Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
oracknows | February 19, 2016One of the most frequent claims of supporters of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), which goes by the Orwellian name "integrative medicine," is that it represents "integrating" alternative medicine with science-based medicine to produce the "best of both worlds." Of course, when I think of the best of both worlds, I usually think of The Best of Both Worlds, which might well be appropriate, except that, unlike the case when the Borg assimilate a species, when science-based medicine is forced to assimilate quackery, the quackery changes it, making it weaker, not stronger…
cmonforton | July 23, 2013My mailbox today contained an example that Obamacare is working for healthcare consumers. In an envelope from my health insurance provider was a check for $124.08. The cover letter from Humana explained it was a rebate of a portion of my premium, as required by the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medical Loss Ratio standard.
Under the law, health insurers are required to report to HHS's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) how income from premium dollars are spent. (The first year of reporting was 2011 with the previous year's spending data.) For individual and small group plans…
oracknows | October 18, 2012The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, and, for better or worse, health care is one of the major defining issues of the election. How can it not be, given the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also colloquially known as "Obamacare," was one of the Obama administration's major accomplishments and arguably the largest remaking of the American health care system since Medicare in 1965? It's also been singularly unpopular thus far, contributing to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, as well as the erosion of…
oracknows | June 27, 2012And now for something completely different.
Except that it isn't really. I say that it isn't really different because, although this post will seem to be about politics, in reality it will be about a common topic on this blog: Anti-science. And where is this anti-science? Sadly, it's in the platform of a major party of one of the largest states in the country. It also meshes with the anti-science inherent in a lot of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and all comes together in one place: The proposed 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas. It's all there, as you…