Insurers Once on the Fence Plan to Join Health Exchanges in ’15 - NYTimes.com

 

In a sign of the growing potential under the federal health care law, several insurers that have been sitting on the sidelines say they will sell policies on the new exchanges in the coming year, and others plan to expand their offerings to more states.

“Insurers continue to see this as a good business opportunity,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “They see it as an attractive market, with enrollment expected to ramp up in the second year.” Eight million people have signed up for coverage in 2014, and estimates put next year’s enrollment around 13 million.

In New Hampshire, for example, where Anthem Blue Cross is the only insurer offering individual coverage on the state exchange, two other plans, both from Massachusetts, say they intend to offer policies next year. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a nonprofit insurer with 1.2 million members, said it expected to participate in the exchanges in both New Hampshire and Maine for the first time and to add Connecticut to the mix in 2016.

Insurers Once on the Fence Plan to Join Health Exchanges in ’15 - NYTimes.com

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Cabbies Hail For Health Insurance | NBC 10 Philadelphia

Getting health insurance in spite of Gov. Corbett!

About 80 percent of the nearly 5,000 taxi drivers in the city did not have insurance prior to the Affordable Care Act going into effect, said Ronald Blount, president of the Unified Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania.

"They were pretty much on their own," he said. "If a driver was hit by a drunk driver, the taxi auto insurance doesn’t cover the driver.”

"They’d be stuck with big medical bills,” added Blount, who said many drivers are plagued by “silent killers” like diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol since many eat while on the go and are sitting for most of the day.

In an effort to enroll as many cabbies as possible, the TWA teamed up with two nonprofits focused on health care, Healthy Philadelphia and Get Covered America, to hold regular enrollment and information sessions.

Cabbies Hail For Health Insurance | NBC 10 Philadelphia

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Opinion: Cancer survivor: Obamacare got me covered - CNN.com

 In January, for the first time since my diagnosis 36 years ago, I will have an individual health plan that offers quality coverage for me and my family. I will save $628 every month on premiums. Best of all -- I wasn't even asked if I've ever had cancer.

Opinion: Cancer survivor: Obamacare got me covered - CNN.com

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Obamacare meets extra resistance in Oklahoma - Page 2 - Los Angeles Times

The cognitive dissonance should make these people’s heads explode, but I don’t think there’s enough cognition to create the dissonance.

In dozens of interviews here, many said they feared they would be forced to buy insurance they couldn't afford. Some said they were told (erroneously) that insurance penalties would come out of their Social Security checks; others said they'd heard the law meant they'd soon have to travel several hundred miles to see a doctor.

"They say it's affordable, but when you ain't got no money, nothing's affordable," said 55-year-old Paul Bush of Midwest City, who accompanied his sister to a clinic for care last week. While he supports efforts in Congress to kill the program — "Heck yeah," he said — he wasn't happy about Fallin's decision to reject the Medicaid expansion: "The state could really have used the money."

Bush's sister, Teresa Springer, might have qualified for care under a Medicaid expansion, but she supported Fallin's decision.

Springer, who has applied for disability assistance, said she worried that fines related to the healthcare law would cut into her disability checks at the same time that some Republicans in Congress were talking about cutting food stamps.

"That's all I have," she said after a visit to the Mary Mahoney Memorial Health Center in Spencer, Okla. "I'm going to either pay my bills or not eat." The law, she added, "is hurting everybody."

Obamacare meets extra resistance in Oklahoma - Page 2 - Los Angeles Times

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Uninsured in Texas and Florida - NYTimes.com

 

A new Census Bureau report documents the alarming percentages of people in Texas and Florida without health insurance. Leaders of both states should hang their heads in shame because they have been among the most resistant in the nation to providing coverage for the uninsured under the Affordable Care Act, the law that Republicans deride as “Obamacare.”

Uninsured in Texas and Florida - NYTimes.com

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“Secretary of ‘splaining” - NYTimes.com

 

“I have agreed to give this talk today because I am still amazed at how much misunderstanding there is about the current system of health care, how it works, how it compares with what other people in other countries pay for health care,” Mr. Clinton told the crowd assembled in a hall around the corner from a montage of black-and-white photographs of the 1992 presidential campaign. The audience of about 250 included Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, and Speaker Davy Carter of the Legislature and Michael Lamoureux, president of the State Senate, both Republicans.

Despite the bipartisan show, health care is a contentious topic in Arkansas politics that conservatives have seized on in local campaigns. Mr. Pryor did not attend the event for risk of being too closely associated with the health care law, according to one person with knowledge of his plans, but who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. A campaign spokesman has said that Mr. Pryor had a scheduling conflict.

With the new insurance markets set to open on Oct. 1 for an initial six-month enrollment period, the White House has asked cabinet officers and other presidential appointees to step up efforts to promote the law. The administration has also recruited actors and entertainers and is seeking athletes and disc jockeys to whip up enthusiasm. Last week, the singer Katy Perry retweeted a Twitter post from President Obama encouraging young people to sign up for coverage. He responded, “Thanks for spreading the word.”

Mr. Clinton’s speech, which the White House broadcast live on its Web site, was not the first time that the former president, whose own attempt to sell a universal health care law failed drastically in his first term, has stepped into the debate over the new law. At the Democratic National Convention last September, Mr. Clinton delivered an endorsement of Mr. Obama that included concrete, well-received explanations of his policies, including on health care. That speech in particular signaled to the White House that Mr. Clinton could be an effective surrogate to sell the highly complicated Affordable Care Act.

On Wednesday, the former president carefully laid out Mr. Obama’s plan without delving into politics. But his mere involvement in selling the law provides him with a platform to reframe the failed battles of “Hillarycare” from his own administration.

“It would not be in her interest to be running for president and have this be a huge controversial issue in 2016,” said Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy at Harvard who closely follows public opinion of the law. “The Clintons have a lot of interest in getting this up and working and making it a legacy for the Democratic side.”

Reading glasses perched on his nose, Mr. Clinton struck a professorial tone as he explained in extensive detail the intricacies of the act. He laid out who would qualify for federal subsidies to help pay for the cost of coverage through the new markets and even ticked off Web addresses and phone numbers where Americans could find information.

Clinton Urges Americans to Sign Up for Health Care Exchanges - NYTimes.com

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Obamacare Showdown Over a Ham Breakfast in Kentucky - NationalJournal.com

 

Beshear's advocacy, by contrast, was striking in its intensity and in how personally he approached the issue, picking up on the idea that many people who don't have health insurance are embarrassed by that and don't talk about it.

The governor compared health insurance to "the safety net of crop insurance" and said farmers need both. He said 640,000 Kentuckians—15 percent of the state—don't have health insurance and "trust me, you know many of those 640,000 people. You're friends with them. You're probably related to them. Some may be your sons and daughters. You go to church with them. Shop with them. Help them harvest their fields. Sit in the stands with them as you watch your kids play football or basketball or ride a horse in competition. Heck, you may even be one of them."

Beshear went on to say that "it's no fun" hoping and praying you don't get sick, or choosing whether to pay for food or medicine. He also said Kentucky is at or near the top of the charts on bad-health indicators, including heart disease, diabetes, cancer deaths, and preventable hospitalizations. He said all that affects everything from productivity and school attendance to health costs and the state's image.

"We've ranked that bad for a long, long time," he said. "The Affordable Care Act is our historic opportunity to address this weakness and to change the course of the future of the commonwealth. We're going to make insurance available for the very first time in our history to every single citizen of the commonwealth of Kentucky."

About half the audience burst into applause at that point while the other half sat on their hands. But he wasn't done. He cited a study that showed the law would inject about $15.6 billion into the Kentucky economy over eight years, create 17,000 new jobs, and generate $802 million for the state budget.

"It's amazing to me how people who are pouring time and money and energy into trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act sure haven't put that kind of energy into trying to improve the health of Kentuckians. And think of the decades that they have had to make some kind of difference," Beshear finished pointedly.

Obamacare Showdown Over a Ham Breakfast in Kentucky - NationalJournal.com

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The Affordable Care Act And People With Disabilities - Forbes

 

“ACA changes the world for persons with disabilities and funds who will now have a choice between public or private health insurance. For significant financial as well as health reasons, we believe that private health insurance, not Medicaid, will be soup d’jour for the vast majority of (Special Needs Trusts) SNT clients. We cannot know for certain, but I would not be surprised to see persons with disabilities leaving public health insurance (Medicaid) for the private market in January, 2012.

The most obvious and most significant health industry reform important to our SNT clients is the elimination of pre‐existing conditions as a bar to purchasing private health insurance. However, ACA also eliminates annual or lifetime caps, rescission of insurance policies, non‐renewability, and higher premium costs for persons with pre‐existing conditions. For individuals with significant medical problems, elimination of cost‐containment ceilings is just as important as access to the door of private medical care. It is not unusual to see clients who have maxed out their lifetime cap and are now seeking public health insurance.

Why would clients opt to pay for private health insurance rather than “free” Medicaid? The two major reasons are first, securing health insurance without a payback on death and second, access to significantly better medical care…

Change makes most of us uncomfortable, but change is a constant in our lives. This is one time when special needs attorneys can both lament the negative impact of national legislation on our personal financial well‐being, but rejoice in the concomitant good fortune of our clients with disabilities who can now join the private health insurance market with the rest of us as equal citizens with their dignity intact.”

The Affordable Care Act And People With Disabilities - Forbes

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Engaging confidently on health care reform | Battleground Surveys

 

Republicans will run on health care reform in 2014 and 2016, so get used to it. But do not believe that it will give them a better chance of securing their seats or the best shot at putting competitive Democratic seats in danger.  Democrats in the most rural and the strongest Romney seats will have to be inventive as usual, but Democrats have a lot to say on health care: fix it, don’t repeal it, don’t put the insurance companies back in charge and take your hands off Medicare.

Health care is just not a wedge issue that threatens to change these races very much – as we saw in the 2012 elections where Republicans played out this strategy.  This is basically a 50-50 issue in the battleground districts and the country, and it remains a 50-50 issue after voters have heard all of their toughest attacks, including one on the role of the IRS in the new system.  These attacks have power, and it is important to engage on the issue.  But there is no reason to think the debate changes the dynamic in these competitive House seats: we actually show Democrat members gaining on handling health care reform in their own seats.

Why is it that the popularity of the Republican Congress keeps going down as the Republicans vote now 40 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite that the law is not popular with the public?  We suspect because the House Republicans are associated with gridlock, extreme partisanship, and intense anti-Obama sentiment; because voters have other serious priorities and their steadfast focus on health care alone says Republicans are not focused on them and their issues; because Democrats are more trusted than Republicans on health care; and most important because voters do not want to repeal the law.  The more voters hear “repeal,” the less they are interested in voting Republican.

We know Republican base voters feel intensely about health care reform, but voters rank “government takeover of the health care system” pretty low as a concern about Democrats in Congress.

These results suggest Democrats should engage the issue with some confidence -- they can undermine the Republican attacks and indeed gain an advantage by educating the public on the reforms. 

Engaging confidently on health care reform | Battleground Surveys

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If this health plan is 'socialism,' we need more of it -- latimes.com

 

If this health plan is 'socialism,' we need more of it

As Obamacare's exchanges take shape in California, true, transparent, capitalistic competition will be seen among insurance firms, going toe to toe to win consumers.

David Lazarus

6:18 PM PDT, May 23, 2013

So this is what socialism looks like: Private companies competing for people's business in an open marketplace.

Californians got their first glimpse Thursday of what insurers plan to charge for coverage to be offered next year to about 5 million state residents who don't receive health insurance from employers.

In southern Los Angeles County, for example, Health Net is charging $242 a month for one of its plans. Blue Shield is charging $287 and Kaiser Permanente $325 for the same coverage.

For the first time, consumers are in a position to make an informed decision about health insurance. They can opt for the lowest-priced plan or they can factor in other considerations, such as personal convenience.

Insurers, meanwhile, are going toe to toe to win customers, keeping prices as low as possible and stepping up quality of service.

Amazingly, the sky hasn't fallen and the world as we know it hasn't come to an end.

Critics of Obamacare have long warned of the dire consequences of reforming the U.S. healthcare system. The federal Affordable Care Act constitutes a government takeover of healthcare, they have said. We might as well be living in Cuba.

In reality, what we're seeing is some much-needed sunlight being cast upon a market that for too long has operated largely in the shadows, denying consumers the information they need to make choices about medical treatment.

Private insurers will have to meet minimum standards for coverage when they begin open enrollment in October, allowing people to compare apples to apples for the first time when shopping for individual or family policies.

Insurers also will have to post their prices in a clear and easily accessible fashion, introducing a long-absent element of competition to the market.

"It will be a one-stop shop for selecting policies," said Devon Herrick, a healthcare economist at the National Center for Policy Analysis. "That should make things a lot easier for people."

If this health plan is 'socialism,' we need more of it -- latimes.com

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Want to know the future of Obamacare? Take a look at Fort Dodge, Iowa.

 

In Fort Dodge, this is changing. UnityPoint Health (which was, until this week, named Iowa Health System) is one of the 32 Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations that volunteered to have part of their Medicare payments tethered to a set of quality metrics.

While UnityPoint has hospitals across the state, it decided to focus its ACO effort on a relatively small segment of its population to limit the health system’s exposure to the possibility of losing money on the endeavor.

“If we completely missed the mark, we knew it wouldn’t be disastrous from a financial standpoint,” UnityPoint President Bill Leaver said. “We knew it wouldn’t be overwhelming, but a good size to start with.”

The Pioneer ACOs launched Jan. 1, 2012, and for the first year, the program only required them to report quality metrics. Their payments would not yet depend on how well they met 33 measures.

The most difficult part of preparing to move to a system that pays for value rather than volume in Fort Dodge was asking doctors to rethink how they do their jobs. They would be encouraged to delegate relatively routine care, for example, to other advanced practitioners, while focusing their own work on care management.

“That is harder work than we thought,” Leaver said. “For physicians, they run the office and they’re the captain of the ship. Instead of seeing a strep patient now, you might have other people working for you that you’re going to deploy.”

Overall, Leaver describes his experience with the ACO Pioneer program as “generally positive.” What he likes most about the program is that, when the hospital gets a lump sum for each patient, it has more control over treatment. The health system can prescribe treatments that Medicare would not traditionally reimburse.

Want to know the future of Obamacare? Take a look at Fort Dodge, Iowa.

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Five Obamacare Myths - NYTimes.com

Five Obamacare Myths - NYTimes.com

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Partisanship guides American attitudes on health-care reform - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

Partisanship guides American attitudes on health-care reform 

Predictably, individual views on the law's effects -- for good or ill -- also fell along party lines. Twenty-two percent of Democrats say the ACA has had an overall positive effect on their lives, compared to only 4 percent of Republicans. Similarly, 42 percent of Republicans deem the overall effect as negative, compared with 9 percent of Democrats.

"Republicans are much more likely to see negative effects of the ACA, including some effects (increased taxes or a decline in quality of care) which are almost certainly not linked to the Affordable Care Act," Taylor said. "Democrats tend to see positive effects that [also] may be real or imagined."

Although the poll numbers appear mixed, Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA in Washington, D.C., believes that public attitudes will lean more toward the positive as 2014 approaches and more of the law's key elements are enacted.

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Health care for all: Expanding Medicaid would save lives, suffering and money - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Printer friendly

Health care for all: Expanding Medicaid would save lives, suffering and money - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Printer friendly

My Piece on Medicaid expansion from the P-G:

Health care for all: Expanding Medicaid would save lives, suffering and money

One of the most common questions I get asked about the new health care law concerns how expanding health insurance coverage to millions of low-income families through Medicaid will affect those who already have insurance. "What will all of those new people with access to health care do to the rest of us? Will it make it harder to get access to our doctors? Will they clog up our emergency rooms and hospitals?"
As someone whose profession takes a strong position in favor of universal access to health care, I have a hard time saying anything but, "What a great problem to have!" It turns out to not even be a problem.
Massachusetts did this many years ago, as we are being frequently reminded, and the results are in. Use of emergency rooms is down, waiting times to see a primary care doctor are essentially unchanged and there has been a vast expansion in the use of preventive services: mammograms, colon cancer screens and prenatal care, for instance. Doctors and the people of Massachusetts overwhelmingly favor continuation of their program, and they are now proceeding to the really hard part: getting costs under control. Stay tuned!
An even more interesting experiment is being conducted in Oregon via an unhappy accident. Due to a shortage of funds, Medicaid eligibility was determined by lottery, creating a natural experiment of haves and have-nots. In the first year, those who were enrolled were 70 percent more likely to have a usual source of care, were 55 percent more likely to see the same doctor over time, received 30 percent more hospital care and received 35 percent more outpatient care, and much more.
Every doctor you know can tell you stories about how the lack of access to health insurance and health care has injured a patient's health, life, limbs, finances or all of the above. I've had patients who work full time in jobs that fall far short of the American dream. They get by, but they can't afford health insurance.
There's the cabbie who recognizes his diabetes and determines to work harder and longer so he can buy insurance before he is stricken with the label even worse than diabetes: preexisting condition! He doesn't make it and ends up in the ICU with diabetic ketoacidosis.
There's the construction worker who has a controllable seizure disorder that goes uncontrolled. He ends up in the ICU multiple times.
There's the woman who stays home to care for her dying mother and loses her insurance along with her job. When she finally gets to a doctor for herself, her cancer is far advanced.
So, for me and my profession, the most expansion for the most people is a best-case scenario. But others see expanding health insurance only through a short-term budgetary lens and consider covering nearly everyone a worst case.
For one thing, this view ignores the incredible deal states get when they accept Medicaid expansion. According to the Kaiser Foundation, by 2019 Pennsylvania would add about 482,000 new enrollees; another 282,000 who are eligible but don't know it would come into the program. That's more than three-quarters of a million people with access to care.
Critics point to the potential cost to the state of more than a billion dollars over six years. That's a lot of money, but the federal government would pay more than $17 billion -- over 94 percent of the cost. Furthermore, the additional billion would be only 1.4 percent more than Pennsylvania's currently scheduled spending over that period. Even in a best-case scenario, with insurance for an additional 1.1 million Pennsylvanians, this figure would rise to only 2.7 percent.
One can choose to focus on the costs to the state and federal governments, but we spend many of those dollars already on the wrong end of the care continuum. Our governments already pay for patients who cannot pay for themselves, largely by cutting big checks to hospitals.
You can take care of a lot of diabetic cabbies for a lot of years for the cost of a stay in the ICU. Just because the costs don't show up as a line item in a government budget -- it could be labeled "Exorbitant Amounts of Money for Preventable Complications and Deaths" -- doesn't mean we don't pay them.
A frequent talking point against expanding access to health care, "You can always go to an emergency room," is actually dead on. Literally.
The law requires emergency rooms to treat and stabilize patients even if they have no means to pay. But no emergency room does cancer screening. Or prenatal care. No emergency room manages diabetes. Or congestive heart failure. As a result, many people don't seek treatment until they are nearly dead.
Patients forgoing care or medicines because they can't afford them simply shifts the costs from keeping people healthy to our extremely expensive system of "rescue care." And remember, Massachusetts' early experience and Oregon's current experiment are showing the benefits to the entire system of getting people taken care of before they need an ER or ICU.
Not long ago, expanding access to health care was a nonpartisan goal. As recently as 2007, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including Republicans Jim DeMint and Trent Lott, wrote a letter to then-President George W. Bush pointing out that our health care system was in urgent need of repair. "Further delay is unacceptable as costs continue to skyrocket, our population ages and chronic illness increases. In addition, our businesses are at a severe disadvantage when their competitors in the global market get health care for 'free.' "
Their No. 1 priority? "Ensure that all Americans would have affordable, quality, private health coverage, while protecting current government programs. We believe the health care system cannot be fixed without providing solutions for everyone. Otherwise, the costs of those without insurance will continue to be shifted to those who do have coverage."
Medicaid expansion, as well of the rest of the new health care law, represents our best effort so far in reaching these once-bipartisan goals. Pennsylvanians deserve an expansion of health insurance and health care, a healthier state, a healthier workforce and to continue the journey toward my profession's goal: excellent, affordable health care for all.
Christopher M. Hughes practices intensive care and hospice medicine in Pittsburgh and is the Pennsylvania director of Doctors for America (www.drsfor america.org).

First Published October 4, 2012 12:00 am

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Let health reform do its job

Let health reform do its job

A patient loses his insurance and it puts his life at risk. Everyday stuff in America.

Health insurance is essential for living well with chronic disease, and the loss of access to care is a major cause of preventable illness and death, but it is also ultimately much more costly to society than long-term continuous primary care. As a doctor, I know how to help people. I can't do it when I don't see them because they cannot afford to come in. We need to shift our care to the doctor's office and away from the expensive emergency room.

The Affordable Care Act is in the process of correcting that fatal flaw in our health care system. With the benefits for seniors including making medications more affordable and shoring up Medicare, Medicaid expansion, health insurance exchanges (that would help people like Mr. Smith), subsidies to purchase insurance and spreading of risk across large populations to make possible the ending of exclusion for pre-existing conditions, the coverage gap for patients such as mine should ultimately be a thing of the past.

Most medical organizations are supporting the ACA. Most primary physicians favor it as at least a major step toward access to health care. Those who oppose it and work to create barriers to implement it have yet to offer a reasonable alternative that would help patients such as Mr. Smith. If they have one, it is time to tell the American people what they have in mind, and if not, they should step aside and let reform do what it was designed to do.

 From Doctors for America member Ian Gilson.

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The Republican ticket’s big Medicare myth

The Republican ticket’s big Medicare myth

Obama’s Medicare reform plan isn’t that hard to find. It’s largely in Title III of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The basic strategy has three components: First, figure out what “quality” in health care is. Second, figure out how to pay for quality rather than paying for volume. Third, make it easier for Medicare to quickly update itself to reflect both advances in knowledge about what quality is and how to pay for it.

And so, in Title III, you’ll find dozens of different efforts to achieve these goals. The most famous of them is Section 3403, which establishes the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). But there’s also Section 3021, which creates the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and Section 3025, which cuts hospital reimbursements if too many of their patients are readmitted, and Section 3001, which establishes value-based purchasing for hospital services, and Section 3015, which collects data on quality, and Section 3502, which advances the medical home model.

Some of the efforts are outside Title III. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is actually in Title VI of the law. And then there are the subsequent reforms the administration has proposed to save more money. Those can be found on pages 33-37 of the president’s 2013 budget proposal. They include expanding IPAB’s mandate such that it can change Medicare’s benefit package and setting a growth cap on Medicare of GDP+0.5 percentage points — which is, by the way, the same growth cap that Rep. Paul Ryan imposes in the latest iteration of his budget.

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Incivility Is a Partner in Health Care Reform Indicates Benepath CEO | Jul 23, 2012

Incivility Is a Partner in Health Care Reform Indicates Benepath CEO | Jul 23, 2012

There is another glitch looming large in the health care system. It is called incivility. “Incivility is the latest, but not the newest, issue to come to the fore in the health care system,” Clelland Green, RHU, CEO, and president of Benepath, Pennsylvania, indicated. “It is not new, but it does seem to be getting worse over time. Medical health professionals hand it out and conversely, put up with it, so it’s a two-way street with a dead end if this keeps escalating.”

Most know incivility to be intimidating, rude, disruptive or unwanted behavior aimed at someone else. It is typically an offensive, hostile or intimidating action that charges the environment in a highly negative manner. It has always been around, but seems to be getting worse. Victims of the potshots taken at them suffer real and distressing symptoms that may include humiliation, stress, depression, anger and an inability to sleep. “Call it what you want, incivility, relational aggression, lateral violence, or call a spade a spade and say that incivility is really bullying, by a slightly nicer name, but not by much,” Green added.

Bullies exist in every walk of life and for those who have the misfortune to run across them, they find themselves on the receiving end of abnormally aggressive actions and behavior that allows the individual to get control and power over others. Bullying exits in the workplace, in groups and in individual interactions. In a medical setting, it may be one nurse bullying another, management bullying a nurse, a nurse bullying a patient and vice versa, and the list goes on.

 The hard, cold fact of incivility is that it shreds workplace morale and interferes with patient safety. This type of behavior in a medical setting is far more widespread than we may imagine. The end result of working in this kind of hostile atmosphere is lower productivity, less inclination to take the initiative and fear, anger and stress and an increase in medical malpractice.

The statistics that show that bullying in workplaces across the nation is highly prevalent, with roughly 37 percent affected by it, at least 12 percent who have seen it transpire, 45 percent whose health has been impacted by bullying and a disturbing number of 40 percent who are subjected to it, but do not report it. “As it relates to the medical health profession,” said Green, “the bottom line is civility must be present for there to be professionalism. It is just that simple. Patients do not go to hospital to be subjected to this kind of behavior or attitude. Medical professionals need to get a grip.”

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The Conservative Misinformation Campaign About Obamacare Has Worked Really, Really Well | Mother Jones

The Conservative Misinformation Campaign About Obamacare Has Worked Really, Really Well | Mother Jones

Andrew Sprung draws my attention to a Kaiser quiz about Obamacare from a few months ago, and you'll be unsurprised to learn that most Americans don't know much about it. I put the responses into graphical form, and what's most interesting, I think, is to look at the right side of the chart: the questions that were most frequently gotten wrong.

All of them are tied together by a single thread: they've been the main targets of the conservative misinformation campaign against the Affordable Care Act. The tea party folks have never spent much time talking about low-income subsidies or tax credits or Medicaid expansion or pre-existing conditions. And guess what? Most people know how the law works in those areas.¹

But conservatives do spend a lot of time rabble-rousing about death panels and illegal immigrants and Medicare cuts. And they also spend a lot of time bewailing the "government takeover" of healthcare, which includes things like the public option ("a new government run insurance plan") and a supposed mandate that small businesses will all be required to offer health insurance for their employees. Sure enough, those are the areas where misunderstanding is highest.

That's why I disagree with Andrew that misinformation about small businesses amounts to a "foot fault" by current standards of public discourse. In a way, he's right, of course: it's not a major flash point and it hasn't gotten a lot of news coverage. But there's a reason it's the single most misunderstood issue. The Rush/Fox/Drudge axis has been screaming about the government takeover of healthcare for three years now, and it's sunk in. Most people believe it. That's why, faced with a question most of them really have no idea about, their immediate reaction is to believe that, in fact, government is once again planting its jackboot directly on the necks of America's small businesses. It's a small issue, but it's also a bellwether that the broader conservative misinformation campaign has burrowed very deeply into the American psyche.

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AlterNet: 10 Reasons Most People Like Obamacare Once They Know What's Really In It

AlterNet: 10 Reasons Most People Like Obamacare Once They Know What's Really In It

There are two Affordable Care Acts. There's the legislation passed by Congress in 2009, and then there's the mythical Affordable Care Act – the perfidious “government takeover” decried and demagogued by so many conservatives (and quite a few liberals). The former is quite popular, the latter gets decidedly mixed reviews.

Don't take my word for it. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found Americans split down the middle, with 41 percent approving of the law, and 40 percent saying they didn't like it (PDF). But then Kaiser asked about 12 specific provisions in the legislation, and found that, on average, 63 percent of respondents approved of the nuts and bolts of Obamacare. Of the 12 measures they tested, only one – the controversial mandate to carry health insurance or pay a penalty – received the approval of less than half of Americans (35 percent).

Or consider this divide: while only 12 percent of Republicans had a positive view of the law overall, 47 percent, on average, viewed its specifics favorably.

Follow the link to read the ten reasons...

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Ezra Klein: No, ‘Obamacare’ isn’t ‘the largest tax increase in the history of the world’ (in one chart)

No, ‘Obamacare’ isn’t ‘the largest tax increase in the history of the world’ (in one chart)

Since the Supreme Court decision, Republicans have been calling the Affordable Care Act “the largest tax increase in the history of the world.” Politifact rates this false. Kevin Drum’s got a table of the 15 significant tax increases since 1950, and the Affordable Care Act, which amounts to a tax increase of 0.49 percent of GDP, comes in 10th. Austin Frakt took Drum’s table and made a chart:

So no, the Affordable Care Act isn’t the “biggest tax hike in history.” It’s not even the biggest tax hike in the past 60 years. Or 50 years. Or 30 years. Or 20 years.

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