Information below is from Blue Cross of Illinois site and explains what the Affordable Care Act and minimum coverage is: notice that “Obamacare” is not used at all. This is one of the best and shortest explanations I have seen. It is surely a win for insurance companies and surprisingly most Americans (even some members of Congress).

Affordable Care Act: Minimum Essential Coverage

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is bringing many changes to health insurance in 2014. One of the biggest changes took effect Jan. 1. Now most United States citizens must have a minimum level of health care coverage or face a tax penalty. This is known as minimum essential coverage.

What Is Minimum Essential Coverage?                                  Types of minimum essential coverage plans include:

• Employer-sponsored health insurance (including COBRA and retiree coverage)
• Individual health insurance coverage
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Certain types of veterans’ health care
• TRICARE

How Do I Know if I Have Minimum Essential Coverage?                                  Most people who have employer coverage or the other types of insurance listed above meet the requirement. If you have health insurance through your employer and aren’t sure your coverage meets the requirement, you can check with your benefits manager.

What if I Know Someone Who Doesn’t Have Minimum Essential Coverage?                                  You may have friends or family who do not have insurance that meets the minimum essential coverage requirement. It is important to know that most people who do not have qualified coverage by March 31, 2014, will pay a tax penalty.

This is true for everyone except those who are part of an exempt group. Exempt groups include people who do not have to have coverage because they meet certain qualifications. Some examples of these qualifications include:

• Financial hardship
• Religious beliefs
• Incarceration
• Those who have special coverage established by another law, such as American Indians

Still Have Questions?                                  Visit ReformandYouIL.com for more information. If you have friends or family members who don’t have health care coverage, they can go online to ReformandYouIL.com to apply for Get Covered Illinois coverage. They can also apply for coverage by phone at 800-538-8833 or by mail with a paper application.

The information provided here is only a brief summary of one of the provisions of the law. It is not intended to be a complete, detailed description of the law or a legal opinion on the law.

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Today after I arrived home there was a note on the bathroom faucet-No Water”. This not left by my personal assistant ( my boss). After checking the usual areas for a possible reason  for this stoppage, I called several of the neighbors and found out that there is a water main break which was being addressed as I spoke to one neighbor. Think about the inconvenience of having no water: Nothing to drink, no ice, can’t flush, can’t wash clothes or dishes. Last but not least No shower or bath for as long as it takes to repair.  Now there is a weather warning for  3 to 9 inches of snow beginning after 6PM today. So there’s not much chance of having soup today, cocktails only as long as the current ice supply lasts. Why did I not get a rain barrel but wait the barrel would be solid ice by now and probably un moveable due it’s being frozen to the ground and quite heavy (about 440 pounds). For now water is judicially used (what little there is) and drinking kept to a minimum since  we can’t flush!

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The attached article caught my eye as another way to “combat obesity and related health issues, the basic premise is OK but will the overall effect cause the not obese or diabetic as much distress as the targeted subjects? It is stated in studies that the well pay for the sick (it has always been that way) but can a soft drink excise tax do the job? It will be a number of years and test cases before it becomes law but during that time will any REAL data emerge that would encourage the at risk to do something on their own after all these “soft” drinks and their contents are as addictive as any illegal consumables
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Time right for soda tax, proponents say
Business groups vow to fight it
By Tobias Wall
State Capitol Bureau
The head of a public health advocacy group says now’s the right time to push again for a state tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, even though similar efforts have failed and even though proponents face a fight from business groups.

Illinois Public Health Institute CEO Elissa Bassler said last week that after years of research and discussion, “it seemed like it was reasonable to have legislation introduced.”
“We got a lot of positive feedback from legislators this year so we wanted to
move forward,” she said.
Sen. Mattie Hunter, D-Chicago, and Rep. Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, filed the Healthy Eating and Active Living Act in the Senate and House last week that would impose a 1-cent-per-ounce excise tax on regular and diet sodas, beverages that are less than 50 percent juice, sports drinks and ready-to-drink coffees and teas.
A Cook County Department of Public Health study published in 2011 estimated that at current consumption levels, a penny-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Illinois could generate more than $600 million and cut statewide consumption of those beverages by almost 150 million gallons.

Other estimates in the study suggest that the tax could play a role in a reduction of as many as 3,400 new cases of diabetes each year, saving up to $20.7 million in diabetes-related health-care costs. Obesity-related healthcare costs could be reduced by more than $150 million.
At least half of the revenue generated from the tax would be set aside to shore up Medicaid, which has been the victim of recent funding cuts. The other half would go to education and prevention programs that aim to curb obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.
The bill calls for the formation of an advisory board tasked with deciding which programs would get grant money generated by the tax.
Gabel said the board would include representatives from the State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Public Health and other health organizations.
Pass-along costs?
Since the legislation was announced Wednesday, Hunter said she’s added four chief co-sponsors to the bill in the Senate.
but as support picks up steam, business groups with ties to the beverage industry are lining up in opposition.
“We’re not just going to sit back, we’re going to be aggressively opposing the bill,” said Illinois Beverage Association executive director Timothy Bramlet, who noted that the industry had already taken its first step in the fight by forming the Illinois Coalition Against Beverage Taxes.
The coalition argues that the added expense to distributors would put already-thin margins in danger. In addition, the tax would get passed along to consumers who would see a bump in shelf prices for sugar-sweetened beverages.
If fewer people decide to purchase those drinks, opponents say producers will have no choice but to respond to a shrinking market by slashing jobs.
Bassler said the decision was made to push for an excise tax rather than a sales tax because research shows sales taxes don’t achieve the desired effect.
“One important distinction is that (the research) authors and economists articulate that a sales tax doesn’t have an impact on consumption,” she said.
One of the Cook County study’s authors, Dr. Frank Chaloupka, professor of economics at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said, “Sales taxes aren’t really apparent to consumers” because they’re relatively low. He said that by the time consumers check out at a register, a sales tax isn’t enough to cause them to rethink the decision to buy something.
Excise taxes, on the other hand, are built into the retail price and could dissuade consumers from making the purchase in the first place, he said.
For example, under the act, a 24-pack of soda would cost an additional $2.88 — and that’s before the 6.25 percent sales tax Illinois already tacks onto soda.
Get people talking
Despite the additional revenue, agencies in line to receive grants generated by the tax wouldn’t be able to count on stable revenue year over year.
If the HEAL Act is passed into law, and if the law works as intended, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages will fall, bringing revenue generated from the tax down with it.
Gabel said she’s prepared to tell public health personnel that could be the case. It shouldn’t be a problem, she said, because workers in that sector have become accustomed to such uncertainty.
“It doesn’t worry me,” Hunter said. “The more people we educate and the more they take the products out of their diet, we can focus on the folks who need the most assistance.”
Hunter said that even if the law works perfectly, some people will still drink sugarsweetened beverages.
“That’s on them. They still have that choice,” she said.
At any rate, Hunter and Gabel expect a long and difficult fight.
“My experience with bills that have a lot of opposition is that in the first year, it’s hard to get them out of committee,” Gabel said.
However, the effort will get people talking about the issue, she said.
“As people recognize sugarsweetened beverages as one of the main sources of added calories and sugar in our diets, they’ll become more sensitive to it,”

Gabel said. Contact Tobias Wall: 782-3095, toby.wall@sj-r.com, twitter.com/reTcWall

This post was brought to my attention and I think we should all read it and receive one of the best reads on the President’s term in office so far.

 There are Obama haters aplenty, have been from Day One: Snooty left wingers have offered advice he should have, could have, would have followed to success if the president had just listened to his white betters in the media. Hate-filled right wing bigots have jostled to be the loudest claiming Obama isn’t a “real American,” not one of us, from somewhere else, a liar, a communist, a Muslim, the anti-Christ… and that’s just a start.

Economists have lined up on all sides to predict his policies would fail, that we were headed for depression, world economic collapse, and higher unemployment. Hawks told us the president was giving in to terror, maybe he was a terrorist himself. Doves told us he’s a mass murderer, using drones to target the innocent.

Civil libertarians told us Obama is creating a surveillance state, that he’s Orwell’s worst nightmare personified. That, of course is when he’s not selling us down the river to terrorists, as the Religious Right claims or turning our children into gays.

The Religious Right also tells us that the president is a baby-killer, wants to destroy marriage, hates families, and is in league with a global gay conspiracy to coddle pedophiles. Speaking of pedophiles, the Roman Catholic bishops – when not busy with settling lawsuits on behalf of abused children their priests raped – have told us that the president is anti-religion, anti-Catholic and anti-religious freedom, all because he hasn’t kowtowed to them and insisted that women are given full health coverage, including access to contraception. The president has only been forced to tell one untruth, and it’s not that everyone could keep their coverage irrespective of how bad their so-called insurance was. That was a misstatement. It’s this: He’s never been able to say that the bitterness of his opponents stems from the fact he’s black. Not everyone who opposes the president is a racist. But race embarrasses us. We try not to mention it. We pretend we’re a less race-divided country than we are.

The president can’t say that because then on top of everything else he’d be accused of being an angry black man. Pundits like to tell us how well Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan got on and worked together. Why can’t the president be like that? The two Irish-Americans on opposite sides of the issues back in the good old days were both white, that’s why. One of them wasn’t facing a party of obstruction and hatred so irrational they would risk the entire world economy to make a point, that’s why!

With the economy salvaged from the toilet, two unnecessary wars ended, America’s standing retrieved from the lowest point it’s ever been that W Bush brought us to, with our dollar taken from worthless to the world currency again, our educational system retreating from free fall, any minimally fit president who had held all that together would be ahead in the polls… if he happened to be white.

The Democrats put forward the brightest, most compelling and inspiring candidate since Franklin Roosevelt. He won. But he did not change the blighted elitist heart of the white ruling class – Left or Right – used to being in charge. I say this as a white, 61 year-old former Republican and former Evangelical leader, who was turned into an Obama supporter by my disgust with the hijacking of the Republican Party by a bunch of anti-American revolutionaries. (See my new book And God Said, “Billy!“ exploring the roots of American religious delusion, and offering a way to better understand what I mean by the term “anti-American revolutionaries.”)

Senator Obama won scholarships to America’s top academic institutions, was voted by his peers to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, is a family man with an exemplary and obviously loving marriage, has a wife who is a brilliant charismatic woman, two lovely children, is a born-again Christian comfortable with his faith, has avoided making the fast buck in the new gilded age of greed when he could have, served his community, is thoughtful, considered in his opinions, slow to anger, proved right in his judgment about the Iraq war, the economy and just about everything else, looks at every side of a question before making a decision, and is not given to grandstanding let alone defending himself. That is who I voted for twice. That is who the president still is.

And now we come to the “healthcare reform debacle.” It is a “debacle” just as the economy was a debacle. In other words it isn’t. Check the stock market lately? Check the employment numbers lately? Check the wind-down of our wars lately? Check the whereabouts of bin Laden lately? Check the falling crime rates lately? Check the fact our deficit is dropping and that we are closer to energy self sufficiency than ever.?

Turns out all the worst case forecasts about President Obama have been wrong. No, he hasn’t fixed everything. But, in spite of the racist, crazy Tea Party, the evangelical haters and the supercilious, know-it-all liberals who harass Obama, the president has done A LOT! President Obama remains the most intellectually and emotionally even-tempered and best equipped President we have had in the modern era. And even with the entire machinery of the Republican establishment and much of the media rooting for and egging on the “failure” of his Affordable Care Act, he will prevail.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expert on health care reform. But given the actual record of achievement of this president I’m betting against the bigots and the know-it-all-pundits. Based on how all the other “disasters” and “failures” this president “created”– by not listening to Tea Party/evangelical bigots and white “liberal” commentators… I’m betting President Obama gets the Affordable Care Act website fixed, survives this current chapter of the slow-motion lynching that’s characterized his presidency, and wins this round too.

Today the president’s poll numbers are down. Thirty years from now the word “Obamacare” will be right up there with the other things we take for granted as the bedrock of our civil society. In President Obama we were given two extraordinary gifts; a great President and a national mirror. Looking into that mirror we just learned who we really are.

Like our national reaction to Jackie Robinson — the American baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League — we’ve learned that one brave decent black man has had the fortitude to call us to a better place by what he did NOT say or do in his defense. The question is not will President Obama fail, but who are we?

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book — And God Said, “Billy!“ exploring the roots of American religious delusion, and offering another way to approach true spirituality, is on Kindle, iBook and NOOK for $3.99, and in paperback.

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