COVID-19 & Healthcare

Countdown to the Health Insurance Marketplace

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

FiveThe Tucson Weekly — which is out with its annual "Best of Tucson" edition today, be sure to pick up a copy — has a Guest Commentary from Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild explaining the Health Insurance Marketplace:

On Oct. 1, open enrollment begins for the Health Insurance
Marketplace, part of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, also known as
Obamacare. Whether you were for or against this legislation, it's here,
it's the law of the land, and here's what you need to know.

Young adults were some of the first beneficiaries of the ACA, which
made it possible for them to stay on their parents' health plans until
age 26 regardless of whether they're in school or where they live.
Already, this provision has helped more than 3 million young adults get
coverage.

The ACA eliminated many barriers to becoming insured. You cannot be
discriminated against for pre-existing health conditions or gender. (The
ACA banned the common practice of charging women higher premiums than
men.)

The ACA eliminated other questionable practices, too, such as
lifetime or annual caps on coverage, or canceling coverage for making a
mistake on your insurance application. You cannot run out of coverage
because you've hit your dollar limit with a catastrophic illness or
injury, and you cannot have your coverage canceled—in some cases,
retroactively—because you filled out a form incorrectly.

These changes apply to all health insurance plans, whether you get
coverage through your employer, your parents or buy it yourself.

Plus, the ACA strengthened Medicare, which has already saved Arizonans nearly $123 million in prescription drug costs.

Tea Party Cruz-missile crashes and burns

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ass-hatTo paraphrase Shakespeare, Ted "Calgary" Cruz "struts and frets his hours upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." – Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28. After 21 hours, Sen. Cruz ends anti-Obamacare speech.

Calgary accomplished nothing but his own self-aggrandizement among the GOP crazy base, and complicating matters for the GOP House leadership, whom he will set up to blame for his own hair-brained scheme.

The Tea Party Cruz-missile crashed and burned today, failing to stop the U.S. Senate from moving forward on a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open and funding "ObamaCare." Senate votes to proceed with spending bill:

The Senate moved Wednesday to take up a House-passed temporary
spending bill that defunds President Obama’s health-care law, despite
Sen. Ted Cruz’s more than 21-hour attempt to delay the legislation.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the funding bill passed its first
procedural hurdle in the Senate, which voted unanimously to invoke
cloture on a motion to proceed on the House’s continuing resolution. The
Senate now is scheduled to hold up to 30 hours of debate on the funding
bill.

[Update: The vote was 100 to 0. Calgary voted
for cloture after saying he'd vote against cloture and urging his
colleagues to do the same. What a fraud!]

* * *

The Senate then essentially choked off the first filibuster hurdle on
its own version of the funding bill, marking the first step toward
allowing Democrats to include funding for the health-care law that had
previously been stripped out by the House.

Steve Farley Tele-Town Hall tonight on the Health Insurance Marketplace

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Facebook message from Senator Steve Farley (D-LD9):

On October 1, the new healthcare exchanges will arrive. If you are currently buying your health insurance on the open market, or are a current HealthCare Group member, or would like to get insured but previously was not able to find an affordable plan due to your self-employed status or your employer not offering benefits, the exchanges will help you find a good plan at reasonable cost, and likely save you real money as it increases your peace of mind.

State Senator Steve Farley is convening a Tele-Town Hall [Wednesday night] for all of you to get your health insurance questions answered. His special guests will be Herb Schultz, the Region IX Director for the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, who will tell you all you need to know about how the exchanges work and how you can put them to work for you, and Jennifer Carusetta who works at AHCCCS and she is helping with the transition from HCG to the exchanges, so she can help HCG members and also give information on where Medicaid-eligible people fit in and what happens if their income bounces them out from time to time.

Sen. Jeff Flake issues a ransom note in the The Arizona Republic(an)

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A new New York Times/CBS News poll today finds that:

* Eighty percent of Americans, including 83 percent of independents and 75 percent of Republicans, say threatening a government shutdown is not an acceptable way to negotiate.

* Americans say overwhelmingly that Republicans are not trying to work with Obama by 70-23. By contrast, 51 percent say Obama is trying to work with Republicans.

Which is to say that the Tea-Publican economic terrorism act of taking America hostage to extort concessions from the Democrats to defund "ObamaCare" and to give them a grab bag of their wish list items in exchange for not destroying the American economy is opposed by 80 percent of Americans, who don’t see this as a fundamentally acceptable way of governing.

And yet . . . this morning Sen. Jeff Flake issued a ransom note to the American people in the The Arizona Republic(an). Delay 'Obamacare' to kill it:

[This] is why we have introduced legislation that would delay all
Obamacare provisions and taxes for one year. H.R. 2809 and S. 1490 seek
to postpone all provisions of the Affordable Care Act taking effect on
Jan. 1, 2014 or later by one year from the date of enactment.

Delaying Obamacare is a necessary step in our efforts to get this law
off the books and replace it with real health-care solutions that work
for American families and businesses. It builds on efforts already taken
by the House and Senate to delay both the individual and employer
mandates. In fairness to American taxpayers, the best thing we can do
right now is to implement a one-year delay so we can continue to chip
away at this disastrous law.

Countdown to the Health Insurance Marketplace

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

SixThe second most frequent question I receive about the Health Insurance Marketplace is when are we going to know the insurance rates in Arizona? The correct answer is October 1.

Late Tuesday, the government issued a report detailing premiums in
states whose insurance markets will be federally run starting Oct. 1, i.e., Arizona, with costs generally lower than prior estimates. The New York Times reports, Officials Offer First Detailed Look at Health Plan Costs:

The Obama administration on Tuesday provided the first detailed look at
premiums to be charged to consumers for health insurance in 36 states
where the federal government will run new insurance markets starting
next week, highlighting costs it said were generally lower than previous
estimates.

[According to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.]

* * *

The White House sought to focus attention on what it portrayed as the
financial advantages of the health insurance program, which is set to
start accepting customers on Oct. 1.

“I can tell you right now that in many states across the country, if
you’re, say, a 27-year-old young woman, don’t have health insurance, you
get on that exchange, you’re going to be able to purchase high-quality
health insurance for less than the cost of your cellphone bill,” Mr.
Obama said Tuesday, speaking at a health care forum in New York City
with former President Bill Clinton.

For a benchmark plan — the second-lowest-cost “silver plan,” covering 70
percent of projected medical costs for a typical consumer — the average
premium nationally will be $328 a month for individuals, the
administration said in a new report.