Obamacare and you

[11B4V]

Health Chief Sebelius Is Resigning
White House budget official Sylvia Burwell expected to replace her

(Newser) – ObamaCare may have rebounded from its disastrous start, but health secretary Kathleen Sebelius won't be around for the next phase, reports the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Sebelius already has submitted her resignation, and President Obama has accepted it, reports the New York Times. The move is expected to be announced tomorrow, along with the president's nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, currently the White House budget director, as Sebelius' replacement.

http://www.newser.com/story/185160/health-chief-sebelius-is-resigning.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=united&utm_campaign=rss_topnews

[Admiral Yi]

Anyone here not have health insurance and have to pay the fine?

I'm curious how it works.  I expected to see a "prove you're insured" part of the tax form, but it wasn't there.

[sbr]

Anyone here not have health insurance and have to pay the fine?

I'm curious how it works.  I expected to see a "prove you're insured" part of the tax form, but it wasn't there.

Turbo Tax asked me if I had insurance.  I clicked 'Yes' and it moved on to the next question.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[Berkut]

Not Obamacare and me, but it is Obamacare and our family...

My sister in law is 49, and has 4 kids, all grown. She is a school cafeteria employee, and while she made a little to much to qualify for medicaid, she did not make enough to pay for the $300/month health insurance the school offered to their part time employees. At least she didn't think she could afford it, and mostly I believe her.

So a week before Christmas, she has what appeared to be a stroke. Collapsed, was taken to the hospital. Turns out it was actually a seizure, and a brain scan revealed a ping-pong ball sized tumor.

Once her doctors at the ER found out she was a smoker from the age of 16, they did a full body MRI, and the result was what we all had feared: stage 3 lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain.

She was originally in a Buffalo local, general type hospital but asked to be transferred to Roswell, which is a regional cancer center, and very, very good.

She had successful neurosurgery to remove the tumor on last Friday. Now she has to see a pulmonologist to figure out how to treat the lung cancer (due to the lesions location, it is almost certainly inoperable). We have not yet heard about what specific type of cancer it is (biopsy results are either not back or have been released).

What is interesting about all this from a health care/system perspective is that she has no insurance of any kind right now. Yet she was still immediately taken in at Roswell, and they scheduled semi-emergency neurosurgery, which I suspect is not cheap, while knowing that she had no real way to pay for it. She is going to meet with the cancer centers financial specialists this week, and I am sure they will get her set up with whatever assistance the state can provide and such.

But obviously her course of treatment is going to cost...well, a lot of money. I am sure the bill already is into six figures. I have no idea how this will or can be paid for.

So far her outcome, given the circumstances, has been pretty good. They think they got all the cancerous cells out of her brain, and the surgeon said the tumor was well contained.

Follow up:

So the brain tunour was successfully operated on, and  follow up scans appear to show that they had gotten it all. So that was great news.

The lesion on her lung was almost certainly too large to operate, so they did the chemo thing. Which worked much better than expected, so they decided that since it had been reduced much more than they had hoped, surgery was now an option.

But the surgery in question would be to remove a lobe of her lung, which of course is pretty serious, but that is "good" news, compared to the alternative of not being able to operate at all.

Plan was to go in, and first check lymph nodes while they had her on the table - make sure no cancer had spread there. I guess if it had, they would close her back up, since there would be little point in operating on her lung cancer - once it spreads to the lymph nodes, it is going to spread eleswhere.

If they were clear, then they would remove the effected part of her lungs.

She went into surgery day before yesterday at Roswell. Lymph nodes looked perfectly fine, so they moved onto the lungs.

Once they got in there though...the tumour was actually, well, gone. The chemo had not just reduced it, it had apparently eliminated it, which is just...not expected. Not only are her lungs apparently cancer free, they decided they didn't even need to remove the lobe at all, and just did some minor excising around the previous lesions site and closed her back up. She should be home tomorrow.

The impression we are getting from her doctors is that they are a little baffled. That kind of cancer was the more treatable kind, but generally not THAT treatable. This was a result well beyond any "best case" scenario envisioned.

We are not sure what this means - is she technically cancer free now? Is it possible to be "cancer free" after being diagnosed with stage IV lung and brain cancer?

[sbr]

Wow sounds too good to be true for sure, but hopefully it is true.

[Fate]

Oncologists are pretty cagey folks. They will rarely use the word cured. The preferred term is 'sustained remission'.

[The Brain]

 

[celedhring]

Very happy to see it going well Berkut. Hope the good news keep coming.

[Jacob]

That's great news

[Eddie Teach]

Indeed. 

[dps]

Anyone here not have health insurance and have to pay the fine?

I'm curious how it works.  I expected to see a "prove you're insured" part of the tax form, but it wasn't there.

Fines don't kick in till next year, I think.

[11B4V]

US Quietly Earmarks Money for ObamaCare Insurers
It's a safety net to cover any losses; Republicans cry foul

(Newser) – ObamaCare just became a win-win proposition for insurance companies. Tucked into hundreds of pages of new rulings on the Affordable Care Act last week was a promise to pay insurers for any losses they incur by providing coverage on government exchanges, the LA Times reports. The Obama administration inserted the provision to try to keep premiums down; insurers get the money, which would be diverted from other health programs, only if they keep rate hikes modest.

Conservatives are already bashing the move as a "bailout," and some Senate Republicans are accusing Obama of making "another end-run around Congress." The administration defended the move by saying it was "highly unlikely" the funds would actually be needed. In other bad news for the law's supporters, a poll of emergency room doctors released today found that 46% had seen an uptick in visits since benefits kicked in, compared with 23% who saw a decline, the Huffington Post reports. One of the law's selling points was that giving people access to primary care would reduce ER visits.

http://www.newser.com/story/187241/us-quietly-earmarks-money-for-obamacare-insurers.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=united&utm_campaign=rss_topnews

[Admiral Yi]

Ossum.

[derspiess]

Oops.  I'm shocked that such a well-written piece of legislation contained a flaw of some sort.  I guess they had to pass it before they could check it for errors!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101819065