Retroactive Health Insurance Bill Covers Maryland Residents

January 30, 2014, 11:53 am

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Patch Upper Marlboro, MD --

Maryland residents who couldn't sign up for health insurance because of problems with the state's website can enroll and be retroactively covered to Jan. 1 Reported by Patch 4 hours ago.

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Did You See How Republicans Tried to Tamper With Women's Health Insurance Plans This Week?

January 30, 2014, 11:22 am

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Where are the women? That's the question I asked nearly two years ago when an all-male panel testified to the House Oversight Committee on restricting women's access to contraception. And it's the question I asked again at the start of this year when another all-male panel green-lighted a bill to restrict women's access to constitutionally protected abortions.

For years, Republicans have tried to get between a woman and her doctor. Now they're trying to come between a woman and her health insurance company.

This week, the House of Representatives voted 227 to 188 to approve the deceptively named "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" (H.R. 7). Just one Republican, Congressman Richard Hanna, joined Democrats in voting against the bill, even though the law already says no taxpayer dollars can be used to pay for abortions.

Access to abortion is, unfortunately, already denied to women on Medicaid and restricted for federal employees, military personnel, Native American women, poor residents of the District of Columbia and federal prisoners due to the Hyde Amendment. H.R. 7 has nothing to do with taxpayer funding and everything to do with restricting abortion access even further.

The bill passed this week would impose even harsher restrictions by prohibiting millions of women from using their own money to buy health care plans that cover comprehensive reproductive care. It would affect women who work for small businesses by denying tax credits to companies that provide abortion coverage. And it denies comprehensive plans to women who qualify for a tax credit when purchasing insurance through the health care exchanges. In this way the proposal disproportionately impacts low-income women who need the most help getting covered.

Despite all the real problems that need solving in this country like an unemployment rate that is still too high and a shrinking middle class, Republicans remain focused on curbing a woman's reproductive choices and defunding proven programs that have helped to lift women and children out of poverty, and improved their safety, health, and well being.

You can't execute a war on women and cover it up with rhetoric and niceties. You can't make restricting abortion access the top priority for one of our country's two main political parties and think women will look the other way. When 99 percent of Americans have used birth control at some point in their lives, you can't expect that women won't notice when Republicans actively work to cut access to contraception. And you can't continually work to shut down Planned Parenthood and expect us to go along with it. The list goes on and on.

They may not want anyone to call this a war on women. But I would point out to them that women--and only women--are the casualties of this multi-front assault on reproductive rights. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

Report: 20% of Obamacare 'Enrollees' to See Cancellation Notices Soon

January 30, 2014, 1:04 pm

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One in five Obamacare "enrollees" could have their plans cancelled for failure to pay their first month's premium. That figure is based on reports from health insurers themselves, some of whom have made 10 attempts to collect the first payment.

The exact percentage of those who pay (the actual definition of enrollment) varies among insurers according to a report Thursday by CNN Money. Medical Mutual of Ohio put the figure at 88 percent while CoOportunity Health put it lower at 82 percent. CoOportunity CEO Cliff Gold tells CNN "We figure either those people had a change of heart or thought it was too expensive." WellPoint would only say a majority but not a "vast majority" had paid their first premium. CNN estimates the overall percentage of insurers it polled at one in five.

Earlier this month health insurance expert Bob Laszewski estimated, based on his contacts in the industry, that 10-20 percent of Obamacare enrollments would be dropped for failure to pay. CNN's report suggests the actual figure will be closer to the upper end of Laszewski's estimate.

The Obama administration has reported that, as of December 28th, 2.1 million people had enrolled in private insurance plans. However the administration counts anyone who selected a plan on a health exchange website as enrolled whether or not they have paid a premium.

The high rate of cancellations will certainly have a political impact in not an immediate policy impact. If the 20 percent figure highlighted by CNN is accurate, roughly 400,000 people the administration has already counted as enrolled under Obamacare will receive cancellation letters. That's considerably more than the total number who enrolled in October and November combined. It would also mean the total number of people enrolled did not pass 3 million as HHS claimed last week.

Those individuals who are canceled for non-payment will need to start over in order to get insurance before the enrollment period ends in March. Presumably, those who do so will be counted as enrolled a second time unless HHS is careful to exclude duplicates or simply revises its earlier numbers downward to account for cancellations. It's just one more asterisk to add to the list of already dubious numbers coming from the administration.

 
 
 
  Reported by Breitbart 3 hours ago.

Get Your Health Insurance Company’s Attention: Use Twitter

January 30, 2014, 12:31 pm

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Over at ProPublica, they recently learned what we at Consumerist have known since 2008: when you’re having customer service trouble, sometimes the best way to use alternate means to get the attention of someone who can help you. Propublica discovered that some consumers are using Twitter to navigate the intensely personal and deeply confusing world of health insurance.

Health … [More] Reported by The Consumerist 3 hours ago.

The State of the Direct Care Worker

January 30, 2014, 2:31 pm

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*Present State: Direct Care Work = Low Wages and Lack of Opportunity*

Everyone seems to agree, as the President emphasized several times in his state of the Union address, that people who work full-time should not live in poverty. But, the President said, "Our opportunity agenda won't be complete -- and too many young people entering the workforce today will see the American Dream as an empty promise -- unless we do more to make sure our economy honors the dignity of work, and hard work pays off for every single American."

For far too many direct care workers -- the nursing assistants, home care and home health aides, personal care assistants, direct support professionals and others who provide the majority of the paid, hands-on personal assistance and long-term care to older adults and persons with disabilities -- hard work does not pay off, except in the satisfaction it gives them and the relationships they form with the people they assist. Their wages are so low -- about $10 an hour, on average -- that many direct care workers share with Direct Care Alliance (DCA) that they must work two, even three jobs, often working 7 days and as much as 60 or 70 hours a week just to piece together enough pay to support themselves and their families. As a result, hundreds of thousands of direct care workers are unable to afford health care coverage and nearly half rely on some form of public benefits to meet their basic needs.

Direct care workers provide an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the paid hands-on long-term care and personal assistance received by Americans who are elderly or living with disabilities or other chronic conditions. Those needs are growing fast: an estimated 1.6 million new direct care workers will be needed over the next decade. If we don't start paying better wages, and soon, how can we expect to find the people we need to provide that care, let alone to be able to guarantee care recipients the quality and continuity of care that is so important to them?

There are clear opportunities for America to improve direct care as a profession, and thus to respond effectively to the growing need for care workers. An excellent starting point would be ensuring that 2014 is a break-through year for low-wage workers by passing pending legislation that would grant paid family and medical leave to nearly all workers in the U.S., getting immigration reform done, raising the minimum wage, and keeping intact various government safety net programs like food stamps, child care subsidies, WIC, etc. (until such a time when they no longer are needed).

One area that is already showing some promise in leveling the benefits playing field for direct care workers is access to affordable health insurance, though more work is needed to make health care truly affordable for many low-wage workers. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is helping tens of thousands of direct care workers like Beverly, a home health aide in New York City. After working five years as a home health aide, Beverly found herself no longer eligible for Medicaid and subsequently without health insurance, although she lives with several chronic health conditions that get much worse if she can't afford the medications needed to manage them. Her job offered insurance, but she could not afford the premiums. When she found a plan she could afford through the ACA she was greatly relieved, but paying for the insurance will require a significant portion of her already low wages. Worse, her hours and pay vary from check to check, making it difficult to budget in this new expense. Like a lot other direct care workers, Beverly wishes she could find one stable job with full-time hours. Then budgeting and paying for basic needs like health insurance would simply bring her peace of mind without causing additional stress.

Beverly is relieved that she can now get regular checkups for her high blood pressure, and that she can now go to the ER, if she has an asthma attack, without the worry of ending up with a huge hospital bill. "You definitely have to have insurance," she says, and the ACA has made that possible. But until she can count on higher and more stable wages, maintaining coverage will be a struggle.

*Continued Workforce Progress through Collective Efforts *

Imagine that the year is 2020 and the largest occupational group in the U.S. -- direct care workers -- has made so much progress that their hard work finally leads to economic stability and health security for them and their families. How can we get from here to there in six short years?

We must apply the same collective organizational efforts that allowed DCA and our allies to undo the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exemption for home care workers, making these workers eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay and other basic labor protections for the first time in FLSA's 75-year history. We must build on this momentum to ensure other advances for the direct care workforce.

Direct care workers just want what other hardworking Americans desire: to be employed at one full-time job that pays enough so they can afford basic benefits like health care coverage, and can pay their bills without relying on public assistance. As the President said in the State of the Union: "We're not doing right by American people." Don't we all want to see every direct care worker get those basic rewards for the important work they do?

Another recurring theme in President Obama's State of the Union address was that progress in America does not stand still -- and neither should our efforts to ensure that direct care workers share in the fruits of the American dream. Direct Care Alliance and our allies will remain on the frontline, advocating for needed changes until direct care work receives the respect, compensation, and benefits they so rightly deserve. We hope you will join us. Reported by Huffington Post 1 hour ago.

HUFFPOLLSTER: 2016 And The 'Magic Kingdom of Hypothetica'

January 30, 2014, 3:02 pm

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A new national poll showing Clinton leading the Democrats and Christie in decline prompts another round of debate about the value of a polling "snapshot" three years before an election. And this is somehow connected to a talking toaster. Seriously. This is HuffPollster for Thursday, January 30, 2014.

*'NON-EXISTENT CANDIDATE LEADS NON-EXISTENT COMPETITORS IN NON-EXISTENT RACE'* - Jason Linkins ponders the meaning of a new PPP poll that measured Republican voter preferences for the 2016 GOP nomination: "Yes, in the Magic Kingdom of Hypothetica, Mike Huckabee, on the strength of comments that embarrassed Reince Priebus, is narrowly beating Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Luke Skywalker, Grumpy Cat, and a plucky little toaster that can talk and grant wishes, but would trade all of his powers for the chance to find true love. *Meanwhile, in America, I would really, really caution anyone to think twice before betting that Mike Huckabee will run, let alone lead a primary field*. Call me up when Huckabee starts doing things like hiring an experienced campaign staff or signing up major donors." There is more. HuffPollster urges you to read it all. [HuffPost]

*MEANWHILE, ANOTHER 2016 POLL SHOWS CLINTON LEADING DEMS* - Philip Rucker and Scott Clement: "Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a commanding 6 to 1 lead over other Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential campaign, while the Republican field is deeply divided with no clear front-runner, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. *Clinton trounces her potential primary rivals with 73 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, reinforcing a narrative of inevitability around her nomination if she runs*. Vice President Biden is second with 12 percent, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is third with 8 percent. Although Clinton’s favorability rating has fallen since she stepped down as secretary of state a year ago, she has broad Democratic support across ideological, gender, ethnic and class lines. Her lead is the largest recorded in an early primary matchup in at least 30 years of Post-ABC polling." [WaPost]

*...And Christie falling* - Gary Langer: "Chris Christie’s popularity has been badly dented and Republican preferences for president look like a six-car pileup in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Just 35 percent of Americans see Christie favorably overall, dropping from 52 percent in a Gallup poll in June, while his unfavorable score has doubled to 40 percent. He’s gone from a 32-point net positive rating last summer to a 5-point net negative now – never a comfortable place for a public figure. And *he’s notably weak among strong conservatives, a core Republican group*. There’s room for Christie to rebuild; 25 percent of Americans have yet to form an opinion of him. But nearly half the public, 46 percent, sees the political payback controversy that’s engulfed him as a sign of broader problems with his leadership; 43 percent call it an isolated incident." [ABC]

*Two new New Hampshire polls test the 2016 primary* -

-*University of New Hampshire*: "Although few voters have made up their minds about who to vote for in the 2016 New Hampshire Primary, Hillary Clinton remains the clear favorite among New Hampshire Democrats but the GOP still lacks a frontrunner. Republicans are now less likely to support Chris Christie because of the Bridgegate scandal." [UNH]

-*Purple Poll* - "Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is very well-liked by Democratic primary voters (89/6), as is Vice President Joe Biden (69/12) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (62/12)." [Purple Strategies]

*Skeptical reactions...*:

-Political scientist *Jonathan Bernstein*: "Ignore those polls! Whatever the merits of polling on the 2016 presidential nominations (and perhaps I’ll get to that later), *general election polls at this early date are essentially worthless*. The results are some messy mix of relative party standing, candidate name recognition, recent press reports about the candidates and who knows what else. Any relationship with events taking place in the fall of 2016 is almost totally coincidental...The 2016 nomination campaigns have started; in fact, they started some time ago. But only among the relatively few people who pay very close attention to politics. For most voters, 2016 is in other galaxy, and they won’t really start paying attention until the conventions kick off the fall 2016 campaign. Yes, voters will answer pollsters' questions, but there’s just no reason for us to pay any attention to the answers -- or whether one candidate outperforms another at this point." [Bloomberg]

-DSCC Executive Director *Guy Cecil*: "I love that old political adage: the only poll that counts is the one 3 years before the election." [@guycecil]

*...prompt a defense of early polls from The Fix* - Chris Cillizza: "Now for the assumption that simply by the act of conducting a poll about a far-off race you are predicting that the poll results MUST match the ultimate outcome. Talk to any pollster -- non-partisan, Democratic or Republican -- and they will tell you that polls are by their very nature snapshots in time, not predictors of outcome. (Modeling, the sort of stuff Nate Silver does, is, on the other hand, meant to be predictive.) And, if you kept talking to that pollster they would tell you that the head to head number in any poll -- especially one conducted 700 days (or so) before an election -- is probably the least important number in the survey. *The perceptions that people have about the candidates' character attributes/strengths/weaknesses is far more telling as an indicator of the shape of the race to come than who is ahead in the horserace question.* In short: You need to take the WaPo-ABC poll -- and the dozens (or maybe even hundreds) that have come before it and will definitely come after it -- for what they are: Early measures of name identification and voter perceptions about the candidates." [WashPost]

*CRIST LEADS SCOTT IN FLORIDA* - Quinnipiac: "Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, now running as a Democrat, leads Republican Gov. Rick Scott 46 - 38 percent in this year's governor's race and tops the incumbent on almost every measure, including handling the economy and jobs, listed by voters as the most important issues in the race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Scott started behind Crist 50 - 34 percent in a March 20 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University and narrowed the gap to 47 - 40 percent in a November 21 survey." [Quinnipiac]

-HuffPollster's poll tracking model gives Crist a roughly 6-point lead over Scott.*ACA: PERCEPTIONS LITTLE CHANGED AFTER JAN 1* - Kaiser Family Foundation: "January 1st may have been a monumental date for those working on and closely following the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds little change in the public’s knowledge and views of the law. With enrollment in new coverage options underway, a majority of the public believes that only 'some' of the ACA’s provisions have been put into place, while just about one in five think 'most' or “all” of the law has been implemented...*Among the uninsured – a key group for outreach under the law – unfavorable views now outnumber favorable views by roughly a 2-to-1 margin (47 percent versus 24 percent)*. This is a change from last month when 43 percent of the uninsured had an unfavorable view and 36 percent were favorable. More of those without coverage say the law has made the uninsured as a group worse off (39 percent) than better off (26 percent). Despite these views, large shares of the uninsured see health insurance as “very important” and say they need it, while four in ten say they’ve tried to get coverage in the past 6 months, and half expect to get it this year." [KFF]*But intent to purchase through exchanges on the rise* Gallup: Fifty-six percent of uninsured Americans who plan to get health insurance say they will do so through a government health insurance exchange. That figure has steadily increased since Gallup began tracking uninsured Americans' intentions in October. [Gallup]
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*Rasmussen Reports – Help Wanted*. Rasmussen has a new position open for a senior data scientist/statistician to help lead us into the future of public opinion polling in a way that relies less on land lines and more on a combination of the various media channels available today. If your background is in statistics, mathematics and programming and you have a vision for the next wave in public opinion, please apply. Love of politics and policy a plus. Job listing and more details here.
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*HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL!* - You can receive this daily update every weekday via email! Just enter your email address in the box on the upper right corner of this page, and click "sign up." That's all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).

*THURSDAY'S 'OUTLIERS'* - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data that we missed during our holiday break (starting with a few
new items from today:

-55 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with U.S. gun laws, the highest level since 2001. [Gallup]

-Fewer than a quarter of Pennsylvania voters think Gov. Tom Corbett (R) deserves reelection. [HuffPost]

-Kathy Frankovic charts the toll of Bridgegate on Chris Christie's nationwide favorable ratings. [YouGov]

-46 percent of Americans say the news media makes the weather sound worse than it really is. [Rasmussen Reports]

-Steve Shepard says early polling may be underestimating Republican support. [National Journal]

-Sean Trende examines how reapportionment will affect "the coming fight over the death of some majority-minority districts." [CrystalBall]

-Television ratings for the State of the Union address hit a 14-year low. [Hollywood Reporter]

-Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph explore polarization over trust in government, or why Americans have "vanishingly low trust in government when their party is out of power." [WaPost's Monkey Cage]

-The US has canceled funding for opinion polls in Afghanistan's presidential elections. [Yahoo]

-Patrick Ruffini (R) makes the case for probabilistic voter targeting. [Engage]

-The Analyst Institute (D) is hiring. [Analyst Institute]

-Reddit user atrubetskoy plots a map showing how much snow it takes to close school in every U.S. county. [The Atlantic]

-Jimmy Kimmel's "Lie Witness News" shows shows how a camera crew can enhance "social desirability" bias. [Re/code] Reported by Huffington Post 55 minutes ago.

Mandeville to offer revised health insurance plan to public employees

January 30, 2014, 4:01 pm

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It appears that Mandeville government employees might not be socked with giant insurance premium increases after all. City officials have found a way to counter the City Council's decision to pass along steep increases in health insurance costs directly to... Reported by nola.com 1 day ago.

Get Your Health Insurance Company's Attention: Use Twitter

January 30, 2014, 5:38 pm

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Get Your Health Insurance Company's Attention: Use Twitter Reported by ajc.com 23 hours ago.

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State report offers bold outlook about health insurance

January 30, 2014, 8:12 pm

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In Washington, nearly 1 million residents are uninsured, few part-time and low-income workers get health insurance from their employers, and hospitals and clinics provide more than $1 billion worth of unpaid-for medical care. Reported by Seattle Times 20 hours ago.

Spooked Democrats Distance Themselves From Obama

January 31, 2014, 3:45 am

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spooked by President Barack Obama's low approval ratings, some of his fellow Democrats in tough November election races have begun their campaigns by distancing themselves from the White House and asserting their independence from Obama's policies.

In what amounts to a survival-first strategy among embattled Democrats crucial to the party's effort to keep control of the Senate, some candidates in conservative states Obama lost in 2012 are aggressively criticizing his health care, energy and regulatory policies.

The group includes three incumbent senators, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, as well as Natalie Tennant, who is seeking to replace retiring Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Other Democratic senators facing tough battles for re-election have not been as critical of Obama, but have signaled they might not do much campaigning with him.

Democratic Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina recently passed on a chance to appear publicly with Obama, saying she had another commitment. Begich and another Democrat up for re-election, Mark Udall of Colorado, have expressed skepticism about the idea of campaigning with the president.

Each of the Democratic senators is facing persistent criticism from Republicans who cast them as rubber stamps for parts of Obama's agenda that are particularly unpopular in their states.

The growing distance between these Democrats and Obama's White House was evident this week in Washington, where their responses to the president's State of the Union address ranged from muted to chilly.

Begich said after the speech that, if Obama came to Alaska, he would be "not really interested in campaigning" with him, but would "drag him around" to show him how the administration's policies have hurt the state by limiting oil and gas development and the issuance of logging permits.

"I don't need him campaigning for me. I need him to change some of his policies," Begich told CNN.

Democratic senators are not the only candidates in their party keeping some distance from Obama. In Wisconsin, a state the president won in the 2012 election, Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke skipped an appearance by Obama in Waukesha on Thursday. She said she had a previously scheduled commitment.

Deciding how to handle a president in their party whose approval ratings are down is a common quandary for candidates in midterm elections. Many Republicans stayed away from then-President George W. Bush in 2006, when his slumping approval ratings and the unpopularity of the Iraq war helped fuel a Democratic blitz that gave the party control of both houses of Congress and most state governorships.

This year, the problem for Democrats is reflected in Obama's sagging approval ratings after a year in which his health care overhaul got off to a rocky start, and critics have cast his policies as causing a decline in American influence around the world.

Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls on Thursday indicated that 38 percent of Americans nationwide had a favorable view of the job Obama is doing, while nearly 53 percent disapproved. A year ago, 52 percent viewed Obama favorably and 43 percent did not.

-DEMOCRATS WORRIED-

Obama's low ratings have contributed to Democrats' worries that regaining a majority in the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives could be out of reach, and losing control of the Senate is a possibility.

In the 100-seat Senate, where Republicans need to win a net six seats in the November 4 elections to reclaim a majority, Democrats must defend seats in seven states where Republican Mitt Romney beat Obama in 2012. Obama's ratings are particularly low in those states: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia.

Republicans have launched ads in several states reminding voters of the ties between Obama and local Democrats, especially Senate Democrats who supported the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health care law also known as Obamacare. The law aims to help millions of uninsured Americans get health coverage and provides a range of consumer protections. Republicans say it will raise costs and limit healthcare choices.

"It's going to be very difficult for a lot of these Democrats because they will own Obama's agenda, no matter how hard they try not to," said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

"Obama will be a drag on them because he reminds voters of how far the party has shifted to the left."

-HAVE TO BE ON THE OFFENSIVE-

Obama and his aides have largely sidestepped questions about the efforts of fellow Democrats to distance themselves from the president, who will talk with senators at a Democratic retreat next week.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said this week he expected the party's Senate candidates to welcome Obama into their states to campaign. Democratic strategists, meanwhile, are casting the November elections as contests between candidates, not a referendum on the president.

"What those candidates have to decide, especially in those tough states, is how they are going to talk about these big issues like Obamacare," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. "They have to be on the offensive."

Senator Landrieu, who is likely to face a difficult re-election battle against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, recently introduced legislation to allow people to keep their health insurance policies even if those policies did not meet Obamacare's new requirements for coverage. In her first campaign ad, she criticized Obama for breaking his promise that all Americans who liked their health plan could keep it.

"This is a promise that you made. This is a promise that you should keep," Landrieu, who voted for Obamacare, says in the ad.

Pryor, who faces a challenge from Republican Rep. Tom Cotton in Arkansas and is perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election, seemed to echo Republicans' criticism of Obama after the president's speech before Congress on Tuesday.

Pryor highlighted his opposition to Obama's push for gun control and additional farm regulations. Pryor also was critical of delays by Obama's administration in deciding the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would help bring oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Pryor supports the pipeline.

"I've always said that I'll work with the president when I think he's right, but oppose him when I think he's wrong," Pryor said in a statement. "I'll continue to oppose his agenda when it's bad for Arkansas and our country."

West Virginia Democrat Tennant, who has an uphill battle against Republican Shelly Moore Capito to keep a Democrat in Rockefeller's seat, has been criticizing the administration's regulation of the coal industry, saying it was eliminating jobs in her state.

"If the president wants to promote opportunity, he needs to rethink his energy policies. The president is wrong on coal and I will fight him or anyone else who wants to take our coal jobs," Tennant added.

(Editing by David Lindsey and Andre Grenon)

Join the conversation about this story »

 
 
 
  Reported by Business Insider 13 hours ago.

PwC Health Research Institute Confirms: ACA Marketplace Plans Cheaper

January 31, 2014, 4:05 am

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Benefitter welcomes PwC research showing Affordable Care Act plans cheaper than employer-sponsored ones. Benefitter offers free insurance transition analysis to U.S. employers.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) January 31, 2014

U.S. employers took note Thursday as PwC released research showing health plans on state marketplaces cost less than comparable employer-sponsored group plans. According to Benefitter, a leader in employer health insurance transitions, the new research represents a significant opportunity for employers to reduce healthcare costs. The findings draw employers away from traditional, employer-sponsored group plans, and toward the less expensive state marketplaces for employee health coverage.

PwC reported that the median “platinum" and “gold" health plans sold through state marketplaces are from $61 to $758 less expensive than the average employer-sponsored group plan. In the research, PwC reviewed the price of platinum and gold plans because employer-offered health plans typically cover about 85% of health-care costs—exactly halfway between the platinum (90%) and gold (80%) marketplace tiers.

Employers have even more savings to capture, because typical U.S. employees with household incomes between 133% and 400% of the federal poverty level can receive additional government-sponsored savings on marketplace plans. The only caveat is that employers must transition away from group health insurance in order for their employees to be eligible for the premium tax credit savings.

"The PwC research provides additional evidence that the individual market can be an attractive alternative for employers struggling to manage costs with traditional group health insurance.” states Brian Poger, CEO of Benefitter. “There’s a dark secret many industry insiders don’t want public. Savings can approach 50% for the average employer who transitions from traditional group health insurance to the state marketplaces. My co-founders and I are delighted to see the message entering the public spotlight."

To capture cost savings on employee health insurance, employers work with Benefitter to assess the financial opportunity of the transition, develop a detailed plan of action, and execute the change to support employees.

During the month of February, Benefitter will provide employers of all sizes, nationwide, a free detailed analysis of the cost of coverage in the individual market versus the cost of coverage in their existing group plan. Seize the opportunity by visiting http://www.benefitter.com/FreeFebruary.

About Benefitter

Benefitter is reinventing employer-sponsored health insurance by helping employers confidently navigate the evolving healthcare reform legislation, save money, and enhance their employees’ well-being. Benefitter works closely with health insurance agents and brokers to deliver straight-forward web-based software solutions to employers. Based in San Francisco, California, Benefitter is funded in part by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Aberdare Ventures, and Mayo Clinic. http://www.benefitter.com Reported by PRWeb 12 hours ago.

Michael Ortoll of iPEO Solutions Reveals the Eight Key Questions Businesses Must Ask When Choosing a Professional Employer Organization

January 31, 2014, 4:05 am

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More firms are considering Professional Employer Organizations—and for good reason. iPEO Solutions (http://iPEOsolutions.com) says PEOs help companies shift from time-consuming administrative tasks to revenue-producing activities, thus lowering the level of pain endured to achieve success—but key questions must be asked in choosing a PEO.

Orlando, FL (PRWEB) January 31, 2014

Professional Employer Organizations handle issues like workers comp/risk management, employee benefits, HR and payroll, so companies can concentrate on what they do best: create jobs and expand the economy. iPEO Solutions (http://iPEOsolutions.com) makes sure firms know what to ask when considering a PEO.

“Most people invest in the services of a PEO to thwart some level of pain,” Michael Ortoll, founder and CEO of iPEO Solutions, candidly observes. “We can deliver lower Workers Comp costs, including better service aimed at keeping costs lower, as well as provide improved HR compliance and Payroll Administration via higher-end technology and resources.”

That means iPEO can help deliver Fortune 500 type employee benefits at affordable prices and advise on all viable coverage options, Ortoll explained.

“This is what we do and why they hire us,” he said.

In addition, iPEO can help manage implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act and improve cash flow through “pay-as-you-go insurance and taxes,” thus spreading out a company’s cash a bit.

These are just some of the reasons for PEO’s gain in popularity.

According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), “Since 2010, employment growth among PEO clients has been 9 percent higher than other small businesses (based on the Intuit Small Business Employment Index), and 4 percent higher than employment growth in the U.S. economy overall.”

These and other findings about how Professional Employer Organizations help fuel small business growth can be found at http://www.napeo.org/docs/McBassi_keyfindings.pdf.

Why are Professional Employer Organizations statistically more successful in such challenging and uncertain economic times? Because PEOs tackle time-consuming administrative tasks while allowing savvy business people to focus on revenue-producing activities—thus reducing the level of pain endured to achieve a higher degree of success.

“iPEO Solutions tailors PEO solutions producing the greatest value for its clients,” says the company’s founder and CEO. “Outsourcing to a Professional Employer Organization allows companies to leverage a PEO’s world-class technology and personnel.”

Industries in which iPEO Solutions specializes include: Private Equity portfolio firms, Associations, Franchises, Real Estate/Property Management, Healthcare (Senior Housing), Construction, Hospitality and Transportation.

“In addition, we oversee the customized onboarding and enrollment services to make the transition to a PEO a success,” Ortoll said.

Here are the key questions executives should ask themselves when considering a PEO:

ONE: “Will I have to give up control over my company or employees?”

TWO: “What will my employees think of this arrangement?”

THREE: “Who is the employer in this arrangement?”

FOUR: “How often does the PEO process payroll?”

FIVE: “How are a PEO's payroll capabilities superior to utilizing a payroll processing service?”

SIX: “Why would I want to engage a PEO if I already have someone handling payroll and benefits?”

SEVEN: “Will I have to stop and deal with health insurance and benefit questions?”

EIGHT: “What happens if I have an employment issue or concern?”

Answers to these key questions can be found online at http://iPEOsolutions.com/faq.html.

For more information, call 1 (813) 220-3132 or visit the iPEO Solutions website at http://iPEOsolutions.com — also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/iPEOsolutions.

ABOUT: iPEO Solutions is an independent broker and single-source co-employment solution that works with the industry’s best Professional Employer Organizations, ensuring that each meets the following requirements: A-rated insurance carriers, leading technology, experienced and stable management teams, strong financials, a history of success and qualified internal personnel in all service areas. Reported by PRWeb 12 hours ago.

Liberalism’s Legislative Genius Calls It Quits

January 31, 2014, 5:56 am

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AP Images/Jacquelyn Martin

Two things to know about Henry Waxman: First, during his 40 years in Congress, he authored and steered to enactment the legislation that provided health care to millions, that put nutritional labeling on food, that gave rise to generic drugs, that provided medical care to people with AIDS, that greatly reduced smog and acid rain, that strengthened the safety standards for drinking water and food, and that signally reduced the number of Americans who smoke.

Second, in achieving all this, he acquired a sobriquet: “that sonofabitch Waxman.” “I thought Henry’s first name was ‘sonofabitch,” his colleague and friend George Miller once said. “Everybody kept saying, ‘Do you know what that sonofabitch Waxman wants?”

“People think, ‘Of course, we have laws that keep the drinking water safe and the air cleaner,’” Waxman told me yesterday, on the day he announced that he’d retire at the end of the current Congressional session after 40 years in Congress. “But none of them came easy. Some took years of battling. I held the first hearing on HIV/AIDS in 1982, before the disease even had a name. Throughout the ‘80s, we couldn’t even get [then president] Reagan to say the word.” It took Waxman eight years, but in 1990, Congress passed and George H.W. Bush signed the Ryan White Act, which provided care to Americans living with AIDS whose health insurance didn’t cover it, or who had no health insurance at all.

Think that was hard? Perhaps Waxman’s most improbable achievement was to extend Medicaid coverage to millions of poor children during Reagan’s presidency. When he began that fight, only children whose parents were on welfare were eligible for Medicaid. Waxman argued that children of parents with jobs that didn’t come with health insurance and paid too little for them to buy it should be eligible, too. He persuaded just enough Republicans to go along with his stratagem of inserting that expansion into Congress’ annual omnibus appropriations bill, which Reagan then signed into law.

None of this, as Waxman said, came easy. He was a ferocious negotiator in House-Senate conference committees—and throughout the ‘80s, while the House was controlled by Democrats, the Senate was controlled by Republicans. GOP Senator Alan Simpson once staggered out of an all-night conference and remarked, “Henry Waxman is tougher than a boiled owl.” Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole once adjured his colleagues not to add amendments to a particular bill for fear that it would then have to be referred to conference and subjected to Waxman’s bargaining prowess.

Hence, “that sonofabitch Waxman.” More precisely, the people’s sonofabitch.

Waxman certainly doesn’t come off as an SOB—to the contrary, he’s the most unprepossessing and low-key elected official I have ever known. But Waxman does possess two attributes frequently associated with one of his mentors, San Francisco Congressman Phil Burton, the leading liberal in the House in the ‘60s and ‘70s: a “rage for justice” (Burton’s description of what he looked for in a colleague) and supreme strategic ability to get things done.

Getting things done the Waxman way didn’t involve the bonhomie that politicians characteristically employ. He didn’t persuade his fellow congressmen by schmoozing. “Henry never entertains his colleagues,” his longtime aide Howard Ellison told me when I wrote a profile of Waxman for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine in 1995. “He does no sports. His staff would say, ‘You should play golf with John Dingell [then chair of Waxman’s committee].’ Fat chance.”

Rather, as I wrote at the time, Waxman “persuades by argument, not by humor or force of personality. Where Ralph Nader unleashes a torrent of indignation, Barney Frank stings with wit and Tom Hayden still taps into a vein of adolescent anger, Waxman simply makes his case point by point. He is not liberalism’s man for all seasons. He is only its legislative genius.”

You can’t be a legislative genius, however, without the power to shape legislation, and Waxman also had a genius for power. His roots were in the California left of the early ‘60s—as a UCLA law student, he headed the state’s Young Democrats, which became the first Democratic organization in the nation to go on record opposing U.S. intervention in Vietnam. With his fellow law student and YD Howard Berman, Waxman set his sights on elected office. In 1968, he waged an insurgent campaign against a veteran Democratic state assembly member in West Los Angeles. Berman’s younger brother Michael, still a UC Berkeley undergrad, went through the list of every registered Democrat in the district, and sent out targeted mail to every member of a particular ethnic group that he could identify—the first use of targeted mail in a political campaign that I know of. Waxman won the seat, and with the Bermans (Howard followed Waxman to the Assembly and then Congress; Michael became a dazzling political consultant, to whom California Democrats entrusted the state’s decennial redistricting in the days before computers could do it), developed a powerful political operation. Raising money largely from the affluent and disproportionately Jewish Democrats clustered in L.A.’s Westside, they funded and frequently managed not only their own races but also those of their political allies and protégés.

In the 1978 congressional elections, after just four years in Congress, Waxman became the leading donor to his fellow House Democrats, which enabled him to win enough votes in the House caucus to take the place of the sitting chairman of the health and environment subcommittee on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It was from that perch that Waxman was able to expand Medicaid and write and pass landmark clean air and safe food legislation.  

Waxman reworked that maneuver in 2009, when he persuaded caucus members to have him replace the venerable John Dingell as chairman of Energy and Commerce. In that post, Waxman—by far the leading expert in the House on health insurance—played a key role drafting the Affordable Care Act (though his own preference, had it been possible, would have been to adopt Canadian-style universal health coverage).

Waxman’s tenacity was legendary. He held up the Clean Air Act for nearly a decade in the ‘80s until its provisions on emission controls and acid rain were greatly strengthened. To do this, he had to oppose Dingell, his chairman, whose district included the headquarters of the Big Three automakers, and who kept pushing legislation that would have allowed them to keep turning out cars with barely reduced emissions. Once, when Dingell seemed on the verge of getting his bill out of committee, Waxman introduced 600 amendments, which he wheeled into the hearing room in shopping carts. Dingell’s bill never made it out of the room.

Waxman was also a tough congressional investigator. He presided over two particularly memorable sets of hearings. At the first, in 1994, he summoned the heads of the seven big tobacco companies and confronted them with evidence that they had suppressed the information on the addictive powers of nicotine. Big Tobacco in the United States never really recovered. In the second set of hearings, he presided over the revelations about steroid use in baseball. It was Waxman’s committee to which Roger Clemons swore he’d never used the drugs. Pro baseball didn’t recover until it took far stronger action to ban steroids.

In announcing his retirement, Waxman insisted he hadn’t given up hope that the Democrats could retake the House in this November’s elections. He will soon turn 75, and says, quite reasonably, that he would like to do some other things while he still can. But his retirement, coming on the heels of his colleague George Miller’s two weeks ago, means that two Democrats who’d retake the chairmanships of two leading House committees if the Democrats do recapture Congress are leaving. If Republicans retain control—the more likely possibility—there won’t be a great deal a House Democrat can do, even if, like Waxman, they’re masters of the legislative process.

Miller and Waxman are the last two members of the Watergate Class of 1974—the more than 50 predominantly young Democrats elected to the House that year in the wake of the Watergate scandal—still serving in that chamber. That class soon differentiated itself from its elders by its emphasis on issues that arose from the Sixties left—ending our involvement in Vietnam, focusing more on the environment and equal rights for women. But the California members of that class—in particular, Waxman and Miller (whose district is in East Bay suburbs of San Francisco)—added to this mix Burton’s “rage for justice,” a zeal for helping the poor and workers. As Ted Kennedy was to the Senate in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and aughts, they were to the House.

No one knew better than Waxman how to pass legislation that helped people eat, drink and breathe more safely and enabled them to get medical care when they took sick. That he had to become “that sonofabitch Waxman” to get this done ultimately tells us more about our nation, and how hard it is to improve it, than it does about Waxman himself.   Reported by The American Prospect 11 hours ago.

Millions Are Now Realizing They're Too Poor For Obamacare

January 31, 2014, 6:28 am

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Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling and staunch Republican resistance, Marc Alphonse, an unemployed 40-year-old Marine veteran who is essentially homeless, cannot get health insurance under Obamacare.

Three years ago, Alphonse learned he has a kidney disorder that will deteriorate into kidney failure, and possibly prove fatal, if left untreated. As it stands now, he suffers from bouts of nausea caused by his dysfunctional kidneys, and he's dogged by an old knee injury that limits his job prospects. He gets by on $400 a month in unemployment benefits, and his family can no longer afford housing in their home city of Miami. Alphonse's 28-year-old wife, Danielle, and three young children are staying with relatives while Alphonse couch surfs.

"I live from family to family until I'm able to get myself situated," he told The Huffington Post.

Alphonse is one of nearly 5 million uninsured Americans caught in a cruel gap that renders some Americans "too poor for Obamacare."

*Broken Promise*

Obamacare was supposed to make health coverage affordable, or even free, for low-income Americans. The law's official name is the Affordable Care Act. However, the Supreme Court tossed a huge obstacle in the path of that goal in 2012, ruling that the states could opt out of one of Obamacare's crucial provisions: The expansion of Medicaid coverage to anyone making less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,300 a year for a single person. Since the court's ruling, 24 states, including Florida, chose not to expand the program.

Under the pre-Obamacare rules, eligibility for the program typically was limited to low-income children, pregnant women, parents caring for children at home, and adults with disabilities. Without the law's expansion, an adult without a disability who isn't living with their children -- like Alphonse -- doesn't qualify for Medicaid, no matter how poor he or she is.

For those who don't qualify for Medicaid coverage, Obamacare offers tax credits for private health plans sold through the law's health insurance exchange marketplaces. But those subsidies are available only to those making between the poverty level, or about $11,500 for an individual, and four times that amount. In states not expanding Medicaid, people who earn less than poverty wages get nothing.

In Alphonse's case, his family is trying to survive on his unemployment insurance. It amounts to $4,800 a year -- far below the poverty level, which is $27,570 for a family of five. Even the unemployment benefits will run out in March.

*'People Break Down In Tears'*

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) launched his political career in 2009 as a health care reform antagonist. Originally, he opposed the Medicaid expansion, but he then changed his mind. Last year, Scott and the majority-Republican state Senate backed a plan to accept federal dollars to expand the program. The GOP-led state House of Representatives refused to go along.

Now, 764,000 low-income adults in Florida will remain without insurance because of the coverage gap, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And they're beginning to understand the tragic consequences of that public battle. At Miami's Borinquen Medical Centers for low-income and uninsured patients, Jason Connor sees hopes crushed as people who thought Obamacare could help them at long last learn otherwise.

"We've had people break down in tears at our desk," said Connor, who is under contract with the community health centers to do Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment activities through his company, Choice Returns.

Seventy-eight percent of the 50,000 patients that Borinquen Medical Centers treat every year are uninsured, Connor said. About 20 percent of those who visit their facilities looking to apply for benefits fall into the coverage gap, he added.

"Folks are frustrated and they're angry, and they'll curse at you even though you have nothing to do with it," he said.

*GOP Revolts*

When the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion, Florida, Texas and nearly the entire South turned away billions in federal dollars offered for broadening the program, citing budgetary concerns and resistance to Obamacare itself. The federal government will pay the full cost of the Medicaid expansion through 2016, after which its share will be no less than 90 percent.

These decisions by governors and legislators essentially consigned a huge swath of the very poor to a life of extreme insecurity.

"It's very frustrating," said Alphonse, who last worked as a security guard until being laid off 10 months ago. "It's kind of odd where an individual that has an opportunity to help millions of people in their own state, and they just totally refuse to do it."

Florida's legislature is poised to take up the Medicaid expansion again during this year's session, but the political dynamics don't appear to have changed much since last year. Meanwhile, one-quarter of Florida's population (under the age of 65) is without health insurance -- the second-highest of all the states behind Texas. In Miami-Dade County, where Alphonse lives, the uninsured rate was an astonishing 34 percent in 2011, the most recent year county-level data were available.*Where Are The Uninsured?*This map shows the percent of uninsured in each U.S. county in 2011. The data includes all incomes, races, and both sexes for people under age 65. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

*'I Just Try To Live Every Day'*

Unable to afford medical care or insurance, Alphonse hasn't followed up on the warning he received about his kidneys from a doctor treating a knee injury he suffered in 2011 while working as a security guard. Alphonse was told he needed to see a kidney specialist and start getting treatments, or he'd risk the condition worsening to the point he'd need dialysis or a transplant.

"It's extremely scary, but I try not to think about it. I just try to live every day because it's what you have to do to survive," Alphonse said.

A few years ago, Alphonse broke his hand and faced a $1,000 emergency room bill that destroyed his credit. He's afraid to rack up medical bills now. Even copayments as low as $20 at community health centers, which charge low-income patients on a sliding scale, are unaffordable, he said. He's applying for health benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he may not meet the program's eligibility rules.

While hospitals can't turn away patients in need of emergency treatments, they aren't required to provide the kind of comprehensive care needed for someone with a serious medical condition.

"If you're really sick, you can fall through the cracks of the safety net system," said Lise Federman, a health policy specialist at Florida Legal Services in Miami. "People who have chronic conditions who need specialist services do suffer." (Florida Legal Services referred HuffPost to Alphonse.)

*Taxpayers Still Foot The Bill*

Keeping people like Alphonse off the Medicaid rolls doesn't shield American or Floridian taxpayers from the cost of whatever treatments he eventually may receive, like at a hospital emergency room or a government-funded community health center. Unpaid medical bills totaled $57.4 billion in 2008 -- and taxpayers picked up about three-quarters of the tab, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs. Expanding health coverage via Obamacare was supposed to reduce that burden, but the patchwork Medicaid expansion limits the law's reach.

And if Alphonse's condition deteriorates into what's known as end-stage renal disease, or permanent kidney failure, he automatically would qualify for Medicare coverage paid for by the federal government. Although Medicare mainly is for people over 65 or those with disabilities, people who need dialysis or a kidney transplant are eligible under a special rule enacted in 1972.

For those too poor for Obamacare in Miami, watching neighbors who make more money receive subsidized health insurance makes the experience even more painful, said Mayte Canino, a field and volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast. Uninsured people are skeptical of Obamacare and unaware of many provisions, and only 49 percent know that states have the option to expand Medicaid, according to a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation this month.

"That even affects them more, when they see that other people are getting help and they're not," said Canino, who helps people sign up for insurance. "Many of them are very unhappy. They blame the law, some of them, for it. They just walk away from it, and they think that's it. They're defeated."

*HuffPost Readers*: Did you try to sign up for health insurance coverage, but were told that you're not eligible for Medicaid because your state didn't adopt the program expansion, and you make too little to qualify for help paying for private insurance? We want to hear from you. If you're willing to discuss your health care with a reporter, email us here, and tell us if you're facing any medical issues, what your current coverage situation is, and what Medicaid coverage would have meant for you. Please let us know the following information: your name, your age, your city, and whether we have permission to quote you by name. Please enclose a photo if you're willing to have one published. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.

Fitch Publishes Health Insurers' Sector Credit Factor Summaries Special Report

January 31, 2014, 6:18 am

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CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Link to Fitch Ratings' Report: Health Insurer Sector Credit Factor Summaries http://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=732240 Fitch Ratings has published a special report illustrating how it applies its Insurance Rating Methodology and assesses key qualitative and quantitative factors in its ratings process for health insurance and managed care companies. The report includes sector credit factor diagrams for 13 health insurers. These diagra Reported by Business Wire 10 hours ago.

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Sebelius to tout community health insurance effort

January 31, 2014, 7:08 am

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U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is visiting Dallas to promote community-based efforts to sign Texans up for health insurance. Reported by ajc.com 9 hours ago.

Hope: Sgt. Cory Remsburg and Ethical Stem Cells

January 31, 2014, 8:27 am

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Let’s put two recent news items together and see if we can envision a way to develop and deliver medical miracles. 

First, let’s start with the inspiring saga of Sgt. Cory Remsburg and his determination to overcome grievous war injuries. Anyone who saw or read about President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night knows about Remsburg. Nearly an hour into his speech, after lots of box-checking, laundry-listing, and going-through-the-motions-ing, Obama highlighted the story of the heroic Army Ranger: “On his tenth deployment, Cory was nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb in Afghanistan. His comrades found him in a canal, face down, underwater, shrapnel in his brain.”

Thanks to combined action—comrades, doctors, and therapists from Central Asia to South Florida—Remsburg is alive today. If he’s not robust, he’s at least getting better. Perhaps more can be done to aid in his full recovery; we’ll get to that in a moment.

So that part of Obama’s speech was great—because it was built on powerful patriotic source material; Obama seemed sincere in his respect and admiration for Remsburg. (Yet of course, that didn’t stop liberal Obama sycophants in the MSM from equating the courage and grit of Remsburg to the supposed equivalent virtues of Obama; we might note that for all of Obama’s high self-regard, the MSM seem to regard him even more highly.)

Remsburg’s patriotism and determination, of course, stand far above a fawning media. But we might also take note of something else that’s wonderful: the effectiveness of the medical system that kept him alive when he was hit and that has nursed him back to health ever since, as detailed back in 2010 by USA Today. As we can see, much of the improvement has been brought about by the imperative to help the wounded warriors streaming back to the US from war zones: 



“So much has changed since 2006,” says physician Shane Mcnamee, VA director of the polytrauma center in Richmond. “The level of knowledge and approach that you need (to help brain-damaged patients awaken) is not something that you can just unpack out of box.”

They say two key factors helped. Because of the funding emphasis Congress has placed on treating traumatic brain injury during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA has more money to spend.

The VA spent $34 million in emerging-consciousness treatment for 104 patients since January 2007, according to department statistics. Total staffing at the four polytrauma centers has expanded from 78 specialists such as doctors and therapists in 2004 to 255 today. And in-patients are allowed more time to wake up.



The VA has its problems, to be sure—bad ones. Yet in the case of Remsburg and others suffering from grievous kinetic injuries, the VA seems to have done its job, and done it well. And why is that? Why is it effective in these specific cases, if not always for the system as a whole?

The answer might be that in the case of Remsburg and other wounded warriors, their situations garner much media attention, and a very specific goal is set. As with so many matters of motivation and management, it makes big difference when someone puts true “command focus” on a problem, as opposed to simply leaving it to “business as usual.”

And in this case, Remsburg is the beneficiary, and that’s good. Yet still, we might ask: Could the model be extended? Could it be extended not only to all wounded warriors, but also to the rest of us?

After all, it was military urgency that brought about enormous medical improvements in the past. Plastic surgery was first attempted on a survivor of World War One who had lost much of his face. Antibiotics were a result of World War Two. And all American wars have caused an acceleration in the quality of trauma treatment.

So now to the second news item, this one from BBC.com: “Stem cell ‘major discovery’ claimed.” As the article relates, scientists at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Japan can now produce stem cells quickly by dipping blood cells into acid; the acid shocks the cells into becoming “pluripotent”—that is, they can be induced into becoming any type of tissue.

If this finding proves out, then not only has the ethical debate over embryonic stem cells been transcended, but we are also about to enter into a world in which it’s relatively easy to produce new organs of all kinds. And that’s good news for all of us.

Yet surprisingly, officials in Washington, D.C. has not been much interested in medical-scientific breakthroughs. For reasons the Beltway will have to explain, the healthcare debate in D.C. has revolved around health insurance, as opposed to health itself. That is, politicos argue over Obamacare, pro and con, ignoring the possibility of breakout scientific transformation. 

It’s fine to argue about health insurance, including mandates and all the rest, but D.C. should also be alert to the opportunities actually to cure disease—because cures could make healthcare really cheap. Since the advent of the polio vaccine back in the 50s, for example, we no longer spend much of anything on polio. It was science, not insurance, that made the difference.

Indeed, a moment’s reflection should tell us that while health insurance is important, health is more important. Remsburg had health insurance, through DOD and then VA, but if trauma science hadn’t advanced over the years, he would have either been dead on the scene in Afghanistan or in a coma for the rest of his life here in the US. 

So now the questions: Can we build on the successes of Remsburg’s care to create new kinds of stem-cell-generated tissue and organs? And can we use the same sort of “command focus” to advance medical breakthroughs that help not only wounded warriors, but all of us?

If those aren’t questions that the elite political class seems interested in answering, perhaps it’s time to put some command focus on them. 

 
 
 
  Reported by Breitbart 8 hours ago.

A Physician's Response to the State of the Union Address

January 31, 2014, 9:02 am

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The foundation of excellent medical care is the power to choose your doctor and, in partnership with that doctor, decide your course of treatment. With the Affordable Care Act, the government has inserted itself to become the final arbiter of your care. It will ultimately decide who becomes the health winners and losers. 

Proponents of Obamacare want people to believe that the system is so broken that it can only be fixed through fundamental change. The disastrous rollout has certainly fed the push for a single-payer system, but an argument can be made that the government bailout written into the bill has actually already ushered in single-payer--since whoever controls the money also controls the access and makes the rules.

As the Obamacare train wreck continues to roll out, it will become painfully obvious to patients that although they have health insurance with no pre-existing conditions restrictions, free birth control, and preventative care, for several reasons they still may not be able to afford access to medical care when they need it: the out-of-pocket costs from their co-insurance and deductibles are so high; they will find that because they qualified for a subsidy, they will have that money clawed back the following year if their financial situation improves; and if they took the Medicaid option, they will be unable to leave any of their wealth to loved ones because the government will take it to recoup payments made for their health care. 

Physicians will ultimately discover that they have no control of their talents. They will be considered providers of services that are rights that must be given--for whatever value the government deems fair. They will become interchangeable with the healthcare team, and with that innovation, individualized health care and the art of medicine will be gone forever. 

But the antidote to what is ailing the American healthcare system is NOT more government intervention; it is more choice via free market medicine.

 
 
 
  Reported by Breitbart 7 hours ago.

‘Bette In Spokane,' Cited In McMorris Rodgers' Speech, Declined Health Insurance Options

January 31, 2014, 11:53 am

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The woman described only as “Bette in Spokane” during a nationally televised address by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Wednesday she had no idea her frustrations over increasing insurance premiums would become part of the Republican attack on health care reform. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

Deadline to Apply for March 1st Healthcare Coverage with Don Allred Insurance

January 31, 2014, 3:38 pm

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The application deadline for securing healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act with an effective start date of March 1, 2014, is quickly approaching. Clients have until February 15th, 2014, to meet with an Allred Insurance Agent.In order to obtain healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act with an effective start date of March 1st, 2014, clients have until February 15th, 2014, to meet with an Allred Insurance agent to discuss enrollment options, select a health plan, and submit an application to the official ACA website at healthcare.gov.

Highly trained agents are prepared to handle every facet of the application process on behalf of clients, according to Don Allred Insurance spokesman Scott Allred. "Incomplete, inaccurate, or otherwise mishandled applications are a leading cause of non-coverage," Allred says. "That's why our agents do all the work for our clients. We are familiar with the ins and outs of the entire procedure and know exactly what information is required for each form. Our goal is to get people covered before the deadline with the least possible hassle or inconvenience."

It is recommended that clients provide the following documents at the time of their consultation in order to expedite the application process:

Photo identification, social security numbers and dates of birth for all immediate family members, current street address, valid email address, and projected income for 2014. Acceptable forms of proof include government-issued IDs (driver's license, state ID card, or passport), pay stubs, social security vouchers, or 2012 tax returns. Applicants that do not have an email address may elect to have one created for them.

In addition to filing an application, clients must also remit payment for the first month's premium to activate their new plan. Payments may be made at the Don Allred Insurance office in Burlington, NC, or mailed to Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.

For further details about applying for health insurance coverage through Don Allred Insurance or to set up an appointment with a knowledgeable agent, please visit www.nchealthagency.com today.

Company Contact Information
Don Allred and Associates Insurance
Scott Allred
3001 S Church St
27215
1-800-280-2230

News and Press Release Distribution From I-Newswire.com Reported by i-Newswire.com 49 minutes ago.