Obamacare Keeps Improving

Obamacare covers mental health on a par with somatic health.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/2013/12/08/affordable-health-care-act-treating-the-mind-and-body-as-equals/3913069/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/08/health/hhs-mental-health/

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HealthCare.gov just keeps getting better. "Click. Next page. Click. Next page. The website, HealthCare.gov, was working so well that Ms. Egozi, who oversees the 45 navigators in eight locations who help consumers enroll in health plans, said her team gave the system an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, meaning that most people got as far as selecting a plan or taking home information to select a plan. It felt like a champagne moment." Lizette Alvarez and Jennifer Preston in The New York Times.

Republicans finally notice that Obamacare's problems will be their own reform's problems, too. "Democrats' politically bruising experience over the Obama health law has prompted leading Republican policy experts to rethink one of the party's own long-standing ideas about remaking the health-care system...Some Republicans are now worried that a GOP proposal to begin taxing health-care benefits offered through employers--which would affect some 160 million Americans--would cause market disruptions far more severe and expose the party to its own political peril...[James Capretta] and others recommend capping the tax break available for health insurance through work and finding other ways to pay for additional tax breaks to those who buy insurance on their own."Laura Meckler in The Wall Street Journal.

Your premium may be low. But other costs? High. "Until now, it was almost impossible for people using the federal health care website to see the deductible amounts, which consumers pay before coverage kicks in. But federal officials finally relented last week and added a "window shopping" feature that displays data on deductibles. For policies offered in the federal exchange, as in many states, the annual deductible often tops $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a couple."Robert Pear in The New York Times.

Podesta is going back to work for Obama. "President Obama, after a rocky year that leaves him at the lowest ebb of his presidency, is bringing into his White House circle the longtime Democratic strategist John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. Mr. Podesta, who has agreed to serve as counselor for a year, led Mr. Obama's presidential transition in 2008 and has been an outside adviser since then. He also has occasionally criticized the administration, if gently, from his perch as the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, a center-left public policy research group." Jackie Calmes in The New York Times.

HealthCare.gov's problems don't mean Obamacare will fail. "For Obamacare's supporters, the IT problems really were IT problems. Now that the Web site is working the law will likely work, too. For Obamacare's critics, however, the problems with Healthcare.Gov confirmed that Obamacare was a top-to-bottom train wreck. The Web site's improvements -- if they're even real -- will simply give way to new, and probably worse, problems with the law." Ezra Klein in The Washington Post.

Q&A: Your Obamacare questions, answered. Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.

This $2,000 drug says everything about our messed up health-care system. "very incentive in our health-care system preferences Lucentis, the $1,000 drug, over Avastin. Because it's a more expensive drug, doctors get a higher administrative fee when they give it to patients...A small majority of doctors -- 56 percent, according to Whoriskey and Keating's analysis -- do use Avastin now to treat macular degeneration. But the sizable [minority] that don't -- the ones who are following the incentives in the health-care system -- mean an extra $1 billion in federal health-care bills." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.