From the spindle:
■ A whole raft of ObamaTaxes are due to hit shortly, including:
"Section 9010 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires health plans and commercial insurers to pay $8 billion in new taxes in the coming year, and more in later years, to help compensate for the new, subsidized business PPACA is supposed to send to carriers."
A quibble with the phrase "health plans and commercial insurers to pay $8 billion in new taxes." Um, no - neither insurers nor health plans will pay these taxes, you will. As regular readers know, businesses don't pay taxes.
■ SHOP dropped (temporarily):
"An online health insurance marketplace for small businesses is being put off until November 2014"
Ostensibly, this is to give Ms Shecantbeserious time to work out the various "bugs" and "glitches" plaguing the individual version. So here's a question: if one has already taken the SHOP certification course necessary for an agent to sell through that vaporware, will a new, updated version be required when (if?) it's ever actually rolled out?
■ We already know that US citizens' medical records are no longer private, but FoIB Holly R tips us to this horrific (and eye-opening) story of a Canadian woman whose supposedly confidential medical history was accessed by US Homeland (In)Security:
"I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression ... The Weston woman was told by the U.S. agent she would have to get “medical clearance’’ and be examined by one of only three doctors in Toronto ... she was so shocked and devastated by what was going on, she wasn’t thinking about how U.S. authorities could access her supposedly private medical information."
Bet she is now.
■ We already know that the real reason that HC.gov requires one to part with substantial private information is to assess what, if any, subsidies are available in order to (try to) hide the true cost of this horrendous coverage.
But did you know that the original plan was to offer an "Anonymous Shopper" widget, which let one see which plans were available, as well as their actual sticker price, without giving away the store?
Worse yet, that little piece actually worked:
"When the troubled federal health care website came online, the key "Anonymous Shopper" function was nowhere to be found -- even though it passed a key test almost two weeks before HealthCare.gov launched ... The window shopping feature allows website visitors to compare health insurance plans without opening an account ... is still unavailable to users." [emphasis added]
Gee, wonder why.
■ In case you were wondering about the potential ObamaTax end-game, here's one potentially likely scenario from Venezuela, courtesy of The Political Hat blog:
"The country’s 1999 constitution guarantees free universal health care to Venezuelans ... Yet of the country’s 100 fully functioning public hospitals, nine in 10 have just 7 percent of the supplies they need”
Is this our future, as well?
■ A whole raft of ObamaTaxes are due to hit shortly, including:
"Section 9010 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires health plans and commercial insurers to pay $8 billion in new taxes in the coming year, and more in later years, to help compensate for the new, subsidized business PPACA is supposed to send to carriers."
A quibble with the phrase "health plans and commercial insurers to pay $8 billion in new taxes." Um, no - neither insurers nor health plans will pay these taxes, you will. As regular readers know, businesses don't pay taxes.
■ SHOP dropped (temporarily):
"An online health insurance marketplace for small businesses is being put off until November 2014"
Ostensibly, this is to give Ms Shecantbeserious time to work out the various "bugs" and "glitches" plaguing the individual version. So here's a question: if one has already taken the SHOP certification course necessary for an agent to sell through that vaporware, will a new, updated version be required when (if?) it's ever actually rolled out?
■ We already know that US citizens' medical records are no longer private, but FoIB Holly R tips us to this horrific (and eye-opening) story of a Canadian woman whose supposedly confidential medical history was accessed by US Homeland (In)Security:
"I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression ... The Weston woman was told by the U.S. agent she would have to get “medical clearance’’ and be examined by one of only three doctors in Toronto ... she was so shocked and devastated by what was going on, she wasn’t thinking about how U.S. authorities could access her supposedly private medical information."
Bet she is now.
■ We already know that the real reason that HC.gov requires one to part with substantial private information is to assess what, if any, subsidies are available in order to (try to) hide the true cost of this horrendous coverage.
But did you know that the original plan was to offer an "Anonymous Shopper" widget, which let one see which plans were available, as well as their actual sticker price, without giving away the store?
Worse yet, that little piece actually worked:
"When the troubled federal health care website came online, the key "Anonymous Shopper" function was nowhere to be found -- even though it passed a key test almost two weeks before HealthCare.gov launched ... The window shopping feature allows website visitors to compare health insurance plans without opening an account ... is still unavailable to users." [emphasis added]
Gee, wonder why.
■ In case you were wondering about the potential ObamaTax end-game, here's one potentially likely scenario from Venezuela, courtesy of The Political Hat blog:
"The country’s 1999 constitution guarantees free universal health care to Venezuelans ... Yet of the country’s 100 fully functioning public hospitals, nine in 10 have just 7 percent of the supplies they need”
Is this our future, as well?
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