not that the rule was good or not, but because of the back s
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Informative)
Why's that? My brother is self employed and his insurance premiums have so far doubled under the "affordable care act". I don't know mine exactly only because I'm under a group policy through work, though with the numbers they post for what my insurance is worth, that's gone up by roughly $1000 a year and I'm single, early 30s, non-smoker, and at 5 foot 10 and 170 lbs, not exactly obese. As another data point, I'm currently working on my masters, and we are automatically enrolled in the campus health insurance plan and have to waive it. It was $798 PER SEMESTER! And it's not what I'd call great coverage. When I did my undergrad it was like 200 a semester, and I graduated in 2006. Not like it was eons ago.
I'd say calling obamacare a cluster is quite accurate so far. Seriously, can anybody come forward and say that their insurance premiums are cheaper now? I heard that the minimum coverage in cali was estimated to be something like 340 a month for a family of 4. Thats pretty much a BMW car payment. Not what I call affordable.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Informative)
Campus health care is often a scam. The University is getting a kickback for signing you up. They want the cheapest plans for the employees they care about, not some grad students.
$340 is not a BMW payment, more like a normal car payment for a normal term loan. A cheaper BMW like the base 3 series sedan goes for $32550, a 60 month term at 1% interest would result in a $556.40 monthly payment.
Minimum coverage costs have gone up now that minimum coverage actually has to cover something. Some of those very cheap plans had low lifetime cost ceilings. Meaning when you needed it most, like you had a major medical problem, you would run out of insurance coverage.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like hell you don't pay a damned thing. Ever heard of taxes? Worse, there's a lot of corruption here hiding massive healthcare failures, including huge numbers of people who are now dead who shouldn't be due to poor care [wikipedia.org]. I wouldn't hold up the UK's socialised healthcare system as an example to follow.
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Those kinds of cover ups exist here too. Private doctors working for a private hospital killed my grandfather. They misdiagnosed him repeatedly and failed to properly treat him even for what they misdiagnosed him with.
The likely difference here is that you will never hear of that case due to NDAs and settlements. The NHS can't do that, so you eventually hear about it.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason we're hearing about it now is because of some very brave relatives. Also remember that UK FOI is much weaker than US FOI.
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It was so sad and funny at the same time - during the London Olympics open ceremony, while they were riding bicycles around heaping praise on their awesome National Health Service, General Electric ran a commercial about how they'd donated a bunch of neonatal incubators to a hospital in London [gereports.com] because the NHS couldn't afford it!
Awesome health care, indeed.
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Because no one donates stuff to American hospitals?
That seems to contradict reality. Hospitals often get donations of money or equipment here in the USA.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't ballyhoo our [non-existent] National Health Service to the world as the pinnacle of Socialism while accepting charity from a country we look down our noses at for being uncivilized and barbaric with regard to health care.
It would be like us claiming our system is perfect in the face of Obamacare while accepting donations of chicken bones and rattles from Amazonian witch doctors.
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The English do not tout the NHS as the pinnacle of Socialism. Most of them rather not use that last word at all.
I think your image of this is warped by your sources of information. I suggest you try visiting England.
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Been there, seen first-hand the angst of people waiting for CAT and MRI scans for possibly life-threatening issues.
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Most of them rather not use that last word at all.
Sorry for the double reply - so substitute Civilization for Socialism; same idea.
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You do understand that the only thing that's going to change is the way that some people buy insurance, right? That government is not going to have a bigger hand in healthcare than it already has? That the exchanges exist to allow people to buy individual insurance from the big private insurers like Blue Cross, Tufts, and so forth? That the 'public option' died an ignominious death before the ACA passed? That insurers are still free to charge whatever exorbitant premiums they like, so long as they spe
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Awesome health care, indeed.
Anecdotal evidence which is easily trumped by, you know, actual research [who.int] (key chart starts on page 18). It turns out that by any objective measure, the NHS gets better results than the US does: The UK is in the top 20, the US is competing with Costa Rica, Cuba, and Slovenia. And if you want to see really all-out socialized medicine, check out France, sitting comfortably as the best in the world.
A big part of what's going on is that your perception of health care is coming from your own experiences using it
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I wouldn't hold up the UK's socialised healthcare system as an example to follow.
Neither would I. The only country it seems to do better than is the US. Look at the "Expenditure on Health (% of GDP)" towards the bottom of this article [theguardian.com]. See the big outlier? That's the US. We have plenty of fraud too, including the institutionalized kind (aka for-profit health insurance companies and for-profit hospitals). We also kill lots of people by not giving them medical attention until they can justify going to the emergency room.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
What will happen next is you will end up in the ER for a real medical condition, the hospital will write it off and I and other taxpayers will be stuck paying. If you are very lucky someone like my mother will get the hospital to transfer you from the ER to a regular bed and they will pay for your treatment as an act of charity. Then the hospital will have even more cost to write off and for the rest of us to pay.
If you are less lucky you will be treated only in the ER and released to die at home. Cheaper for the taxpayer, but clearly not the superior choice.
Where did you get these numbers? Their are low cost plans for those who cannot pay.
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I would assume this fellow is, since he stated he would have to stop eating to pay that.
Then he could also pay the fine. Why there is no public option I still do not understand.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Informative)
From a purely precedent standpoint, the OP is at least somewhat correct. This is the first time in the history of the US that any government - federal, state, or local - has been given the power to force a citizen (with the threat of fines and arrest) to purchase a commercial product. It was very obvious that Obama wanted to make this a precedent - he didn't take the easy way out and claim it was a tax, he wanted it to be clear that this was a new power for government.
Think about it a little - what other things can you think of that a citizen is required to do by a government as a result of being born and NOT as the result of a personal choice?
* Must you have a SSN? Nope. You are not required to apply for one.
* Do you have to pay taxes? If you choose to not work, no job, no income, no taxes (I assume your family is willing to support you).
* Do you have to attend public school? No, you can be home-schooled or just not attend (your parents might get in trouble if the gov't knows about you, or you could've been born at home).
The only thing I can think of is that males of a certain age must register for the draft. That's literally all, except now you must also buy insurance.
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We do not nurture people to adulthood as a society. That is the responsibility of the parents.
I take it you've never heard of Child Services?
If we're going to say the government is the be all and end all, then why not go whole hog?
You mean why not go all slippery slope?
Your health is your responsibility, not mine.
Couldn't you apply the same logic to protection? "Can't afford a gun? Can't afford to protect your family!" How about education? "Can't afford an education? More jobs for *my* kids!"
That said, you asked what the benefits were, there they are. Your mechanic died due to lack of healthcare? Oh well, it's gonna take longer to get your car fixed and we're gonna have to charge extra to hire and train a new guy. Or do unde
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What's not working? The parts that are implemented are working just fine.
And why would you be glad? You want people to not be able to see a doctor? Really?