Playinghardball
Playinghardball's Journal
Blowout Interest: 8 Million Have Applied For Coverage Under ACA
The headline numbers for the Affordable Care Act this week have been the 2.2 million Americans who have enrolled in a marketplace plan. But beneath the headlines lurks an even bigger blowout case for Obamacare: the interest is nearly literally off the charts.
By the 28th of last month 4,348,224 applications had been completed through the state and federal-run marketplaces applying for coverage for 7,716,824 individuals. Of those, 5.1 million have been deemed eligible for marketplace plans, and an additional 1.5 million for expanded Medicaid (note that Medicaid enrollees are not necessarily all enrolling through the exchanges, and additional numbers are doing so by directly applying with their states). About 1 million applicants’ status is still pending.
That only about 2.2 million of the over 5 million had chosen marketplace plans by December 28 is an indication of a surge in enrollments that likely continued past that date. That means that as we continue to receive updates and March 31 end of open-enrollment approaches, the numbers are likely to blast past even the huge spike in enrollment in December.
More here: http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2014/01/blowout-interest-8-million-have-applied.html
Black fathers are more involved in their children's care than white fathers,according to a CDC study
Black fathers are more involved in their children's care than white fathers, according to a CDC study
8:53 AM - 15 Jan 2014
Found on the Obama Diary
No Guns!
On This Day: President Obama signs letters from children backstage after signing executive orders and unveiling new gun control proposals as part of the Administration’s response to the Newtown, Conn., shootings, and other tragedies, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building South Court Auditorium, Jan. 16, 2013. The children wrote the President letters in the wake of the Newtown tragedy expressing their concerns about gun violence and school safety
Found on the Obama Diary
What Happens When the President Sits Down Next to You At A Cafe
Thursday into Friday, my head cold got worse, so on Friday morning I walked down to a bar-cafe-restaurant in my neighborhood….
… the president arrived, 40 minutes later – stepping out of his SUV, smiling, with a little wave …
…. He picked up the baby. The baby’s mom told him about the baby …. He was adorable. Obama really seemed to appreciate holding him, and bounced him for probably a minute. The baby’s mom told him that their family had just been stationed in Kenya, that thats where the baby was born.
He seemed to stumble for a second, as he realized he could not phrase a joke in exactly the way he could phrase it in private.
“That’s, that’s where Donald Trump thinks I was born,” he said.
More at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/what-happens-when-the-president-sits-down-next-to-you-at-a-cafe/283074/
Article discovered on the Obama Diary
Obamacare Giving Big Boost To Georgia's Health IT Industry
Politically, Georgia is fighting the health law at every turn.
Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, has chosen not to expand Medicaid, and the state’s insurance commissioner publically vowed to obstruct the Affordable Care Act. But that doesn’t mean Georgia isn’t seeing a financial benefit from the law.
Mark Gilreath heads the medical device company, EndoChoice, based in Alpharetta, Georgia. The business is part of a health tech boom in the state.
Take the company called PreMedex. Founder and president Van Willis knows that just a few years ago, a company like his would’ve been a hard sell -- impossible, even. The two-year-old company contracts with hospitals and doctors’ offices to call patients after they're discharged. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals are penalized if Medicare patients are readmitted within a month for several specific illnesses.
"From a hospital standpoint, there was very little, if any, communication with patients once they leave,” Willis explains. "A logical way to communicate with patients if you can’t be in their homes is, of course, through the telephone."
Scattered around a half-dozen office cubicles, PreMedex employees don telephone headsets on a recent morning and sit down in front of computers that automatically dial patients. After telling patients they are calling on behalf of doctors and hospitals, the workers ask some simple but important health questions: Have you had any fever? Are you in any pain?
How patients answer could mean the difference between a hospital’s profit and loss. Private insurers will probably follow Medicare’s lead on punishing readmissions. Willis says that’s creating a new market for companies like PreMedex.
"We’ve got clients across the country - small clients, large clients - they all feel the same pressures," he says.
More at: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2014/january/09/georgia-high-tech-health-industry-boosted-by-health-law.aspx
Article discovered on the Obama Diary
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