Obama Care vs Republicans

[Adak]

BIG fight coming up between those who still support the Affordable Health Care Act, and the House, who control the $$$ to fund it.

Now that the time has come to actually read the first 10,000 pages plus, of regulations regarding Obama Care, the whole law is slowly losing the popular support it once enjoyed.

Labor leaders, like the large corporations before them (and Congress itself), are or have already, had meetings with the Democratic leadership, to discuss how they can work around it with exemptions, or be subsidized for their losses, if they're forced to have it.

As all the previous warnings about Obama Care are moving from "Republican scare tactics" to reality, the act is moving slowly into the a more unfavorable rating with the public.

This will be a kicker:

You might go in for a flu shot, but your doctor is *Required* to ask about (and enter data about), your sex life.

Do you still remember when Privacy was something that actually existed?

Now the House Republicans have decided NOT to fund Obama Care, unless the Democrats cut their overspending. The resulting impasse is likely to cause a *BIG* showdown, with a shutdown of the gov't, possible.

Not a further sequester, but a shutdown. Of course, such a query verges on Traitor Territory for a Democrat. The nerve of those Republicans - asking the Democrats to cut their massive overspending!!

Interesting that the House has grown enough spine to tackle this problem. In the past, they've rolled over with meaningless gestures of non-support/non-funding for Obama Care, which they knew would never even get to a vote in the Senate.



-----------------------------------------------
Democrat to Republican: "My party loves the poor, you know."
Republican to Democrat: "You must. You make a lot of them."

[glatt]

I suppose that's one way of looking at it.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Adak

You might go in for a flu shot, but your doctor is *Required* to ask about (and enter data about), your sex life.

[citation needed]

[Undertoad]

Nope

McCaughey tells us that Obamacare is not a plan to make healthcare more accessible to every American; the real “aim [is] to turn doctors into government agents.” How? By “pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.”

This stuff is not true, though, fortunately. Doctors are trained to take a sexual history, as part of a thorough evaluation, even when you're just complaining of foot pain. Few disease processes happen in isolation in the body. It's all part of the strange, late-stage Jenga tower that is human health, but when a doctor asks if you're sexually active, take it as a sign that you're being thoroughly cared for.

Obamacare does say that insurance must now pay physicians for preventive services, including things like STI counseling. This is meant to help patients not contract sexually-transmitted diseases, and save the whole system money down the line. It's cheaper and easier for everyone to just not get gonorrhea than to end up with a baby blinded by gonorrhea, or to require antibiotics and contribute to the advent of super gonorrhea.

Preventive services that physicians will be encouraged to offer go well beyond sexual counseling, too. Doctors will be encouraged to talk to you about depression, alcohol abuse, obesity, etc, before these things become a problem. These are practices based on evidence. Doctors aren't forced to offer these services, and they won't be penalized if they don't. Patients likewise don't have to answer questions they don't want to. But the financial incentives will encourage doctors to actually do the things that our best evidence says is the best approach for both the individual patient and the system.

Finally, nothing in the law mandates that the answers to your questions be sent anywhere public. Oppositely, it must remain in a confidential medical record, to be viewed only by healthcare professionals who care for you, under penalty of law, as always.

[Undertoad]

Nope

There are federal EHR requirements. But those are part of the HITECH Act (which was part of ARRA), not Obamacare. What Obamacare introduces is that insurance must now reimburse physicians for preventive services. These include things like STI counseling (which is why more docs may ask about sex). They also include lots of other stuff, especially for women and children. I’m fine with this, because these things work. They have evidence behind them. That’s why they’re in there. For years, we’ve paid for tons of things that don’t work, while not paying for things that do. This tries to right that balance.

But, hey, if you don’t do those things as a doctor, you won’t be “penalized”. You won’t get paid for them, and your patients might suffer, but no Obamacare thugs will come to get you. Moreover, there’s nothing in the law that mandates that the answers to your questions be sent anywhere or to the government. They’re part of your medical record, as they always have been, and they’re protected by the same laws that have always protected your data.

There are legitimate reasons to dislike Obamacare. It amazes me how opponents of the law keep needing to invent ones that aren’t accurate in order to rail against it.

[tw]

There are legitimate reasons to dislike Obamacare. It amazes me how opponents of the law keep needing to invent ones that aren’t accurate in order to rail against it.

Its called ideology. Moderates are pragmatic. Which means they learn facts rather then recite an extremist gospel. Using soundbytes to obtain political office is how extremists throughout history obtain power. Preach the ideology so that the naive will only believe the first thing heard. The concept even explains why the majority once knew smoking cigarettes increases health. Resulting anger against the Surgeon General also fueled by people brainwashed in ideology.

Hitler described the process in one chapter of his book "Mein Kampf". Limbaugh needs only invent a lie. Then wacko extremists will recite the lie as if it was ordained by the Pope; as if it were god's law.

Remember those evil muslims planning to destroy America by building a mosque blocks from the World Trade Center? Extremists also knew that was evil. Ideology said so.

[DanaC]

Ffs, tdub, you just lost the thread to Adak!

[Adak]

Are you still naive enough to believe that personal sexual information you give to your doctor, required by the federal government, will be kept private?

Our government can't keep NSA data secret (Snowdon), it can't keep State Dept info secret (Manning). Do you recall Barrack Obama saying that they don't spy on Americans, on the TV, too?

Obama's response when it was revealed that they DO spy on Americans, on an ungodly scale, is that it's not "spying". It's "collecting metadata"! See, you don't have to admit to anything you don't want to, you just change what your definition of the words are. Ala, Bill Clinton's classic when he was caught lying:

"It all depends what your definition of is, is."

If the Democrats can use the IRS to fight against their political enemies, and Homeland Security, etc., what makes you think they won't use "private" medical info against anyone they please?

@Undertoad:

You're correct about the part covered by the EHR, (that medical records must be digitized...", and I don't know anyone who has actually studied the 10,000 pages of regulations (not the law, but the regs that will actually implement the law, whose first volume was published recently. So far.. more on the way), but the fact is, your medical records may NOT remain private, and it will include info given by you, on your sex life, etc.

That is very relevant in some medical cases, but it's a HUGE inducement for political, personal, legal, and business opponents, (to say nothing of blackmailers and reporters), to get that info. For them, it's a treasure trove. I seriously doubt if such info will be kept private.

I haven't heard anyone say that we'll have the option of declining to answer, yet. Perhaps it will be like the Census takers, when they ask you what race you are. They won't arrest you if you don't answer (I believe it's inappropriate to ask), but they do insist you answer, and I've never seen them leave without an answer.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Adak

Are you still naive enough to believe that personal sexual information you give to your doctor, required by the federal government, will be kept private?

--snip

Define "private".

And what kind of personal information, sexual or otherwise, do you think is being disseminated? Who is getting what information? Who is getting it and shouldn't be getting it? Naturally, if you have a sexual secret, unless you're doing it *alone*, someone else already knows about it. Then, let's say you tell your doctor. That's three. When does it cease to be a secret, when is it no longer private?

It seems to me that you're arguing against the application of the law, by defunding it, because patients will have to reveal sexual information to their doctors who will not keep it private. That's your argument, right?

Your argument is invalid; your appeal to fear (page 26) does not support your conclusion. Since your argument is invalid (as it stands, I welcome your attempts to improve it), I do not accept your conclusion to withdraw my support for Obamacare.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Adak

I haven't heard anyone say that we'll have the option of declining to answer, yet. Perhaps it will be like the Census takers, when they ask you what race you are. They won't arrest you if you don't answer (I believe it's inappropriate to ask), but they do insist you answer, and I've never seen them leave without an answer.

Really, Adak? Every patient has the option of declining to answer any question. I question how many SS Census Takers you've actually observed ("... I've never seen them leave without an answer."), but believe me (since I have actual physician experience in two countries and many different clinical settings) - if a patient declines to answer, we DO leave without an answer. Your cognition has been fuzzed by the fumes of conspiracy theory.

[tw]

ObamaCare now says I must tell the doctor what sex I am. That my business; not his. The law has no right to infringe on my privacy. It's even in the Constitution.

[Lamplighter]

The morning tv talk shows were a disappointment for me today.
Even the moderators used remarks that took the GOP stance of conflating
the Obamacare website performance and President Obama’s pledge
that "if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it".

Here is a more realistic view:

NY Times
Editorial
11/2/13

Insurance Policies Not Worth Keeping

Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that.

By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide
the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year.
So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people
who hold these substandard policies.

(At issue here are not the 149 million people covered by employer plans, but the
10 million to 12 million people who buy policies directly on the individual market.)<snip>

But insurers are not allowed to abandon enrollees.
They must offer consumers options that do comply with the law,
and they are scrambling to retain as many of their customers as possible with new policies
that are almost certain to be more comprehensive than their old ones.

Indeed, in all the furor, people forget how terrible many of the
soon-to-be-abandoned policies were. Some had deductibles as high
as $10,000 or $25,000 and required large co-pays after that,
and some didn’t cover hospital care.

This overblown controversy has also obscured the crux of what
health care reform is trying to do, which is to guarantee that everyone
can buy insurance without being turned away or charged exorbitant rates
for pre-existing conditions and that everyone can receive benefits that
really protect them against financial or medical disaster, not illusory benefits
that prove inadequate when a crisis strikes.<snip>

[Adak]

@orthodoc: You haven't read the regulations yet for Obama Care, doc. If the doctor is required to ask the questions, and is being paid to do so, there will naturally be a substantial pressure on all the patients, to answer. Whether it is legally mandated, or not.

@BigV: I have. Reputations, careers, marriages, etc., could easily be ruined, just as we have seen with Anthony Weiner.

Do you REALLY believe that your private medical records, once digitized according to the federal EHR standards and Obama Care, will not be leaked, or hacked, and used by those who want to gain by doing so?

Who in our nations past would have been crushed if their infidelity had been discovered earlier? Franklin Roosevelt, both John and Ted Kennedy, Martin Luther King (for sure!), Dwight Eisenhower (likely), and many more.

I don't believe the federal gov't's needs info for their records (and it certainly isn't YOUR record anymore, since you don't possess it), on every possible aspect of our lives.

@Lamplighter: still kicking against the factual rocks, I see. Thank heaven you have YOUR facts, and facts already proven, don't matter to you.
=============================================
The Stand Off Continues
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So we have 11 days left. Friday, the House will vote on the bill to start the defunding of Obama Care, according to Sen. Cruz of Texas.

Majority leader Reed meanwhile, has his own subterfuge going. He's putting a bill together to allow the Senate to remove any amendment to defund OCare. Then he'll have two bills to raise the federal debt, with the amendment to defund Obama Care, sent to the House, for a vote.

That will give the Republicans a chance to say to their voters, that they voted TWICE to defund OCare. When said Bill is returned to the Senate, it will then have the amendment to defund OC removed, by the Senate, and then passed using his simple majority (instead of a super majority, which he can't get right now), and sent up to be signed.

You can read about it on TheHill website, in much more detail. I was driving while listening to Sen. Cruz, so I couldn't note all the details.

As of today, the Republican strategy will be to force the Senate into voting either to defund OCare, or to face a shut down of the entire gov't.

Now that labor is getting on board - realizing that they will lose a lot of their health care benefits that they had before, OR pay more to keep them, the groundswell against OCare is building.

Lots of people are being cut back to 29 hours per week, so their employer does not have to pay for their health care, under OCare. Many of the larger corporations, already have exemptions, as do some members of Congress, according to Sen. Cruz.

If you want to hear the full interview with Sen. Cruz (who is a very likely candidate for the Republican party for President in the next election), you can hear it at the Hugh Hewitt website.

Audio of Sen. Cruz's interview is here:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/wp-content...19hhs-cruz.mp3

Transcript of this and much more is here:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/
"Ted Cruz on the Coming Filibuster" is the title.

[Undertoad]

My medical records already contain that, and worse than that. This is nothing less than conspiracy theory. Stop the bullshit, it's beneath you.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

My medical records already contain that, and worse than that. This is nothing less than conspiracy theory. Stop the bullshit, it's beneath you.

Not really. He's already running pretty low to the ground as it is. When it comes to the barking dogs of the Right, he's pretty much a Dachshund.

As to Mr. Cruz, he has successfully leapt to the forefront. Since he was kind enough to open the Godwin Gate in his remarks, I would like to remind everyone what happened to the Nazi Party and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party.

During 1921 and 1922, the Nazi Party grew significantly, partly through Hitler's oratorical skills, partly through the SA's appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there was a backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany's economic problems deepened and the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent.

Hussein became President of Iraq, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Prime Minister and General Secretary of the Regional Command of the Ba'ath Party in 1979, during a wave of anti-regime protests in Iraq led by the Shia community

I'm sure that Ted has read Mein Kampf multiple times and probably highlighted what he considers the good parts. So if he succeeds in his personal ambition, how many titles will he have?