Affordable Care Act Scare!

Hate to break it to you, but the lawmakers didn't spend hours reading it either.

OK how does the this possibly justify being uninformed of the actual content? I quiz my congressional members, if only through their staff that answers the phone- you can do the same. You can demand they know as much as they need to but you need to do more than just post fear and rage because an uninformed population is really just a mob. We have ALL THIS INFORMATION right at our FINGER TIPS! It's not like our parents day - when you would have to drive to your state capital or DC to get a hard copy to read. We can all read the ACTUAL text and not the paid press's version. But it takes effort and energy which is much harder to muster than just yapping on the internet. You seem bright but maybe you DON'T want to know the truth because it's so fulfilling to be filled with moral indignation!

I have found that when ever you dig deeply into ANY of the big divisive issues in the world, when we wade in and read the details - there is no "clear" answer. REALLY SMART, REALLY COMMITTED, people work hard on BOTH SIDES of almost every issue you can name. And they have some excellent compelling arguments but these arguments are WAY TOO COMPLEX to fit into a news bite on FOX or MSNBC. They won't make you angry and they won't fill your soul with indignation! They're often kinda boring and illicit more of a groan than banner building flag waving emotion.

Information is powerful. Please don't settle for the "preaching to the choir" BS you get on the mega-corp news programs. Read the Wall Street Journal - read the long boring stuff with no pictures. Listen to the WHOLE story on the NPR website not the five minute version they air. Go dig up the sources they use and make sure they used them in context!

In case you hadn't guessed it - I don't have much time to watch TV -:embarassed:

To the person who registrars people at the Emergency Department - your ED may be out of compliance if you register them prior to they're being evaluated by a medical professional to determine if they WILL be treated in an ED. If you do do this, and they're being treated you can be sure your hospital has a policy for this. Some states reimburse at ED rates for all medicaid patients regardless of the reason - this would be a great example of "playing the system" - treat a skinned knee, use pennies of services and bill the state a share of total costs of the department divided by total patients treated. In these situations it PAYS to treat as many non-ill patients on medicaid as you can. If you only reject uninsured and under-insured patients but take ALL the medicaid patients it's a pretty good funding source! By US states, the only service a patient presenting with a skinned knee is entitled to? An evaluation my a medical person to determine how serious. Zero tests, Zero band aids just a check to see if the presenting issue warrants ED usage. If your ED is treating this kind of injury you may be actually witnessing a federal crime if it's federal dollars, more likely with Medicaid it's a state fraud. Here's a link for you (you may be entitled to a % of the ill-gotten funds your ED has pulled in through treating skinned knees! http://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/report-fraud/index.asp AGAIN what you're talking about here is MEDICAID what this board has been discussing is ObamaCare - not remotely the same thing. Trust me, if you see a newly insured citizen, their private for profit healthcare will NOT pay for an ED to treat their skinned knee.

I am shocked that anyone thought this was going to be "affordable". Think about it.

Actually I live in MA, we've had to have insurance for years and, though there are some flaws, overall it has lead to a higher quality of health and availability of care to residents.

what does someone in the middle class pay a month in premiums? What percentage of your gross income?

One thing I like about Canada - I pay $600/yr provincial health premium - that's 0.8% of my income. Together with my employers extended coverage, even my prescriptions are free.

So your federal, provincial and GST taxes don't go towards health care at all, just the $600?

I was wondering the same. What are they paying in taxes total compared to the taxes on Americans with SS, income, payroll taxes? Not to mention any State or Local taxes.

And what if your current plan has to make changes to their policies to meet the Obamacare standards? I can bet they will raise their premiums along with that...

We had to cut back hours on some PT workers to stay under cap fro health care provisions in the ACT, or that would have added an additional $13+ million to our health care budget....and our premiiums went up again this year.

Just this past Monday the business where my mother works cut about 40 employees to 29 hours to stay under the 50 employee 30 hour average and at the same time put help wanted signs up. How screwed up is that?

Why did they do it now? Because the look back period is 6 months to determine your full time employee count come Jan 1.

Look for this to be a widespread practice.

Imagine being the owner of a growing small business that has 49 full time employees and needs to hire a few more. What are they going to do?

my wife's employer just cut a number of workers to part time as well.

I'm amazed that people making laws either do not consider or do not care about the "unintended consequences."