Obama: Premiums Will Decrease 3000% So You Should Get A Raise When H'care Is Passed

[Niels Bohr 72]

Aren't you an idiot too for generalizing? It basically what you always do. You never admit it, but, you always post to attack something which you oppose where others think it's reasonable.

I don't know when the last time you talk reasonable other than attacking.

No, I think I was pretty specific in calling you an idiot for generalising your defence of President Obama as a Republican issue. When BushBaby was in office, most of the world thought he lacked the ability for public speaking by the end.

You also do yourself no favours by opting to intentionally misunderstand what I wrote. I'm not saying that people are stupid, I said in this case that you in particular were being so.

I'm not interested in attacking Obama for his mistakes, just for the sake of getting a dig in at our current President. As the President, Obama needs eliminate these goofs so that what is reported is what his message is, rather than what he actually said (and should have said). If these mistakes are in the content he is reading from, he should have had people proof-reading the material, to catch these oopses. If the mistake is his by misunderstanding the material, he needs to work at avoiding the eye-mouth disconnect.

Edited March 18, 2010 by Niels Bohr

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Except that for four years it is a TAX prgram, NOT a healthcare program ...

Says who?

Here's how this will play out - with some minor modifications based on the final version of the measure. In large part, however, this is what's coming and when - and I'm just covering this year and enxt. Those are all taxes and not healthcare issues?

2010

Immediate Access to Insurance for Uninsured Individuals with a Pre-Existing Condition: Provides eligible individuals access to coverage that does not impose any coverage exclusions for pre-existing health conditions. This provision would end when Exchanges are operational.

Prohibition on Rescissions: Prohibits abusive practices whereby health insurance companies rescind existing health insurance policies when a person gets sick as a way of avoiding covering the costs of enrollees’ health care needs.

No Lifetime or Annual Limits: Prohibits lifetime limits on benefits in all group health plans and in the individual market and restricts the use of annual limits. This takes effect for plan years beginning on or after the date that is six months after enactment.

Coverage of Preventive Health Services: All group health plans and plans in the individual market must provide first dollar coverage for preventive services. This takes effect for plan years beginning on or after the date that is six months after enactment.

Extension of Dependent Coverage: Requires any group health plan or plan in the individual market that provides dependent coverage for children to continue to make that coverage available until the child turns 26 years of age. This takes effect for plan years beginning on or after the date that is six months after enactment.

Bringing Down the Cost of Health Care Coverage: Specifies that health plans must annually report on the share of premium dollars spent on medical care and provide consumer rebates for excessive medical loss ratios in each year between 2010 and 2013.

Reinsurance for Early Retirees: Creates a new temporary reinsurance program to help companies that provide early retiree health benefits for those ages 55-64 offset the expensive cost of that coverage.

Improved Consumer Assistance: Requires that any group health plan or plan in the individual market implement an effective appeals process for coverage determinations and claims. Also, requires the Secretary of HHS to award grants to States to establish health insurance consumer assistance or ombudsman programs to receive and respond to inquiries and complaints concerning health insurance coverage. This takes effect for plan years beginning on or after the date that is six months after enactment.

Early Internet Portal: Requires the Secretary of HHS to establish an Internet website through which residents of any State may identify affordable health insurance coverage options in that state. So-called “mini-med” or limited-benefit plans will be precluded from listing their policies on this website.

Crackdown on Health Care Fraud: Requires enhanced screening procedures for health care providers to eliminate fraud and waste in the health care system.

Part D “Donut Hole” or Coverage Gap: Shrinks Medicare prescription drug coverage gap by $500 and begins a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs and biologics when beneficiaries fall into the coverage gap. Currently, the coverage gap falls between $2,700 and $6,154 in total drug costs

Ensuring Access to Doctors for Seniors and Military Families: Averts a 20 percent pay cut for physician services that threatens Medicare beneficiaries’ access to medical care.

Increased Access to Home and Community Based Services: The new Community First Choice Option, which allows states to offer home and community based services to disabled individuals through Medicaid rather than institutional care, takes effect on October 1, 2010.

Improved Public Health Prevention Efforts: Creates an interagency council to promote healthy policies at the federal level and establishes a prevention and public health investment fund to provide expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs.

Strengthening the Quality Infrastructure: Additional resources provided to HHS to develop a national quality strategy and support quality measure development and endorsement for the Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP quality improvement programs.

Extended Payment Protections for Rural Providers: Extends Medicare payment protections for small rural hospitals, including for hospital outpatient services, lab services, and facilities that have a low-volume of Medicare patients, but play a vital role in their communities.

Establish Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute: Establish a private, non-profit institute to identify national priorities and provide for research to compare the effectiveness of health treatments and strategies.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Fee: Imposes an annual non-deductible $2.3 billion fee on the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry allocated according to market share and not applying to companies with sales of branded pharmaceuticals of $5 million or less.

Medical Device Manufacturers Fee: Imposes an annual non-deductible flat fee of $2 billion on the medical device manufacturing sector allocated according to market share and exempting companies with U.S. sales of $5 million or less. The fee does not apply to any sale of a Class I product or any sale of a Class II product that is primarily sold to consumers at retail for not more than $100 per unit (under the FDA product classification system).

Health Insurance Provider Fee: Imposes an annual non-deductible flat fee of $6.7 billion on the health insurance sector allocated across the industry according to market share. The fee does not apply to companies whose net premiums written are $25 million or less and whose fees from administration of employer self-insured plans are $5 million or less.

Non-Profit Hospitals: Establishes new requirements applicable to nonprofit hospitals beginning in 2010, including periodic community needs assessments.

New National Health Care Workforce Commission: Establishes an independent National Commission to provide comprehensive, nonbiased information and recommendations to Congress and the Administration for aligning federal health care workforce resources with national needs.

Strengthening Our Health Care Workforce: Expands and improves low-interest student loan programs, scholarships, and loan repayments for health students and professionals to increase and enhance the capacity of the workforce to meet patients’ health care needs.

Special Deduction for Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS): Requires that non-profit BCBS organizations have a medical loss ratio of 85 percent or higher in order to take advantage of the special tax benefits provided to them under IRC Section 833, including the deduction for 25 percent of claims and expenses and the 100 percent deduction for unearned premium reserves.

Cosmetic Surgery Tax: Imposes a five percent excise tax on voluntary cosmetic surgical and medical procedures performed by a licensed medical professional. The tax would be collected by the medical professional at the point of service.

2011

Increased Reimbursement for Primary Care: Provides a 10 percent bonus in Medicare payments for primary care physicians and general surgeons.

Increased Training Support for Primary Care: Establishes a Graduate Medical Education policy allowing unused training slots to be re-distributed for purposes of increasing primary care training at other sites.

Improved Health Care Quality and Efficiency: Establishes a new CMS Innovation Center to test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce health care costs and enhance the quality of care provided to individuals.

Improved Preventive Health Coverage: Covers an annual wellness visit and personalized prevention plan services for Medicare beneficiaries and eliminates cost sharing for preventive services. Creates incentives for state Medicaid programs to cover evidence-based preventive services with no cost-sharing, and requires coverage of tobacco cessation services for pregnant women.

Transitional Care for Medicare: Establishes the Community Care Transitions Program to provide transition services to high-risk Medicare beneficiaries.

Expanded Primary Care, Nursing, and Public Health Workforce: Increases access to primary care by adjusting the Medicare Graduate Medical Education program. Primary care and nurse training programs are also expanded to increase the size of the primary care and nursing workforce. Ensures that public health challenges are adequately addressed.

Small Business Tax Credit: Initiates the first phase of the small business tax credit for qualified small employers for contributions to purchase health insurance for its employees. The credit is up to 35 percent of the small business employer’s contribution to provide health insurance for its employees. There is also up to a 24 percent credit for small nonprofit organizations.

New Medicaid Flexibility for States: A new option allows states to cover parents and childless adults up to 133 percent of FPL and receive current law FMAP will take effect.

Transition to Competitive Bidding in Medicare Advantage: Begin transition to a competitive bidding system to eliminate overpayments to insurers in Medicare Advantage.

Employer W-2 Reporting: Requires employers to disclose the value of the benefit provided by the employer for each employee’s health insurance coverage on the employee’s annual Form W-2.

Standardized Definition of Qualified Medical Expenses: Conforms the definition of qualified medical expenses for HSAs, FSAs, and HRAs to the definition used for the itemized deduction. An exception to this rule is included so that amounts paid for over-the-counter medicine with a prescription still qualify as medical expenses.

Increased Additional Tax for Withdrawals from Health Savings Accounts and Archer Medical Savings Account Funds for Non-Qualified Medical Expenses: Increases the additional tax for HSA withdrawals prior to age 65 that are not used for qualified medical expenses from 10 to 20 percent. The additional tax for Archer MSA withdrawals not used for qualified medical expenses would increase from 15 to 20 percent.

Cafeteria Plan Changes: Creates a Simple Cafeteria Plan to provide a vehicle through which small businesses can provide tax-free benefits to their employees. This would ease the small employer’s administrative burden of sponsoring a cafeteria plan. The provision also exempts employers who make contributions for employees under a simple cafeteria plan from pension plan nondiscrimination requirements applicable to highly compensated and key employees.

Limit Health Flexible Savings Account Contributions: Limits the amount of contributions to health FSAs to $2,500 per year.

Eliminate Deduction for Employer Part D Subsidy: Eliminates the deduction for the subsidy for employers who maintain prescription drug plans for their Medicare Part D eligible retirees.

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

Says who?

Here's how this will play out - with some minor modifications based on the final version of the measure. In large part, however, this is what's coming and when - and I'm just covering this year and enxt. Those are all taxes and not healthcare issues?

We don't know what will be in the final version they (don't) vote on. Why on earth, if this is so wonderful, are they playing this obviously sneaky game? You believe any of this? How naive must you be to believe the government that says..."Here is what it will be, maybe, but we might change it before we play a little game so we don't really vote on it"

The very first section...pre-existing conditions...is simply impossible. How can the government require an insurance company to cover someone with a pre-existing condition? what will that cost? It goes against the entire concept of "insurance" to wait until you have a claim or condition and THEN buy insurance. Private insurers simply cannot...and that is the goal...to eliminate private insurance, the competition, from the industry. There is NO plan to "increase competition". This would be like the government requiring auto insurers to provide coverage and let you buy insurance after an accident occurs.

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

Focus on the trivial and you'll have trivial government, is that what you want?

Personally, I prefer to focus on things that actually matter. Pre internet-u-tube etc people made mistakes all the time of this nature when speaking publicly and no one remembered or cared, no one focused on the trivial, people focused on what was important, whether the policy was a good one, or a bad one - what aspects of the policy where good or bad - not whether someone said 3,000% instead of $3,000. This is no 'gotcha' moment.

Everyone who makes speeches is prone to making these types of mistakes from time to time and I really don't give a toss about it no matter who the person is, president or insignificant no one. Now, if someone asks for an opinion and the speaker can't come up with something articulate to say about a subject matter that is a completely different kettle of fish - I would be most disgusted if the President couldn't string a sentence together without prompting on subjects relating to government and policy. That is not what this is about though so it's stupid, trivial and irrelevant.

Please. Stop.

When asked to name a country that begins with the letter "U" the most common answer given by Americans is "Yugoslavia". When asked how many states there are, the most common answer was "52".

Tell these same people "Your employer will save 3000 per cent and you will get a raise" and not one of the major news outlets reports even one person saying..."Um, that's impossible"

It was no mistake. It was purposefully misleading people to support something with dishonest statements, fully aware of the fact that they can easily be fooled. The amazing thing to me is that anyone with a functioning brain would support something that opbviously can only be justified with lies and passed through congress with tricks. It does not surprise me that mathmatically disfunctional morons would support it. I wish Obama would speak to intelligent people and not just the ones that will still vote for him.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

We don't know what will be in the final version they (don't) vote on. Why on earth, if this is so wonderful, are they playing this obviously sneaky game? You believe any of this? How naive must you be to believe the government that says..."Here is what it will be, maybe, but we might change it before we play a little game so we don't really vote on it"

The very first section...pre-existing conditions...is simply impossible. How can the government require an insurance company to cover someone with a pre-existing condition? what will that cost? It goes against the entire concept of "insurance" to wait until you have a claim or condition and THEN buy insurance. Private insurers simply cannot...and that is the goal...to eliminate private insurance, the competition, from the industry. There is NO plan to "increase competition". This would be like the government requiring auto insurers to provide coverage and let you buy insurance after an accident occurs.

We know fairly well what will be in the final version - it's in essence what the Senate bill has with some modifications to take out the special concessions and such. Some dates or provisions may be changed - the pre-existing conditions provision, for example, will likely be extended to children first and to adults later.

As for the pre-exisiting conditions clause in more general terms, if it's impossible to cover pre-existing conditions in a private insurance market, then that would be the about the strongest argument one could make against private health care insurance. Insurance companies will be allowed not to cover a pre-existing condition but the window how far they can go back in a patient's history will be shortened. That will ensure that you can't insure yourself after the accident, so to speak. As well, that's what the mandate to obtain health insurance is all about. It spreads the risk to a larger pool and helps avoid people getting free rides on the back of those that have and pay for their health insurance.

It's really not that difficult a concept - it's done all over the developed world and it works. Not only does it work, it works a heck of a lot better than our current sorry excuse for a health care system.

[JimandChristy 1,689]

Please. Stop.

When asked to name a country that begins with the letter "U" the most common answer given by Americans is "Yugoslavia". When asked how many states there are, the most common answer was "52".

Tell these same people "Your employer will save 3000 per cent and you will get a raise" and not one of the major news outlets reports even one person saying..."Um, that's impossible"

It was no mistake. It was purposefully misleading people to support something with dishonest statements, fully aware of the fact that they can easily be fooled. The amazing thing to me is that anyone with a functioning brain would support something that opbviously can only be justified with lies and passed through congress with tricks. It does not surprise me that mathmatically disfunctional morons would support it. I wish Obama would speak to intelligent people and not just the ones that will still vote for him.

Irony of that statement, the Republicans have been playing that game and are masters of it for as long as I remember and are still doing that now...

Socialism

Communism

Death Panels

Rationing Care

Should have seen the right wing network go mental over Obama apparently wanting to ban fishing! That was a great laugh!

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Just do a simple 'gut' check. This health care reform will insure millions of more people and SLASH the deficit? Come on.... does anyone believe that?

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

We know fairly well what will be in the final version - it's in essence what the Senate bill has with some modifications to take out the special concessions and such. Some dates or provisions may be changed - the pre-existing conditions provision, for example, will likely be extended to children first and to adults later.

As for the pre-exisiting conditions clause in more general terms, if it's impossible to cover pre-existing conditions in a private insurance market, then that would be the about the strongest argument one could make against private health care insurance. Insurance companies will be allowed not to cover a pre-existing condition but the window how far they can go back in a patient's history will be shortened. That will ensure that you can't insure yourself after the accident, so to speak. As well, that's what the mandate to obtain health insurance is all about. It spreads the risk to a larger pool and helps avoid people getting free rides on the back of those that have and pay for their health insurance.

It's really not that difficult a concept - it's done all over the developed world and it works. Not only does it work, it works a heck of a lot better than our current sorry excuse for a health care system.

No the system does not work better than ours all over the developed world, which is why people come HERE for healthcare. We should not confuse health CARE with payment systems. Our hospitals here are full of Quebec license plates, the hospitals over the border are NOT full of Vermont license plates, you are simply wrong on that matter.

That pre-existing conditions cannot be covered by private insurance is proof that the government should not try to do so and should definitely not try to force someone else to do so. It won't work. Can't work. What is the point of forcing the competition (Obama says it is competition) to do something impossible in order to stay in business? Sounds like the purpoise is to destroy the competition, doesn't it? And the government can only "compete" when they have no competition. How many people would use USCIS for visas if there was a private source for them? Why does Fedex make a profit while the Post Office goes bankrupt? Given the perfect track record that the Federal government cannot do ANYthing better...even deliver a package...why do you want them to do you healthcare?

I have never understood the need to require ALL of us to participate in a debacle designed to cover 10% of the people (or less if we do not count illegal aliens) that do not have health care insurance, they ALL have health care already

[JimandChristy 1,689]

Just do a simple 'gut' check. This health care reform will insure millions of more people and SLASH the deficit? Come on.... does anyone believe that?

You don't have to believe it but isn't that what the CBO is for?

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

Irony of that statement, the Republicans have been playing that game and are masters of it for as long as I remember and are still doing that now...

Socialism

Communism

Death Panels

Rationing Care

Should have seen the right wing network go mental over Obama apparently wanting to ban fishing! That was a great laugh!

If your defense of Obama lies is that Republicans also lie...OK, I will let you have that. Republicans are PIGS. Democrats are PIGS. They all lie. You win that point.

Now, as I said before, stop trying to defend Obama's obvious lies to the public. Saying that someone else lied, even if they did so first, does not justify what he did. It was a LIE, not an "error". He did NOT mean to say "3000 Dollars" he meant to say exactly what he said to exactly who he said it to.

Why are you afraid for the "health care" plan to simply stand on it's own with facts? Why are the Democrat pigs afraid of a real vote?

[JimandChristy 1,689]

No the system does not work better than ours all over the developed world, which is why people come HERE for healthcare. We should not confuse health CARE with payment systems. Our hospitals here are full of Quebec license plates, the hospitals over the border are NOT full of Vermont license plates, you are simply wrong on that matter.

I bet far more Americans go to Canada for health care than vice versa.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

You don't have to believe it but isn't that what the CBO is for?

Theorhetically, but the CBO hasn't even seen a health care bill yet.

The only thing they have seen is 'ideas' put into their inbox to look over.

Those 'ideas' are ones intended to get a good response from the CBO, but they are in no way factual. They are just guesstimates by the CBO on the information they have been given.

If they can't see the actual bill, then their estimate is useless.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Just do a simple 'gut' check. This health care reform will insure millions of more people and SLASH the deficit? Come on.... does anyone believe that?

Not surprising at all. Many people do believe this. But they also believe anything that Obama the Socialist says.

[alienlovechild 75]

I bet far more Americans go to Canada for health care than vice versa.

I doubt it as I don't believe the Canadian system subsidizes everyone who crosses the border.

Aside from healthcare, a far greater proportion of Canadians move to the U.S. than Americans moving to Canada.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Just do a simple 'gut' check. This health care reform will insure millions of more people and SLASH the deficit? Come on.... does anyone believe that?

Yes, the CBO does.