'Pushing the boundaries of bad taste and political incorrectness.' they even have a Saturday boobage feature.
too bad you and McMark can't comment on the content telling that all you can do is attack a source you've never even heard of...
Interesting given that you posted the image in order to avoid commenting on McMark's content. Unintentional irony is HILARIOUS!!!
So texxx you're saying you are a frequent visitor of grouchyoldcripple.com? I'm surprised: one would think with your acumen to political correctness you would shun such a poorly named website.
obamacare-is-accomplishing-its mission http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-...s-accomplishing-this-one-thing-165445642.html It it Working? After six months of partisan drama over the Affordable Care Act, there’s finally enough reliable information to assess whether the law is doing what it was supposed to do. The qualified answer seems to be yes. There have been too many controversies over the ACA to count, and it will be a long time before it becomes clear whether Obamacare, as it’s known, is smart, cost-effective policy. But the law is fulfilling its main purpose: To provide health care for more people and reduce the portion of Americans without health insurance. “What’s pretty amazing is the number of people who seem to have gotten coverage, even with all the problems,” says analyst Gary Claxton of the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Most of the attention has been focused on the politically charged question of whether enrollment through one of the exchanges created by the law would hit thresholds predicted before the ACA went into effect. So it was a victory of sorts for President Obama when he was able to announce recently that 8 million people have enrolled in Obamacare, considerably more than earlier predictions of 6 million to 7 million. What has gotten less attention, but is equally important, is a surge in the number of people who have gotten insurance through a source other than Obamacare so far in 2014. The upshot is that the number of uninsured Americans--which totaled around 47 million in 2013--is likely to drop sharply this year. The data is still incomplete, but there are three credible sources that all show the same trend, more or less: Gallup. The polling firm found that the percentage of adults lacking health insurance—the uninsured rate— fell from 18% right before Obamacare went into effect last year to 15.6% so far this year. Rand. The nonprofit research group estimates there was a net gain of 9.3 million people having health insurance from September 2013 to mid-March 2014. The Urban Institute. This think tank has conducted polls showing the number of nonelderly adults lacking health insurance shrank by 5.4 million from September 2013 to mid March 2014. All of this data was gathered before the surge of Obamacare enrollment that occurred right before the April 1 deadline. So the number of people with insurance is probably higher than these estimates suggest, and the uninsured rate lower. Subsidized insurance offered through the online exchanges explains only part of the increase. Medicaid expansion also has something to do with it. In 25 states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA, as they were allowed but not required to do, the uninsured rate is 5.7 percentage points lower on average than in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. So Medicaid expansion also accounts for some of the net gain in the number of people with coverage. There also seems to have been an increase in the number of people getting coverage on their own, without any government subsidies, in the private sector. That suggests the individual mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance probably compelled at least a couple million previously uninsured people to pay for their own health insurance, to avoid paying a penalty fee. Some of those people undoubtedly purchased an individual policy in the so-called non-group market, because they couldn’t get coverage through an employer. But others who had passed up employer-provided coverage before—most likely because they didn’t want to pay their share of the premium--probably decided to take the plunge and get covered through their company. “Some people who are uninsured can get coverage through an employer,” says Genevieve Kenney of the Urban Institute. “The individual mandate may have led to an uptick in takeup rates among workers or their spouses.” It also helps that overall employment has ticked up by about 1.1 million since last fall. Some of those people got jobs that include health insurance, pushing down the uninsured rate even more. It will still take a long time for the dust to settle and the full effects of Obamacare to come into focus. Some people still aren’t aware the ACA requires them to have coverage. Others know what’s required but haven’t purchased insurance anyway, because it’s too expensive. And it’s still not clear if Obamacare will do anything to reduce medical costs and make healthcare itself more affordable. Some analysts think the opposite could happen, with more people demanding healthcare pushing doctors’ fees and other costs up, not down. Nonetheless, the implementation of the ACA will trigger a sharp reversal in the 25-year trend of rising uninsured rates and more people going without healthcare coverage. Whether that’s happening in the right way, for the right reasons, will be hotly debated for years. But whether it’s happening won’t be
URL: http://grouchyoldcripple.com/ URL Categories: Politics/Opinion, Incidental Nudity, Blogs/Wiki great source you've enlightened all of us towards. glad to know you are aligned with it. the content is based on lies.
so you can't even attack the content. All you can do is attack the source. That tells me you're unable to refute the content.
What is really telling (and embarrassing) is that you seem to rely on websites like grouchyoldcripple.com for your information. That explains a lot...
You posted that pic to avoid commenting on the content and then call someone else out for not commenting on the content?
Poor Texas Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a valuable read on new data showing that the Medicaid expansion really should be a no-brainer. CBO Finds Health Reform's Medicaid Expansion Is an Even Better Deal for States Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates released last week show that health reform’s Medicaid expansion, which many opponents wrongly claim will cripple state budgets, is an even better deal for states than previously thought. CBO has sharply lowered its estimates of the costs to states of adopting the Medicaid expansion. - CBO now estimates that the federal government will, on average, pick up more than 95 percent of the total cost of the Medicaid expansion and other health reform-related costs in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the next ten years (2015-2024). - States will spend only 1.6 percent more on Medicaid and CHIP due to health reform than they would have spent without health reform (see Figure 1). That’s about one-third less than CBO projected in February.[2] And the 1.6 percent figure is before counting the state savings that the Medicaid expansion will produce in state expenditures for services such as mental health and substance abuse treatment provided to the uninsured.
So what your saying is, Texas taxes are paying for healthcare here instead of federal taxes. I pay both so I guess I'm covered. I don't think that Texas has quite the same debt problem that the federal government has, maybe Texas can actually afford it.
It's not your tax dollars that will cover the uninsured people left out of Medicaid expansion - it's generally going to be lumped into the rates that doctors and hospitals charge to the insured patients. In other words, insurance costs are higher by not expanding Medicaid. It's one of the reasons that the states that have embraced Obamacare have seen much better results than those that have fought it.
Texas, which has the highest uninsured population in the nation, could cover over a million Texans with medicaid expansion.
TBT: Oregon may be the White House’s favorite health exchange and today: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>It's official: Oregon dropping its Obamacare exchange -- <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FF&src=hash">#FF</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ChelseaKATU">@ChelseaKATU</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23liveonk2&src=hash">#liveonk2</a></p>— David Freddoso (@freddoso) <a href="https://twitter.com/freddoso/statuses/459386790164451328">April 24, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
All about how Republicans spread misinformation and ignorance in the name of politics to the detriment of Americans in need. In Poorest States, Political Stigma Is Depressing Participation in Health Law http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/u...ressing-participation-in-health-law.html?_r=0 HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Inside the sleek hillside headquarters of Valley Health Systems, built with a grant from the health care law, two employees played an advertisement they had helped produce to promote the law’s insurance coverage for young, working-class West Virginians. The ads ran just over 100 times during the recent six-month enrollment period. But three conservative groups ran 12 times as many, to oppose the law and the local Democratic congressman who voted for it. This is a disparity with consequences. Health professionals, state officials, social workers, insurance agents and others trying to make the law work for uninsured Americans say the partisan divisions and attack ads have depressed participation in some places. They say the law has been stigmatized for many who could benefit from it, especially in conservative states like West Virginia that have the poorest, most medically underserved populations but where President Obama and his signature initiative are hugely unpopular. Steven L. Shattls, chief executive of Valley Health, a network of 28 health centers, said his organization would like to rerun its ad before November, when enrollment resumes. But he also conceded, “We have limited resources.” Republican candidates and the so-called super PACs supporting them have made assailing the Affordable Care Act their No. 1 issue for the midterm elections, and they are focusing their attacks in states with the most competitive Senate and House campaigns. In few places is that as evident as here in southern West Virginia, where Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a 19-term Democrat, is threatened as never before. “We don’t know what’s going to happen once they pull out all the stops to trash Obamacare,” Mr. Shattls said. “We’re nonpartisan here. We’re just doing what we’re funded to do, and that is to provide access” to health care. In the past week, 22 new television ads against the health care law and for Republican federal candidates ran in 14 states. Since last spring, 76 percent of the more than 38,000 Republican-sponsored television ads nationally, and 79 percent in West Virginia, have attacked the law, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks political advertising. “Unless public opinion breaks decidedly in favor of the law or some other unexpected but powerful issue arises, Obamacare will remain the top issue in Republican House and Senate TV advertising for the duration of the cycle,” said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president at Kantar Media. While the evidence that such ads, and the partisan climate generally, have hindered sign-ups consists mainly of anecdotes, nearly everyone interviewed in West Virginia volunteered some. “The controversy about Obamacare does seem to have interfered with people’s ability to sort out the value of the marketplace for getting health insurance for themselves,” said Dr. James B. Becker, associate professor of the Marshall University School of Medicine and medical director of the state’s Medicaid program. Other problems stymied the introduction of the law, notably the initially dysfunctional federal website. But the political polarization “complicates our efforts to enroll people and to educate people about the Affordable Care Act, there’s no question,” said Perry Bryant, head of the advocacy group West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, based in Charleston, the capital. “Literally, people thought there would be chips embedded in their bodies if they signed up for Obamacare,” Mr. Bryant said. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story Advertisement Far to the east, at a branch of the Shenandoah Valley Medical System in Martinsburg, Sara R. Koontz, a social worker, said she had heard people express fears about chip implants as well as “death panels” as she sought to enroll uninsured residents. Some told her that they would rather pay a penalty than sign up for insurance, she said, and even people who did enroll paused in their excitement to ask, “Wait — this isn’t that Obamacare, is it?” Stoking such sentiments in order to rouse conservatives to vote is central to Republicans’ hopes of not only keeping their House majority but perhaps recapturing the Senate. They are counting on West Virginia to help. In the race to replace longtime Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat and advocate of the health care law who is retiring, Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, is favored over the Democrat, Natalie E. Tennant, West Virginia’s secretary of state. On her website, Ms. Capito solicits voters’ stories about the “disastrous” law, while Ms. Tennant, echoing the mixed messages of many Democrats, acknowledges the law’s problems but praises its benefits for women and children. The more closely watched contest is the House race here in the state’s southernmost, poorest district. Mr. Rahall is under attack both from Evan Jenkins, a state senator, and from the pro-Republican groups advertising on Mr. Jenkins’s behalf. Until recently, Mr. Jenkins was a Democrat, a member of Valley Health’s board and executive director of the West Virginia State Medical Association, which has supported the Affordable Care Act. Now, as a Republican, he backs its repeal. “Evan knows Obamacare is a mess,” said an ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which blamed the law for lost jobs, dropped coverage and high premiums. An ad from the group Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative billionaires David H. and Charles G. Koch, denounced Mr. Rahall for supporting the law, saying it was “going to hurt a lot of people.” Many professionals here dispute such claims. “It’s working, and you can show it’s working,” Dr. Becker said. He and other health care advocates call West Virginia a national success story in terms of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to more of the working poor. While 24 states have refused to expand Medicaid to those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $23,850 for a family of four, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, decided over Republican objections that the state — with a population older and sicker than the national average — would do so. Nationwide, more people have signed up for private plans than for Medicaid, but the results are the opposite in West Virginia, where about 15 percent of residents — 270,000 of 1.8 million — lacked insurance when the law took effect. Initial sign-ups for Medicaid, about 115,000 since Oct. 1, are nearly double what actuaries projected, and roughly five times the number of people believed to have bought private plans from the one insurer in West Virginia’s marketplace, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield. An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people enrolled in private coverage, fewer than predicted. State, industry and consumer representatives generally agree on why West Virginia was so successful with Medicaid yet fell short in the private marketplace. Much of it has to do with the process of reaching out to the uninsured. For Medicaid, state agencies coordinated to write to 114,000 people already receiving nutrition assistance, to seek their authorization for the state to determine whether they qualified for the expanded health benefits. The state followed up with another letter and phone calls. No such outreach was possible to pitch private insurance to people not on public-benefit rolls, and the governor — concerned, insiders say, about being too closely identified with the health care law — turned down federal aid for a marketing campaign. Many of the uninsured were also deterred from participating by cultural factors: unfamiliarity with insurance, computer illiteracy, Appalachian isolation and, most of all, cost. But also at play was hostility to Mr. Obama. “The president is definitely unpopular here,” said Jeremiah Samples, assistant to the secretary at the State Department of Health and Human Resources. “I would not discount it as a factor; I have heard folks discuss it.” He added, “There is perhaps a lot attributed to the A.C.A. that is not actuarially accurate.” “I worry,” Mr. Samples said, “about people not understanding what their options are.”
Do you even know what happened here? It's a complete non-issue. Oracle screwed taxpayers out of $250 mil. by not delivering a working site. OR decided not to waste more $ and is just pointing residents to the healthcare.gov site. he fact that they registered as many people as they did by phone and through the mail since their site never worked is pretty incredible.
