Healthcare law full of unknowns

Thom Hartmann did a good explanation of some of the points in the new mega bill that give you some clues into how the dark forces are at work in this bill.

Another point to consider is that Medicaid usually pays about 60% of costs and Medicare pays about 80%. With these figures in mind, is it a wonder that doctors aren't accepting or are cutting back on providing care to these people.

Perhaps the omen is that we need to do a better job of taking care of our selves and our health needs, just like it used to be.

And you can do it!

About the only thing Dr. Philip Schwarzman can be sure of under the national healthcare overhaul is that he is adding his daughters, ages 23 and 25, to his health plan immediately.

Much less clear to Schwarzman is how the sweeping law will affect the emergency department at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he is medical director.

"It's incredibly complicated," said the white-haired physician, whose department sees 50,000 patients a year. "It's hard to predict what's going to happen."

That pretty well sums up the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Potential effects of the law, passed last month, can be described as profound and prosaic, obvious and unknowable.

Some of its most complex and far-reaching changes won't take effect for years, including the requirement that, by 2014, all Americans have health insurance. But the law also contains immediate changes, such as the one allowing parents to add or keep dependent children up to age 26 on their health insurance policies.

Over the next decade, many of its consequences will play out at places like St. Joe's, a 431-bed nonprofit hospital founded by the Sisters of Providence in 1943, and in surrounding community clinics.

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Related article here on the state of Social Security

Kiplinger reports as well...