Obama, what has he done for you??

[classicman]

My current plan will not be available next year. Its changing again. The new comparable plan is $200 more a month and has an OOP max of $6350 (compared with $2500) AND my prescription coverage is now 50% up to $125 per instead of a $10 copay. The one prescription I use 5 times a year means I'll be out another $575 a year.
In fact, the company is not truly offering a "group plan" any longer. What they are doing is paying a % of each employees plan. The available options are all based upon age. Therefore all the older employees are getting screwed even harder.

ETA - One coworker will be paying over $900 a month for just him and his wife. Thats almost double from last year.

Thanks Obama!

[Clodfobble]

Sounds more like, "Thanks unethical employer."

If your employer is offering shit plans, there are very likely better plans on the state/federal exchange. Your employer could have screwed you at any point along the way, they are doing so now because they want you to get off their plan and find something better in the new system.

[glatt]

While I'm pleased that my premiums haven't gone up this year, the costs of my health care are staggering. I can't get my hands on the 2015 numbers, but in 2014, I'm paying $4,560 per year for my family plan premiums. And since it's an HSA type of plan, I need to put funds aside for that to pay for the actual health care we use before the $6k in-network family deductible is met. I set aside $2,640 per year for that. So I'm spending $7,200 for family health care per year for simple wellness visits and basic stuff like contact lenses. This doesn't include dental. Doesn't seem like that much until you factor in what my company is paying. They pay $15,946.32 per year in premiums for my family plan. So that's a total of $23,146.32 per year for health care for a healthy family of 4. We also get the promise that if we get really sick, we will be taken care of (after that $6k deductible is met.) And I guess that's what insurance is all about.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What? Employer/Insurance co, screw you? In America? Poppycock.

I'm not surprised to see Humana team up with walmart and AARP, after all, scum congeals.
It was Humana sending bullshit letters to subscribers in the months leading up to the Obamacare start, tricking them into a most costly policy. Various states have fined them millions of dollars for being lying scumbags, but they are just saying 'oops, sorry', all the way to the bank.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Sounds more like, "Thanks unethical employer."

If your employer is offering shit plans, there are very likely better plans on the state/federal exchange.

Hahahaha ... funny lady.
These are the EXACT SAME PLANS available on the exchange.

[Jill]

Hi everyone! Remember me?

I was reminded of this forum when the torture report came out yesterday, because we had such a great conversation about torture a few years ago. I was going to revive that thread, but thought I'd pop in here first because it looked like fun, too, so here goes (Part 1 of 2) ...

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

In regard to the Affordable Health Care, it has created a nightmare in my area. Many jobs have become part-time to skirt the health insurance benefits.

While I appreciate the anecdote, do you have any factual evidence of this occurring, as well as evidence that the Affordable Care Act is to blame for it if it is? I ask because if that's the case, it's contrary to what economists know from the data. From the conservative Wall Street Journal:

“Companies are just more inclined to hire part-time workers, not necessarily because of the health-care law, but for business reasons that make it a more attractive option,” Ms. Girard said.

Anecdotal reports have suggested employers have cut hours to prepare for the implementation of the health-care law, but that hasn’t been borne out by economic data.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

I know a lot of people who have ended up having to pay more for health insurance.

More than what? More than previous years? More than for bad policies that didn't actually cover them for anything if they got sick, which were disallowed under the new law?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Plus, my son is a Medicaid Eligibility Specialist. He sees large numbers of people who had health care from work, but are now forced to purchase their own or go on Medicaid.

Define "large numbers," please. Any factual evidence as to why they've been "forced" out of work-related health care?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Many lower middle class and working class families can't afford the insurance but make too much for Medicaid.

Now here you've said something quite profoundly true. Would you care to know why that is?

The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid – An Update

Nationally, nearly four million poor uninsured adults fall into the “coverage gap” that results from state decisions not to expand Medicaid, meaning their income is above current Medicaid eligibility but below the lower limit for Marketplace premium tax credits. These individuals would have been newly-eligible for Medicaid had their state chosen to expand coverage. ...

Adults left in the coverage gap due to current state decisions not to expand Medicaid are spread across the states not expanding their Medicaid programs but are concentrated in states with the largest uninsured populations (Table 1). ...

The geographic distribution of the population in the coverage gap reflects both population distribution and regional variation in state take-up of the ACA Medicaid expansion. As a whole, more people—and in particular more poor uninsured adults— reside in the South than in other regions.[sup]3[/sup] Further, the South has higher uninsured rates and more limited Medicaid eligibility than other regions. Southern states also have disproportionately opted not to expand their programs, and nearly half (11 out of 23) of the states not expanding Medicaid are in the South. These factors combined mean 86% of people in the coverage gap reside in the South (Figure 2).

That would therefore not be the fault of either President Obama or the Affordable Care Act. It would be the fault of the conservative Supreme Court who altered the ACA to make Medicare expansion optional instead of mandatory for the states. In other words, blame your state Governor, not President Obama.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Obama is not responsible for the economy? He's only been president for 6 years during which the Democrats controlled the Senate and for awhile the House.

I'm happy to give President Obama credit for the economy. I think he's done a great job with it. (Though you're incorrect in the length of time Democrats in Congress had any kind of meaningful majority. It was actually more like five months that Democrats had control of both houses of Congress with filibuster-proof majorities. But you should know, in spite of that obstacle, the 111th Congress was one of the most productive of any Congress since WWII.)

Here is Politifact's assessment of the economic numbers as compared to when President Obama took office. For the most part, the numbers you want to see going up, are going up, some of them significantly. And the numbers you want to see going down are going down.

Where the numbers aren't doing what we'd hope for, there are factors that have little to nothing to do with anything President Obama has done or not done. You'll find (should you choose to read through it in full) that "bad" numbers are often attributed to the financial collapse that occurred as a result of the previous administration's bad policies that brought us to our knees in a deep recession.

For instance:

Median household income rose just slightly to $51,939 in 2013, Census reported. In “real” income, adjusted for inflation, that was 0.3 percent higher than in 2012, but still 4.6 percent below 2008, the year before Obama first took office, when the first effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression were just starting to be felt. ...

As of September, the U.S. had 5,459,000 more people employed than it did when Obama took office in 2009. And the official unemployment rate had dipped to 5.9 percent, which was 1.9 percentage points below where it was when he first took office.

But scars from the great recession of 2007-2009 remain.

His policies have been extraordinarily great to Businesses and Wall Street -- those folks Reagan promised would "trickle down" their financial rewards on us if we would lower their tax responsibility to "free up" more of their cash -- yeah, those guys. Who never actually did that.

The Obama years have brought dramatically better times for corporations and their stockholders.

Corporate profits (after taxes) reached a record annual rate of more than $1.8 trillion in the second quarter of this year, the most recent figures available. That was 174 percent higher than the quarter before Obama first entered the White House.

Do you think the average worker and family would be doing better if corporations stopped using taxpayers like you and me to supplement their payroll departments with our money in the form of survival security programs? Did you know that if Wal-Mart would take their $28 Billion in annual profits (profits -- as in after taxes -- not income) and raised all 1.4 million American workers' salaries by a mere $5,000 a year, it would pull families out of poverty, reduce reliance on social programs (freeing up tax dollars to be used for infrastructure repair, creating jobs for millions of Americans), and still leave them a multibillion-dollar corporation with annual profits of $18 billion?

It's true. Do you not think corporations in America have a responsibility to pay their own payroll from their own profits? Why should they be allowed to suck off the government teat when they have way more than enough to cover their own payroll expenses and still be filthy rich? How does that promote American values? How does that promote a self-reliant public? If people were doing that -- forcing the government to pay their mortgage or rent, their utilities and their food, while all they paid for was their car and their clothing while they were sitting on million-dollar bank accounts -- you'd be UP IN ARMS and you know it.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

We have the highest national debt ever.

Yes we do. Are you interested in why? Because it's not all President Obama's fault, you know.

The federal debt held by the public, which had not quite doubled as of our last report, is now nearly 103 percent higher than it was the day he first took office. The “total” debt, which includes money the government owes to itself, has gone up by more than 68 percent.

Both figures are staggering, but are not entirely Obama’s fault. As we’ve often noted, the FY2009 federal deficit was running at a rate of $1.2 trillion on the day he took office in the midst of a financial crisis.

The debt is now growing less rapidly than during Obama’s first years, which saw a string of trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits. CBO projects this year’s deficit will be $506 billion, so the deficit has fallen by more than half since he took office.

I'd love to see it do better. What have Republicans who control the purse strings in Congress done to make it better? They've spent a lot of time and taxpayer resources to make 54 votes to repeal or gut the Affordable Care Act. How many jobs bills have they introduced, let alone passed? Actual jobs bills, not tax cuts that they claim will create jobs in the way Reagan's peeing program claimed but failed to deliver.

--continued--

[Jill]

Part 2 of 2:

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Remember when he called Bush un-american for having a 5.4 trillion debt during his 8 years?

Not exactly, but close enough. Here's the full quote, made while he was still candidate Obama, not President Obama:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

Now that sure seems damning if President Obama and his policies had actually done worse. But have they? The number is higher, but why? From Politifact again:

Both figures are staggering, but are not entirely Obama’s fault. As we’ve often noted, the FY2009 federal deficit was running at a rate of $1.2 trillion on the day he took office in the midst of a financial crisis.

So if you step into office and the deficit (the difference between what you're spending and what you're bringing in) is averaging $1.2 trillion a year because of spending bills and budgets that were passed before you even took office, you can't really be said to have caused all of the increase in the debt.

But if you're the president who put two multitrillion-dollar wars on the nation's credit card, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the nation's credit card, and lied to the United States Congress to get them to pass a massive giveaway to the Pharmaceutical industry that you put on the nation's credit card, then left all those obligations in place still racking up the debt for the next guy who steps in ("Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs.), I think you can rightly be blamed for being irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

What is the debt now? I wish all of you would truthfully ask yourselves would you have cut a Republican president this much slack??

I'd like you to ask yourself why you've cut Republican President George W. Bush and his Republican Congress this much slack for the trillions of dollars of debt his and their policies and actions have saddled this country with, making it that much harder for any president of any political party to make the slightest bit of headway against. How do you think a President McCain might have changed our nation's spending and tax revenue structure so that we could stop the still-current bleeding caused by the irresponsible wars, tax cuts and corporate giveaways Bush put on our credit card?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Hmm, I thought Obama was at the helm when our country was downgraded.

John Boehner was at the helm of the branch of government that was held responsible for said downgrade.

“The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently.”

You remember who was threatening to default on our obligations and actually shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling, right? That would be the irresponsible actors in Congress, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Interesting read: http://wolfstreet.com/2014/10/05/dwi...n-fiscal-2014/

What I find most interesting is that that pretty little graphic fails to find fault with either Reagan (who more than doubled the debt and stole from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his tax cuts) or GW Bush, who did worse, then adds an adorable little color block of a "projection" just to make President Obama's numbers appear that much worse than Bush's actual numbers. Not to mention completely ignoring the source for the ongoing rise in the debt, which is a combination of the still-not-closed gap between spending and income which causes a deficit in our annual budget (something President Clinton left in a state of surplus) and -- again -- two unfunded wars, unfunded tax breaks for the wealthy and an unfunded giveaway to Big Pharma which are all still costing us major bucks for. Seriously, that's just precious.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Of the 206 million eligible voters, 70 million are not registered. Then 63% of the registered voters stayed home, or pushed the "fuck you" button.
So the Republicans got a little over half about 54 million votes cast. That's the "American public" you speak of? Have some more Kool-Aid.

That doesn't even take gerrymandered districts into consideration. In 2012, Democrats cast 1.7 million more votes for Congress nationwide, but lost seats to Republicans because of gerrymandered districts. And while Democrats did not out-vote Republicans with raw numbers in this most recent election cycle, gerrymandering gave Republicans 57% of the seats up for re-election even though they only received barely more than half the votes: 52%.

And let's not forget all the states where strict voter ID laws had a negative impact on Democratic turnout. Or the fact that by mere chance, there were more Senate elections in Red states than in Blue.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Obama killed Osama?? He was the number 1 in the stack & pulled the trigger?? A man with no military service who has ravaged our senior command? Now y'all must be snorting your koolaid. Osama was eliminated due to the efforts of the intelligence community that culminated with a tactical excision. I think Admiral McRaven was responsible for planning and executing the mission. Obama watched a computer screen.

Come on now. That's just a silly argument and I believe you know it. How about we put it another way: President Obama made it his mission to have his network root out bin Laden's location, then gave the order to have his ass killed. George W. Bush, on the other hand, "really didn't think about him that much."

Bush told conservative Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes that "bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism." And in a subsequent press conference he scolded us for not "understand[ing] the scope of the mission" because bin Laden was just "one person" whom he "really just [didn't] spend that much time on." His exact words:

Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.

You preferred that tactic over the one President Obama employed: Having him hunted down and his ass shot dead?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Our Glorious Leader has saved the economy and the unemployment rate is shrinking. Wait a minute, we might need to check that.

Here is the stunning statistic on the economy that tells the whole story about why we aren’t growing faster. Since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in January of 2009,the percentage of the working age population actually part of the labor force (either working or looking for work) has plummeted by 3 percentage points – to 62.7%.

While interesting, it fails to account for a single reason that might be the case, merely laying the entirety of the blame at the feet of this president. Allow me to explain the majority of the reason why today's workforce is smaller than that of 1978:

One big reason the participation rate dropped involves long-run demographic trends that have nothing to do with the current economy. Baby boomers are starting to retire en masse, which means that there are fewer eligible American workers.

Demographics have always played a big role in the rise and fall of the labor force. Between 1960 and 2000, the labor force in the United States surged from 59 percent to a peak of 67.3 percent. That was largely due to the fact that more women were entering the labor force while improvements in health and information technology allowed Americans to work more years.

But since 2000, the labor force rate has been steadily declining as the baby-boom generation has been retiring. Because of this, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago expects the labor force participation rate to be lower in 2020 than it is today, regardless of how well the economy does.

Maybe we should check some of Glorious Leader's accomplishments a little closer. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemoo...e-found-a-job/[/quote] Will you please stop with the insulting names for your president? It's really unbecoming and officer and a gentleman.

I hope at least some of this insight has been edifying for you.

Jill

[Jill]

As for what President Obama has done for me personally, it's everything he's done for this country as a whole. Here's a short list of the accomplishments of his administration that I'm most proud of:

1. Passed health care reform which now precludes insurance companies from discriminating against women with higher rates, refusing policies on the basis of pre-existing conditions, and dropping subscribers when they get sick
2. Saved the American auto industry from collapse
3. Passed Wall Street reform (even though more needs to be done)
4. Eliminated Don't Ask Don't Tell
5. Stopped enforcing the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act and led the fight to have it overturned by the Supreme Court.
6. Saved the country from the Republican Great Recession
7. Has presided over the longest stretch of private-sector job creation - 56 straight months - adding 10.6 million jobs (Bush netted 3 million in eight full years)
8. Ended the war in Iraq as promised
9. Killed Osama bin Laden instead of ignoring him like Bush did
10. Improved the U.S.'s image abroad
11. Reversed Bush's torture policies
12. Increased veterans support and created a new GI Bill with $78 billion in tuition assistance for our veterans
13. Tightened sanctions on Iran and opened the door to talks for the first time in half a century
14. Passed credit card disclosure reforms with the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act
15. Created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
16. Has invested heavily in renewable energy - the more than $800 million in interest already earned outpaces all failed loans combined (including Solyndra), with an expected net income of $5 billion over their lifetime
17. Expanded stem cell research which Bush cut
18. Saved us $4 billion by eliminating the F-22, which has never flown a single combat mission
19. Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
20. Immediate and efficient responses to numerous natural disasters over the past six years (flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes)
21. Got the Swiss banks to let the U.S. government have access to records of tax evaders and criminals
22. Reduced federal student loan interest rates
23. Established a new cyber security department
24. Instituted tax cuts to 3.5 million small businesses
25. Took GDP growth from -5.4 to +4.6% (2nd quarter 2014)
26. Improved consumer confidence from 37.7 to 78.1%
27. Presided over an economic recovery that has taken the Dow from 7,949 to 17,777 (the highest in history -- ever)
28. Ended no-bid defense contracts
29. Closed the Medicare Part D doughnut hole and significantly lowered the cost of prescription medications for our seniors
30. Expanded health care to children through renewed SCHIP
31. Has thwarted numerous attempted terrorist attacks here at home
32. Stopped prisoners from collecting Social Security benefits
33. Re-established statutory Pay As You Go policy

I could go on and on and on, but this is a good enough list, I think. Has he been perfect? No. He's human, as subject to err as any of us. Have I agreed with all his negotiated compromises? No. But I recognize the necessity of them, given the obstructionism of Republicans. Do I like all of his policies? No. But then that would only be possible if he were me, because I'm sure no one in the world agrees with 100 percent of everything I believe except me.

But we are so, so, so much better off as a country in so many myriad ways since he took office than we were when his predecessor left, it's almost beyond the ability to measure.