Larry

OK, so it wasn't somebody doing a remake of "I Love Lucy".

Just glanced through a USA Today. They have a promo for Denzel Washington staring as Robert McCall in The Equalizer. I'm not really sure I have high hopes for the thing. Among other things, in the interview, Denzel kept stressing that he didn;t watch the series, and he just liked the script. But who knows. It seems to be a formula that works. The retired Bad Guy with a conscience, who decided to Do Good Deeds. I mean, that's what Burn Notice was. (At least the ones I watched.) OTOH, I didn't like Burn Notice as much as Equalizer. Don't know why. I think that one of the things that really made Equalizer, the series, was Robert Lansing's character, Control. The guy was a ****. But he was McCall's friend. Kinda. Whenever I would watch the show, I would watch the credits at the beginning, and if the credits said that Robert Lansing was gonna be in this episode, then I perked up.

But I don't know what happens, when a state turns down that money. The impression I get is that the WH's fallback position is to offer the affected people subsidized access to the exchanges, instead. I don't know how that affects the total expenditures. Does the government spend less money, total? The same?

Only way I know of, to solve the fact that there are thousands of different payers, and every one of them has different rules, is to reduce the number of payers. Well, maybe to mandate that all of the thousands of payers must follow a single set of mandated rules. but that effectively makes them a single payer.

i think you'll find a whole lot of support for single payer in this thread. Although, granted, I strongly suspect that some of our posters are merely complaining about the lack of single payer, because Obamacare doesn't have it. If it did have it, then they'd hate that, too. I've said for some time that I think that by far the solution that would be the best for the country, would me a "Medicare for everybody" plan, that covered just the basics of health care, often with no deductible at all, for everybody in the country. (And then allow private insurers to compete to sell "Medicare supplement" coverage, that goes further.) Every provider will accept it. (If they don't, then they will have zero customers.) Providers will only have one set of rules. Imagine the savings in compliance costs, when providers only have one set of billing procedures for the most services. Yes, I know that the federal government is not known as a paragon of paperwork efficiency. but even the most bloated of federal bureaucracies has got to be better than dealing with hundreds of different bureaucracies. But, I see a huge drawback, if such a plan becomes applied to the real world. I said "a plan that covers the basics". Well, every practitioner or vendor who sells a medical service will want this program to cover (whatever they're selling), too. If the plan doesn't cover MRIs, then every hospital with an MRI machine will start lobbying for coverage. The voters will want it covered. The insurance companies will want it covered. (Because then they don't have to.) Every segment of the health care landscape, will be lobbying Congress to cover everything. Odds of Congress saying "no", when every special interest in the world (including the voters) are all pulling in the same direction? I don't think it's possible, in the real world, for a "Medicare for all" system to just cover the basics. (But, it sure is a great vision.)

Somehow I don;t think that the public attitude towards Obamacare is going to be "my life depends on it". At least not any time soon, for very many people. And the Republicans have a plan. They've been proposing it for years. 1) Repeal your state's insurance regulations. (By "allowing insurance to be sold across state lines", without requiring them to comply with the laws in the customer's state.) 2) Make it so that, if your insurance company breaks one of the few remaining regulations, and you successfully prove it, the insurance company is immune from punishment. 3) Get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, and replace then with what's left of private insurance.

There are whole bunches of topics in the articles posted. Many of them contradictory. (In fact, they actually point this out.) Do I get the impression that there's a shift going on, whereby health care is being "rationed" (I put that in quotes because the term is accurate, but not in the evil connotations often associated with it.) through narrow networks of physicians, many of whom are "well, we participate, but we won't take new patients"? Yes, I do. Although just like you, I've been seeing that trend going on for over a decade, too. I think it's one of the drawbacks of Obamacare. By putting lots of insurance policies in front of a consumer, with the government at least strongly implying that they're all the same, it really forces insurers to compete on the basis of price, and nothing else. The exchanges (at least the small portion of them I can see, since the government still seems to have trouble admitting that I really am me) really only give the consumer a few pieces of information, on which to base their decision. Price. And a list of Doctors. And that's about it. But then, I suspect that primary care physicians have been getting squeezed, for decades. I think they're getting blamed for the predictable consequences of decisions which were made by other people. I suspect that the market has squeezed them to the point where they can only just barely break even, if their practice is occupied exactly 100% of capacity. Which is very difficult to do, in a field where the need is spontaneous. But I can't really think of a good way to solve the problem, either.

. . . when they actually read what you've posted, instead of what you're trying to hint at.

Wow. An article claiming that the newly insured under Obamacare can't spend money on health care. And an article claiming that the newly insured under Obamacare sre spending money on health care. And a poster who is trying to say (without actually saying a word) that both of these are bad, and that both of them are Obama's fault. (When the only thing these articles have in common is: They both agree that there are millions of newly insured, because of Obamacare.)

pointing out that I wouldn't be ordering the Super Bowl rings, quite yet. I can think of a few reason why enrollment numbers might be higher than expected, but it's not necessarily good news. A biggie is that the Obamacare forecasts assumed that all of the working poor would be covered under Medicare expansion. (Instead, a lot of governors decided that it was their sacred constitutional duty to screw their own citizens, just so they could **** with Obamacare.) So there's a whole bunch of people who are "exchange eligible" who were supposed to have been already covered by Medicaid, by now. I also suspect that the Obamacare forecasts didn't predict such large numbers of people would have their insurance cancelled (by their employer or by their insurer), also resulting in the pool of people hitting the exchanges being larger than forecast. Now, both of those are simply vague impressions, on my part. I have no clue whatsoever if they're even remotely true.

So, your point is that a persons plan might have a high deductible, but that doesn't COUNT as a high deductible plan unless you say it counts? Because they just don't know as much about the plan that they're on, as you know about it? In your opinion, does she know whether she bought her plan on the exchange or not? (Or do you know more about that, too?) Cause, if she really did buy it on the exchange, then does that mean that the plans on the exchanges don't actually COUNT as high deductible plans?

Could have sworn that she gas a plan from the exchange, that all of said plans were high deductible plans, and that she was well aware of what she has and hasn't paid for. But if you know more about her health insurance than she does, then by all means, feel free to tell her about it.

You seriously asking her if she knows what she pays for and what she doesn't?

I think they should cover them with bubble wrap. (I mean, the outside). Just think how the TV audience would enjoy the sound, when they hike the ball.

I feel kinda similar about Roddy McDowell. I think he's a terrific actor. But his voice is really distinctive. So, every time he speaks, I hear Planet of the Apes. And my favorite vocalist is Mandy Patinkin. You put him in a musical Dick Tracey, as a piano player named 88 keys. And the only time he sings is a duet with Madonna.

In a lot of the comics movies, what really make the movie, for me, are the little things. Not necessarily the big, major, plot sweeps. Thor and HulK have been fighting a gigantic dragon. They slay the beast, and it's dead carcass, with them aboard, crashes into the side of a skyscraper. Thor and Hulk are left, in a smashed room, in the skyscraper, panting from the exertion of successfully slaying the dragon. Hulk punches Thor. The scene lasts about 3 seconds. But I thought it was great.

I quite liked Thor2. To me, the movie isn't about the villain. It's about Thor and Loki.

From what I've read, yes, there was a cap in the law, BUT, Obama had already unilaterally exempted that cap, delaying it till 2015. The change in the law simply makes the delay, permanent.

I seem to remember that Obamacare originally mandated that we study the outcomes from various medical procedures, to see which ones actually were cost effective. I think it was removed from the final bill. Can't remember why.

Right. Better to just not run the test. Cuts down on false positives.

I think you missed the point if twa's pistol, to which I was responding. He's pointing out that preventative care allows people to live longer, which allows them to collect more Social Security, which costs money. And that allowing people to live longer increases their chance of coming down with some OTHER condition, other than the one you prevented, and that costs money, too.

Space. The final frontier. No matter where you go, there you are. A penny saved is a penny earned. Money talks. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Well, heck. The ultimate cost savings, long term, is simply to never pay for any medical care at all. But feel free to keep pointing out that it's cheaper for people to die. ---------- Uh, no, not exactly. They're trying to restrict access. (Making something cost more is a restriction.) But that's not the same as "deny".

No, costs eliminated. That's the magic of the term "preventative". It's related to the word "prevent". And no, that does not mean "have our defense play 15 yards off the line, when it's third and 10". Antibiotics are not given to prevent infection. They're given to cure infection. Now, cholesterol and blood pressure medication? I could see some argument, there. Are those things preventative? To prevent more serious problems? Or are they treatment, for existing problems? I could see arguments, either way.

Yes, that's at least the reasoning. Try to cut down on health care costs, by encouraging people not to get sick, in the first place. Encourage them not to get sick in the first place, by eliminating the "I don't want to pay five bucks for a flu shot" excuse. (And no, I'm not claiming that pregnancy is a disease. Simply drawing a parallel.)