His premiums obviously went up because his “catastrophic high-deductible” plan is not ACA compliant. Anyone with a passing understanding of the new regulations knows this, I think. Proponents have argued this is required because refusal to pay under these plans (see the story above about refusing to pay due to a high deductible) causes costs to rise for everyone (and also possibly causes sick folks to avoid treatment until care is much more expensive). Obviously YMMV.
And that is a fair critique of supporters of the bill - they were (and are) very careful to avoid mentioning that there is a group of consumers that will have to pay more in premiums. Primarily those that opted out of the system (the young and healthy, but not poor) and those that self-insure or have high-deductible limited-coverage plans (but actually pay their bills when they get sick).
ETA: I long for the day when public debate moves beyond “Repeal!” to substantive discussions about what types of plans should be allowed on the exchange. My guess? 2017.
Didn’t say anything of the sort. I am entirely capable of making up my own words to put in my mouth, and do not require your assistance. Prefer if you didn’t, actually.
The best outcome for the sake of political comity would be one in which the ACA is here to stay, but Republicans can make it more in their image. Which is what is most likely to happen if the Republicans win it all in 2016, unless implementation worsens the poll numbers for the ACA rather than bettering them.
However, if implementation does actually make the public even more against it, then repeal should become a bipartisan goal. If we get to 2016 and the numbers are like 35-60 instead of the current 45-50, then that’s a pretty good sign it’s time for the Democrats to realize they had their chance, time to repeal it.
So if in 2012 NPR had a guy on that talked about how bad a President Romney would be based on his terrible management of the companies he took over and it turned out that he was a union rep at one of those companies, Fox (and you) would have just said, “Well, sure he had skin in the game, but there CAN’T be an agenda there, can there?”
Color me a disbeliever.
And ADAHER! Will you PLEASE respond to my post about your basic errors in the US budget process and how deficit calculations are done?
I failed to see how it contradicted anything I said. Did the CBO score ACA based on money appropriated in the law? In other words, someone, maybe you, said that HHS needed more resources, and that was an example of Congress sabotaging the law. Was more HHS funding included in the CBO score? How about more IRS agents?
My point was that if Congress did not include that funding when they had the CBO score it, then a) Republicans are not sabotaging the law, since the law never said to expand HHS or the IRS, and b) Democrats deserve what they get since they gamed the CBO, lied to the public, and slandered critics.
Given that it is substantively a Heritage Foundation proposal, it is “in their image”. And given that we know you knew that, one wonders why you might suggest otherwise.
Well, gosh. If that happens, or if ACA brings about Armageddon, plagues of locusts, an alien invasion, or another series about Honey Boo Boo, I’ll definitely consider repealing it.
This is silly. If I said “If it turns out to improve health insurance coverage for millions more Americans while remaining deficit neutral , the Republicans should drop all opposition and give full credit to Obama for implementing such a bold policy” would you agree?
The basic outline, yes. The huge new bureaucracy and all the rules and regulations, no. How hard would it have been to just let people choose what insurance was best for them? Why the need to qualify plans for the exchanges? A qualified plan is what people want to buy. That would be the most major change, aside from repealing the mandate, which was supported by Republicans until libertarians reminded them it was illegal.
You believe it’s out of the realm of possibility that it could become less popular? It’s getting less popular NOW, and only the most popular provisions have been implemented, like the insurance reforms. People are getting refunds, kids are on their parents plans until 26, and Democrats are reminding people of this, yet the law is getting LESS popular. What happens when the losers figure out they are losing?
If it turns out to do all you say, the Republicans will insist they were never opposed to begin with, and anyway, it was their idea.
I guess I wasn’t clear enough. Bills are passed “as is”. Funding for those bills is handled through a different bill(s) called “the budget”. The CBO (an independent body) “scores” a bill by listing its budgetary impact based on the criteria listed in the bill. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but nobody tells them what to assume.
After the bill is passed, it may or may not be funded at the level assumed by the CBO. If it isn’t funded at the right level, then many of the CBO assumptions change - BUT ONLY FOR THAT YEAR. Since the CBO is independent, they don’t make political judgments. They assume that the intent of the Congress that passed the Bill will be fulfilled.
Now do you fucking get it? AUTHORIZATION to do something is separate from the FUNDING to do it. It’s been that way for 200+ years.
I thought that was it. That does not actually apply to the Medicaid expansion or the subsidies though. Those are automatic, mandatory spending.
I get that. What confused me is that you don’t seem to know that mandatory spending does not require yearly appropriations and the bulk of the bill is mandatory spending. What I wanted to know is if any of the discretionary items being requested by the administration were scored by the CBO.
With all due respect, the point of insurance is for people whose risks didn’t materialize to subsidize those whose risks did materialize. It works quite well even if everyone’s premiums are proportional to their known risks, where nobody’s subsidizing anyone in advance of probabilities of bad luck for everyone turning into certainties for some but not others.
Anything to avoid dealing with the topic of this thread: If Cruz, et al., shut down the government, will American hearts brim over with love for the Republican party?
No, I’m saying that the hypothetical as phrased is not terribly useful.
Is that a result of the plan or a result of the massive misinformation campaign the Republicans have been undertaking? Will that misinformation stand in the face of widespread implementation?
I don’t think so. But I also don’t think the Republicans are willing to force a shutdown. What’s happened so far is that the Republicans sent a bill to the Senate defunding ACA. The Senate is likely to strip it out. If that happens, they can go to conference and compromise, or the Republicans can just cave, which I think would be the wiser option.
The idea was to have the vote.
I notice Reid’s trying to be slick though, with the 50-vote margin. That would allow some red state Dems to vote to defund Obamacare. If that does happen, hopefully some hay can be made out of it.
Half right (which is an improvement for you). They are automatic unless otherwise modified. If they are truly “mandatory” then the GOP shouldn’t be campaigning on reducing them, now should they? But the automatic part is why the CBO estimates the way they do.
Why don’t you ask them (PDF)? Oh wait, I did it for you:
So it seems they did look at those things, but decided they couldn’t include them on a year-over-year basis without some guidance about the budget implementation since those things are held at the whim of Congress. That took me five minutes to find for you, unfortunately I only bill in quarter-hour increments so I’m afraid I’m going to have to bill you for $40. After all, we are not communists.