Here's the Obamacare story you *won't* be hearing from Republicans. The Affordable Care Act’s Lower-Than-Projected Premiums Will Save $190 Billion The Affordable Care Act is already working: Intense price competition among health plans in the marketplaces for individuals has lowered premiums below projected levels. As a result of these lower premiums, the federal government will save about $190 billion over the next 10 years, according to our estimates. These savings will boost the health law’s amount of deficit reduction by 174 percent and represent about 40 percent of the health care savings proposed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—commonly known as the Simpson-Bowles commission—in 2010. Moreover, we estimate that lower premiums will lower the number of uninsured even further, by an additional 700,000 people, even as the number of individuals who receive tax credits will decline because insurance is more affordable. In short, the Affordable Care Act is working even better than expected, producing more coverage for much less money.
Hello Clutch fans! Hope all had a fantastic Thanksgiving! I just wanted to let everyone know the last, best chance for repeal of ACA is officially dead. U.S. justices decline to hear another Obamacare challenge (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a broad new legal challenge to President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law. The court rejected a petition filed by Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, which had raised various objections to the law, including to the key provision that requires individuals to obtain health insurance. The justices upheld the constitutionality of a the individual mandate in a 5-4 ruling in June 2012. By rejecting the Liberty University case, the justices left intact a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of a May 2013 decision that dismissed the claims made by the college and two individuals, Michele Waddell and Joanne Merrill. The case is Liberty University v. Lew, U.S. Supreme Court, 13-306.
I'm neither wealthy or poor, but I do need to apply under the ACA. Just tried again today and got kicked to "logout" , talked with the on-line chat and I'm pretty sure it was a bot, called on the phone and talked with a very nice upbeat lady. She reviewed my application and when she hit enter, she got kicked to the logout. She says give it 24 hours and I should see the "enroll" when I log in. It is a pretty involved enrollment process. It is about 15 pages and maybe 30 questions. I think the kicker is when it tries to look up your 2012 tax return number to verify your income. I saw it do it a couple of weeks ago, but the ap still never completed. The lady said they had 1500 phone agents in the one building she was in.
I don't think this deserves a new thread so am putting it here. http://www.nbcnews.com/health/state...caid-report-finds-2D11697962?ocid=msnhp&pos=1 States losing billions in refusing to expand Medicaid, report finds Texas will lose $9.2 billion in 2022; Florida says goodbye to $5 billion; Georgia is out $4.9 billion. A new report details just how much states are losing because they don’t want to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, and it’s not chump change. Red states may be sticking to their Republican beliefs in small government, but the Commonwealth Fund finds they are passing up billions in federal funding by saying no to the Medicaid expansion. “By choosing not to participate, Texas, for example, will forgo an estimated $9.58 billion in federal funding in 2022. Taking into account federal taxes paid by Texas resi*dents, the net cost to taxpayers in the state in 2022 will be more than $9.2 billion,” the report by Sherry Glied and Stephanie Ma of New York University says. “We find that the Medicaid expansion will be a relatively large source of federal revenue to state enter*prises," the report adds. States expanding Medicaid will get, on average, more than twice as much in federal funding than they get in federal highway funds, they said. It’s the latest report on what Medicaid expansion would mean on a fiscal level to states, and the timing couldn’t be better for the administration of President Barack Obama. The White House has launched a three-week drive to highlight what it says are the benefits of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and Obama has been urging states to expand Medicaid. The ACA was designed to transform health care in the United States, which most experts agree currently costs too much and leaves far too many people without health insurance. One way to do that is through the health insurance exchanges, where people can buy private insurance and which are dominating the headlines now. The other way was by requiring states to extend Medicaid to people earning up to about 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $14,800 for single people and $31,000 for a family of four. Medicaid is usually a cost-sharing program – the federal government pays on average about 57 percent of costs and states pay the rest. But under the expansion, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the additional costs for the first three years. States will have to kick in a very small percentage more each year after that. By 2020, the federal government will pay 90 percent of the costs. But after a series of challenges to the law, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the Medicaid expansion requirement went too far. States can’t be forced to add more people to Medicaid, the court ruled. Many Republican-led states immediately said they would not be expanding Medicaid. “As of November 2013, 20 states have decided to opt out of the Medicaid expansion,” the report said. Glied and Ma calculated how much this would cost by 2022, and took into account states’ arguments about the so-called woodwork effect – the argument that people who were already eligible for Medicaid but had not applied would do so if they heard about the expansion. These people would still cost states the 43 percent or so of state contributions to Medicaid. But they also calculated savings. States would not only get the direct federal money, but would save the money that taxpayers end up spending on so-called uncompensated care – when sick or injured uninsured people show up in emergency rooms seeking treatment. Their calculations show that by 2022, Florida would lose more than $5 billion and Georgia would forgo $4.9 billion. They also looked at what Medicaid brings to states in comparison to two other giant federal programs – federal highway funds and defense funds. The report projects that Alabama would bring in $2.1 billion in federal funds from expanding Medicaid; $975 million in federal highway funds and $10.4 billion in defense procurement contracts. North Carolina would get $5.7 billion in Medicaid money; $1.3 billion in federal highway funds and $4.6 billion in defense contracts. Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Tennessee are undecided about the expansion. Indiana would bring in nearly $2.6 billion in Medicaid money in 2022; $1.2 billion in highway funds and nearly $5.6 billion in defense contracts. Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming are not expanding Medicaid. The Urban Institute, Lewin Group and Rand Corp. have also issued reports showing states will lose billions by not expanding Medicaid. The decision not to expand Medicaid has more than financial effects. It leaves a lot of people without any inexpensive options for health insurance, because the law assumed states would expand Medicaid and doesn’t provide insurance subsidies for the very poor. “If adopted by all states, the Medicaid expansion is expected to provide health insurance to as many as 21.3 million Americans by 2022,” the report says. “No state would experience a positive flow of funds by choosing to reject the Medicaid expansion. Because the federal share of the Medicaid expansion is so much greater than the state share, taxpayers in non-*participating states will nonetheless bear a significant share of the overall cost of the expansion through federal tax payments—and not enjoy any of the benefits,” the report concludes.
Government is in major debt. I think its cool that some states are saying they don't need more federal money.
Are you eligible for a subsidy? If not, just go to EHealthInsurance.com. You can get the same plans for the same prices and just apply through their well-run site. There's no benefit to going through the HealthCare.gov website unless you are eligible for a subsidy (one of the horribly marketed aspects of ACA).
