I always thought it more likely that Republicans would cooperate with President Obama, for the good of the country, than it would be for Manchester United and Chelsea supporters to work together.
I was wrong.
Drum roll please:
As of today, UTAustinLiberal – also known as @NerdyWonka – is a completely and totally official TOD ‘Administrator’.
What does that snazzy WordPress term mean?
Well, the main thing is that she can now access all the inner workings of the blog, so she can actually edit my posts and insert Chelsea photos and similarly horrible things. đ
But, other than that, nothing changes hugely around here because UT was already contributing so much, it just means that Chelsea Girl is now, officially, the joint runner of our teeny little corner of cyberspace.
And that’s ridiculously fabulous.
Her taste in soccer/football might be shocking….
…. but she has brought sooooooo much to this place with her posts and highlighting of issues, like women’s rights in Texas and the benefits of ‘ObamaCare’, so it’s a very, very lovely honor to have her team up in this way.
It also means that if I, say, disappear after kidnapping Wayne Rooney to stop him from signing for Chelsea, UT will be here to keep things going while international law enforcement agencies track me down.
So, that’s good.
Meanwhile, we’ll always be thrilled and hugely grateful to have the other blog tyrants contribute here, and any other regulars who have something they’d like to say – this place is, and will always be, open to you all.
We partied over our 20 million hits only a little while ago, and we’re already up to 20,311,000 – and that’s largely down to the contributions of UT, LL, LP and Zizi, whose posts have attracted huge traffic.
Together, we’ve created a really lovely community, with so many smart and powerful voices, and I’m thrilled beyond description that UT has agreed to team up and run it all.
So, say hello to your new half of TOD, the legend that is: UT Austin Chelsea Nerdy Liberal Wonka Girl.
Information is power. ObamaCare works and is here to stay, so go out into the world and educate people. 2014 is around the corner and we have to be our own news and become even more proactive. Don’t let the media, so called progressive experts or the GOP demoralize you. Even if you only inform one person about the fantastic awesomeness that is ObamaCare, you have created a ripple effect because that person will tell another and another and another. Nobody said implementation of ObamaCare would be easy; Medicare and Social Security had a rough ride initially, but now? Try to mess with them negatively and watch the backlash explode. I will keep on providing tools that will help you disseminate facts and stop the lies. đ
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RWJF:Traditionally, individuals considering leaving their job to strike out on their own have worried that they may be denied health insurance coverage because they have preexisting conditions, fear losing access to a trusted physician, or are unable to afford the premiums without an employer sharing the costs. The result is that some U.S. workers feel âjob lock,â being tethered to their jobs and unable to leave, even if their skills and talents no longer match their position.
New research estimates that the number of self-employed Americans will be 1.5 million higher in 2014 because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Beginning next year, access to high-quality, subsidized health insurance coverage will no longer be exclusively tied to employment, which could lead people to pursue their own businesses as self-employed entrepreneurs.
Denise Early:Around 900,000 people living in Arizona do not have health insurance. Over 90% of them will get help from Obamacare. 94% of uninsured people in Tucson will get help paying for their health insurance under Obamacare, according to Enroll America. Based on census data, 50% of the uninsured in Tucson would qualify for expanded Medicaid. In Arizona, Medicaid is run by AHCCCS, pronounced âaccessâ (Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System). 44% of uninsured Tucsonans would qualify for help with their health insurance premium.
The White House Blog: The Medicare Trustees reported some good news for seniors and taxpayers: The Medicare program will be solvent through 2026, nearly a decade longer than projected at the time of passage of the Affordable Care Act. This is 2 years longer than projected last year. Their annual report also shows that the long run actuarial deficit in the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund â a measure of its long-term fiscal health â has been cut by more than 70 percent since enactment of the health care law. The long-run Medicare deficit has fallen from 3.88 percent of taxable payroll in the 2009 Trustees Report to 1.11 percent in this report.
These long-run gains are matched by short-term relief: the Trustees also project that the Part B premium will not increase between 2013 and 2014, keeping out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries down. Medicare cost growth has remained at historically low levels over the past three years even as new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs have helped tens of millions of beneficiaries access care at lower cost. The law reduces prescription drug costs by closing the donut hole, a policy that has already saved more than 6 million seniors more than $700 each. And more than 32 million seniors have accessed a free preventive service under the law, helping them stay healthy and avoid future illness.
Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas: In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that a medium-level âsilverâ plan â which covers 70 percent of a beneficiaryâs expected health costs â on the California health exchange would cost $5,200 annually. More recently, a report from the consulting firm Milliman predicted it would carry a $450 monthly premium. Yesterday, we got the real numbers. And theyâre lower than anyone thought.
The way this competition can drive down rates is already evident in Oregon. There, one insurer came in with monthly premium costs in the $169 range, while other insurers asked to charge more than $400. But then, seeing  what their competitors were charging, two insurers came back to the stateâs regulators and asked if they could refile at lower rates. Otherwise, they wouldnât be competitive in the exchange. The Obama administration was ecstatic to see this: Itâs exactly what theyâre hoping will happen across the country.
USA TODAY: Market forces and an impetus to attract younger, healthier people into the insurance market will help keep health insurance premiums lower as the 2010 health care law takes effect on Jan. 1, industry analysts and insurance officials say.
“If they price too high, young people won’t buy insurance, and that’s going to hurt the companies,” said Jay Angoff, who led initial implementation of the law for HHS. “They need these people to come in. It’s an industry problem.”
Ezra Klein:Last week, California released early information on the rates insurers intend to charge on the new insurance marketplaces â known as âexchangesâ â that the state is setting up under Obamacare. They were far lower than anyone expected. âThis is a home run for consumers in every region of California,â crowed Peter Lee, director of the stateâs exchanges. The Affordable Care Actâs critics saw it differently. Avik Roy, a conservative health writer at Forbes, said Lee was being âmisleadingâ and that âObamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.â Obamacare, he said, would trigger ârate shock,â the jolt people feel when they see higher rates.  Roy got his 146 percent by heading to eHealthInsurance.com, running a search for insurance plans in California and comparing the cost of the cheapest plans to the cost of the plans being offered in the exchanges. Thatâs not just comparing apples to oranges. Itâs comparing apples to oranges that the fruit guy may not even let you buy.
Click to buy the plan and eventually youâll have to answer pages and pages of questions about your health history. Ever had cancer? How about an ulcer? How about a headache? Do you feel sad when it rains?  Is there a history of cardiovascular disease in your family? Have you ever known anyone who had the flu? The actual cost of the plan will depend on how you answer those questions. According to HealthCare.gov, 14 percent of people who try to buy that plan are turned away outright. Another 12 percent are told theyâll have to pay more than $109.
Comparing the pre-underwriting price of this plan to those in Obamacareâs exchanges is ridiculous. The plans in Obamacareâs exchanges have to include those people. They canât turn anyone away or jack up rates because of a history of arthritis or heart disease. They also have to offer insurance that meets a certain minimum standard. Under Obamacare, for instance, the out-of-pocket limit for someone making 100 to 200 percent of the poverty line is $1,983. Under the Value 4500, you could spend up to $9,500 before the out-of-pocket limit kicked in. Obamacare also has subsidies for people making up to four times the poverty line. The poor pay next to nothing. The rich pay full freight.
Sy Mukherjee: Golden State small businesses and their employees got some great news: two of the stateâs largest insurers will have to give them over $36 million in insurance rebates because of an Obamacare consumer protection.
The health law forces insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on paying for actual medical services, rather than administrative overhead or profits. That means more money for ordinary consumers â and less for profitable insurance companies.
The so-called â80/20 ruleâ put $1.5 billion back into Americansâ pockets in 2011 alone. The average rebate was $151 per family across all insurance markets, and in states where insurers blatantly gouged prices, average rebates topped a whopping $500 per family.
Now, the benefits for Californians with small business health plans are beginning to materialize. Blue Shield of California will be forced to pay back $24.5 million in rebates. Anthem Blue Cross will have to pay back another $12 million.
Tara Culp-Ressler: A new study focusing on low-income women in St. Louis, MO concludes that expanding access to free contraception â just as the health care reform law does through its provision to provide birth control without a co-pay â leads to significantly lower rates of unintended teen pregnancy and abortion. Researchers found that when women werenât prohibited by cost, they chose more effective, long-lasting forms of birth control and experienced many fewer unintended pregnancies as a result.
ThinkProgress: Americans who bought individual health plans in 2012 saved $2.1 billion thanks to Obamacare consumer protections that limit how much insurers can profit off of Americansâ premiums, according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). The vast majority of those savings stem from individual health plan providers lowering the premiums they charge Americans in an effort to comply with the reform law.
The Kaiser study comes shortly after several major California insurers announced that they would have to pay back $36 million to small businesses and their employees after charging them too much. Obamacare mandates that insurers on the individual market spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on actual medical services, or reimburse the amount they overspent to their customers.
But insurers can avoid writing those checks after-the-fact if they just lower their premiums to begin with â and KFFâs study concludes thatâs what many individual plan providers have been doing.
The Obama Diary 
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