<p>Broad Distaste for Health Law, but Little Appetite to Repeal It, Poll Finds</p>
<p>Despite strong dislike of President Obama’s handling of health care, a majority of people in three Southern states – Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina – would rather that Congress improve his signature health care law than repeal and replace it, according to a New York Times Upshot/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.</p>
<p>The poll also found that a majority of Kentucky residents – and a plurality in a fourth state, Arkansas — said they thought the health care marketplace in their state was working well, even as they expressed strong disapproval of the health care law. More than twice as many Kentuckians say their state exchange is working well than say it is not.</p>
<p>“It moves money from the extremely rich to the poor”</p>
<p>What is your definition of extremely rich?</p>
<p>The problems are not only confined to Ca. This is a national problem.</p>
<p>Dietz is so right about the irony of making it much more difficult for a person to leave an employer-provided plan under this law. For many, giving up their group insurance is no longer a viable alternative.</p>
<p>As I see it, ACA moves money from the middle class to the lower middle class in the form of increased premiums on individual policies. The ‘extremely rich’ don’t need health insurance at all. They can pay out of pocket, go to the boutique concierge practices, etc. It hurts those who earn just a bit too much to get subsidies but who don’t get insurance at work. It really hurts the young, who are just starting out to subsidize the older folks who should have reached their peak earning years and who could afford more. </p>
<p>So the IRS, which is charged with dispensing the subsidies and collecting the Obamacare penalties, has been caught paying bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including many who owe back taxes. LOL</p>
<p>I shouldn’t have said “extremely rich.” I thought the threshold was higher. But the two ACA surtaxes apply to couples with income greater than a quarter of a million dollars, and singles with income greater than $200K. So, merely “rich” would have been the correct description. Rich people pay more taxes to fund the provisions of the ACA. That’s the first transfer. Healthy people pay more for insurance, so that sick people pay less. That’s the second transfer. Some of us get hit with neither of those, some with one, some with the other, some with both. </p>
<p>Healthy people who had employer insurance were already paying more for their insurance to fund their sicker co-workers, so their situation is not worsened vis-a-vis premiums.</p>
<p>In frustration at the lack of returned phone calls I marched myself into the office of the supposed know it all when it comes to in network/out of network questions. Well, lucky them, the whole administrative staff is at a big off site meeting today.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Healthnet has a reasonable network. But, short of calling every provider of interest, and verifying their contract, I don’t trust the on line info. H and I have discussed moving just to get into a Kaiser service area. Heck it might make sense to rent a dump in a Kaiser area and use that address…</p>
<p>As far as the income cut off for subsidies, it is not a sliding scale. One dollar over the limit and your on the hook for full pay. Go one dollar over the limit during the year you thought you qualified for a subsidy and you owe back that money (assuming anything in the system is currently able to track that info). I know this has been discussed in detail so - enough said. </p>
<p>
hey I thought it was those red states that took more than their share of federal funds!</p>
<p>The premium increase for unsubsidized subscribers is not just because of guaranteed issue for unhealthy people. Insurance companies are passing through Obamacare taxes to their policyholders and the premiums also reflect all these mandated benefits for the subsidized (and unsubsidized) policyholders. </p>
<p>Don’t forget increasing the threshold percentage for medical expenses which can be deducted on your Schedule A</p>
<p>I would also bet that more people at the lower income levels who are receiving subsidies are probably less healthy than unsubsidized policyholders because of lifestyle choices.</p>
<p>Dietz, I know many people like Kaiser (for preventative care) but I would never buy their insurance. It’s an HMO which will limit your choice of providers if you need specialized care outside their 4 walls.</p>
<p>I know GP would never go with an HMO such as Kaiser. But we have, and I had stage 2 cancer treated in their system. Mine was a common cancer and I got exactly the treatment I would have at UCLA or City of Hope minus some bells and whistles. I have a close friend who was treated for an extremely rare cancer through Kaiser. Her oncologist consulted numerous times with specialists at UCLA so that she received appropriate treatment. Like all health care systems, being your own advocate may result in better care.</p>
<p>I grew up where Kaiser was the “company doctor” and I never would have though I would choose it. But being middle-middle class, it seemed to be the best choice for us of what my husband’s employer offered. I have said many times after 8 years with Kaiser that if that is what single payer health care looked like, I would be satisfied. I don’t need absolute choice among all the physicians in the world. I do need something reliable and affordable. There is no doctor anywhere who can prevent ultimate death.</p>
<p>I am glad you received great care at Kaiser, my3girls. However, it seems like for every person who is happy with them, there are others who feel differently. I guess I just like having a wide selection of choices and not being shoehorned into one organization for all my healthcare.</p>
<p>Agreed. It’s the lack of choices that has people very upset. Lack of choice in extent of coverage. Lack of choice of doctors and hospitals. That and the fact that the law that was sold to the Congress and the public bears no resemblance to what it is in actuality. </p>
<p>So since Obamacare was declared a tax (and not a mandate) by the Supreme court, one should be able to deduct the full premiums as a paid tax on Federal tax filings. So, as a business, I should be able to list the health insurance premiums along with things like property taxes, and state income taxes on the deduction schedule amd get the full value write-off…Right :)</p>
<p>This seems to me to be a completely incorrect analysis of the objections of the people on this thread who have objections. GP doesn’t care about lack of choices. He cares that he can’t do what he wants to do. He wants high-end individual insurance, but nobody is selling it. If he could have the kind of insurance he likes, he wouldn’t care whether there were fifty other options, or none. If I tried to persuade him that he should like the ACA more than he does, because there were fifty other insurance options he was unaware of, none of them acceptable to him, that wouldn’t make him any happier, and it shouldn’t.</p>
<p>Lack of choices is not the problem here, for people who have a problem. Moreover, of all the people in the US who don’t have employer insurance or Medicare, most of them now have more choices, not fewer. GP doesn’t have more choices, but most people do.</p>
<p>Nothing in the ACA prevents GP’s kind of high-end insurance from being offered. If there’s a market for it, it’s going to be offered in the next couple of years. Some of us wonder whether there really will be a market for it, given what it will have to cost, but if there’s anywhere in the US where there would be a market for high-end individual insurance, surely southern California would be that place.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court didn’t say insurance premiums are a tax. They said the penalty for not buying insurance is a tax. You can’t deduct federal taxes from your taxable federal income; it doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification CF. I read the article to quickly. That said, I can deduct taxes paid (property, sales etc) from gross revenue of a business. So I guess if one wanted to go the penalty route one could deduct the penalty from the gross revenue. Interesting stuff.</p>
<p>GP, I don’t know how many times you have to be told. If you need care that cannot be provided in network, you can be referred to an out of network doctor at network rates. It"s hard for me to imagine what specialized care Kaiser doesn’t provide. But if Picassos really are the only thing that will heal you, Picassos you will have. </p>