Live ACA calculator, see if you can break it

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The graphic above is an organizing image a colleague and I worked out. Later we can hyperlink any of the three elements and use it to build up a database of articles. But the even cooler feature below: there should be a partially embedded ACA premium calculator. I say partially because, while you can enter data directly into it from this website, it will open a new window and render results at the home site. This took some developers a lot of work and as best I can tell, they did well. But I could use a few beta testers …

So if you would be so kind, go ahead and give it a whirl if you like, see if it works, see if you can break it. Tomorrow it’s gonna get quite a workout at the Great Orange Satan. [Read more…]

A new canyon grander than the Grand

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A 3-D view of the subglacial canyon, looking northwest from central Greenland. Source J. Bamber, University Bristol

Trick question: what planet has a canyon grander than the Grand? Answer: if the science denier wing has their way, it may be coming soon to a continent near you:

The age of discovery isn’t over yet. A colossal canyon, the longest on Earth, has just been found under Greenland’s ice sheet, scientists announced Thursday in the journal Science.

“You think that everything that could be known about the land surface is known, but it’s not,” said Jonathan Bamber, lead study author and a geographer at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “There’s still so much to learn about the planet.”

Biggest money saver in Obamacare

We talked a little bit about what an exchange is and how they will be used for enrollment into a healthcare policy after Jan 1, when the main parts of the Affordable Care Act kick in. There’s two important differences between those policies to come on the exchanges and those available now at private insurance companies. The first, they’ll be required to cover a lot more than they do now. We’ll talk more about that in future articles. What I want to show here is an actual calculator that can estimate what you would pay for one of those future policies as a function of your income. There’s a huge money saver embedded in this. [Read more…]

ACA exchanges maybe coming soon to a website near you

In a few weeks there are these public databases called exchanges which states were supposed to set up. Ideally, one state, one exchange, handled by that state’s department of insurance. This is what the landing page of the exchange in New Mexico may look like when it’s up and running.

The exchanges are the more visible implementation of the Affordable Care Aact, aka Obamacare, including some of the parts people care most about, like subsidizing and covering everyone of every income level. Obamacare will be handled mostly under the HHS. The exchanges are state-created mega-websites used to educate, compare and enroll residents of that state into healthcare policies found there. [Read more…]