The Cost Of Owning Health Care Reform: The AARP Raises Rates

The health care law is “a small part,” said David Certner, legislative affairs director.
But try explaining that to a dissatisfied electorate. This was, of course, one of the initial hazards of taking on health care reform: Now Obama owns the entire system in the public’s mind, even if they don’t understand it.
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Because the media is terrible at informing people about the news.

I think I now understand what the pundits are trying to say. Obama did a very poor job of explaining complicated issues to people who are uneducated. What he should have done is try to find simpler solutions to complicated problems or perhaps, drew a lot of pictures and relied heavily on metaphor, parables and expressive hand gestures. Had he done that everyone would have health coverage and a job by now.

But try explaining that to a dissatisfied electorate.

We’d like to see the straight media actually try explaining stuff like that, actually…instead of just ‘reporting the controversy’.

Well-informed electorate, and all that.

“He had no idea that health care reform had effectively closed the donut hole for people like him, making him one of the laws major beneficiaries.”
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Why should the media bother reporting on HCR’s benefits to Americans when they can titter endlessly about “Death Panels”?

Needlessly sad story RE the elderly gentleman buying up Walorski’s and the GOP’s lies…er, fuzzy math. Why do common people believe WITHOUT QUESTION* the baloney Flox and talk radio continue to produce?
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*Sorry about the caps – I don’t have ital capability!

Should we invest in coloring books?

And Floridians just elected that moron in the video box to dismantle health care….

nflfoghorn I don’t know. However, I have seen manufacturers draw pictures and put them on the assembly line because their workers didn’t seem to understand what to do based on linguistic explanations, so who knows.

This is a democracy (or democratic republic, or representative democracy, or however you want to state it) but it’s pretty clear that the electorate either isn’t well-informed or chooses to be that way. I choose the latter.

nflfoghorn I agree but they seem to want to blame everyone but themselves for their ignorance, especially those who stayed in school.

Dang. I pine for the ol’ talk radio days where everyone got their opinions in and the hosts didn’t take your intelligence for a Manhattan cab ride.
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There aren’t any Murrows around who would use the truth (not name-calling) to shoot down McCarthyism.

…not to mention “polls indicate that you the public want to stay misinformed” versus “we report, you decide.”
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Woops.
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Make that “we give you the truth and you make of it what you will.”

Look the other day someone I know online had all kinds of misconceptions about ACA and were asking “how can I figure this out”. I sent them to the government site with the ACA timeline and the person was all “Oh, I didn’t get that! THanks for the site”. One site cleared up a lot of that. Why isn’t that broadcast everywhere? Why doesn’t the media post a link whenever they do a little story on ACA? You can include links to everything else under the sun on news blogs why not that? Why not talk about it?

Maybe ignorance = ratings.

I’m not sure it is that people are ignorant (in a non-prejorative sense) it’s that for the middle class they haven’t felt any benefit while having the cost estimates brought up repeatedly.
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They heard this-
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“Visiting a Cleveland suburb this week, the president described how individuals and small businesses will be able to buy coverage in a new kind of health insurance marketplace, gaining the same strength in numbers that federal employees have.
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“You’ll be able to buy in, or a small business will be able to buy into this pool,” Mr. Obama said. “And that will lower rates, it’s estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting. That’s money out of pocket.”
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And that’s not all.
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Mr. Obama asked his audience for a show of hands from people with employer-provided coverage, what most Americans have.
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“Your employer, it’s estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent,” said the president, “which means they could give you a raise.”
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A White House press spokesman later said the president misspoke; he had meant to say annual premiums would drop by $3,000. ”
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/17/politics/main6306991.shtml
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And see their pay stubs not reflect any benefit.

Has anybody analyzed AARP’s plan to determine if this is, you know, actually true? Because it’s very easy for a company to use the threshold argument in order to make this claim and to not be entirely honest or accurate about it. It’s a way of cutting benefits and saying “it’s not my fault.”

Another question: are these companies and organizations making other preparations for the 2018 tax code right now, or just this one? if just this, why just this?

Obviously I don’t know if there’s something amiss here. But it seems to me that the media shouldn’t just take these companies at their word. Somebody needs to do an analysis of the actual plans. Do they break the cadillac threshold? Is there any reason to make the change 8 years ahead of time?

Reading these few comments, it is obvious that progressives remain in a constant state of denial. Obamacare is a fraud, folks. Why do you think democrats RAN from it during this last election?…they know fully well what the public is going to experience over the next couple of years and it is NOT going to be funny, especially to our senior citizens. Your premiums are going up precipitously, as are your Rx medications. More and more of our physician base are refusing to accept new Medicare patients, your wait times are are increasing exponentially and many of the policies the insurance companies will write for pre-existing conditions are “junk” policies with EXTREMELY high deductibles (5-10k) 500,000 health care professionals are adamantly opposed to Obamacare…go to Docs4PatientCare.org, to find out why.

“Had he done that everyone would have health coverage and a job by now.”
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No one is saying that, but you could make the argument that more public support would have given him more leverage to pass more complete, effective solutions instead of watered down measures held hostage by Republicans banking on their failure.
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How about this: if Obama had done a better job of selling the stimulus and healthcare plans, maybe we would have been spared months of listening to BS about death panels and near riotous town hall meetings filled with anger fueled knuckleheads that thought that death panels were real.

Earl, you do such a fantastic job at perpetuating myths. If you ever in your life accepted the truth you’d do wonders for enhancing the national conversation.

“Why do you think democrats RAN from it during this last election?”
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Because they weren’t able to get ahead of the wing nut lies about death panels, socialized medicine, and losing your favorite doctor that had so heavily colored public opinion with misinformation. They didn’t run from the reality of it, they ran from the perception of it. The saddest part is how weak of a fight they put up to counter the misinformation. I’ll give the Republicans credit: they completely outmaneuvered the Democrats because of the Dems complete lack of spine.

Docs4PatientCare.org’s support for the status quo isn’t exactly subtle.
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And their non-disclosed funding is pretty telling. “we are self-funding”. Yup.

“We are self-defrauding” is more like it.
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The status quo is not an option. The GOP House already knows this, yet chooses to fight BO over it not because there are legitimate items to haggle over but because they want face time all the way thru ’12.
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Death panels and killing Grandma was a smokescreen for the GOP knowing this is an idea whose time has come and they didn’t want anyone upsetting their lobbyist-cash infused gravy train.

8.1 was meant for 9. Timing’s off today!

Earl,

Let me explaint it to you. Medicare/Medicaid is now about 20% of the federal budget and growing. If you think the deficit is bad now, just wait a few years as these items eat up the federal budget.

Obama was seeking to slow the growth of Medicare?Medicaid and the amount it was eating of the budget. As much as Republicans hated Obamacare, at least the idea of slowing spending should have been welcomed by the Republicans.

I kept waiting for a Republican to say, “Well, most of Obamacare is bad, but at least I like the idea to see if we can cut spending.” Did we hear any of that from the Repubicans? NO!! We got “Obama wants to cut benefits!” “Obamacare will lead to Death Panels!” This is shear demogagary, not statesmanship.

Now these same Republicans who chided the President for “cutting benefits” i.e. cutting spending are telling us that they are going to be careful wards of the publics money? That’s laughable!! They have said Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense spending is off limits. That’s 60% of the budget. Where are they going to cut? Interest on the debt is another 20% so that leaves 20% of the budget to play with. Even if you eliminated all of the other programs, you would still have a deficit.

Refusing to accept fact is part of the progressive mantle, I guess. Why do you think those “brave” democratic congressmen refused to include themselves in this panacea called Obamacare? Perhaps it did NOT quite meet their own lofty standards. You wait and see how seniors will be reacting over the next two years and explain to them that treatment is no longer available because an Insurance panel decided against them. You wait until 75% of our physicians no longer accept Medicare….yes, indeed, progressive apologists will be working overtime…but then again, this is what you do best. Paul, our organization is 100% physician funded….we KNOW the pitfalls of Obamacare and will work diligently until it is radically modified, or if necessary…repealed!

“Paul, our organization is 100% physician funded”
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Can you demonstrate that?

I’ll take your pretend doc word for it.

You’ve got your enrollment package by now Michael. Did your benefits not get reduced, your contribution increased? Small businesses (like the corp I belong to in my coop) got a 20 percent or so hit. Folks I know at F500 corps also got significant increases and declines in coverage.
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Why is AARP news?

Go to our membership desk, paul and request a funding statement and hippo, I will chalk up your juvenile commentary to progressive stupor. You consistently reject any and all conservative commentary, showing just how narrow your perspective is. This being said, I will lay odds that YOU will be one of the loudest complainers the first time you get inconvenienced in your quest for “I am first in line” health care. We see people like you every day of the week….always complaining about something. (And irritating everyone you encounter)

“Go to our membership desk, paul and request a funding statement”
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So you personally can’t establish “our organization is 100% physician funded”?
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It’s fine if you can’t I only ask because you made the assertion.
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As you are a member I would suspect you know, or at least care.

” hippo, I will chalk up your juvenile commentary to progressive stupor. You consistently reject any and all conservative commentary, showing just how narrow your perspective is. This being said, I will lay odds that YOU will be one of the loudest complainers the first time you get inconvenienced in your quest for “I am first in line” health care. We see people like you every day of the week….always complaining about something. (And irritating everyone you encounter)”
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You’re not a doctor. In any way shape and form. Not even a love doctor, you don’t have the suave nor the twinkle in the eye humor. There’s absolutely nothing about you that say ‘I know what i’m talking about’. As for juvenile commentary and reject conservative commentary. Like Freeinpas ‘FU commentary’ when he’s proven wrong? Why should I accept that? Or RWD claiming that fascism and socialism is on the left? Why should I accept that? That would be the same as me claiming that a proctologist and a neuro surgent is pretty much the same thing. I mean it’s a body right so digging in the brain is the same thing as milking the prostate.
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Those are not conservative ideas. I haven’t read any conservative ideas so far. What I read is a bunch of blog links, gloating, chest beating, neck stomping ‘you’re a elitist and I’m real American’ lower taxes lowers the deficite hogwash. I’ll be the first to second if you present an idea worth a real discussion that actually is supported with facts. If it is pulled out of the proctologists domain I will reserve the right to say so.
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And don’t worry about me complaining about being last in line at the doctors office. My mom gave birth to some decent timber and my dad taught me to walk erect – I don’t have to walk around with an assault rifle to feel like a man or make up some story about being a doctor as to to pretend I know something about healtcare. That’s for people such as yourself. Facts are supported by themselves under the scrutiny of collected knowledge. If they require a fake degree it’s probably garbage.
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If that is juvenile, so be it – but at least I’m not so childish I need a pretend crutch to support my juvenile commentary.

I am sorry, why didn’t You just check – Hartford Insurance is insurer for AARP members.
AARP is NOT an Insurance Company.
What is this hell about?

Just exactly what I expected from you, hippo, more of the same progressive B.S. I know your type, full of bluster and blunder…a real blowhard and you contribute NOTHING to society except whining. My credentials are very much intact, thank you, how about yours? Have you ever worked a day in your life? I am thinking probably not. The biggest complainers are usually those who contribute the least. Go to Docs4PatientCare.org, you will find several contributions I have made. And remember something, hippo, you get back from life in the same manner you contribute….in your case, it is nothing but hyperbole.

paul, I AM a member, but how can I personally attest to our funding? I know the guidelines for how we operate and our funding is membership generated, What more can I tell you? I have contributed money from my own pocket to help get the message out…other members are doing the same.

earl, what ARE your credentials? Where is the proof that you’re really an MD?

Exactly. Medicare premiums are not rising this year. AARP is one of the biggest shills for auto, life, and health insurance. They are not insurers. I have supplemental health insurance because Medicare deductibles are quite high depending on the service you require.
Supplemental is a rip off but I feel I need it. When I originally enrolled in Medicare my supplemental was $30 dollars a month, then the next year $50, then $79, then the next year $112. I switched insurers and my monthly premium is $95 a month. My premium for the coming year is $99. However, they dropped vision.
All of these rate hikes happened long before HCR.
By the way, AARP affiliates themselves with the United Health Plan. They negotiate with United for rates.

“I AM a member, but how can I personally attest to our funding?”
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“Paul, our organization is 100% physician funded”
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You can see my confusion.

“Your premiums are going up precipitously, as are your Rx medications.”

Yes they are, were, and will continue to. Are you saying they were not? Prove it.
Are you saying that ACA is responsible for the present hikes, even if most of it hasn’t taken effect yet? Prove it.

“More and more of our physician base are refusing to accept new Medicare patients…”

You keep saying that, but you offer no proof. Prove it.

“… your wait times are are increasing exponentially…”

You keep saying that, but you offer no proof. Prove it.

“… and many of the policies the insurance companies will write for pre-existing conditions are “junk” policies with EXTREMELY high deductibles (5-10k)”

Since they haven’t been written yet, how do you know how expensive they will be? If you can prove your prediction in advance, do so.

“500,000 health care professionals are adamantly opposed to Obamacare…”

Prove it.

“go to Docs4PatientCare.org, to find out why.”

I did. It doesn’t say why. It only offers opinions. Tell me why.