Hat tip to BostonBob.
New Obamacare Facebook Photo Ignites Mockery
A photo posted on Sunday by the official HealthCare.gov Facebook account has prompted an avalanche of mockery.
The Obamacare Facebook photo reads: “The first thing I’m going to do after my coverage begins is ______.”
Facebook users wasted no time filling in the blank with quips and barbs aimed at mocking the unpopular Obamacare program.
“Get another job so I can afford to pay for it,” responded one Facebook user.
“Check for identity theft,” quipped another.
“Lament the lack of coverage and the astronomical cost for the crappy coverage,” wrote another.
“Try not to get sick all year,” snarked one Facebook user.
“Wonder why it costs so much more than it used to because I am a young, healthy male with no preexisting conditions,” wrote one Facebook poster.
“EAT!!! I was starved waiting all these weeks to get signed up. I never had time to cook or even work,” wrote another.
“Watch the economy circle the drain,” stated another Facebook user.
The lackluster Facebook response is merely the latest Obamacare social media backfire. President Barack Obama’s campaign-turned-activism group, Organizing For Action, set off a wave of mockery when it launched its “pajama boy” holiday graphic featuring a pajama-clad young man sipping hot chocolate with a message that read, “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance.”
The latest RealClearPolitics average of polls finds just 40% of Americans now support Obamacare.
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hahahaha, people will have some fun with this. it’s like they thought the whole internet needed a “caption contest” for making fun of obamacare.
it is hilarious how stupid these people are, they just keep feeding the comedians and bloggers softball pitches.
“The first thing I’m going to do after my coverage begins is……”
a) save up $5000 for my deductible
b) lie about my income so I get free Medicaid
c) get a third part-time job, since there aren’t any full time jobs thanks to Obamacare
d) get another abortion
e) finally get my chlamydia, herpes, and gonorrhea treated
f) get me a baby daddy and start having welfare babies
g) get on disability from depression caused by signing up for Obamacare
h) finally get that gastric bypass surgery
You can read some real happy horseshit right here. These had to be written by OFA stooges.
http://www.barackobama.com/health-care-stories/
How about saving up to buy some damn clothes?
That chick looks like someone rolled her and left her sobbing in an alley. What’s up with the rotten undershirt and the torn-up coffeeshop girl scarf? Looks like she stole a worn-out Taliban turban from the Kabul A-#1 Laundry shop (Rated 5 Kalashnikovs in Panjshir Today!) and wrapped it around her neck. Is she black, or just not bathing regularly?
Target cuts health coverage for part-time workers
By Paul Ziobro
Target Corp. on Tuesday said it will stop offering health coverage for part-time employees, citing insurance options available through public exchanges.
Target will stop covering part-time employees on April 1, the company said in a corporate blog post quoting human resources chief Jodee Kozlak. Less than 10% of Target’s roughly 360,000 employees take part in the plan being discontinued. Those employees will be given $500 due to the coverage being ended.
Target said the health-insurance marketplaces, spurred by President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, could provide options its part-time workers may prefer.
“By offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense,” Target said.
The health law requires large companies to offer coverage to employees working 30 hours a week or more, from 2015, or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 per worker. The law also requires most individuals this year to have coverage, or pay a penalty, and many big employers have been bracing for higher costs as employees who previously turned down participation in the company health plan now sign up for it.
Retailers, along with restaurant and hospitality companies, are bracing from some of the biggest cost increases under the new insurance mandates due to their sizable workforces.
Several other big employers have already said they are paring back the benefits they offered that aren’t required by the law to try to keep their benefits spending in check. In August, United Parcel Service Inc. said it was cutting off coverage for workers’ spouses who had access to insurance through their own employers.
The online health insurance exchanges allow individuals to compare health plans and apply for tax credits toward the cost of their coverage. People can get tax credits on a sliding scale if they fall within certain income brackets–between $11,490 and $45,960 for a single person — but only if they don’t have access to insurance through their employer that costs 9.5% or less of their wages.
Some employers have also sought to trim workers’ hours to minimize the number for whom they have to provide coverage or pay a penalty. In its statement, Target said it wouldn’t be limiting hours for workers as a result of the change and its workers that average at least 32 hours a week will be eligible for comprehensive health insurance coverage.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Should doctors protect patient privacy? Yes, of course.
Should doctors take steps to make sure patients are free to discuss sensitive information (by requesting family members step out if necessary)? Yes.
Should it literally become a “federal case” if doctors fail to follow proper protocol before each medical discussion with patients and their families? I don’t think so.
Federalizing these relatively minor offenses has tremendous potential for misuse and selective enforcement. We’ve seen this in other areas, as in this 2011 Wall Street Journal piece, “As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared“.
It looks like we may be seeing more of this in health care as well.” –Dr. Paul Hsieh
‘Socialist’ Swedes Take to Private Health Insurance
J.D. Tuccille|Jan. 22, 2014 8:55 am
http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/22/socialist-swedes-take-to-private-health
Sweden, a country famous for a welfare state that has actually been trimmed back substantially in recent years, is experiencing a phenomenon unlikely to bring cheer to those Americans who think the answer to Obamacare’s problems is more government involvement in medicine. Tired of long waits and inadequate care, Swedes increasingly purchase private health insurance policies to gain access to the care the state can’t provide.
According to Sweden’s insurance trade industry organization, Svensk Försäkring:
The number of private health care insurance policies has increased in recent years. In 2011 about 440,000 people had private health care insurance. Most of these people have their policy paid by their employer.
The trend continues, with the English-language The Local reporting last week that “One in ten Swedes now has private health insurance.” The site also says, “More than half a million Swedes now have private health insurance,” though that seems to refer to the growth in the number of policies, with many more of the country’s 9.5 million people actually covered by private insurance.
Why the growth? From The Local:
“It’s quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks’ time rather than having to wait for a year,” privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio on Friday. “It’s terrible that I, as a young person, don’t feel I can trust the health care system to take care of me.”
In a separate article about Sweden’s shrinking welfare state, The Local also noted that “visitors are sometimes surprised to learn about year-long waiting times for cancer patients.”
Reason’s Matthew Feeney noted in June that Sweden’s welfare-state period was something of a brief interlude.
Up until the 1970s Sweden had strong market-oriented policies in place that increased wealth and standards of living thanks to reforms introduced at the end of the 19th century. These Swedish market reforms were wide ranging, impacting both business and law. Property rights were enforced, the government was limited, regulation was light, and a private banking sector flourished.
The cradle-to-grave services implemented in the 1970s proved unaffordable starting in the 1990s.
In the years following the 1990s crisis, Sweden has deregulated whole industries and encouraged the privatization of public services. One Swedish hospital is listed on the stock exchange while the country’s education system is the most market-friendly in the word, with a popular voucher program and for-profit schools.
“Income tax in Sweden is now lower than in France, Belgium and Denmark,” says The Local, “and public spending as a share of GDP has declined from a record 71.0 percent in 1993 to 53.3 percent last year.”
And, of course, Swedes are turning to private medicine to escape the long lines and poor service of the government health system that has been unable to deliver what it once promised.
Liberal-leaning think tank The Brookings Institution just released a new analysis of Obamacare. Guess what? It’s going to redistribute income…
Henry Aaron and Gary Burtless present preliminary research on the potential effects of the Affordable Care Act, finding it will significantly increase net income and boost coverage for the poor, while slightly lowering incomes and increasing coverage for the rest.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/01/potential-effects-affordable-care-act-income-inequality-aaron-burtless