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posted by LaminatorX on Friday October 31 2014, @07:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the take-your-medicine dept.

We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act but until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.

Despite many Republican voters’ disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.

 
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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 31 2014, @10:50AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday October 31 2014, @10:50AM (#111832) Homepage Journal

    I notice there was no mention of how the insurance rates have gone up drastically as a direct result of the ACA. When even the bastion of Obama lovin that is the huffington post [huffingtonpost.com] admits there's a problem, there's a fucking problem.

    There also was no mention of how jobs for anyone who knows their ass from a hole in the ground in the medical field have all but completely disappeared. Before Obamacare, a well qualified RN or PT could expect 3-5 calls a week offering them a job. After Obamacare, zero calls and the same two people are unlikely to be able to find a job even actively looking. Yet the statistics all say Obamacare is creating jobs in healthcare? Yeah, it's creating beancounter jobs, lawyer jobs, and inexperienced, entry-level jobs while causing layoffs of people who actually know what they're doing. Makes you feel a warm, safe feeling about the quality of care you're going to receive, don't it?

    Thankfully, this is not my problem. I remain uninsured and immune to Obamacare by way of my feather not dot, wagon burner heritage where capitalism still controls the quality of my healthcare. While everyone else is laying off experienced staff and cutting corners at the patients' expense, my tribe just built a spankin new hospital paid for through free market principles. Suck it, palefaces. Enjoy your death panels. Enjoy your 30+ millions of looming coverage losses. Enjoy your wet behind the ears- doctors, nurses, and therapists.

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    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
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  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday October 31 2014, @01:13PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Friday October 31 2014, @01:13PM (#111878)

    well, someone had to pay for all the un-insured people?

    I have never, ever met a poor doctor so I call BS on the medical professional decline..

    What has probably happened is that since there are 10,000,000 more people on the rolls, facilities are needing to expand...

    We are only at the beginning of this process....

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 31 2014, @01:32PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday October 31 2014, @01:32PM (#111888) Homepage Journal

      You have never, ever met a doctor in their first ten years of practice then. They're ALL poor then from the extreme amount of loans they had to take out. And poor or not has nothing to do with there not being jobs available.

      If facilities were needing to expand, there would be jobs for experienced healthcare workers. There are not. Check for yourself, there are plenty of jobs search sites. The only ones you'll find are paying half or less what experienced healthcare workers were being offered only a few short years ago.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday October 31 2014, @02:00PM

        by opinionated_science (4031) on Friday October 31 2014, @02:00PM (#111904)

        Those ten years are graduate school...I don't expect students to be wealthy, but to be anything other than GP requires 10 years. I have never met a qualified medical professional who is not well off, that is why the debt is "sort of" justified, although one could argue it drives up the cost of healthcare....

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday October 31 2014, @02:19PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday October 31 2014, @02:19PM (#111911)

      I have never, ever met a poor doctor so I call BS on the medical professional decline.

      There are three trends about this that are simultaneously true:
      1. Doctors, on the whole, make far more than the average person (a low-paid doctor in the US typically makes something like $150K a year). Part of this is just a supply/demand issue.
      2. Doctors are making less than they once did.
      3. Younger doctors (under age 35 or so) are not particularly wealthy, in part because much of what they make is going to student loans, and in part because what they make is significantly less than their more experienced counterparts.

      So where's all the money for health care going if not to the doctors, you ask? Pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, hospital facilities, and hospital upper management.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Friday October 31 2014, @01:33PM

    by fadrian (3194) on Friday October 31 2014, @01:33PM (#111890) Homepage

    Umm, that's because rates were not limited by PPACA. They had been going up for years and will continue to do so. If you didn't notice, they didn't go up as much this year (overall) as in recent years past.

    If you wanted to really save money, we could stop paying the insurers' 15% bribe off the top. Having national insurance as a government-managed risk pool would be the right way to go for efficiency. But we had to bow to the disciples of the free market and make sure the current players got their bribes.

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    That is all.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @02:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @02:37PM (#111917)

    > When even the bastion of Obama lovin that is the huffington post admits there's a problem, there's a fucking problem.

    Did you even read what is on the other end of the link that you posted? It sure doesn't fucking say what you claim it fucking says.

    Only one of the articles there is less than 2 years old and the point of that article is the opposite of what you are claiming - "Right now, there is too little information about too few carriers to make any conclusions on the ACA's impact on premiums."

    As with nearly all of your posts, you are just doing the peacock dance of delusional disconnect from the real world. Stick to simple matters of programming and stay away from the hard stuff.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @03:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @03:19PM (#111931)

    Lay off the fire water dude! Seriously.

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 31 2014, @05:57PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday October 31 2014, @05:57PM (#111965) Journal

    There also was no mention of how jobs for anyone who knows their ass from a hole in the ground in the medical field have all but completely disappeared
     
    Except, it addresses exactly that question:
      Wall Street analysts and health care experts say, the industry appears to be largely flourishing, in part because of the additional business the law created.
     
    But hey, don't let reality affect your already-made mind.