You know what doesn't effect lasting change: distortions

[ProSense]

No matter how often the President's record or accomplishments are distorted, people who know better will continue promoting them. For example:

Minnesota Small Businesses Benefit From The Affordable Care Act

77,900 Small Business Are Elegible For Premium Tax Credits In 2010


In a new report on the small business tax credit that was included in the 2010 Affordable
Care Act, Families USA has annouced that 77,900 of Minnesota small businesses will be
eligable for Premium Tax Credits in 2010.

In a new report on the small business tax credit that was included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, Families USA has annouced that 77,900, or 84.3%, of Minnesota small businesses will be eligable for Premium Tax Credits in 2010. Nationally, more than 4,015,300 small business will be eligable for the tax credits. You can read the full report http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/reports/health-reform/small-businesses-findings.html">here.

[Oregone]

1. Heh...I wonder how many of them businesses will start opting into the exchanges...

Sticking their workers with 70% actuarial valued plans...time will tell.

[ProSense]

2. "time will tell."

Yeah, a lot better than distortions.

[Oregone]

4. Quite better than both distortions and propaganda

Hindsight is 20/20. It will take time to see the damage here.

[Fumesucker]

6. Hey, as long as it gets us past November 2012 it's all good.. n/t

[ProSense]

7. That's exactly the reason Al Franken is promoting this benefit to Minnesota small businesses

he's worried about President Obama's re-election.

Oh brother.

[Fumesucker]

8. Isn't that what I said?

:shrug:

[ProSense]

9. Oh, I guess I needed the

sarcasm icon.

[Fumesucker]

10. Holding political power is what really counts..

Right?

[ProSense]

11. Whose?

Franken's or Obama's? If he doesn't believe it, you think he's staking his credibility on Obama's re-election two and a half years from now?

[Fumesucker]

13. Whoever's..

It's the fact of holding power that counts.

[ProSense]

14. "It's the fact of holding power that counts." Why,

because one can't be legislators or impact an agenda unless one remains in office?

That's a basic concept. Again: Who is Franken concerned about, his credibility or the President's?

[Fumesucker]

15. Agenda, schmagenda..

Power is what counts, we all know it.

Agendas are ephemeral things, subject to the vicissitudes of pragmatism, power is *real*.

[ProSense]

16. Excellent response.

When you figure out how being powerless enables one (politician or otherwise) to change anything, let me know.

Now, about the OP, care to address the point?

[Fumesucker]

18. I'll go with Oregone's question..

How many of the employees will get stuck with a 70% actuarial value plan?

A great many is my guess, but of course time will tell.

[ProSense]

19. What does it mean?

Where does it say is going to impose a plan on businesses?

[Fumesucker]

20. Oh, there'll be "choice"..

If you can afford it.

And if you can't afford it then you don't deserve a choice, you should be stuck with the plan that if you get seriously ill will wind up with you in bankruptcy if you happen to be lucky. I watched both of my parents die paupers after going through two successful businesses and a paid-for home, that was long before the current insane escalation of the cost of medical care.

Isn't the free enterprise system wonderful?

And I say that as a former long term small business owner myself who is planning on getting back into business because I'm old enough that no one wants to hire me other than maybe for greeter at Walmart and the competition for those positions is brutal.

[ProSense]

22. There is nothing in the law that states

if you can't afford it tough shit. This is just another distortion. Besides the subsidies, there will be hardship assistance.

[Fumesucker]

23. Eh, the truly destitute will get something..

The lower middle class and the upper lower class are the ones that will feel the full weight of health insurance reform.

Of course the current economic malaise will vastly swell the ranks of the lower middle class and upper lower class but them's the breaks, right?

[ProSense]

24. "and the upper lower class are the ones that will feel the full weight of health insurance reform"

Really? The upper class will suffer?

[Fumesucker]

25. The lowest of the lower class will get something..

The upper end of the lower class will get the shaft.

Why is "lower middle class" understandable but "upper lower class" not?

[ProSense]

26. It's all speculation, and

none of it based in fact. Up to now people have been paying tens of thousands of dollars because the system shut them out. There have been millions who simply neglected to get care. All the speculation about what someone might or might not do is just that, speculation.

[Fumesucker]

27. Umm.. So no one knows how the program(s) will work?

I guess those 2000 plus pages of legislation were a bit more vague and/or obscure than we were led to believe.

[laughingliberal]

33. Don't look now but couples over 50 making 400% of FPL ($58,280) will still be paying 10's of thousan

Our last premium before we had to drop it was $1200 per month and that was before all the premium increases of the past couple of years. That would amount to 25% of the income of a couple at just over 400% of FPL. I'm sure it's more, now. We have friends (a couple in their 50's) who dropped theirs 2 years ago when it was $2000 per month. That would be approaching 50% of the income of a couple at 400% of FPL.

[ProSense]

34. This

"Our last premium before we had to drop it was $12,000 per month and that was before all the premium increases of the past couple of years. "

...has nothing to do with the health care law.

[laughingliberal]

39. Oops! Editted to $1200 per month & it has everything to do with the new health care law & what

you said about people who have had to pay 10's of thousands. My point is many will still be paying that much or going without and the new law does not help them, at all.

[Foo Fighter]

37. "Up to now people have been paying tens of thousands of dollars because

the system shut them out."

Damn straight.

I'm so glad HCR included price controls...oh wait.

[laughingliberal]

40. +1000 nt

[Raineyb]

3. 70%? They better hope they don't get sick they'll end up broke. n/t

[depakid]

17. That's precisely what researchers expect will happen

No improvement in the appalling number of medical bankruptcies in the US.

Indeed, as more and more people are pushed into every more expensive high deductible, high copay junk insurance, one is hard pressed to see how matters won't get even worse.

That's the price for entrenching parasites into the system.

[ProSense]

21. Do you have a link to the research? n/t

[depakid]

28. Yep

First study:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.w5.63v1

Second study:

http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf

Homelessness and medical bankruptcy:

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/02/only-in-america-medical-bankruptcy-homelessness/

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., on medical bankruptcy

Before the Subcommittee on Administrative and Commercial Law
House Judiciary Committee

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I’m Steffie Woolhandler. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and professor of medicine at Harvard. I am also senior author of two studies on medical causes of bankruptcy, one published in Health Affairs in 2005, and the latest in the August 2009 issue of the American Journal of Medicine. Both studies were done in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard Law School and Ohio University.

In our most recent study, medical bills and illness contributed to 62.1 percent of all personal bankruptcies. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6 percent. The striking conclusion from our study is that private health insurance is a defective product that leaves millions of middle-class families vulnerable to financial ruin. Unfortunately, the health reform plan now under consideration in the House would do little to address this grave problem.

...The overwhelming majority of those bankrupted by illness in our study had health insurance. Seventy-eight percent were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness; 60.3 percent who had private coverage. These families had done everything right. They worked hard, paid their premiums and thought they were covered. Yet when illness hit they found themselves unprotected, ruined by co-payments, deductibles and bills for uncovered services like home care and physical therapy. Medically bankrupt families with private insurance ran up uncovered medical bills that averaged $17,749.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/july/testimony_of_steffie.php

and:

Unfortunately, Massachusetts-style reform has not made health care affordable for middle class families. Our individual mandate forces middle-income residents to purchase private insurance or pay a fine of about $1000. Yet the cheapest coverage available to a 56 year old (according to the state’s Connector website) forces her to lay out $4900 for a policy with a $2,000 deductible before it pays for any care, and a 20% co-payment after that. Skimpy, overpriced coverage like that would not have protected the families in our survey from bankruptcy.

It is not surprising that one in six Massachusetts residents reported that they were unable to pay their medical bills last year. Access to an insurance policy is not the same thing as access to health care. An insurance policy with unaffordable deductibles, co-payments and the like may protect hospitals by assuring that at least part of each hospital bill gets paid, but it won’t protect families. Even among Massachusetts residents WITH health insurance, 18% skipped care because they couldn’t afford it. In the first year of Massachusetts’ reform the state expanded Medicaid and Medicaid-like subsidized coverage and access improved, albeit at enormous cost to the state and federal governments. In the second year of the reform, access to health care in Massachusetts has actually deteriorated.

More: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Woolhandler090728.pdf

[ProSense]

29. A July 2009 study from PNHP?

Got anything more recent based on the actual law?

[depakid]

31. It's a ton more than that- peer reviewed research published in major medical and policy journals

There's another quote floating around out there from the lead researchers after the final bill was substantially in place (which as we know was even worse than what was expected in July 2009).

Not even a dent in the medical bankruptcy rate- and every reason to believe based on the evidence that it will only get worse, for reasons set out in the studies (and the presentation review).

[ProSense]

32. There is nothing in the pieces you supplied that have anything to do with

banruptcy continuing under the current law. Nothing.

[depakid]

38. It has everything to do with it!

If you knew anything about the underlying concepts (rather than simply being a copy & paster) you'd see why.

It's clear as day to anyone who cares to look past the overblown hype at the fundamental problems (including btw cost containment) that this legislation not only failed to address but through perverse inceptives, exacerbated.

[laughingliberal]

43. Exactly! nt

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. That's a big salad!

[MadHound]

30. Case in point,

n/t

[Foo Fighter]

35. You know what does effect lasting change?

Actual change.

[JoseGaspar]

36. Let me get this straight...

You think that a think-tank produced "report", written by a PR flack, and fronted by a standard press-release picture (grinning Franken, giant bowl of "healthy" salad, smiling CHILDREN!)... you think that represents "reality"...

AND...

You think legions of ACA critics (open-ended) represent "distortions" (without corroborating detail).


Congratulations... You have successfully folded reality in on itself.

...proving at least 3 of Einstein's theories...

...and that you should not be giving political advice to ANYONE.

[ProSense]

41. "You think that a think-tank produced 'report...represents 'reality'" Of course not, I

just couldn't find an obscure blog post by a little known blogger declaring the health care bill worst than the status quo. That would have been much more credible.

:sarcasm:

[JoseGaspar]

45. Let me amend what I said...

You shouldn't try to engage in sarcasm either.

The only criticisms of the ACA that you found were "obscure blog posts" by "little known bloggers"?

Really?

Where did you read about the oil spill in the Gulf? At the BP website?

Let me help you: the giant bowl of salad is a dead giveaway.

[Radical Activist]

42. There must be people who favor distortion.

My rec didn't count.

[Luminous Animal]

44. The report plays a little slight of hand with the numbers.

If you read the report it clearly states that the Small Business Majority" represents 28 million small businesses. That is, 28 million small businesses with 100 employees or fewer. Which is the correct classification for a small business.

Then, they (correctly) state that the exchange is ONLY open to small businesses that employ 25 or fewer people and the credit is only available, on a sliding scale, to employers that pay their employees an average of $50,000 a year. This, of course lowers the pool considerably.

Another odd thing, the report does not offer an analysis of the insurance costs, per employee, of businesses that employ 11-49 people. Quote: "In 2008, employers with fewer than 10 workers paid $350 more for each employee’s health insurance, on average, than firms with 50 or more workers." Why no mention of the "penalty" for small businesses that employ 11-49 people? I know for a fact that, for group health insurance purposes, insurance companies classify small businesses as those that employ between 2-50 and that these businesses pay more than those that employ more than 50. So, were are looking at millions of small businesses that will not receive any relief.

Finally, and I think this is most important. Everything that I've read bases the tax credit on payroll. Many small businesses are sole proprietorships or partnerships. That is, the principals are not on payroll so their compensation will not be in consideration. Small businesses that are fair and pay their employees well and have profit sharing programs are penalized. Take these examples from my own personal experiences as a bookkeeper and business consultant.

Employer #1: COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY. Offers no benefits. Staff is comprised of one incredibly overworked production manager who makes $70,000 a year and 5 rotating "interns" (that is, young budding photogs who will do anything to get on a commercial set) who get paid minimum wage. No vacation pay or holiday pay for the "interns" - 2 weeks plus 6 days holiday for the production manager. Personal net income for this photographer is $425,000-$450,000 a year and he will qualify for the tax credit. In fact, because most of the staff makes minimum wage, he will qualify for all or near all of the available tax credit.

Employer #2: GRAPHIC DESIGN. Offers health & dental insurance up to 75% of cost and 401K with a 4% employer contribution. Staff of 8 is highly compensated with average salary of $85,000 augmented by bonuses and overtime. minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation plus 6 sick days and 6 holidays. Principles net $125,000-$150,000 a year. For treating their employees well... for running a more equitable business, they will be penalized.

[JDPriestly]

46. The owner of my local market, the one where I buy all the good vegies (some organic)

was beaming the day after the bill was finally passed. He was praising Obama to all his customers saying how grateful he was that he could now offer health insurance to his employees. Can't be implemented too soon.

But let's don't forget that we need to improve the bill.

We do need a public option.

And I am really worried that my Medicare Advantage will become too expensive for me.