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March 17, 2014 06:28 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 38 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk."

–Marcus Tullius Cicero

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38 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

  1. Anyone following the 2090 Wright St. business in Jeffco? I'm hearing the school district joined an appeal for ownership of the property. What's 10 acres in Lakewood worth, anyhow?

  3. Finally, an ACA horror story with a liberal, Colorado hook. Anyone, who has spent any time at all researching or pondering the healthcare mess, knows Wendell Potter. For those who don't or just can't remember, he is the health insurance executive who woke up one day and realized he was working for the devil. He has since been doing penance by educating the rest of us about the evils of the health insurance industry. To the extent that the ACA continues to permit private insurance companies to be a part of our healthcare system, he has been critical of Obamacare:

    Lawmakers who wrote the Affordable Care Act fell for the health insurance industry's insistence that Americans want "choice and competition." Having worked in that industry for two decades, I know the real reason insurers and their allies kept reciting the "choice and competition" mantra was to scare lawmakers away from even daring to give serious thought to a single-payer health care system.

    And I also know that insurers benefit from the marketplace confusion that "choice and competition" can create. I can assure you that some insurers are counting on you becoming overwhelmed by all the choices and picking a plan that might appear at first glance to be a bargain. But beware: if you're not careful and pick a plan without really kicking the tires, you very possibly will be buying something that could wind up costing you much more than you ever imagined if you get sick or injured.

    That's the liberal side. Here's the Colorado hook:

    That happened to my friend Donna Smith, who as executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation, knows more about health insurance than most of us. She spent quite a bit of time last fall on the Colorado exchange trying to figure out which plan would offer the best value for her and her husband. If she had to do it over again, she would have taken the additional step of calling the insurance companies directly after reviewing the plans they were offering on the exchange, just to be certain of what her out-of-pocket obligations would be if she had to be hospitalized during the year.

    A cancer survivor, Donna knew there would be a chance she might get sick again and need expensive care. It never occurred to her, though, that picking a gold or platinum level plan with a higher premium would likely have been better deal than the silver Kaiser Permanente plan she opted for and that seemed to be more affordable.

    To make shopping for coverage even more challenging, Kaiser and most other insurers offer several silver plans on the Colorado exchange, so Donna had to spend time trying to figure out which silver plan would be the best deal.

    Donna told me the she took the time to compare the monthly premiums, co-pays and annual deductibles of each of the silver plans before making her decision. "I felt that the one I chose offered the most coverage I could afford with my premium buying dollar," she said.

    Sure enough, within days after the plan went into effect on January 1, Donna got sick and was hospitalized for a week.

    To her shock, she later found out some limitations of her coverage that made her overall financial responsibility much higher.

    For one thing, she discovered that hospitalization under her plan required a co-insurance payment of 30 percent. She didn't realize while shopping on the exchange that some other silver plans charged only 20 percent co-insurance for inpatient hospital stays.

    She also found out that some services she needed, such as the anesthesia for a biopsy that was performed while she was in the hospital, were not covered under her plan at all.

    "That $400 bill is my responsibility. So after this one illness and hospitalization, we end up several thousand dollars in debt," she said.

    "In retrospect," she added, "I needed to ask much more detailed questions about the coverage. I definitely should have gone beyond talking just to the very gracious and helpful navigator. I believe now that I would have done better with one of the gold Kaiser plans that might have cost another $150-$200 per month but saved me from these higher costs of getting sick."

    Donna says she feels "embarrassed and foolish" that she didn't go the extra step of asking those detailed questions of a Kaiser customer service person before signing up for her coverage.

    Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, Donna  remains "grateful" for the ACA, but she is an even more ardent advocate for single payer in light of her experience with Obamacare's market place.

    However, this example raises the question, "If someone as smart and experienced as Donna can make such a serious mistake, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

    1. JD, Another wrinkle in this, particularly for cancer patients, is many of the drugs that were previously covered on the pre-Obamacare plans are not covered as a way of cost savings.  It is not just premiums and co-insurance and co-pays and deductibles which have most people confused as it is, but Insurance Companies generally used two techniques to reduce cost.  They restricted the networks of providers and limited the drugs that were covered.

      The whole ACA system is a fraud.  We should start over.  We may differ on where we should end up, but I think we can agree it is not where we are.

    2. Surely there are teams of lawyers and accounants at every insurance company making sure no part of their coverage costs them too much. They examine every punctuation mark and word for any loopholes that may work against them, and make sure that instead they work against people like Donna (and 1000s of other Coloradans.)

      As we go to shop each year on the old and new plans offered by these lawyer/accountant/health provider teams (the plans allowed by the vagaries of monopoly law in each state, that is), Republicans and Free Market proponents expext usto navigate all this to eventually find a plan we need and that covers exactly what we want. And that is nearly impossible.

      Those who love the free market and feel single payer wouldn't be fair won't acknowledge that these lawyes, accountants, CEO's, CFO's, stockholders, et. al do this crap every day. And, We the Consumer are at their mercy, of which they have shown to have very little.

      1. Small point of clarification – it is the actuaries who are really making sure the insurance companies can not lose. They are paid very well to analyze, access, adn monitize risk.  There is no way an average individual (or even a genius) can compete with them.  I have shopped the exchanges. For every savings offered in premiums, there is a corresponding reduction in benefits. There are significant savings if you opt for HMO with very restrictive providers in network.  There are savings if you opt for a plan that restrict prescription drug benefits.  There are savings if hospital stays, ER visits are out of pocket. It is unrealistic to assume that the insurance companies are going to offer any plan that does not maximize their profits. Even if the insurance companies were transparent (and they are not) you can't beat the system.  Long term, the only way to reduce costs is to change the system.

    3. Well, JD, civilized 21st century single payer universal coverage certainly is the only way for Americans to truly get out from under the most expensive and and least adequate healthcare system in the modern industrialized world but Donna is right to be grateful for ACA.  With all its inadequacies, it does mitigate the barbarism of our pre-reform health care system in which cancer survivors who lose insurance by losing jobs or just being dropped become uninsurable and no government assistance kicks in until they've gone bankrupt.  

      ACA is still the lesser of evils and I still have faith that, as with gay rights, we will be reaching a tipping point that will allow us to join the 21st century in the foreseeable, though sadly not immediate or particularly near, future. It would have been nice if single payer could have been included in the initial negotiations if only as a baragining point that might have allowed for at least a compromise public option. Instead Obama chose to to start from a position giving Big Insurance and the GOTP almost all of what they demanded as the starting point and making more concessions from that point.

      Somebody should have given him a quick course in bargaining 101 before negotiations ever started. You ask for considerably more than you think you can get and so does the other side and you bargain toward some point in between. You don't give away 95% just for starters.

  4. Americans For Prosperity commercial.

    Polsters, for those of you who have seen the ad, I get you will not like the content, but do you think it will be an effective ad with the middle?

    1. Americans for Prosperity commercials are filled with lies. The Koch Brothers (all of them: David Koch, Charles Koch, and Colorado's own Bill Koch) are all liars and greedy beyond imagination. And the Koch Whores that live here and help spread their lies are filled with bile and hate. I won't say anything about their ignorant followers who believe every lie or who can't figure out if having their friends and neighbors without health care is good or bad.

    2. Cookie cutter anti-ACA ads seem likely to be just so much partisan noise that aren’t likely to persuade someone who is still undecided on the issue.

      The ads with individual local horror stories seemed more persuasive except for the inevitable backfire when they were debunked.

      1. I would think the local flavor ads will come from the candidates themselves. I know that local Republicans have been capturing the information for months but I would not expect that from a national buy.

        In terms of starting the conversation tying Udall and Udallcare for the next 3 weeks to help define him before the election gets underway, I thought it was a good first step.

  5. Keeping in mind that the ACA is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation and that "Romneycare" preceded it, I think it is now time to replace the ACA with a single payer system. The ACA is superior to what we had before (I don't see how it could possibly be worse), but, since conservatives seem to hate their own creation as manifested in the Affodable Care Act, it is time for the GOP to support the creation of single-payer health care (alternately…Medicare for All).

    If there is a sincere bone in the body of ANY conservative, they should fully support the institution of single-payer. If you hate the ACA so much, get behind single payer…it is the conservative thing to do.

    1. You're right – it's so simple, really: The Repubs hate Obamacare because they think politically it will help them to hate it; The Dems hate it because it's really Romneycare and a Heritage Foundation program. The only answer is single payer.

    2. For profit…the concept is a major conflict of interest in health care.  The Mayo Clinic and the Grand Junction system are actually doing a good job with that.  Profit, of course, at some level needs to be a factor for research and development, but what we have now is predatory.  It is purposely so.

  6. @DC

    This is crazy.  Do you actually believe that there is a snowball chance in hell of conservatives supporting a single payer plan?  Are you mad?

    1. I will tell you that it is such a relief not to have deal with meaningless and vindictive posts that do nothing to advance the discussion.  I thank you for that and I excuse your minor break in the newly adopted protocol of just ignoring those posts with which you are in either disagreement or have no way to refute.

      1. I, of course, felt no need to take your pledge.  

        I think my comment does advance the discussion.  I think one would have to be crazy to even think that any conservative would be in favor of a single payer system.  You might consider offering some evidence from any current conservative that they would be interested in pursuing such a plan. Absent such evidence, I am advancing the discussion by dismissing your comment as totally crazy.  I also was careful not to accuse you of being "mad," I merely asked if that were your status.

        Now, let me add.  I would be in favor of a single payer system.  However, that is not what you posted.  You are suggesting that a single payer system would find support among conservatives. 

        1. I suggested no such thing. l said they should…not would…and since your opinion doesn’t mean shit to me, l recommend you ignore my posts…
          unless you would like to engage in a flame war, that will serve no purpose other than to allow each of us to insult the other. …..your call….

  7. Cuts in hours caused by Obamacare coming to an Employer near you:

    "Starting next year the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require that large employers offer insurance to any worker putting in more than 30 hours per week. But the 600 part-time professors at Colorado Mountain College won’t be among those who benefit from the change. 

    That’s because CMC is prohibiting any adjunct from working more than 30 hours per week to avoid the obligation of providing its part-time labor force with insurance under President Obama’s signature healthcare law. "

    http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/161613

  8. Pols… Logging in and changing pages is very slow. It makes posting a pain in the ass. I keep getting a "long running script" prompt. I think it may have something to do with your masthead, or the "Big Line".

    1. You are partly right. Part of the problem has to do with the ads. The second part of the problem has to do with loading the Facebook and Twitter feeds. This has become a problem on a number of sites. The third party servers are slow so the page loads slowly.

  9. Obamacare may be the Republican rallying cry in 2014, but by 2016 the trap will have sprung.  Presumably a GOP House will make another 100 or so attempts to repeal it — with about 50 of those passing the Senate if the Rsa take control.   Probably vetos keep the program in place.   But millions of insured children between age 21 and 26 will be threatened with loss of coverage.   People will chronic health conditions will face loss of coverage and/or astronomical rates under the Tender Mercies of Koch Bros. Care.  If a Republican President actually Repealed the program in 2017, there would be a rebellion of millions of newly entitled Americans and a GOP debacle to match the one that followed the 30s.   The Far Right knows this trap is waiting.   That's why it keeps sniping at ACA while praying that the program stays in place.

    1. Unless they go completely nuclear, Ds in the Senate will still have enough stop it from getting to the President's desk. Rs won't take it by that much if they do take it and the 60 vote floor is still alive on most stuff. 

      Don't think they'd want to risk going totally nuclear if they know they might have to give it right back in 2016. Especially since they'll just get vetoed.  And you're right about their needing to keep ACA in place. They need ACA to stay the way the anti-choicers need Roe v Wade to stand.

    1. One message that we are getting is that you must sign up on the exchanges.  A problem with that is that a lot of people are being sent to the Medicaid option.  Many of those people don't actually need that for one reason or another.  My son is a case in point.  We pay for his insurance, he is a student.  We don't want or need for him to be on a Medicaid policy.  Until Medicaid and Medicare are adequately funded, there will be problems.  It's fixable, we just have to want to do it.  Doing  that will actually be an economic engine for this country.  People like the Kochs, the Birchers, the Tea Partiers are why this country is so slow on the uptake. 

      God give me patience and the faith and determination of Elizabeth Warren. 

      1. I forgot to mention, he is signed up through an insurance agent at an incredibly affordable cost, as is my daughter.  It's all good.  They kept their original insurers and their providers.  So there you go, you Gardner trolls. There are names for you, and C.S. Lewis provides us with some.  They are not laudatory.

      2. Every low income person who signs up on the Colorado exchange is automatically routed to Colorado PEAK to see if they are eligible for Medicaid. One must be "denied" for Medicaid before one is eligible to enroll in an ACA plan.

        For myself, it took about 45 days from the day I applied to the day I was finally able to sign up for a plan. Ralphie, I think, had a similar experience.

        I assume that there's some kind of grace period for your son, since he is attempting to sign up before the March 31 deadline.

         

    2. Those numbers are completely meaningless until they tell us how many have really paid.  

      We Dems simply have to hold them accountable for this, anf FIX IT, because right now it looks like we've just gone through the fire for a "victory" that cost us the House, soon the Senate, and all just to get a net number of 1 million uninsured, insured?  Even the bumbling Republican message machine will have a hard time screwing that fact up.

  11. Some Sanctions?

    Obama imposes economic sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of the Ukraine.

    The Russian stock market goes up.

    Obama is making me have fond memories of Jimmy Carter, and that is difficult to do.  Carter tried and failed.  Obama doesn't even try.

    1. Maybe we could invade the wrong fucking country in the region under a false pretext, and that would make you feel better.  Look, Bulgaria has WMD !

  13. Owen Hill has left the senate race.  According to KLZ's Coropon, Hill sent an email to his supporters Monday night redrawing from the Senate race.

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