How do we fix obamacare?

[francoHFW]

Majority of Americans are misinformed.

 

[Sarah G]

Obamacare hasn't even begun yet. Nobody will be taking your advice about Obamacare, we will see soon how well it works for everyone.

As for letting the free market take over, we've seen how well that doesn't work. You're forgetting the greed factor. It is what led us to creating Obamacare in the first place.

Affordable healthcare is necessary for a robust economy to finally take hold.

Majority of Americans don't want it

Next

-Geaux

Did Rasmussen tell you so?

 

[Toronado3800]

How do we fix Obamacare? To do.
1. Lower the cost for the avg man
2. Improve quality?
3. Increase Medical research???

I want to read a serious debate on getting the 3.

Abolish it.

What is your answer? Man up and say throw the unable to pay out of the hospitals and onto the street when they show up wounded or with cancer. That is consistent and realistic. I can admire the point of view.

If you say the Nixon era system is the answer I will call you a socialist. That is the system where freeloaders get their french fry poisoned gall bladders removed on my dime. At least Obama and Mitt want to compel them to pay for insurance when they can more or less afford it.

Is the healthcare of the Reconstruction era your ideal? Doctor's chop off your arm and leave type treatment the Greek's had sound good? Or do you want the man to show up with an MRI machine when you have a lump?

Don't lie and say with no insurance costs would be cheaper. Enough folks have taken a pet to the vet and most of the people there do not have insurance. What does the free market do for pet health care costs? That's right, a capitalistic death panel tells me I better put the animal to sleep because I can't afford to treat that tumor then folks tell me it was best for the animal's "quality of life" which means my quality of life after paying for the dog chemo or watching it die as I don't treat it. I have automotive examples as well lol.

It seems way better to just force all (read young and healthy) folks to have healthcare so we can fix the insurance pay out / revenue math for a few decades. Maybe we will come to some cultural understanding of when enough care is enough or start holding lotteries at 80 years of age so our third liver transplants don't break the bank or something.

 

[RDD_1210]

There needs to be true competition in the market. This is why a public option is needed. A simple base coverage option for all and then a more robust options from the private sector for those who can afford it and want the extra coverage.

 

[waltky]

Defund it...

Obamacare Is ‘Rare Strain of Flesh-Eating Bacteria’
August 2, 2013 -– Comparing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, to a “flesh-eating bacteria, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said the health care law should not be funded by Congress when it votes on a short-term budget after the summer recess.

“Obamacare is not the typical political virus that we’re accustomed to that spreads from Washington, D.C., infecting the body politics,” Perkins said at a press conference Thursday at the Capitol for the launch of the “You Fund it, You Own It” campaign to stop the implementation of ACA. “This is a rare strain of flesh-eating bacteria that if not stopped and stopped now threatens the very life of our republic. “And I’ve talked to members and they agree,” Perkins said. “This is the greatest threat to faith, family, and freedom that our nation has seen in decades.

Perkins said Congress not providing funding for the law is the way to stop it. “The way to do that is joining with this effort of refusing to put money into the continuing resolution to keep this thing alive,” Perkins said. “We need to drive a stake through the heart of Obamacare and save the American people,” Perkins said. Perkins was joined by members of Congress and other grassroots organizations that have signed onto the campaign.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) also attended the press conference. The other organizations represented at the event were FreedomWorks, ForAmerica, Club for Growth, Citizens United, and the Senate Conservatives Fund.

- See more at: Perkins: Obamacare Is ?Rare Strain of Flesh-Eating Bacteria? | CNS News

See also:

Obamacare Will Put ‘Money Back in the Pockets of Consumers’CNS
August 2, 2013 – Touting what she called the financial benefits of the Affordable Care Act, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters that working families will be better off when the law begins to be implemented in October.

“With this landmark law in place, we will be holding insurance companies accountable, we will be enhancing patients’ rights, putting money back in the pockets of consumers with the medical loss ratio, and reducing the cost and strengthening the economic and financial and health security of working families,” Pelosi said at her weekly news briefing on Capitol Hill Friday. “Because of the law, in the coming months Americans will have expanded choices and more affordable care,” Pelosi continued, also confirming that “members of Congress will be in the exchanges.”

CNSNews previously reported on a speech President Obama gave in July in which he highlighted the rebates that will be sent to individuals by insurance companies that don’t meet federal requirements to “spend at least 80 percent of every dollar paid in premiums on health care.” “Another $8.5 [million] rebates are being sent out this summer, averaging around 100 bucks each,” Obama said.

However, the financial benefits of these rebates will be negated by rising health care premiums, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A Kaiser press release notes that a typical family’s health care premiums rose $1,975 on average since 2010, when Obamacare was signed into law.

“This year’s premium increase is moderate by historical standards, but outpaced the growth in workers’ wages (1.7 percent) and general inflation (2.3 percent). Since 2002, premiums have increased 97 percent, three times as fast as wages (33 percent) and inflation (28 percent),” the press release stated. The foundation also noted that “workers at lower-wage firms on average pay $1,000 more each year out of their paychecks for family coverage than workers at higher-wage firms ($4,977 and $3,968, respectively).”

- See more at: Pelosi: Obamacare Will Put ?Money Back in the Pockets of Consumers? | CNS News

 

[Politico]

Get rid of it along with every other governent program.

 

[deltex1]

"Affordable healthcare is necessary for a robust economy to finally take hold."


If you swallow that pill you are dead. Spending billions on PREVENTABLE diseases is the way to go? Think about it. The quoted statement above is wrong on so many levels.

 

[ba1614]

Obamacare hasn't even begun yet. Nobody will be taking your advice about Obamacare, we will see soon how well it works for everyone.

As for letting the free market take over, we've seen how well that doesn't work. You're forgetting the greed factor. It is what led us to creating Obamacare in the first place.

Affordable healthcare is necessary for a robust economy to finally take hold.

lol. you mean how well it works for everyone but those who pushed for it the hardest who have gotten themselves nice exemptions so they aren't subjected to it.

The only ones who will be subjected to it are the hard working middle class who don't suck on the union or public teat.

 

[Sarah G]

"Affordable healthcare is necessary for a robust economy to finally take hold."


If you swallow that pill you are dead. Spending billions on PREVENTABLE diseases is the way to go? Think about it. The quoted statement above is wrong on so many levels.

Businesses are going broke providing healthcare to employees the way it is now. It has to become more affordable for everyone.

If you work, you must be experiencing the cost to you going up higher and higher every year. It affects everything. The cost of everything you buy is affected by how much business has to pay out for healthcare. They're all trying to get rid of providing that benefit.

Sorry but even the cost of your last car could have been much lower as an example.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Add a public non-profit option to the exchanges, as was in the original plans.

 

[Greenbeard]

How do we fix Obamacare? To do.
1. Lower the cost for the avg man

Keep implementing it.

Health insurance premiums see smallest increase in 15 years - Nov. 14, 2012

The cost of providing health care benefits to employees rose by just 4.1% this year, the smallest increase in 15 years, according to a survey by human resources consultant Mercer.

Medicare and Medicaid are costing less than expected.

In recent years, health care spending has grown much more slowly both nationally and for federal programs than historical rates would have indicated. For example, in 2012, federal spending for Medicare and Medicaid was about 5 percent below the amount that CBO had projected in March 2010.

In response to that slowdown, over the past several years CBO has made a series of downward adjustments to its projections of spending for Medicaid and Medicare. For example, from the March 2010 baseline to the current baseline, technical revisions—mostly reflecting the slower growth in the programs’ spending in recent years—have lowered CBO’s estimates of federal spending for the two programs in 2020 by about $200 billion—by $126 billion for Medicare and by $78 billion for Medicaid, or by roughly 15 percent for each program.

We're seeing the lowest health care price inflation on record:

Health care price inflation in May 2013, at 1.0% year-over-year, is growing at a historically low rate. While “all-time low” may be too strong, given that our data extend back only to January 1990, it’s difficult to imagine a lower rate in the last 70 years. The 12-month moving average at 1.8% in April 2013 is the lowest since the 1.7% recorded in September 1998.

The sustained, unprecedented slowdown in overall health spending continues.

Provisions in the Affordable Care Act that penalize hospitals for excessive readmissions and encourage employers to offer wellness programs are slowing the growth of U.S. medical costs, even as the economy rebounds.

Health-care costs for commercial insurers and employers are expected to rise about 4.5 percent next year after accounting for changes in benefits, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in a report today. The increase is a percentage point less than what the consulting company projected for 2013.

PwC’s findings track with studies by the government and others that show continued slow growth in medical costs even with the economy four years into an upswing since the 2007-2009 recession. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in January that U.S. health spending, including from government programs, rose 3.9 percent in 2011, matching the slowest growth in 52 years of record keeping.

Even health insurers' second quarter earnings, reported last week, are seeing it (e.g.WellPoint Profit Jumps as Insurer Has Lower Medical Costs and UnitedHealth Profit Rises on Member Gains as Costs Slow).

2. Improve quality?

Obamacare Shows Hospital Savings as Patients Make Gains

Less than five months before the Affordable Care Act fully kicks in, hospitals are improving care and saving millions of dollars with one of the least touted but potentially most effective provisions of the law.

While much of the focus on Obamacare has been on the government rush to open insurance exchanges by Oct. 1, 252 hospitals and physician groups across the U.S. have signed up to join the administration’s accountable care program, in which they share the financial risk of keeping patients healthy.

Under the program, hospitals and physician practices take responsibility for tracking and maintaining the health of elderly and disabled patients. If costs rise beyond an agreed upon level, hospitals may become responsible for reimbursing the government. If they cut the cost of care while maintaining quality, hospitals share in the savings. The government expects the savings may be as much as $1.9 billion from 2012 to 2015. Early indications suggest they are starting to add up.[/COLOR]

Yet another pilot saw every participant include quality.

All 32 Pioneer ACOs successfully reported quality measures and achieved the maximum reporting rate for the first performance year, earning incentive payments for their reporting. Pioneer ACOs performed better than published rates in fee-for-service Medicare for all 15 clinical quality measures for which comparable data are available. Examples of the Pioneer ACOs’ quality achievements include lower risk-adjusted readmission rates and better control of hypertension and cholesterol.

In other areas where the ACA's quality improvement provisions have launched, they're starting to show some results. For instance, unnecessary hospital readmissions are dropping and the Medicare Advantage quality bonus program is working:

This year [2012] we saw significant improvement in measures included in the Medicare Star rating pay-for-performance program for health plans that participate in Medicare Advantage. Although Medicare Advantage plans have reported on quality and results have been reported to consumers for many years, the Affordable Care Act required the Medicare program to make higher payments to health plans with better quality performance, starting in 2012. In addition to this new program, the Department of Health and Human Services established a demonstration program to complement it, making even higher payments to plans with better performance.

And, of course, some of the biggest quality improvement provisions are just kicking off.

Tying Medicare Payment to Quality

The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program is one of a host of Affordable Care Act programs that put patients at the center of the Medicare system. We’ve known for a long time that when Medicare paid providers based on how much work they did and not on how well they did for patients, too often patients got services and tests that didn’t improve their health. Providers already must publicly report the steps they take to provide quality care to Medicare beneficiaries; Hospital Value-Based Purchasing gives these efforts additional teeth.

Beginning in 2013, Medicare will start paying hospitals a little more or a little less in each payment depending on how well they meet Medicare’s quality standards. The value-based payment adjustment factors tell them how much their base Medicare payments will change.

Hospitals are graded on improvement as well as performance on a variety of quality measures. These standards are consistent with clinical practice for the provision of high quality care. Did emergency room staff follow the right protocols with a heart-attack patient? Did a patient get antibiotics before surgery? Did your nurses and doctors listen to you?

And quality-based payment to physicians is coming, as well.

One of the value-based purchasing initiatives authorized by the ACA pertains to services delivered by physicians receiving fee-for-service payments from Medicare . Section 3007 of the law mandates the Secretary of HHS to develop a mechanism based “upon the quality of care furnished as compared to cost,” that provides for differential payment to physicians and physician groups receiving compensation under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.

Pay for it and you'll get it.

3. Increase Medical research???

Research isn't just about new treatments, it's about finding out whether existing treatments actually work. And under the ACA a whole new infrastructure for that kind of medical research is being built.

PCORI’s vision for a National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, announced on April 23, is an unprecedented effort to support the development of a research infrastructure capable of leveraging the enormous volume of valuable data that is produced in our health system every day.

By creating a large national network of health data representative of patients across the country, this initiative is expected to improve the nation’s capacity to efficiently conduct patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER), to learn from the health care experiences of millions of Americans, and to implement what’s learned in clinical practice.

Conducting health research efficiently and effectively requires data that is accessible, easy to use, and maintains patients’ privacy and security. The national network will serve as an important foundation for transforming the nation’s health care system into one that is able to constantly learn what works best through studies of data that is collected during patient visits with health care providers and then made anonymous and aggregated in central databases. It also will promote broader participation of patients, clinicians, health systems, and payers in the research process and help connect patients interested in participating in studies with researchers conducting trials.

 

[Vox]

Nobody can fix something unknown. Nobody actually knows how is it going to work.

We do not need to fix it.

We need to abandon it and start discussion about healthcare reform, before it can actually be discussed in Congress

 

[NYcarbineer]

Get rid of it along with every other governent program.

So you end Medicaid completely, then how would poor children get medical care? Or do you believe that there is a greater good to having a society where the poorest people in it are deprived of healthcare?

What is that greater good?

 

[Sarah G]

Add a public non-profit option to the exchanges, as was in the original plans.

Yes. Hillary would have pushed for that.

 

[Geaux4it]

Majority of Americans are misinformed.

Thanks for confirming how ODumbo got elected

-Geaux

 

[Sarah G]

Get rid of it along with every other governent program.

That's kind of extreme wouldn't you say?

 

[Geaux4it]

As Adolf Obama likes to tout- "Most American would agree" like a parrot. I will use it here with a slight lean to the definitive instead of the speculative

'Most Americans agree' that ACA needs abolished'

They don't want it

-Geaux

 

[RDD_1210]

"Affordable healthcare is necessary for a robust economy to finally take hold."


If you swallow that pill you are dead. Spending billions on PREVENTABLE diseases is the way to go? Think about it. The quoted statement above is wrong on so many levels.

No it isn't. A healthy consumer class is a working class. A working class is a spending class. A spending class is a healthy job creating economy.

 

[deltex1]

Add a public non-profit option to the exchanges, as was in the original plans.

A place to go for quality care.

 

[Wyatt earp]

OBAMA CARE is better than the old system of REPUBL+I+CANNOT+ CARE+LESS!

WTF? My insurance premiums have already doubled since that retarded piece of shit pushed the lobby group's piece of crap ObamaCare. Medical care in the US sucks, is ridiculously expensive for folks with money and free for unemployed Obama dumbasses, and has gotten worse even before the full implementation. What "old" system is worse?

Since when are the illegals coverd under Obama care? and been a long time since you got a free ride in South Carolina those bills go to the IRS and they garnish wages.