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Medibank Private to push benefits of preventive healthcare
MEDIBANK Private has been given the go-ahead to launch a co-ordinated attack on the costly chronic disease burden by promoting the benefits of user-pays and preventive health schemes that could result in lower premium increases.
Healthcare and controlling healthcare costs have become global concerns for the West. What is going on in the East — is health and healthcare better, or is concern over healthcare an unaffordable luxury for countries whose economies are woefully behind and desperately trying to catch up?
See on www.theaustralian.com.au
Obamacare Faces Major Struggles
Public support for President Barack Obama’s health care law is languishing at its lowest level since passage of the landmark legislation four years ago, according to a new poll.
At some point the liars win and progress stops. Has there ever been a bigger campaign of deceit and misinformation than what the ACA has had to endure?
See on www.huffingtonpost.com
Back to Posting on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Healthcare and Healthcare Reform
It’s been several months. Where has the time gone?
I have been watching the unraveling of the foundations of the Affordable Care Act. I have been depressed that the unraveling is coming from the President.
Then I saw the Republican “Plan” and I had hope. Oh, yes, they can’t stop talking about repeal, but that’s not really what their Plan is about. It is about improving.
It has always been my belief that our Republican elected representatives, patriotic men and women of good will, would adopt many of the same positive aspects of Obamacare, if they thought about it and shook themselves free of the closed and narrow minded of their constituents. Access to health insurance, no preexisting conditions … I mean, who does not support these items in Obamacare?
Implementing is where the Republicans always fall short, because they refuse to take any step that would look like our government is actually governing. A Republican omelet must look like a pan with eggs rolling around in it, since they have no stomach for breaking any.
I have hope that moderates of both parties follow the mandate they have had but have refused to acknowledge as they listened to the ranting of the flatworlder/Tea Party members.
By the way, in case you wondered …
Ohio Decides to Expand Medicaid
As reported in “Action of Ohio Controlling Board on Medicaid Expansion” posted on Bill of Health, a blog sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School:
On Monday, October 22, at the urging of Governor Kasich, the Controlling Board of the Ohio Legislature voted 5-2 to accept $2.5 billion in federal funding to expand Medicaid in the State of Ohio. Under the laws of Ohio this action was valid.
Sore from being Kicked
Republicans make a lot of hay pointing out how health insurance premiums available on the health insurance exchanges have increased for many Americans. Where this is true (and is not true in all states), it is the result of many factors. Some of the increase is the result of more benefits being provided as required by Obamacare, some of the increase is the result of the prohibition against denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and related protections under Obamacare, and much is the result of bad decisions (both historically and recently) by state legislatures or governors or both. Some of these decisions were made for the sole purpose of hurting the implementation of Obamacare — e.g., refusing Medicaid expansion, not setting up a state exchange, not exercising authority over insurance rates, etc.
No one wants to pay more for the health insurance they already had. Some increase may have been inevitable. However, we should make sure to place much of the blame on short-sighted political shenanigans aimed at thwarting healthcare reform at the expense of people. I have written before about Florida’s Governor Rick Scott and his campaign of lies and deceit against Obamacare which many Florida Cabinet officers and Department heads and State Legislators have endorsed. Apparently, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker is just as bad — health insurance premiums for Wisconsin residents will be 79% to 99% higher than those for Minnesota residents because of him.
Yes, there have been some pretty horrendous computer network issues at the exchanges that have frustrated and dissappointed those seeking to get health insurance.
But can’t we all agree that there is a difference between the unintended (even negligent) computer snafus on the one hand and the deliberate behavior seeking to do harm on the other? As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in The Common Law, “Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.” Frankly, I’m a little sore from being kicked.
What the Shutdown Revealed About the Economic Divides in U.S. Politics
Tea Party America doesn’t look much like the base of the big-business Republican Party
This is a disturbing study of our fellow Americans. There are all sorts of people on the edges of the bell curve of life. While I have no love for the leaders of the Tea Party, whom I believe purposely and maliciously lie to their constituents and mislead them, the Americans who want smaller, less wasteful, and less intrusive government, are honest and sincere in their beliefs. They are wrong, but that’s another discussion. The study, on the other hand, in the vein of lies, damn lies, and statistics, paints them as less creative (and by implication less intelligent.
See on www.theatlanticcities.com
See other articles on Scoop.it – Changing Healthcare for the Better
Fighting Lies and Ignorance to Keep the Democratic Process Democratic
The health care crisis and how to solve it has become one of the defining issues of our time. There is much debate over the right course of action. The debate should be principled and intelligent, but we have come to a point in American politics where lying or being stupid or both have become a perfectly acceptable way to debate an issue.
If one assumes that Romney, Ryan, Rand Paul, Cruz, Rubio, Bachmann, Palin, Rick Scott, Pam Bondi, and many other outspoken opponents of Obamacare are intelligent people (an assumption that may be a stretch in some cases), then they must be liars. Other than their being ignorant beyond comprehension (which could be the case for some of the named individuals), lying is the only explanation for what they have been saying about Obamacare.
Honest, intelligent people make sure of their facts before making public statements about this complicated, important legislation.
An open and honest debate, where ideas are discussed and criticized and improved upon, is what is needed desperately in this country. It is the way things are supposed to be done in America.
Americans of good intentions must be educated to fight the campaign of misinformation that has been waged against the President’s plan for health care reform.
Obamacare Facts is one place to get a detailed and unbiased description of what the law does and doesn’t do. Go there, learn, so that, regardless of your position, you will know what’s true and what’s false and who is lying and who is telling the truth. Perhaps, you can even help educate those whose ignorance is keeping them in the dark.
Poorest of the poor left out of Affordable Care Act’s health insurance expansion
Because North Carolina rejected the Medicaid expansion earlier this year, the state’s poorest residents will go without insurance despite the national law that was intended to slash the number of uninsured.
This is another example of the short-sightedness (or just plain meanness — it’s hard to know which) of conservative state legislatures that decided taking a stand against Obamacare was more important than the health of its citizens. The Presdient and the ACA will be blamed by the campaign of misinformation from the Tea Party, but this is their fault, not the President’s and certainly not the law’s.
See on www.charlotteobserver.com
See more on Scoop.it – Changing Healthcare for the Better
What is the Problem … Really?
On Meet the Press this morning, National Review’s Rich Lowry said that Obamacare presented an unacceptable major social change to the country.
What exactly is that unacceptable change?
Requiring people to get insured and subsidizing those who can’t afford it? Making people take responsibility for their health? Prohibiting insurance companies from refusing to insure someone?
It’s not like public dollars are going to start being used to cover people who weren’t covered before.
People have always gotten care paid for by the public — anyone could walk into the ER. Now, however, people can get better care, preventive care, more affordably. Are there really people who rationally oppose any of this? Poll after poll shows popular support when the actual facts of Obamacare are explained.
Honestly, I hear the words ranted out in opposition to Obamacare, but I cannot comprehend what the real issue is.
65,899,660 Votes Have to Mean Something
The Tea Party Republicans in the House and Senate like to say that they are representing their constituents, and shutting down the government and defunding Obamacare are what those constituents want. They demand that the President be willing to negotiate with them to promote their distorted view of America.
But what about the 65,899,660 Americans who voted to re-elect the President last November? We don’t want the President to negotiate to un-win the victories that were legitimately won. There is nothing to negotiate about and certainly not with these self-appointed so-called leaders, some of whom have retained positions of power through questionable means. Perhaps, a time honored way to stay in office, but not to hijack a government they could not win legitimately. In fact, the Republicans should not even be in control of the House given the local popular vote in many states that “elected” Republicans.
Most Tea Party Republicans belong to an outlier mentality who do not understand Obamacare because they have been so maliciously misinformed about it. Their ignorance is being used by those in power who have promoted it to fight the President’s policies.
This is a battle far more important than any that has faced us since Nixon’s shenanigans. Rich men are doing what they can to impose on America a worldview that the public rejected.
This is not politics as usual, and it is about much more than healthcare. If the President loses this, then let’s be honest — elections and democracy are just meaningless shams in America. Money rules, and rich people of influence who are elected by no one can win political victories through a campaign of lies.
America is about process, and Ted Cruz and the other Congressional members of the flatworld society are only about winning. They don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. We cannot allow these well-funded radicals to take what they couldn’t win at the polls. Moderates and reasonable people of both parties are at an obvious disadvantage by relying on the Constitutional process. So, the revolution is coming, but whether it will be a democratic one or an oligarchic one is the question of our time. Buckle up.
Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog 