Obamacare will save us all. Unless your this women.Follow

Rush Limbaugh is not a source, he's a punchline.

Tell us, ThiefX, how does it feel to be so consistently full of fail?

What message? Someone lost their Medicaid when they started receiving Social Security benefits. While unfortunate and probably something the government should work to avoid (there being two different departments involved), it has nothing at all to do with "Obamacare". Hell, the other caller said he's seen it happen tons of times... it's not a new issue and has zilch to do with the recently passed health care bill.

Unless the message is "the SSA and DHHS need to coordinate better", someone is barking up the wrong tree.

On the other hand, gbaji whining because people don't want to play his reindeer games according to his special rules is both predictable and sad.

Edited, Apr 12th 2010 11:32pm by Jophiel

Given that the vast majority of Obamacare is not going to start operating for a couple of years yet, the fact that you are trying to blame Obamacare for this one makes you look deranged. This is the sort of situation that "single payer care" avoids altogether, because personal or family income is never an issue. The entire population is covered publicly, when they choose not to use private services and insurance. But fear not, Obamacare, when it finally kicks in, doesn't go as far as single payer care.

Huh. This woman must be new. Any one I know with Medicare is freaking obsessed with not going over the income requirement. Aslo, who doesn't know that your kid's SS payments count under the parent's/legal guardian's income?

This makes me sad not so much for the lady who lost her coverage (and apparently, the ability to call SS, cancel the payments, reimburse them and regain her coverage), but for our citizenry as a whole.

I missed it. What did this have to do with healthcare reform, besides reinforcing the fact that a public option would have meant there were no problems here?

No one's blaming Obamacare for this woman's problem. What we are doing is suggesting that the same kind of messed up stuff will happen even more as we put more people under what is essentially the same system for health care. I'm not sure how anyone failed to understand that. You're not deliberately trying to be obtuse, are you?

If you just fought hard to convince your spouse to spend a large chunk of your family's savings on a new car, a news article showing that the brand of car you're planning on buying has problems might just be relevant to you, right? Same deal.

One of the major arguments against Obamacare was the idea of rationed care. That was the core argument behind the "death panels". Rhetoric aside, the argument rested on an assumption that government would not be able to handle scarcity of medical resources "better" than private health care providers, it would just use different criteria. The counter argument to this was that the government for some magical reason (presumably having to do with a lack of profit motive) would indeed be able to do a better job at allocating resources.


A story like this shows that, no, the government really isn't. It's just as likely to deny care for seemingly arbitrary reasons as a private health insurer. It'll do it for different reasons, but it'll still do it. Which is exactly what those of us opposed to the health care bill were saying all along. You can't get something for nothing.




No. It doesn't avoid it. It'll just change yet again the criteria by which care will be denied. At the end of the day, there are still only so many health care resources. There are only so many doctors. There are only so many medical scanners, beds, flu shots, etc. No amount of shuffling around who pays for it changes that. What it does change is the criteria upon which that scarcity presents itself. Right now, it's based on ability to pay. If you can't afford something, you can't get it (or you are unlikely to get it). If you remove the cost restriction, then some other restriction must take it's place. It could be based on survival odds, age of the patient, calculated likely years remaining if a procedure is performed, or whatever. But don't doubt that there will be some criteria at hand.


It's not about the specifics of *why* she was denied care, but just that she was. It shows that people get denied for seemingly arbitrary reasons under government care now, so why assume it wont happen if we expand the system?

Emphasis mine, of course.



Edited, Apr 13th 2010 2:48pm by Belkira

Jophed,



No one does. That's all part of Obama's plan to kill the US free market.



Omega,



And situations like this will increase exponentially under Obamacare. People who face expensive health care will simply quit and rely on the govn.

Has the passed law not been open to public scrutiny since December? I'm going to guess you're railing against the deliberate misinformation fed to the masses by the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush, Beck, etc.

Edit: It's one thing to disagree with the law, but it is definitely out there if you want to read it. I mean, how can you even disagree with it if you couldn't? You're behind on the times; the law* is now the end of days because it's obvious what has been in it; not because it's hidden.

Edit2: I mean law, sorry. It's no longer just a bill, but part of this great country :)

Edited, Apr 13th 2010 4:34pm by LockeColeMA

I can't believe the complete denial and utterly retarded dismissal of the story from the overzealous liberals in this thread. I don't know enough about the story either way, and I'm certainly not going to take the lead from Mr. Limbaugh, but if the facts of the story are accurately reported by the local CBS news:

1. She was offered disability benefits for her son without applying for them
2. Accepting these benefits caused her denial of medical coverage
3. Offering to reject the benefits would not reverse the denial

Then yes, the government screwed her. The question should be whether the social security benefits were truly unsolicited, and whether or not it was an intentional effort to find a reason to deny her future care, or whether it was merely an error in the system. The latter can be fixed, but only if we know about it, recognize it, and act to correct it. The former is a very bad thing indeed, and a legitimate reason for people to be just as skeptical of government health care as they are private insurance companies. The fact that several people stepped in and she will actually get the care she needs is quite irrelevant. A person, any person, should not have to make the national news to get benefits they otherwise deserve and were unjustly denied by the system, accidentally, or for other more purposeful and malicious reasons.






Yeah... not at all suspicious.

I won't answer for any other overzealous liberals but I already agreed that the SSA and DHHS should coordinate better on the sort of thing. My assumption (off the cuff, no evidence) is that her acceptance of Medicaid (and having her son on the policy) flagged her in the SSA system as someone eligible for benefits and there's no check against whether those benefits would affect other things she's eligible for.

That -- if I'm correct -- is something that should be reviewed and changed. But I'm not interested in debating it too deeply without knowing exactly how it all happened. What is true though is that this woman would probably have never had any insurance in the past couple years if not for Medicaid and so people using this story as a warning against government intervention in the insurance system are completely missing one of the main points. Government snafus aside, it's not as though this woman would otherwise be using her Humana or Blue Cross policy to cover her chemo.

Must have missed it. /shrug




Reasonable assumption. I've never heard of such a thing, but I'm sure it's possible.



That's all I was really looking for.



Same.



The key point to take away here is that existing government systems can and do fail. Willful ignorance of situations like the one in the story in favor of promoting the larger benefits to the people is not at all a healthy approach, IMO.

You just don't do logic, do you?