Incidentally, these pages come up out of order on the RSS feed. Also, no introductory blurb. LONGREAD FORMATTED PAGES, YOU HAVE BETRAYED ME.
Now, if we can only get this information to the people who rabidly oppose accurate information…
Obamacare sucks not because of !!OMG SOCIALISM!! but because it is regressive favoring insurance companies rather than normal people.
I now live where there is socialized medicine but my wife’s sister and husband end up saving money by paying the fine rather than getting the insurance for themselves which they can’t afford. I dont fully know their financials but there are pre-existing conditions which got them kicked out of individual payer insurance and they haven had for at least ten years.
WTF United State? Single payer health insurance is just as socialist as universal k-12 education and has similar payback to society inclding republican interests like WalMart which rely on socialism to subsidize their low wages.
Have to be honest, just skimmed the cartoon. However, It was never about cost reductions more coverage etc, it is a MASSIVE DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM first and Healthcare second. If cost reductions were wanted, publishing costs on procedures and education consumers on how to shop for price per procedure would have been included. Allowing insurance to break state monopolies is another huge place to save money. But … nope nobody reads the TOS including the one ultra scary one on the federal exchange.
OH NOES! WHY ARE THEY MASSIVELY COLLECTING DATA?
There are lots of reasons. But start with the TOS. Its really bad, especially since you sign away hipaa rights in it.
You know you can’t sign away legal protections right? It is entirely unenforceable.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think. I would share this with the family member who insists that the Affordable Care Act is “just like what they’ve got in Canada, and it’s a mess and the Canadians all hate it!”*, but what would be the point?
*Verbatim quote. I briefly thought about asking where this misinformation was coming from, but I’ve learned that often asking certain people to cite a source just results in a lot of spluttering and name-calling.
Keep telling yourself that. Again take a look at the TOS also doubling down … Executive Order 12612 basically erased HIPAA at the federal level.
Executive Order 12612 is Reagan, from 1987.
HIPAA is Clinton, from 1996?
How did it erase it?
Ronald Reagan’s executive orders on federalism? The whole point of that was to divest power from the federal government back to the states, and for the most part it has had little to no effect in Washington, and absolutely no effect on the ACA signed 23 years later.
I would also share it with an (in-law) family member who hates Obamacare for all the usual reasons including the fact that his insurance premiums went up. It turns out that the ‘insurance’ he was getting from his employer basically amounted to a few GP visits every year.
Of course I don’t hold it against the people doing it (what choice do they have anyway?), but the amount of begging letters going around Facebook, Boing Boing and other sites from Americans who can’t pay for their healthcare is embarrassing. Most of the time these people had good jobs before they got sick - they were also paying more than I do for insurance. A good friend of mine who was young, healthy, employed and insured almost died last year and now is tens of thousands in debt because he became ill with something tangentially related to another illness he had a few years ago. Say what you like about socialised healthcare, at least it involves countries paying for the basic needs of their own citizens. When healthcare becomes a crowdfunded popularity contest, this says some pretty serious things about the priorities of those in charge.
whooops sorry…wrong Exec# This is better. Mr Snowden has taught us what is done with this data.
at the bottom…
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/faq/disclosures_for_law_enforcement_purposes/505.html
To federal officials authorized to conduct intelligence, counter-intelligence, and other national security activities under the National Security Act (45 CFR 164.512(k)(2)) or to provide protective services to the President and others and conduct related investigations (45 CFR 164.512(k)(3));
Another really good link…
Also look up who created the ICD 10 standard what its used for and who gets a copy of it. (Pun intended)
Well then it doesn’t matter if you sign some agreement does it?
So many new posters here. Hmmm…
Ignoring the utterly insane conspiracy theory derail, I’d like to mention that this is a good cartoon about a very important issue. I wish as many people would pay attention to this as to the latest Gamergate news.
I like the overall approach to providing a simplified look at this law, but the notion that Obamacare=“Romneycare” is a pretty massive overgeneralization.
I think all the misinformation about the ACA is a good example of why it’s impossible to have any kind of reasoned political discourse in America anymore. Even just pointing out that it apes the old Heritage Foundation plan from decades ago is flat-out denied, when you can actually check online (there are more similarities than differences, including the “individual mandate” that the GOP now insists is un-Constitutional.)
But the comparision has some serious basis in fact and some merit…
