Even More People To Lose Their Insurance?

New Mental Health Mandate Will Make Obamacare More Expensive, Increase Fraud And Canceled Policies shows that Obamacare will further drive up insurance costs and possibly cause more canceled policies.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced new regulations mandating health insurers cover mental and behavioral health to the same extent they cover physical health care.

A “mental health parity” mandate was passed by Congress in 2008, but Obama officials claim health insurers aren’t fully complying. (You’ll just have to overlook the irony of the Obama administration, which has postponed several provisions of Obamacare without any legal authority to do so, complaining that others aren’t complying with some law.)

The more likely explanation is the administration is desperately trying to redirect peoples’ attention from the Obamacare rollout that has become a non-stop string of stories about failed websites, higher premiums and canceled policies.

That this is part of a separate law that was passed in addition to the ACA, shows that it does nothing to curtail the costs of insurance as some were wanting it to do besides get everyone insured. Not to mention that the administration is wanting to divert attention from the failure that is the ACA rollout that the administration new was going to happen as well as that people were going to lose the insurance they had.

This is something that the administration has been doing every time there has been a "scandal" that has plagued Obama for the last couple of years now.

Do you think that Obamacare is still the be all end all that we were told it was going to be?

We need to make some progress on mental health issues. Hopefully thus is the start if a new direction that addresses such concerns

The problem isn't necessarily with insurance, but more with manufactures.

For example...

Walgreens/CVS charges $120 for a bottle of cypinoate. I can brew the same thing in my kitchen for about $8 a bottle. Even if you take into account my kitchen probably isn't up to par with GMP standards - there's no reason they tenfold the price other than greed.

They need to make realize you shouldn't make a profit on the welfare of others.

You advocate forced "charity" from businesses?

We need to scrap Obamacare and try the Republican alternative.

We need to do what canada does

I heard about one insurance policy that people had in Florida that people were bitching about that they were losing.

The policy cost 50 dollars a month, but all it did was give you 50 dollars off when you went to the doctor. So if you had a major problem, it essentially does nothing.

2 sides to every story keep in mind

America really needs a universal healthcare system. This is getting silly.

@toast_burner

Run by and funded by whom?

Publicly funded

What would that be?

Canada doesn't score too high on healthcare studies either.

Hell no.....

It's estimated that 130 million will lose their plan in the end. Businesses got an extra year so those employees getting dropped haven't even hit the system yet.

Epic failure.

You guys know what I noticed recently? I wonder if they're increasing self checkout lines due to obamacare.

I'm more than a little curious where you got the estimate that greater than 1/2 of insured Americans will lose their policies.

Medicine shouldn't be a business.

Even if we forget about charity. They should just make it illegal to patent drugs of any kind. Then the off-brand meds will be more readily available for all types of medication. Instead of $100 a bottle we'd be paying $10. Also hospitals shouldn't be allowed to charge more than regular price (per pill) for medication. They often times jack of medicine prices through the roof. Usually you have to go through your bill and point it out, and then the hospital will drop the medicine prices on your bill. It's pretty ridiculous really.

Taxes. America already pays an incredibly large amount on healthcare, this would lower the costs and raise the quality.

Some guy is pretending to be me as a joke or something but is unknowingly right here.

"When ObamaCare is fully implemented, Conover finds, an estimated 129 million people — that's 68% of the 189 million Americans with private health coverage — could lose their previous health coverage due to a combination of factors including the cancellations of existing plans as well as changes and "improvements" to existing coverage that will be required under the new health care law."

That's also another issue.

I was working for my physician, and I offered him advice on substituting for high blood pressure medication for a patient who also suffered from prostate issue (to avoid stacking drugs). Cialis, but the problem is it's a name brand drug, and has no generic. Insurance won't pay for it outside of maybe 4 pills a month, and realistically most people are not going to lay down $50 for a pack of two pills, which last a day.

My theory was to not stack drugs to reduce side effects, but Big Pharma won't let it happen...

That's awfully misleading phrasing:

“Bottom line: of the 189 million Americans with private health insurance coverage, I estimate that if Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68 percent) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have lost or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014,” he said in an email. ”But of these, ‘only’ the 18 to 50 million will literally lose coverage, i.e., have their plans entirely taken away. This includes 9.2-15.4 million in the non-group market and 9-35 million in the employer-based market. The rest will retain their old plans but have to pay higher rates for Obamacare-mandated bells and whistles.”

When you can't keep your current plan because Obamacare forces modifications to your current plan.....you lose that plan. And those plans with those unwanted additions cost that person more.

We already have a health care system paid for and run by the government and it is a morass of problems. Lawmakers Demand Answers From VA Over Hospital Mistakes where leaders got bonuses even though staff were putting patients at risk of HIV due to reusing needles. Inquiry Finds Inadequate Staffing at Mississippi Veterans Hospital for not having enough staff as well as violations for prescribing narcotics. These two stories are just part of the problems facing the government run and government paid facilities using taxpayer dollars. This does not take into account military hospitals on base where there is some lack of oversight concerning qualifications of the doctors treating our military personnel (I have personal experience with shoddy care in a military hospital). Again, these are government owned an run facilities.

People wonder why some object to government run medical care, those are just some of the reasons to not want it. Government run health care like that treats people as cattle more or less. it is get you in, take a cursory look at the patient and get them out the door so the doctor can see the next patient and so on and so forth.

@WhiteKnight77: Then why does it seem to work so well in other countries?

@WhiteKnight77: well obviously mental health-care is an important thing to consider. Also since the "mental health parity" thing passed Congress in 2008, it had to be signed into law by President Bush (unless he neither signed nor vetoed, in which case the bill would become law 10 days after passage) not by Obama since Obama was inaugurated more than 10 days into January 2009.

Basically the two of you want to tell others how much they can price their goods, yes?

Why stop at medicine? Shouldn't we do the same with every necessity? People need to eat so maybe the government should tell farmers and grocery stores the price they could sell produce, poultry, etc.., While we are at it, maybe the government should do the same for coal, wood, gas, etc.., because people need to be warm in their homes.

I doubt either of you would be happy if someone did the same to you perhaps with your wages (if you work), how much you can earn, what kind of profit you can make if you are a business owner, etc..,

Based on what you suggest I doubt you follow our government at all. Our government tends to screw up what it touches and our leader are in no position to tell others about profits. Government run healthcare is not all it is cracked up to be.

I get it... Monopolies are only legal when the "all-mighty" government owns it. >_>

They do. You can't price gouge food and water, unless of course you want to end up in prison.

romney care

I don't think you understand price gouging.

It usually occurs during an emergency when a business (or individuals) substantially increases the price of a necessity that is in short supply.

What you are seeing when it comes to medicine is not gouging. A hospital charging $10.00 for Tylenol isn't doing that either. Medicine doesn't just appear one day in a bottle. People have to do research and testing. None of that is free.

For example, if a local gasoline station is charging $6.00 for gasoline today, they are doing nothing wrong (according to the law). If a hurricane rolls in and gasoline is in very short supply and they increase the price substantially, then yes, it is gouging.

No it's not. That's supply and demand. It's gouging if you raise the price of something in which you have a large quantity.

Exactly. Price gouging depends on the amount of something you have, the demand for it, the availability of the product, where else it can be obtained, etc..,

^

It's gouging.

Medication isn't expensive because it's expensive to make, it's expensive because you're forced to buy it from one person, and one person only. Big pharma doesn't exist outside of America; they're increasing prices due to the liability of people getting sick, and knowing the insurance companies are forced to purchase the drug at whatever price Big Pharma says.

I can buy all my medication across into Mexico made by the same manufacture (but not the same company/distributor), and get them probably 1/3 the price. Best part is the majority of the drug aren't even made in fully developed countries.

Even if you take R&D into account there's no reason for the prices. Testosterone Cypinoate shouldn't be $120 a bottle when it was invented in Nazi Germany, which was over 70 years ago. The intial research fees have been paid.

These are new regulations passed recently and part of Obama's wanting help reduce killings by guns since he knows that gun control legislation will not pass. Feds to require equal coverage for mental ills has the details:

The rules, which will apply to almost all forms of insurance, will have far-reaching consequences for many Americans. In the White House, the regulations are also seen as critical to President Obama’s program for curbing gun violence by addressing an issue on which there is bipartisan agreement: Making treatment more available to those with mental illness could reduce killings, including mass murders.

In issuing the regulations, senior officials said, the administration will have acted on all 23 executive actions that the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced early this year to reduce gun crimes after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. In planning those actions, the administration anticipated that gun control legislation would fail in Congress as pressure from the gun lobby proved longer-lasting than the national trauma over the killings of first graders and their caretakers last Dec. 14.

*snip*

While laws and regulations dating to 1996 took initial steps in requiring insurance parity for medical and mental health, “here we’re doing full parity, and we’ve also taken steps to extend it to the people covered in the Affordable Care Act,” the senior official said. “This is kind of the final word on parity.”

With the announcement, the administration will make some news that is certain to be popular with many Americans at a time when Mr. Obama and Ms. Sebelius have been on the defensive for the bungled introduction of the insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.

As you can see, these are new and came on Obama's watch, not Bush's. We can also see that the administration is trying to take the publics mind off the disastrous rollout of the exchanges and cancellation of polices due to the start of Obamacare.

Maybe mental health is a genuine concern.

Hope that we get out of these growing pains of the startings in a manner that is more then molastic

lol...only 27,000 signed up on the Federal website.

That's fine Dave, but to do so at a time where there is already a problem with a big program he pushed that will impact said program is bordering on madness. People are already losing their insurance and this will cause even more due to the requirements that have to be met and polices that do not meet said requirements. That is a double whammy.

Numbers came out today and more people have lost their insurance plans then managed to get signed up~

ridiculous~

Sarcasm. The GOP doesn't have an alternative except for the ridiciulous idea of a complete free-market.

I wouldn't say it works for all countries. In England, two sisters both had to have double mastectomies due to the doctors not finding the cancer early enough for the women to get treatment or didn't realize that they had the cancer at all until it was too lat (I wish I could find the articles on it, but they were prevalent around the time Obamacare talks first came up) or stuff like this: NHS waiting time increases may cost lives, doctors warn detailing long wait times to see doctors or have tests. Those problems are similar to the VA hospitals here in the US. At least here and with the way we do things in the US, we can call the doctor's office on Tuesday and see the doctor that day or at the least, the next, especially if sick. Need to see a specialist, they get you in there the same day with a short wait.

If Dave needed an MRI, he could have it that day instead of waiting 6 weeks for it when it might be too late. Do all countries have long wait times to see doctors? Not sure, but as seen in Massachusetts, where Romney Care has taken affect, wait times have increased and patients are crossing the boarder to go to New Hampshire to see doctors due to long wait times. England has a smaller population than the US and has problems with getting to see doctors, imagine the problems for the whole US if such a system went into affect.

Study: Massachusetts Residents Wait Up To 2 Months For New Doctors has the details of a state with a population of 6.6 million facing waits up to 2 months to see specialists.

Sure, if pharmaceuticals can't recuperate their R&D budget and make a profit you wouldn't have any drugs to complain about in the first place. And that is that.

There does seem to be a problem of long waiting times in most single payer systems. This doesn't mean that they're bad though; it's just something that needs to be fixed.

http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/files/Report-EHCI-2012.pdf

This is an interesting study about European healthcare systems ( a lot of them are single payer), where most of those systems do have problems with waiting times. Not as bad as the NHS, but still significant. But those systems do score good on other things, like accessibility. But to answer your question, no, not all countries have that problem.

Before the ACA, didn't a lot of people lack health insurance? What happens if the need an MRI? They either get into huge debt, or they don't get treated, and might die. So you have to wonder, how much good does fast treatment do if so many people don't have access to it?

That's a lie. Medicine has advanced in Fascist nations before.

In all seriousness, is that idea any more ridiculous than having an inept, corrupt, lying entity such as the federal government trying to run things?

You are referring to a high-deductible health plan. It doesn't cover minor expensive, but will cover the majority of catastrophic problems. Those plans are ideal for people who are young and in good health. Under the ACA, these types of policies are out of compliance.

People in the US have always been treated, even if they could not afford it, it is a basic law and all public (taxpayer funded) hospitals had to follow it. If said individual needed an MRI, he got it. This was before the ACA came into effect. Most people who do not have insurance go to the emergency room to see the doctors there.

But they did get into debt after that, right? It seems unlikely that they did it for free.