Honestly, I just throw copies of my receipts in the envelope I mail anyway. Not sure if that’s a good idea or not.
I agree. Thank you. I just got a moment to read through some of the responses and I do appreciate the different opinions although I don’t agree with all of them.
I was not try to flame-bait anyone. What a ridiculous comment.
Dude, I’m not arguing this is the best possible system. I’m describing what I do when I file my state taxes. I prove I’ve been insured for the last 12 months or I get a fine.
Doctor’s will be required to ask a series of questions each time you visit, regardless if they are your Primary Care physician or your dermatologist. Among these questions are details about your Sex life, whether you drink, smoke, wear your seat belt, own a hand gun, etc. Most of things i would gladly share with my PC. However, all of this information will be stored in a database and managed by the IRS. Doctors who do not follow this will not be paid.
The IRS has already used personal financial information against people for political reasons.
I do realize this. I am not against providing affordable care to everyone. I just don’t believe the current solution is the best we can do. It was rushed through, not very well thought out and overly intrusive. In my opinion.
Heh. I know a couple of accountants. The look on their faces when a customer presents them with an almost-empty box-file and three grubby carrier-bags leaking dog-eared receipts is priceless.
Assuming there even is such a thing as “the best we can do” ignores the reality that there’s different stakeholders with widely varying definitions of “best”. What is best for the hospitals is not best for the doctors is not best for insurance companies is not best for consumers etc.
Yeah, it’s not ideal. That’s why I (and a lot of other people) was pissed to learn that a public option wasn’t even being discussed as part of the reform. The question is whether it’s better than what we had before. For the vast majority of people it’s probably better from what I can tell.
It sucks for people who don’t want health insurance, no doubt about that.
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Many questions would be asked or are asked today by your physician, but a few feel intrusive to me.
Detailed sex life questions, Drinking, smoking habits, whether you wear a seatbelt in your car, if you own a handgun, etc.
My bigger worry is that all of this information is stored by the government and could be used maliciously.
Did I say perfect? Nope.
Let me ask you this…do you honestly think this giant piece of legislation was fully understood by the people who voted for it? If it was even “good” why are so many opting out of it? If it is so affordable why is Congress and others getting it subsidized? Why has the President had to delay so many pieces of the bill? Lastly, why couldn’t the Government even get the website to function properly on the first day? Couldn’t they have called Google for help setting it up? I think they know a thing or two about traffic.
The username tends to make me think anything I say is unlikely to penetrate, regardless of how serious I might be.
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When the dentist asks you how much you floss, are you completely honest?
Genuinely interested in this. Do you have a cite that Obamacare entails the increased asking of such questions, or requires them to be reported to a government agency?
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1 - Understood by the people? No, that’s why there’s been such hatred for it. Everyone likes the elements when they are presented to them but nobody likes it when it’s called Obamacare. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE)
2 - I’m opting out of it because my employer already provides me with healthcare. I suspect a good many of the people doing so have the same idea.
3 - Do you really think Congressmen would pay for anything out of pocket they couldn’t vote to have everyone else pay for instead?
4 - Because he recognizes that it’s still going to happen and that people need time to get used to it. And there’s been such vitriol about it that he still has to help other people get elected.
5 - Because three million people tried to use it the first day. That’s seven times more than have ever been on Medicare’s site at the same time. For a bill that is reportedly unpopular it exceeded traffic expectations by wide margins. And because their website doesn’t work perfectly on the first day is a reason to scrap it all? Seriously?
While I’m at it, I’m interested to hear where you heard the IRS was going to be going through health records. Please see Question 2: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRC-Section-6103(l)(21)-Questions-and-Answers
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NO website works the first day. As for subsidised, If I had any say, the whole infrastructure would be nationalised at gunpoint and Health Insurance CEOs would be in jail.
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Fair enough, but the IRS or any government agency can access all kinds of information already, including some of that stuff. In fact hackers can access that information and use it against you. But whether a hacker does it or a rogue IRS agent, it’s still illegal. What you should really want is government oversight, someone making sure the IRS isn’t abusing its powers. Complaining about the government having access to that info because it could be used against you is kind of paranoid.
And I too am not 100% in favor of the Affordable Care Act, but I also recognize that it was like pulling teeth to get it passed (and even now that it’s passed it’s under attack.) The GOP had plenty of time to add their two cents when it was up for debate, and they just opposed everything about it (despite the fact that it is almost exactly like the plan the proposed in 1994 when Hillary Clinton was trying to get a health care law passed.) They keep saying “repeal and replace” except they haven’t shown us a replacement plan (and how could they, when ACA is so similar to their old plan?)
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Because there area a lot of conservative demagogues preaching that it is evil socialism that will send you to a death panel and make it easy for the government to snoop on your personal life.
Duh.
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No one opts out of the mandate (by definition of “mandate”). You can opt out of the cheapo subsidized plan if you already have a good plan provided by your employer (or paid for out-of-pocket). You’d be crazy not to do so because the cheapo subsidized plans are bare-bones and don’t cover as many doctors and treatments as more premium plans.
Umm, it’s affordable because it’s subsidized. That’s the point of subsidizing it.
Note that the healthcare act itself isn’t what’s being subsidized – the insurance premiums paid for by people who can’t afford unsubsidized premiums is being subsidized (because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford the premiums).
Because the health insurance industry would rather sell a scarce resource for higher profits and they employ an army of lobbyists to help them accomplish this.
This doesn’t seem to be related to the actual worthiness or unworthiness of the healthcare act itself.
The act seems worthwhile to me because, based on what happened when Mitt Romney introduced an almost identical plan in my home state, it will cause a lot of people who don’t have health insurance to have health insurance.
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2a - Or, going back to point [1], because they don’t understand it and have been told they have to be afraid of it. Or, in the case of some of the neoconservative faithful, because they’d rather do anything than admit that a moderate – might have had a good idea; some of the petulance exhibited by state governments in particular has been a beautiful exhibit of “first we’ll save the party, then maybe we’ll give the constituents some attention.”
In other words: the worst challenges that the health care act faces are deliberately manufactured Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. In business that’s considered unethical advertising practice. In politics, alas, it’s currently par for the course.
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Lesson #1 don’t expect to get real information from M. Bachmann…
PolitiFact | Michele Bachmann decries “huge national database” run by IRS with "personal, intimate" details
The “IRS having intimate details” claim is in reference to the data pool that is being used by the HHS to verify what sort of subsidy/etc a person applying for Insurance qualifies for… The data includes information from the IRS – it is managed by the HHS not the IRS.
It appears to be just the typical Fear Uncertainty & Dread spread by her ilk.
Will the hub include "personal" or "intimate" details?The hub is not designed to access, much less store, information like body mass index, or whether you have a serious illness or ingrown toenails. The hub will be able to tell if someone has insurance or not, but it will not access records about their health. It could access other “personal” details beyond health status, including adjusted gross income and Social Security numbers, but those already exist in federal databases, so the hub wouldn’t represent an expansion of federal data collection.
While no fan of the plan as implemented (single payer please), this is what I hear when such worries are voiced:
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
edit: one more link about Bachmann’s claims:
Bachmann’s absurd claim of a vast health database of ‘sensitive, intimate’ information - The Washington Post
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Yeah, because it’s totally skeptical and radical to place more trust in private insurance corporations! Keep sticking it to the man!
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