After Obummercare compliance destroyed it.
"Mass. sticking with its health insurance website" by Felice J. Freyer | Globe Staff August 08, 2014
Massachusetts will run its own health insurance exchange and won’t need to join the federal HealthCare.gov website, state officials announced Friday.
A software system adapted for Massachusetts by the tech firm hCentive passed muster with the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in a test late Thursday, giving officials confidence that it will be ready when enrollment for next year starts on Nov. 15.
The decision marks an important step toward recovery from the embarrassing failure of the Massachusetts Health Connector’s refurbished website, launched last October.
Related: State Cuts Check For CGI Screw-Up
Maydad Cohen, special adviser to the governor who is overseeing the project, said in a conference call with reporters Friday morning. “We’ve successfully demonstrated hCentive’s ability to deliver a smooth consumer experience.”
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I guess we will all find out.
"About 400,000 in Mass. must seek new health plan" by Felice J. Freyer | Globe staff August 15, 2014
Nearly 400,000 people in Massachusetts will need to reapply for health insurance before the end of the year, and many of them probably do not even know it.
And I am long overdue for a physical.
They are people who do not have employer-sponsored health insurance and who instead sought insurance through the state.
Me, and I was forced to get it.
After the Massachusetts insurance website failed last year, most of them were enrolled in temporary coverage that ends Dec. 31, which is why they must select a new plan.
This is the newest challenge facing the Massachusetts Health Connector, the state agency that provides an online place to shop for insurance, as it struggles to emerge from the disastrous rollout of its website last year. Now that state and federal officials have said that Massachusetts has software that will work, Connector leaders want to get people to log on and choose a plan, starting Nov. 15.
Right around election time, a bad signal for Democrats.
See:
Obamacare Plans Forecast Unhealthy Fall For Democrats
Court Erases Obummercare Subsidies
Obummercare Plans Too Complex
Voting against him is not.
To reach them, the Connector plans to place 2 million robocalls and knock on 200,000 doors, along with making personal phone calls, sending mail, buying print and broadcast advertisements, and holding community meetings and enrollment fairs.
The campaign is estimated to cost $15 million to $19 million, money the state will seek from the federal government.
$igh!
In a document describing the enrollment push, state officials say that one of their main messages to consumers should be to “squarely acknowledge and apologize for last year’s problems,” when a new website developed to comply with the federal Affordable Care Act failed to work properly, leaving thousands of people unable to sign up for insurance.
Not good enough anymore. Sorry.
Maydad Cohen, a special adviser to Governor Deval Patrick, told the board that oversees the Connector Thursday that the state will request an additional $80 million in Medicaid funds to complete rebuilding of the website....
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Related: VA to provide medical care on Nantucket
That's national health care for you.
Ex-Googler to work on US websites
If he can't fix it, no one can.
Poll: Obama health law is a tale of 2 Americas
Paying off for those that embraced it!
Pfffft!
Medicare to pay doctors to coordinate care
It's rationing!
Better card your check:
"Hospital executives received big raises; Cost-cutting measures have little impact on pay" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey | Globe Staff August 16, 2014
The departing chief of UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester earned $4.8 million in 2012, topping the list of Massachusetts hospital executives who received healthy increases in seven-figure pay packages — even as they faced growing pressure to bring costs under control.
The greedy money junkies are in charge of all in$titutions. That's why AmeriKa is failing.
John G. O’Brien, who retired in February 2013 after more than a decade at UMass Memorial, nearly doubled his compensation from 2011, when he earned $2.4 million as head of the biggest health care system in Central Massachusetts. Much of his 2012 compensation included retirement benefits earned during his tenure.
O’Brien’s payout came several months before UMass Memorial reported a staggering $55 million operating loss for the fiscal year ending September 2013. The system has since laid off hundreds of workers and made other changes to close the gap under the new chief, Dr. Eric W. Dickson.
Douglas Brown, UMass Memorial’s chief legal counsel, said O’Brien helped expand the health system and did “a remarkable job” as chief executive.
“It is true we suffered a lot in 2013,” Brown said. “We certainly don’t blame that on John O’Brien. We look at his [entire] tenure.”
Brown added that the health system, which employs 12,000 and collects $2.5 billion in revenues, needs to pay well to attract top talent. “We want to pay competitively with the markets so that we can get the best,” he said.
I'm $ick of that excuse for looting.
Massachusetts nonprofits are required to report executive compensation and other figures to the attorney general’s office and the Internal Revenue Service each year, although there is a lag of more than a year in the reporting. Nine nonprofit hospital systems provided those documents to the Globe on Friday.
Most of the 11 top executives at these nonprofit systems received raises. The increases are consistent with a national trend of growing compensation for executives, even as state and federal laws push them to get rising costs under control. Massachusetts, known for its top-quality hospitals, has the highest health costs in the nation.
The biggest health system in Massachusetts, Boston-based Partners HealthCare, gave its top executives big raises in 2012. Chief executive Dr. Gary L. Gottlieb’s compensation climbed 24 percent, to $2.6 million in total compensation, from $2.1 million the year before.
Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, president of the Partners-owned Brigham and Women’s Hospital, made about $2.4 million, a 26 percent raise from her 2011 pay of $1.9 million. At Massachusetts General Hospital, Partners’s other flagship location, president Dr. Peter L. Slavin earned $2.2 million, up nearly 30 percent from $1.7 million.
The highest-paid Partners executive was Peter K. Markell, the chief financial officer, who earned $3.9 million, including $2.6 million in deferred compensation and other benefits. Two other Partners executives earned at least $2.7 million each.
Annual compensation includes base pay, bonuses, retirement benefits, and other payments, and it is rising for hospital executives nationwide. But Thomas Flannery, partner at the consulting firm Mercer, said scrutiny of compensation is also increasing as consumers and employers focus more on the cost and quality of care.
Now you know why costs are zooming out of control.
“Over the next decade, the issue is going to be not just the level of compensation but the performance that these highly paid executives deliver,” Flannery said. “Those organizations that are able to demonstrate low cost, high quality are the organizations that are going to win in the long term.”
Chief executives of nearly all the state’s biggest nonprofit hospitals made more than $1 million in 2012. Former Tufts Medical Center chief executive Eric Beyer, who left the hospital last year, earned about $911,000. Dr. Kevin Tabb of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center earned $1.4 million in his first full year as chief executive.
Boston Medical Center paid chief executive Kate Walsh $1.3 million in 2012, slightly less than the year before.
Compensation for the Children’s Hospital’s chief, Dr. James Mandell, now retired, stayed at about $1.5 million. Dr. Edward J. Benz Jr. of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was paid $1.3 million, also about the same as a year earlier.
Outside Boston, Dr. Howard R. Grant of Burlington-based Lahey Health earned $1.7 million, a 70 percent bump from about $1 million the year before. And in Springfield, compensation stayed steady at about $1.6 million for the former chief of Baystate Health, Mark R. Tolosky.
Dr. Karen Joynt, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said executive compensation needs to be tied more closely to the care patients receive, rather than just the revenues hospitals generate. Joynt conducted a recent study that found little connection between chief executive compensation and a hospital’s quality of care.
“We want incentives to be in place so that people are focused on making care better and more efficient, and not just making more money for the hospital,” she said.
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Related: Mass. hospitals’ mistakes list widens
I'm glad the executives are healthy.
"Massachusetts health insurers post mixed second-quarter financial results" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff August 15, 2014
The state’s big nonprofit health insurers Friday posted mixed second-quarter financial results, including operating losses tied in part to costs stemming from the federal health care overhaul.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest health plan, reported an operating loss of $46.7 million and a net loss of $32.2 million. The quarterly losses were attributed partly to $15 million in taxes and fees the Boston-based insurer said it paid out in the three months ending June 30 to support the US Affordable Care Act.
In last year’s second quarter, Blue Cross Blue Shield registered an operating loss of $8.5 million but a net gain of $11.8 million, largely because of investment income.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan, based in Wellesley, also cited unspecified costs related to the national health overhaul in reporting an operating loss of $12.5 million and net income of $6.9 million for the April-to-June period. That compared to a narrower operating loss of $4.5 million and net income of about $600,000 for the corresponding period in 2013.
Worcester-based Fallon Health posted a second-quarter operating loss of $900,000 and overall net income of $2.3 million, down from operating income of $2.8 million and net income of $7.3 million in the same period last year. In the most recent quarter, Fallon said it paid an Accountable Care Act fee of $2 million and $3.3 million in claims from patients taking a high-cost hepatitis C drug.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Insurer bias persists, group says" by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar | Associated Press August 18, 2014
WASHINGTON — Ending insurance discrimination against the sick was a central goal of the nation’s health care overhaul, but leading patient groups say that promise is being undermined by new barriers from insurers.
The more you find out about Obummercare the sicker you become.
The insurance industry responds that critics are confusing legitimate cost-control with bias.
Otherwise known as rationing, another broken promise.
Some state regulators, however, say there is reason to be concerned about policies that shift costs to patients and narrow their choices of hospitals and doctors.
We all know that's what their plan did, and the ma$$ media is acting like what, what, what? This is sickeningly offensive.
With open enrollment for 2015 three months away, the Obama administration is being pressed to enforce the Affordable Care Act’s antidiscrimination provisions. Some regulations have been issued; others are pending after more than four years.
Why? he has waived everything but the tax penalty for patients, and WTF you mean regulations have still not been written after four years?
What kind of vague, we didn't read it bill written by insurers did you guys pass?
And those enrollments that the people just did six months ago are back? Not a good selling point to people during the election campaign.
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The advocacy groups all supported the law. The advocates say they are disappointed by how difficult it has proved to be for consumers to get a full picture of plans sold on the new insurance exchanges.
At least we were called patients above, and the $lip tells you all you need to know about AmeriKa's medical $y$tem.
Digging is often required to learn crucial details such as drugs covered, exact copayments, and which doctors and hospitals are in the network [and] some insurers are back to shunning the sick.
Why was it made so complicated? nThat turns off Americans. They want to know the health care is there and is good, that's all!
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A Health and Human Services spokeswoman said the department is preparing a formal response to the advocates and stressed that today’s level of consumer protection is far superior to what existed before President Obama’s law, when an insurance company could use any existing medical condition to deny coverage.
You know what? The half-a-loaf happy horse shit has to stop after promises of golden dreams. It's not winning you any votes.
The law also takes away some of the motivation insurers have for chasing healthy patients. Those attracting a healthy population must pay into a pool that will reimburse plans with a higher share of patients with health problems. But that backstop is under attack from congressional Republicans as an insurer ‘‘bailout.’’
Yes, that is the little discussed and vague clause in the bill whereby all insurance company losses are to be covered by taxpayers -- and the pre$$ won't linger ion it now.
Compounding the uncertainty is that Washington and the states now share responsibility for policing health plans sold to individuals.
Now I feel taken care of.
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I read this laughable piece of propaganda last night:
"Obama must sell voters on his successes" August 17, 2014
More than any of his recent predecessors, President Obama has been ineffective in rallying support for his policies. Purely political rhetoric doesn’t suit him; he hasn’t figured out how to cut through the din with pugnacious phrases, like George W. Bush did, or to leaven his attacks with plucky humor, like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did.
Strange analysis for a guy whose oratory has been credited with winning him two terms as president.
Worse than that, he often seems reluctant even to try. In recent weeks, a series of foreign policy crises have kept him pinned down, and his late-August vacation limits his political activity.
See: $coping Out the Senate
Also see: Obama heads back to D.C. for meetings
And then he is going to fly back again to continue having fun he's not really having because he's working?
Thanks for contributing to the greenhouse gas mess, sphincter.
But come Labor Day, he should realize that he actually has a pretty good story to tell, and hit the hustings.
Yeah, if you believe in political mythology and agenda-pu$hing lies.
The fall congressional campaign is well underway, and there are two prevailing scenarios — a full-fledged disaster for the Democrats, losing both houses of Congress; and a less sweeping loss, mitigated by enough strategic victories to keep the Senate barely in Democratic control.
One small point, Globe: the Democrats don't control both houses of Congress.
Nothing like someone arguing a case that has no basis in reality, but that's my newspaper all over.
One would think that Obama’s party is on the ropes, failing, dragged down by the poor condition of the country. But that’s not remotely the case.
Since January 2013, the economy has improved significantly. All the dire predictions made by Republicans in 2012 have been refuted. A jobless recovery? The unemployment rate has dropped from 7.9 percent in January 2013 to 6.2 percent today. A health care disaster? The number of uninsured adults has plunged by 25 percent, thanks to Obamacare. Spiraling health-care costs? The years that Obama has been in office have seen the lowest rates of increase in a generation. Out-of-control deficits? A 2014 deficit of $514 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — almost half what it was during the 2012 campaign. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit is about the average of where it’s been the last 40 years.
Of course, if the Globe editorial staff says it, it all must be true. They are the ones with the solutions to our world's problems.
Of course, the Middle East is a mess, emboldening Republicans who believe a more militaristic posture would somehow have deterred ISIS and Hamas.
That is why the rigged political process basically controlled by AIPAC will ensure the first outcome the Globe mentioned.
Remember, irritating and loose cannon Tea Party already eliminated.
Yet Americans are vastly more supportive of Obama’s reluctance to intervene in such disputes than the frenzied calls to action by John McCain and other GOP hawks.
But we are not support of his covert efforts at coups in Syria and Ukraine, as well as creating the ISIS illusion.
For the world's information, the American people are not only reluctant to intervene, we despise the idea. We are simply tired of being lied into wars, it's been lies for decades now, most often it's the government creating, funding, and directing the "enemy," the jig is up, we know it, and they know we know it. Thus you get hysterical screaming of inane absurdities from authority and media.
Nonetheless, Obama’s Democrats are stuck in a trap of their own making: The president’s opponents, including conservative super PACs, are nationalizing the race with sweeping claims about Obamacare and the economy.
The sixth year of a two-term president is always a referendum on the person and the party in control? Have they forgotten 2006?
But there’s no similarly broad-based response coming from the Democrats. Their candidates in swing districts are distancing themselves even from Obama’s successes, and national Democrats are approaching the election as a series of local contests rather than a fight for congressional control.
They must know something the Globe does not.
Thus, many people who aren’t habitual voters — such as the younger Americans, low-income people, and minorities who came out for Obama in 2008 and 2012 — feel far less of a push to go to the polls this year.
Why did Ferguson just come to mind?
Meanwhile, many moderates are liable to be influenced by frustration over Washington gridlock and seek a change, with the GOP as the only change out there.
Yeah, it's change such as it is, and will make the country worse because every time the American people vote for "change" that is what happen. Exhibit A: Obama.
This pattern is entirely predictable, and there’s only one way to disrupt it: A colorful, forceful defense of his policies by Obama and the national Democratic Party.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
Start with the proposition that the approval ratings for Obamacare are artificially low, because of the initial problems with the HealthCare.gov website.
Problems that have not gone away and are going to be amplified in the next two months as re-enrollments are due! The Globe is saying draw attention to that?
Most national polls are pretty consistent: About 40 percent support Obamacare, while about 55 percent oppose it. It sounds bad, but Democrats should keep in mind that many of those who tell pollsters they oppose the Affordable Care Act aren’t Republicans; they’re liberals who prefer a single-payer plan.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
They were NOT EVEN ALLOWED in the ROOM when the BILL was WRITTEN, and the rotten public option compromise was dismissed!
But now they think supporters of single payer -- and I was one of them, I cited "Sicko" scores of times, pick a country, pick a plan, American genius can figure it out, but nope.... and I'm a NOMINAL REPUBLICAN -- are going to get behind Obummer and the piece of crap he cites as his crowning success?
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
There’s every reason to believe that a full-throated defense of Obamacare — and a focus on Republicans’ inability to coalesce around an alternative — can move the numbers in Democrats’ favor, just as it did in 2012.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
All Republicans have to say is we would have left it alone for the time being after repealing Obummercare, we'll start fresh, and that will be good enough because Obummercare has been a public relations disaster.
Instead of spending their super PAC money to take down individual Republican candidates, the national Democrats should be aggressively countering the view that Obama’s policies have left him, and the nation, at a difficult crossroads. The nation’s vital signs are better today than in 2012, and the political climate for the party in power should be, too. If he wants to continue and expand policies that are working, Obama — the most diffident of political crusaders — must first persuade voters to give him some credit.
And if you keep telling yourself that maybe, maybe it will be true.
Globe didn't mention the immigration crisis disaster as a selling point, either, as that failed political effort has now slid down the memory hole. Waving the kids at people while Israel murdered Gazan babies didn't go over to well, did it?
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You know it is true: laughter is the best medicine.
