Maxine… What the Heck Did you Just Say?!

I’m… not even sure what she just said here. I’ve watched this clip literally about seven times, and I’m not sure what she’s saying here.

Does she think there are 700 billion people living in Kentucky?! Does she think 700 billion people in the USA are going to lose Medicaid?

Does she think there are 700 billion people on the entire planet?!

There are about 7.5 billion people on Earth. Click here to watch the clock.

So I am honestly not sure what she is talking about here. And why are our politicians so insane about grossly exaggerating everything? It wasn’t that long ago that Terry McAuliffe tried to tell us we lose 95 million Americans a day to gun violence. (On a bizarre side note, I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a link to that story. WTF?! Search it on Google. You’ll find it eventually, but you have to sift through all the salon.com articles and HuffPo articles about the horrors of guns first. And I know I posted a link on Twitter to this story, but damn if I could find it)

Check yourself, Maxine. Your crazy is getting out of hand.

Senate GOP weighing penalties for uninsured in healthcare bill

© Greg Nash

Senate Republicans are mulling over a provision to their healthcare overhaul measure that could bar Americans from purchasing insurance on the individual market for six months if they don’t maintain continuous coverage, Vox reported Saturday.

The provision would address concerns over the bill’s current lack of penalties for those who choose not to purchase insurance, and could be introduced as soon as Monday, according to the report.

The Senate bill prohibits insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. But without penalties that would otherwise encourage healthy people to buy insurance, the bill could lead to a system in which only the sickest people purchase coverage, leading to staggering insurance premiums, Vox noted.

Under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, Americans who don’t purchase health insurance are subject to a fine.

Full article: Senate GOP weighing penalties for uninsured in healthcare bill: report | TheHill

This is why the whole damn thing needs to go. I’m sorry, but none of this is sustainable. None of it.

I will say again… I support doctors and hospitals having a “menu” with their prices so you can shop for the best care at the best prices, and I support concierge doctors and hospitals. When government gets involved, it gets too big, too complicated, and more and more people end up getting screwed.

U.N. Tells Trump: Repealing Obamacare Illegal And We Won’t Allow It

American Journal Review

The U.N. Human Rights Commission (now known as the Human Rights Council) purports to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,“ Its members include China, Cuba, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

The “High Commissioner’s” office warning that Obamacare repeal/replacement might be illegal comes in a letter to the Trump administration. The Commissioner asked that the letter be shared with majority and minority leadership in both chambers of Congress. It also proposed that “the wider public should be alerted to the potential implications of the above-mentioned allegations.” According to Milbank, the White House has not shared the letter with Congress, much less “alerted the wider public.”

Full article: U.N. Tells Trump: Repealing Obamacare Illegal And We Won’t Allow It – American Journal Review

I’m sorry. Since when does the UN get to dictate US law?

Anthem will drop out of Ohio’s Obamacare market

Gus Ruelas | Reuters

Health insurer Anthem said Tuesday it will effectively exit its Obamacare individual plan business in Ohio, leaving potentially 18 counties in the Buckeye State with no insurer selling plans in 2018.

Anthem, which sells Obamacare plans in 14 states this year, left open the door to dropping out of other states next year.

The company this year sold individual health plans in all 88 counties in Ohio, the only Obamacare insurer to cover the whole state.

But next year, Anthem said, it will sell just a single plan in Pike County, and that will only be available outside of the Obamacare federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

Full article: Anthem will drop out of Ohio’s Obamacare market

Stand by While I Rant About Obamacare for a Minute

Sorry guys, but I need to get this off my chest. A lot of you are already aware that I signed up for Obamacare. I’m self employed and picked up some insurance through the marketplace just to cover my butt in case something serious happened. I do drive a lot, one never knows.

As I’ve also mentioned, I recently needed to make an appointment with a gynecologist. The one I normally went to didn’t accept my plan, so I had to find a new one. This was issue number one. I went to the page for my insurance plan and searched for gynos. Pages and pages turned up of every single one within a 50 mile radius from where I live, and I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t bad. I found one, and began to make an appointment. As I was finalizing, I got a warning that they were out of network and didn’t accept my insurance. OK. Apparently, the insurance company didn’t weed out automatically the doctors who didn’t take my insurance. So I closed the page and went ahead to the settings, asking for only doctors who accepted my plan.

The pages and pages of gynecologists I had been sifting through vanished. There was now only one doctor who took my plan. Not one page of doctors; one doctor. My choice was gone. What I ended up with was a gynecologist who had the bed side manner of a rabid fox and wanted to run a crap load of tests that were not only not gynecology related, but completely unnecessary. I refused every single one.

I had my usual yearly exam. OK, fine. At the end of that, I was told things weren’t 100% normal, and suspecting either cancer or pre-cancer, she wanted to perform an endometrial biopsy. Since uterine cancer runs in my family, I agreed to the biopsy.

So now I’ve had my yearly exam that is suggested by the insurance company, and I’ve had a biopsy with a good reason behind it. (For those curious, the biopsy came back negative. I don’t have cancer)

Guess what I got today? A bill! For the yearly exam! That’s right… a pap smear isn’t covered. The insurance company will nag you to get it, then won’t pay for it. And I was already sent a letter that I am going to have to pay more than half for the biopsy, too!

Why the hell am I paying for insurance? I have no doctor choice, and I’m paying for the tests the doctor runs anyway, even if the test is pushed by the insurance company and is suggested by everyone as a regular preventative test. I’m paying out the nose for the insurance, and am not getting a subsidy.

So please, explain to me again why Obamacare is so great. Is the thought process that people need to have insurance, to hell with whether or not they can do anything but pay for it? Because right now that’s all my insurance is… yet another bill I have to scrape money together for every month. And since I actually tried to use it – and apparently failed – I have to find a way to pay the doctor, too. Yes, but please. Let’s fight to keep it and tell the country 20 gazillion people are going to lose their insurance and 10 gazillion of those will die.

What would have happened if that biopsy came back saying I had cancer? I know from my dad’s cancer experience that cancer treatment isn’t actually covered by insurance (how many people knew that? Chemo and radiation isn’t covered by insurance, you have to pay out of pocket. And chemo is mega expensive. We had to get a grant and a loan just to make sure my father was able to get the suggested cancer treatment – not an experimental treatment; an established, normal cancer treatment). There is no way I could have paid out of pocket for chemo and radiation as well as the possible surgery I would have needed (especially a year after we were paying for my father’s). So, how exactly would Obamacare have helped me? Because my inability to pay for treatment would have resulted in my dying. And after I dropped dead, my mother would be left trying to finish paying for whatever I did have, plus paying the insurance that covered nothing while trying to get it cut off, all on top of dealing with her husband’s death a year before her only child.

I support concierge doctors. I support hospitals working on similar basis, with set prices you can view before you have anything at all done, sparking competition when people start shopping around for medical care. The price you pay without insurance is significantly less than what the insurance company is billed for. A surgery that costs one person $20,000 might cost someone else $80,000. That needs to stop. I’ve heard the suggestion of private savings accounts specifically for medical care, and I think that is worth looking into. There are shares in operation, which is also not a bad idea. Extreme lefties want single payer, forcing everyone to pay for everyone else and causing the doctors and hospitals to charge the max they can get away with for the simplest things. People in countries with single payer come to the USA for surgeries because the waits are so ridiculously long in their countries. Single payer is not what Obamacare should become, even though it was set up to create an entitlement, and when it failed people would scream for single payer. It isn’t the way to go. Obamacare is useless. Single payer would be more so, and much more expensive on top of it. It is time to open the market. Force competition. Normalize pricing. Stop paying for nothing at all.

NC’s Blue Cross seeks 23 percent hike on individual policies

North Carolina’s largest health insurer said Thursday it wants to increase the average price for heavily subsidized policies created by former President Barack Obama’s overhaul law by 22.9 percent next year, a double-digit increase it blames mostly on Congress.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina said two-thirds of its rate increase is because Congress isn’t funding promised subsidies that provide consumers with extra financial help for out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and copayments.

If the Republican-led Congress fully funded the so-called “cost sharing reductions,” the insurer’s rate increase for individual plans that comply with the Affordable Care Act would be the lowest in the past four years at 8.8 percent, Blue Cross pricing executive Brian Tajlili said. And while buyers are older and sicker, that trend is slowing and allowing insurance prices to stabilize, Tajlili said.

“That was the expectation was from the beginning” of the law, he said, “that at some point it would reach the state where it would not be so volatile every year.”

Full article: NC’s Blue Cross seeks 23 percent hike on individual policies :: WRAL.com

Obamacare was built to fail. Period. It is the gateway to socialized medicine.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I am, sadly, a member of the Obamacare Blue Cross segment for NC. I pay an enormous amount of money every month for my coverage, and my choice of doctors is almost nothing. I recently needed to find a new gynecologist. Within a two hour drive of my house, there was one gynecologist that accepted Obamacare. One. I live in an area that is so heavily populated by doctors it’s insane. Which is why this one doctor choice was mind boggling. Just doing a search on the Blue Cross page… there was 15 pages full of just gynecologists, and they were only the ones who took any Blue Cross insurance (once I cut it down to only my Obamacare plan, it was reduced to one doctor). I ended up with a doctor that had the bedside manner of a rabid fox and had what may have been an unnecessary biopsy, all after fighting her back from doing an entire battery of tests I wasn’t there for and shouldn’t have been performed by a gyno. My choice for primary care doctors is two, and it doesn’t include the one I have been using for 15 years.

So what, exactly, is the price hike for? And what, exactly, are people angry with Republicans over? It isn’t like you have any choices for your care anyway. Why aren’t you angry at Obamacare? It’s been this way since it began. Insurance companies are backing out in droves. People are dropping the insurance because even when the fine reaches the thousands of dollars, it’s still cheaper than paying for the insurance… and you’re paying for the same thing either way: absolutely nothing. If your state didn’t expand Medicare, you don’t even have to pay the fine!

As someone who uses Obamacare, I support a full repeal. Not Trumpcare. Not “fixing” Obamacare, however they think that will get accomplished. Not socialized medicine. Repeal the whole damn thing. I’ll spend my money as I want, and would like to have some choice back. I do support these “concierge doctors” that are popping up. That has been the best idea I’ve seen for healthcare in recent years, and it affords some choice and affordability. Why are we not pushing that type of medical practice?

GOPers Celebrate With ‘Hey, Hey Goodbye’ Chant After ‘Trumpcare’ Bill Narrowly Passes in House

Latest.com

Here are some of the changes included in the AHCA:

• The bill rolls back the Medicaid expansion, reducing federal payments by $880 billion over the next decade, according to the CBO. The bill cuts $600 billion in taxes that primarily benefit richer Americans over that decade.
• The means-tested Obamacare subsidies that help individuals pay for insurance would be repealed and replaced by a system of tax credits. The tax credits provide individuals $2,000 to $4,000 per year based on age.
• The current draft of the AHCA blocks federal funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
• The bill removes the individual mandate that levels a tax penalty on eligible individuals who do not purchase insurance. Instead, the bill incentivizes staying insured by allowing insurance companies to charge higher rates for one year to people who allow their coverage to lapse.
• While the AHCA does keep guaranteed issue — meaning insurers cannot deny coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions — this is where the waivers become key. If a state waives community rating, then they must offer everyone a plan but could jack up prices to unaffordable rates that could prevent sick people from getting coverage. If they waive essential health benefits, insurance companies can offer cheap, bare-bones plans that do not cover essentials such as emergency care, maternal care, and mental health.
• Republicans insist that these waivers will be used responsibly because states that apply for them must first make their case to the White House that use of waivers will increase the number of insured people with adequate care. The administration would have the discretion to refuse or grant these requests.
• The bill puts $100 billion over 10 years into “state innovation funds” for states to help provide care for high-cost patients. Most of this money will likely go to high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.

Full article: GOPers Celebrate With ‘Hey, Hey Goodbye’ Chant After ‘Trumpcare’ Bill Narrowly Passes in House

As someone who is, sadly, on Obamacare, I applaud this decision!

By the way, the chant was the dems to the GOP.

More

Which is laughable, since one of the big things people wanted from Trump was repeal of Obamacare.

Two More Insurance Companies Drop Out of Failing ObamaCare Marketplace

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Two more insurance companies have announced that they will leave Obamacare’s failing exchanges.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced their intention to leave Iowa’s Obamacare exchange next year because they lost $90 million in three years due to most of their enrollees having “expensive medical conditions.”

“Finding solutions to stabilize this market is in the best interest of all Iowans, including providers of health care and insurance carriers,” Wellmark Chairman and CEO John Forsyth said in a statement. “No one really benefits from rising costs. While there are many potential solutions, the timing and relative impact of those solutions is currently unclear. This makes it difficult to establish plans for 2018.”

Full article: Daily Wire

Obamacare Choices Could Go From One to Zero in Some Areas

Parts of the country are in jeopardy of not having an insurer offering Obamacare plans next year.

Many counties already have just one insurer offering health plans in the Obamacare marketplaces, and some of those solo insurers are showing signs that they are eyeing the exits.

Humana announced this year that they’d be leaving the markets altogether next year. That means there are parts of Tennessee that will have no insurance options unless another insurer decides to enter.

And Anthem, which operates in 14 states, is getting nervous, an industry analyst told Bloomberg News this week. Its departure would be a much bigger problem. According to an analysis of government data by Katherine Hempstead at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Anthem is currently the only insurance carrier in nearly 300 counties, serving about a quarter of a million people.

Full article: Obamacare Choices Could Go From One to Zero in Some Areas – The New York Times

Dems Push Pelosi for Single-Payer Health Care After AHCA Fails

Local public radio station KQED reported:

Image: Breitbart

“I extend my hand to the president if he wants to improve the Affordable Care Act,” Pelosi told a crowd of several hundred people gathered at a town hall meeting at Balboa High School in San Francisco.

…

The first audience question was more of a long argument for a socialized health system that some are calling “Medicare for all,” which would eliminate insurance companies.

Pelosi, unruffled by the at times unruly crowd, noted: “I supported single payer since before you were born.”

Full article: Dems Push Pelosi for Single-Payer Health Care After AHCA Fails – Breitbart

It doesn’t need to be improved. And not repealing it is not a “win” for this country, Hillary Clinton and everyone else on the left.

Sit down, let’s talk a minute.

So this year, I did the unthinkable. I actually bought insurance through the marketplace. I didn’t have a choice. I am trying to start up a small business right now, and I didn’t have insurance last year, so my taxes really hit me in the gut. I managed to avoid the tax penalty, to be fair. But I don’t know how much longer that will last. I avoided it because my state didn’t expand Medicaid. We have a new governor now, so that could change, meaning next year my taxes would be devastating.

My experience? Well, I have been out of work for a while, so my income was listed at very low rates (I have had some contract work, but nothing steady). I didn’t qualify for a subsidy. Which is fine. I don’t expect you to pay for my health coverage; I don’t want you to! And since I am starting a business now, I don’t know what that would do to my insurance anyway if the business picks up in a few months.

I got my card and my insurance was active as of March 1. So I decided to make some appointments. I needed to visit an Oby/gyn (for those who weren’t aware, yes, I am a female). It’s been a few years, and the doctor I had gone to before had retired, so I needed a new one.

Now, there was only one insurance company offering plans in my state, so I had to pick a plan from them. I have a mid-range plan. I went to their website to search for doctors who fit. Joy of joys, there were tons of Oby/gyns listed! I was overjoyed to see page after page of doctors to choose from, and I began comparing and contrasting. I chose one and was happy with my choice – a middle aged African-American woman who graduated from a really good school and has been practicing for twenty years. I was thrilled with my choice. Picking an Oby/gyn isn’t easy. We all hate them. But this woman just seemed… OK. I don’t know how to describe it, she just felt like the perfect doctor, someone I could get comfortable with, which is important to someone like me. I don’t get real cozy with doctors easily, especially doctors that have to go into my private areas for exams, because that isn’t an area I let a whole lot of people examine!

Just as I was about to hit send to make the appointment, a notice popped up saying that they were out of network. What? I thought the search I did showed me doctors who were in network only. Nope! I went back through to find another doctor because I need them to be in network; out of network was just too unaffordable, and I have some problems with my lady bits that could require a hospital stay at some point in my life, so I have to keep costs down.

Folks. I went through page after page after page of doctors. I opened up pages for 40 doctors. Only one of them accepted my insurance. I was floored. There was no choice there. I had only one option.

Curious, I began searching around in other areas for other doctors. It’s a good thing I don’t have mental health issues, because there isn’t a single psychologist or psychiatrist who takes my insurance within 100 miles of my home. There is one eye doctor. Four primary care doctors. Etc.

Basically, the government told me I have to be insured or pay a fine. So now I am paying $500 a month for insurance that very few doctors within 100 miles of my house actually takes (and my area is extremely doctor heavy). I’m really not sure this even worth my time.

I know Obamacare was designed this way to fail so an entitlement was created, but people would scream for single payer. Do you want to know how single payer would work out? Go to your DMV. That’s how it would work out. Better yet, go to your local VA! Those waiting lists never got handled. Heck, when my dad – a combat veteran from the Vietnam War – was diagnosed with cancer, he was told our local VA wasn’t set up to do cancer treatments. I had to get a damn senator involved! And suddenly – miracle of miracles – they were able to treat cancer patients on sight (and believe me, Senator Burr had to do some work to get it to that point, this was a long standing issue, to the point that I felt I needed to send Senator Burr a letter when my father passed away so he’d know)! Imagine that! Remember that story not long ago where the people took pictures of the guy laying on the floor in the VA and the other guy in the wheelchair crying in pain? That was my dad’s VA! That’s the one he used. My father was also on Medicare at the time. Do you know Medicare doesn’t cover cancer treatment? Not at all! He had to pay for chemo and radiation out of pocket and with the help of a grant my mom applied for. That, folks, is your government run healthcare.

So do I support single payer? Not on your damn life! Repeal the damn thing!