Category Archives: Health care

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Lambert here: Most coverage of ObamaCare (ACA) policies available through the Exchanges, especially Democratic-friendly coverage, has focused on the price of polices, rather than their value. This post by Dromaius focuses on value, and shows why the distinction between “in-network” and “out-of-network” coverage is important. At least in the case tested here, insurance companies are shown to “narrow” their networks, and hence coverage available to their policyholders, to exclude specialties like oncology, cardiology, internal medicine, and neurology.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

For Obama watchers, it seem ludicrous to imagine that he has any concern for rights whatever, in particular for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Be that as it may, Obama has clearly stated that health care is a right, so I’m going to take him at his word. Here he is in debate during Campaign 2008:

By Joe Firestone, Ph.D., Managing Director, CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI), and Director of KMCI’s CKIM Certificate program. He taught political science as the graduate and undergraduate level and blogs regularly at Corrente, Firedoglake and Daily Kos as letsgetitdone, and Lambert Strether, who blogs at Corrente. Joe did the heavy lifting on this!

Many people, and especially Obama supporters, characterize the ACA (ObamaCare) as “just starting” or a “work in progress” and then go on to urge that the program will have “glitches,” needs to be “tweaked,” isn’t yet “fully implemented,” and so forth. We think it’s a mistake to see the ACA as just starting. We also think it’s a mistake not to weigh the costs of ObamaCare’s stately three-year progress toward partial coverage for the the American people, and just as important to weigh the opportunity costs.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Perhaps this will be a useful metaphor to explain how ObamaCare really works:

Imagine you walk into a hospital seeking health care: Perhaps for something major, like heart failure, or something minor, like a broken arm. You sign in at the front desk and explain your situation to the nurse on duty. In response, they reach under the desk and pull out an extraordinary contraption: A combination, it seems, of a miniature steam engine, the Wheel of Fortune, a cuckoo-clock, and a football scoreboard. There’s a crank on the side of it, which the nurse, having rolled up their sleeves, turns vigorously with one arm, while feeding lumps of coal into the steam engine’s firebox with the other. Clutching your chest (or your arm) you notice two doors behind the desk. They have signs which read: Special Limited Facilities, and Service Grand Royale. The cranking stops: The steam engine emits three shrill whistles: The Wheel of Fortune judders to a halt at $500: you hear “Cuckoo, cuckoo”: and see (in lights) 42. The nurse notes these results, consults a large three-ring binder, and points you to the door marked Special Limited Facilities. Or perhaps it’s your lucky day, and Service Grand Royale is yours, all yours!

By lambert strether of Corrente.

And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

In this continuing series, we’ve been looking at how ObamaCare, through its inherent system architecture, relentlessly creates first- and second-class citizens; how it treats citizens, who should be treated equally, unequally, for whimsical or otherwise bogus reasons. It’s all in the luck of the draw! If you live in the right place or have the right demographic, you go first class to Happyville. If you don’t, you go in coach to Pain City.

By Lambert Strether. Originally published at Corrente.

Kaiser Health News:

Some of the millions of poor people expected to lose out on Obamacare coverage next year because their states are not expanding Medicaid might have a way to get help, but the strategy carries risk.

Experts say the key is for them to project their 2014[*] income to at least the federal poverty level, about $11,500 per person or $23,500 for a family of four.

From his latest presser, Obama’s partisan perspective on ObamaCare:

[OBAMA:] Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail, their number-one priority.

However, from the public purpose perspective, the really interesting question is why our “friends” in both parties refuse to put truly universal coverage — for example, single payer Medicare for All — on the table at all. Remember, ObamaCare is, pathetically, projected to enroll only 7 million people in its first year, and when fully implemented will leave about as many uninsured as newly insured — 25 or 30 million, but with “these people,” who’s counting?

By lambert strether of Corrente.

And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

In this series, we’ve been looking at how ObamaCare, through its inherent system architecture, relentlessly creates first- and second-class citizens; how it treats people who should be treated equally unequally, for whimsical or arbitrary reasons. It’s all in the luck of the draw! If you live in the right place or have the right demographic, you go to Happyville. If you don’t, you go to Pain City.

By lambert strether of Corrente.

And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow