Obamacare

[neoplacebo]

Gee, he's more wingnutty than I suspected.

[bannination]

I got a response!

Hi (Vrede)!

I am Sen. Stacey Campfield's Field Director, Stephen Walsh.

First, I want to thank you for expressing your support for Stacey. It is very encouraging to know that there are people who understand what is truly at stake in this election.

This primary is one of the greatest challenges Stacey has had to face in awhile, and he needs people like you to help get him across the finish line.

Our first order of business is expanding our volunteer force. We need more people willing to talk to voters over the phone and at the door.

Our first order of business is expanding our volunteer force. We have an exciting field program planned (most people know Stacey as being the king of grassroots!), and we are always looking for supporters like you to join Team Stacey. We will be knocking doors, making phone calls, writing letters to the editor, hosting events, and doing everything we can to drive out support for Stacey. Please let me know if you would be willing to join our team today.

In addition, we are facing an opponent who has gotten funding from his liberal, big-money friends, and he will be using these funds to attack Stacey left and right. No matter where you are located, whether here in Knoxville, in Kalamazoo,or in Timbuktu, we need your support to fight back against this liberal, big-money machine. We could always use additional funds. Anyone anywhere can donate, and even if all you can give is $5, that $5 will be put to good use for Stacey. votestacy.com/donate

We also have opportunities to specifically donate for certain campaign costs, such as phone banking days, events, signs, or t-shirts for the team. Even if you can't be here with us, it's the next best thing!

If you are willing to stand with Stacey and can help in any of these ways, please email me back as soon as you can.. We are down to twelve weeks until the primary, so there's not a moment to lose.

Let's do this for Tennessee!

-Stephen Walsh

Idiots.

...My guess: I'll get the same form email neoplacebo got. This will give me the opportunity to call him an illiterate idiot...

Not what I was expecting but still:

Hi Stephen!

Is Team Stacey illiterate? Here's the email I sent you again:

Wonderful, they're just collecting email addresses to spam people, don't even care what you send them. Why am I not surprised.

[Wneglia]

Or 4 days.

Stop the Republican Medicaid Blockade (petition)

To the 24 governors (including NC's McCrory) blocking access to health care: Stop blocking Medicaid and save the lives of thousands who will die for lack of insurance.

The problem is where the states will get the extra money to fund Medicaid. They were misled into thinking that it is free money coming from the federal govenment, when in fact, many of the enrollees in states that expanded Medicaid were what are called "woodwork" people, or people who would have qualified for Medicaid without the expansion, who are coming out of the woodwork. Those patients are funded 50:50 between states and feds. Governor Jerry Brown announced yesterday that that because of this scenario, California is now having to come up with an additional $1.2 Billion that they had not budgeted for, and is going to cause cuts in other areas.

[Wneglia]

The people who would have qualified for Medicaid without the expansion are not the ones that the citizen-hating ODS GOP is keeping out of Medicaid at significant loss to their states.

States that Opted Out of the Medicaid Expansion Have the Worst of Both Worlds

Now, about your paid enrollment gullibility?

I'm not against expansion-just saying that even the non-expansion states have enrolled 550K new people out of the woodwork Link
that they probably didn't budget for, and will be strained just like California. If they had expanded, they still would have had these costs for the woodwork people.

[Wneglia]

Vrede- I realize that the Feds are paying for Medicaid expansion patients. Perhaps "misled" was overstating the perception that the Feds would pay for all new Medicaid patients enrolled in 2014 because of Obamacare, when in fact, there were a sizable number of non-expansion -enrolled Medicaid patients that the states still have to pay 43% of the cost, that they may or may not have budgeted for. In the case of California, it was an additional $1.2 billion. Medicaid expansion has increased emergency department utilization by 40%. Is that a good thing?

[Wneglia]

Whose "perception"? Your link did not cite confusion on this point and I knew the difference even though I'm far removed from the money end of healthcare. In fact, it says the opposite:

...States knew they'd have previously eligible people seeking Medicaid coverage this year, so it will be interesting to see how accurately they accounted for the woodwork effect.

Did you think that new but previously eligible enrollees were going to get 100% federal support? You can bet that GOP state healthcare managers are not that oblivious.

No, increased emergency department utilization for routine healthcare is not a good thing, but it is good for sick and injured people that would otherwise have gone without. We are in a transition period where supply of primary care will lag new demand. Millions are better off than when they were kicked out of the line entirely and, as I linked above, hospitals are doing better reimbursement-wise in the states that aren't ODS GOP haters of their citizens.

No, I did not think that those eligible enrollees would get 100% federal support, and you may be right that state healthcare managers may have been aware of that as well, but there have been a number of articles in the press demonstrating a lack of knowledge about the level of Federal support for the previously eligible enrollees.

So far as "sick and injured" people otherwise doing without- Is your ER turning away patients without insurance? The ones in Columbia are not.

[Wneglia]

One of the unintended consequences of having insurance, is that if you have a serious trauma, and wind up in a non-trauma center, you are more likely to remain there and get sub-standard care. Uninsured trauma patients are more likely to be transferred to trauma centers, where there is superior care. Link

[Wneglia]

Insurance Company Bailout

Cash For Clunkers

Wonder how much this is really going to cost in the end?

[Wneglia]

See How Much Obamacare can Save You in Premiums

[Boatrocker]

People get to be shills by getting paid to be shills . . . it is not unheard-of to find MDs taking such dirty money.

[Wneglia]

Does the rightwing, William J. Casey founded, Koch and Big Tobacco funded Manhattan Institute for Policy Research account for those that were entirely under-insured and likely to need future taxpayer help or does it just lump them in with the overwrought presentation of increases, does it adjust for likely increases sans the ACA, who ever said that the ACA would reduce premiums and why do you, a cancer MD, repeatedly cite Big Tobacco shills?

[rstrong]

Actually, Wneglia, Vrede is greatly understating the dishonesty of your claim.

The description for the video is:

"President Obama repeatedly promised that his signature health law, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, would reduce insurance premiums by $2,500 for the typical family. Instead, premiums have increased by a comparable amount. Video compilation by Naked Emperor News of TheBlaze.com. For more on how Obama came up with this faulty projection, read this account in the New York Times:"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23 ... wanted=all

That New York Times article is from 2008. Obama's promises are from 2008 and before.

This has nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

In 2008 and before, Obama was talking about a public healthcare system like every modern country has. And since their healthcare costs are typically half that of the US per capita while maintaining a better standard of healthcare, Obama's promises were credible. And they still are.

This is what Obama tried to enact in 2009. Alas, only a majority of Congress supported it. He needed a supermajority.

And so he went with 15 years of Republican health care policy. A system that:

a) Mirrors the RomneyCare plan, lauded by Republicans as a private industry success. (It's only when Obama adopted it that it became a commie Marxist socialist failure.)

b) Is very similar to a proposal made to candidate McCain in 2008 by the Health Insurance lobby.

c) Is very similar to the Republican alternative to ClintonCare - the Republican's Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993.

d) Mirrors Bob Dole's plan from the 1990s.

Even the "individual mandate" was called for by Republicans for 15 years, by everyone from Bob Dole to Jim DeMint to the Heritage Foundation to Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney, as the *alternative* to socialism. For Republicans the individual mandate was all about personal responsibility, by not forcing others to pay for your healthcare. (Now, of course, it's unconstitutional commie Marxist socialism.)

Obama in your video and the 2008 New York Times article is talking about a public system. That was blocked by the Republican minority, and you ended up with the Republican alternative. It's not the same thing.

C'mon. Just for once, post something that isn't a sleazy and easily debunked Republican talking point.