Useful Video For Understanding 2014 Health Care Changes and “Obama Care”

Great 7 minute overview, published by KaiserHealthCare. Really liked how the graphics (including Playschool like cartoon figures) outlined the major points without making me feel like a dummy!

From the 26 August 2013 post at Sara Zia Ebrahimi

Do you have a good sense of what the new health care options are starting 2014? The HR folks at work just shared this cute 7minute video that does a good job of clarifying what the options are and the advantages and disadvantages of each. I found it really useful and thought I’d pass it along.

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• Five Myths About Obamacare You Shouldn’t Believe (Think Progress)

• How Much Health Care Reform Will We See By 2014?(redwoodfn)

• Straight No Chaser: Top Seven Facts You Should Know About the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
• The Math of State Medicaid Expansion (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Republicans Back Major Obamacare Benefit For Poor (huffingtonpost.com)

Excerpts

  ” Individual exchanges in 34 states will be created via the federal government – but on July 5, it quietly granted another concession. The Department of Health and Human Services relaxed a requirement for the 16 other states and the District of Columbia to verify the income and health coverage status of applicants to those individual exchanges. These 17 exchanges will only check the income eligibility of applicants at random next year, and they will wait until 2015 to check if applicants are getting employer-sponsored health benefits.^5″

“Where do things stand state-by-state with the Medicaid expansion? Just 23 states and the District of Columbia have signed up for it. (You’ll recall that the Supreme Court allowed states to opt out of it when it ruled that the ACA was constitutional in 2012.) In these states and in Washington D.C., those with earnings of up to 138% of the federal poverty level may qualify for Medicaid (that works out to earnings of $15,856 for an individual and $32,499 for a family of four). The expansion of Medicaid in these states doesn’t require the federal government to recreate the wheel, but delays could happen in other ways. In Michigan, for example, state legislators have passed their own version of a Medicaid expansion requiring a 90-day federal review process, which will put Michigan weeks behind in enrolling participants in expanded Medicaid coverage.^6,”

• If you qualify for Medicare, new insurance marketplaces aren’t for you While the Obama administration is stepping up efforts encouraging uninsured Americans to enroll in health coverage from the new online insurance marketplaces, Kaiser Health News repor (soraglobal.me)
• UPS to drop 15,000 spouses from insurance… (bizjournals.com)
• Viewpoints: Health care companies need to focus on driving down costs (sacbee.com)
• Has Anyone Asked the Patient? (americanthinker.com)
• Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven’t noticed. (washingtonpost.com)
• Michigan Senate Approves Medicaid Expansion To Low-Income Adults, But How Soon Is The Question? (detroit.cbslocal.com)
• The Math of State Medicaid Expansion (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Republicans Back Major Obamacare Benefit For Poor (huffingtonpost.com)