The Glade 4.0

TheRiov:

The physician who performed the procedure has to have admitting rights because the patients of said procedures are generally in a legally altered state of consciousness. As such, until they are released in good health to a parent, guardian, partner, spouse, or other responsible and agreed upon party, the physician performing the procedure is legally responsible for the patient.

As to your mother, and I say this with all sincerity, she is apparently 1 person in 10 million (that is, extraordinary).

Also, here's the main reason why healthcare.gov failed:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/

I don't think anyone could get a code base of that size working in the time that they had.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Why would it need more than 10x the amount of code as Windows Vista? It is a very simple portal with a very simple logical algorithm. Someone **** this right the **** up.

This. That has to be some of the sloppiest, least optimized code ever.

The Obama Administration has been claiming that insurance companies will be competing for your dollars under the Affordable Care Act, but apparently they haven't surveyed the nation's top hospitals.


Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

[CHART: Which Top Hospitals Take Your Insurance Under Obamacare?]

"This doesn't surprise me," said Gail Wilensky, Medicare advisor for the second Bush Administration and senior fellow for Project HOPE. "There has been an incredible amount of focus on the premium cost and subsidy, and precious little focus on what you get for your money."

Regulations driven by the Obama White House have indeed made insurance more affordable – if, like Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, you're looking only at price. But responding to Obamacare caps on premiums, many insurers will, in turn, simply offer top-tier doctors and hospitals far less cash for services rendered.

Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.

The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.

Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.

And that's not because their exchanges don't offer options. Both Ohio and California have a dozen insurance companies on their exchanges, yet two of the states' premier hospitals – Cleveland Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – have only one company in their respective networks.

A few, like No. 1-rated Johns Hopkins in Maryland, are mandated under state law to accept all insurance companies. Other than that, the hospital with the largest number of insurance companies is University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland with just four. Fully 11 of the 18 hospitals had just one or two carriers.

"Many companies have selectively entered the exchanges because they are concerned that (the exchanges) will be dominated by risky, high-using populations who wanted insurance (before Obamacare) and couldn't afford it," said Wilsensky, who is also on the board of directors of UnitedHealth. "They are pressed to narrow their networks to stay within the premiums."

Consumers, too, will struggle with the new system. Many exchanges don't even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don't provide names of doctors or hospitals.

The price differences among hospitals "can be pretty profound," said Joe Mondy, spokesman for Cigna insurance. "When you are doing a cost comparison with doctors, you should look up the quality of the hospital as well. Hospital 'Y' could be great at pediatrics and not great at surgery."

Insurers operating in the exchanges are apparently hesitant to talk about the trade-off between price and quality. Two of the nation's largest insurers – Wellpoint and Aetna – refused to respond to a dozen calls and emails placed over the course of a week.

Wellpoint and Aetna's decision to not educate the public on its choices doesn't sit well with two experts.

"There is no reason to keep that quiet. It's not going to be a good secret for very long when people want to use the plans," Wilensky said.

"In many cases, consumers are shopping blind when it comes to what doctors and hospitals are included in their Obamacare exchange plans," said Josh Archambault, senior fellow with the think tank Foundation for Government Accountability. "These patients will be in for a rude awakening once they need care, and get stuck with a big bill for going out-of-network without realizing it."

All of this represents a larger problem with the Affordable Care Act, said Archambault, who has extensively studied the law.

"It reflects deeper issues in implementation," he said. "Some hospitals and doctors don't even know if they are in the network."

Just look at Seattle Children's Hospital, which ranks No. 11 on the U.S. News & World Report best pediatric hospital list. When Obamacare rolled out, the hospital found itself with just two out of seven insurance companies on Washington's exchange. The hospital sued the state's Office of Insurance on Oct. 4 for "failure to ensure adequate network coverage."

"Children's is the only pediatric hospital in King County and the preeminent provider of many pediatric specialty services in the Northwest," a hospital press release said. " Some of these specialized services not available elsewhere in our area or region include acute cancer care, level IV neonatal intensive care and heart, liver and intestinal transplantation."

And for doctors in Texas, "Basically, we don't know," said Stephen Brotherton, president of the Texas Medical Association. "We can't find out. At this point, it's part of the various unknowns with the marketplace. There are ways you can be on plans and not even realize it."

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Still think they should have beta tested it with the gaming community. We could have most of their problems quickly and told the how to protect it from us and those like us.

You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor
I had great cancer doctors and health insurance. My plan was cancelled. Now I worry how long I'll live.
By EDIE LITTLEFIELD SUNDBY
Nov. 3, 2013 6:37 p.m. ET

Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.

My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.

Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state's Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don't have a clue how to best proceed.

Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University's Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.

Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October.

You would think it would be simple to find a health-exchange plan that allows me, living in San Diego, to continue to see my primary oncologist at Stanford University and my primary care doctors at the University of California, San Diego. Not so. UCSD has agreed to accept only one Covered California plan—a very restrictive Anthem EPO Plan. EPO stands for exclusive provider organization, which means the plan has a small network of doctors and facilities and no out-of-network coverage (as in a preferred-provider organization plan) except for emergencies. Stanford accepts an Anthem PPO plan but it is not available for purchase in San Diego (only Anthem HMO and EPO plans are available in San Diego).

So if I go with a health-exchange plan, I must choose between Stanford and UCSD. Stanford has kept me alive—but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease, and it is where my primary-care doctors are.

Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.

What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.

For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point.

Ms. Sundby lives in California.

Eh, I know someone personally that's dependent on Obamacare to have a career at all. Without it, she'd be forced to stay on Medicaid her whole life and not work just to stay alive.

The rules about not discriminating against pre-existing conditions will be what help her. She's covered by her parents' insurance until age 25, without Obamacare, if she doesn't have a good job at a company that provides a comprehensive group plan (not likely just out of college in this economy) by that age, she can never work. She can't work her way up to the job, because if she took a job without insurance she'd lose Medicaid and no individual plan would ever take her due to her condition, leaving her unable to afford her treatments.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

So you're asserting that no proposals, other than the ACA, contained provisions eliminating denying coverage of pre-existing conditions; such that this one characteristic could uniquely be attributed to the ACA, and was there for an absolute reason to pass it. Furthermore, that this single development is worth depriving very sick people of their existing care, without which they are likely to die?

You have to require everyone to have insurance in order to get rid of the pre-existing condition problem. Otherwise, people won't buy insurance until they get sick.

You can deal with this through fraud laws.