Tag: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Health Insurance Posted on

Why Medicare-For-All Makes More Sense Now Than Ever

Private health insurance drives up costs for everyone. Medicare — signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 — was supposed to be just the first step. For the fifty years before Medicare’s enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that […] Read More

Obama Care Posted on

How Obamacare Is Actually Preventing Americans From Escaping Poverty

Obamacare is leaving the middle class behind. Not the living-in-suburbia, driving-an-SUV-to-soccer-practice middle-class dream (although it affects people living that dream negatively, too), but the new middle class of America—the ones struggling to pull themselves out of the hole after the economic crash. The middle class that is so close to poverty that one wrong move will land them there, but just far enough away from hopeless debt that the states and the federal government figure they can fend for themselves. Which many of them probably could have, before the Affordable Care Act. This is not because Obamacare is a bad idea. It’s because it is not being allowed to function correctly in its attempt to extend affordable health care coverage to more Americans. Do a […] Read More

Vaccine Cover-up Posted on

Hysterical Americans Call to Jail Anti-Vaxxers

Melissa Melton Activist Post I don’t really like using the word sheep, but what else do you call it when people allow a scientific dictatorship with a television to do all their thinking for them? Sorry we’ve been a little behind the curve on this one. See, we don’t have television. So when large swaths of the American populous start completely flipping out over whatever the television fear du jour is, we’re always a little slow on the uptake simply because we don’t pay to have propaganda piped into our home. We didn’t realize that so many people have completely lost their wits because a whopping 100 people got measles at Disneyland (out of the 15+ million people who visit that park each year). You […] Read More

Obama Care Posted on

New Website Born of Healthcare Law Discloses Billions of Dollars Paid to Doctors and Hospitals by Drug and Device Firms

Thanks to Obamacare and the development of a new websitedisclosing payments to physicians and teaching hospitals, it’s now known that billions of dollars has been exchanged between medical practitioners and industry in just a few months. For example, from August to December 2013, pharmaceutical manufacturers and device companies issued 4.4 million payments to more than 500,000 health care professionals and teaching hospitals that totaled $3.5 billion, The New York Times reported. This total included $380 million in speaking and consulting monies that drug and device businesses gave to doctors. The website, established as part of the Affordable Care Act, tracks all gifts valued at more than $10 given by manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and medical supplies that have at least one product covered by […] Read More

Obama Care Posted on

2013: Obama’s Healthcare Fix

By Stephen Lendman Steve Lendman Blog He’s got himself to blame. He sold a pig in a polk. He backed one of America’s greatest ever scams. It hugely enriches providers. It does so at the expense of giving everyone universal single payer coverage. More on that below. Obamacare is rife with problems. It leaves millions uninsured. It leaves millions more underinsured. It makes healthcare coverage more expensive. Mandated market rules include rude awakenings. Many consumers are left paying much more than they thought. Most plans include huge deductibles and co-pays. Doing so means tens of millions face unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. Federal subsidies for America’s poor are woefully inadequate. Millions live from paycheck to paycheck. Limited resources make expensive treatments unaffordable. Insurers have plenty of wiggle room. They can’t […] Read More

Health Insurance Posted on

CBS: More Than Two Million Americans Being Dropped From Their Health Insurance Plans

Source: Washington Free Beacon CBS This Morning reported Tuesday more than two million Americans will not be able to renew their current health insurance policies because of Obamacare. That is said to be more than triple the number of people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Correspondent Jan Crawford called the number “just the tip of the iceberg … despite the president’s assurances to the contrary,” referring to Obama’s infamous pledge that people who like their plan will be able to keep it under Obamacare. Those numbers are certain to go even higher, Crawford said, with some companies telling CBS they have sent letters but not disclosing how many. Industry experts like Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation said the insurance companies have no […] Read More

Health Insurance Posted on

Consumers Abandoning Healthcare.gov

By Stephen Lendman   Steve Lendman Blog Can you blame them? According to Digital Trends (DT), “more than $500 million” was spent creating “the digital equivalent of a rock.” DT’s source is the General Accounting Office (GAO). Most spending went for contracts, saying: “CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) data indicated that the agency spent almost $394 million from fiscal year 2010 through March 31, 2013, through contracts to complete activities to establish the FFEs and the data hub and carry out certain other exchange-related activities.” FFE’s are federally administrative exchanges. They include Healthcare.gov and Washington run state exchanges. Other costs went for salaries and administrative expense. CGI Federal is Healthcare.gov’s lead contractor. It got $93.7 million for failure. It’s done lots of previous […] Read More

Health Insurance Posted on

2013: Billionaire Koch Brothers Spending Millions To Deny Health Coverage To Low-Income Americans

These billionaire industrialists are pressuring states to deny health coverage to the people who need it most. Conservative advocates funded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch have launched a massive campaign pressuring states to deny health care coverage to lower income Americans through the Medicaid expansion contained in the Affordable Care Act. The effort, orchestrated by the group Americans for Prosperity, is targeting lawmakers in Virginia tasked with deciding whether the state should accept federal dollars to provide insurance to individuals and families below 133 percent of the federal poverty line ($31,321 in income for a family of four). Volunteers with the organization are distributing flyers through door-to-door canvassing, attending committee hearings, and according to one lawmakers who has become a target of the campaign, intimidating […] Read More

Health Insurance Posted on

2013: I Would Be Dead Without Health Insurance — GOPers Trying to Kill Obamacare Are Also Killing People

The right’s crusade against health insurance is more than just evil and cruel, it’s evil, cruel and incredibly stupid. Huh. That looks weird. Has that always looked like that? I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the back of my calves. I’m sure you don’t spend a lot looking at yours. Kind of like the dark side of the moon, they’re on the dark side of your body. And they’re not interesting enough to make a special effort. What do the backs of our calves do all day long? Who knows, they could be plotting to overthrow the government and we’d never notice. But for some reason a few months ago I did look at the back of my right calf. And I […] Read More