The US is going to Hell, Health Care for Everyone...

[Loren Littlejohn]

If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

The entire idea of the ACA is that, if enough young and healthy people sign up for plans, the overall rate of old and sick people will be reduced in the insurance market, which will lower long-term costs. It remains to be seen what the proportions are, and that will be reported later this year, IIRC. But if it does work, we'll all be paying much less over the long term, though changing plans may force some people to get more expensive short-term coverage (although the exchanges are supposed to rectify this). To that end, it's worth nothing that health care costs have been rising at the lowest rate in decades since the law was passed.

I'm not an ACA apologist, but I do understand how, if it works, it will ultimately be beneficial for everybody.

 

[sjcortese]

Then if it's benificial for everybody there's no need for anyone to be exempted and until then Vaseline and KY should be free until we stop getting fucked. I'd love to see a HC system that works as much as the next person but it's not gonna happen this way.

What's gonna change when people that don't get coverage, that don't want to work, that don't file a tax return that a penalty for not being insured can come out of, if they can still walk into an emergency room, get treated because they can't be refused treatment, and then walk out the door while the rest of us still flip the bill? The whole system is screwed up and a huge part of the problem isn't just politicians, it's a growing number of lazy pos's that could care less about anyone other than themselves.. Hands out & palms up is an increasingly popular career choice.

 

[JeffTD]

What's gonna change when people that don't get coverage, that don't want to work, that don't file a tax return that a penalty for not being insured can come out of, if they can still walk into an emergency room, get treated because they can't be refused treatment, and then walk out the door while the rest of us still flip the bill? The whole system is screwed up and a huge part of the problem isn't just politicians, it's a growing number of lazy pos's that could care less about anyone other than themselves.. Hands out & palms up is an increasingly popular career choice.

You act like this isn't the case already.

 

[sjcortese]

Not acting like anything that's why I said "still". It's not a new problem it's a growing one.

 

[JHA]

You'd rather leave them die outside?

I think that's the real problem.

 

[SocialNumb]

I'd just like to put it out there that I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the conservative Christian right wing republicans loose their shit over all this. It's been great man.

 

[sjcortese]

I deleted what I just typed for the simple reason that this could go on forever. I'll just agree to disagree.. There's a wide variety of opinions here and I'll respect them all. It's all the differing opinions that make a topic interesting at least for me. Thankfully it stays pretty civil...these types of discussions where I work can get pretty heated but at the end of the day we all still respect each other. Cheers!

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Just appeared on my facebook feed. I'm hearing more and more of this kind of thing. Sometimes good, sometime horrible.

http://amac.us/watch-employees-pennsylvania-company-learn-increased-health-costs-due-obamacare

EDIT: I have no idea if amac is biased. It doesn't really matter in this context IMO.

 

[egan.]

FWIW, AMAC is a conservative senior citizen group that thinks the non-partisan AARP is too liberal. It was founded by an insurance agency owner and AMAC also markets and sells it's own health insurance.

 

[egan.]

You'd rather leave them die outside?

What I've always said is that free market health insurance doesn't work b/c you have to be willing to tell people to fuck off and die for a market to work. Few are that hard hearted.
I think the ACA is an excuse insurance companies to spike rates and in turn for employers to pass on the cost to their employees or reduce coverages to protect their bottom line. There also seems to be incredible confusion about the marketplaces and such. Logically there is no reason for the increase in premiums for identical coverage from last year.
Single payer is obviously more logical but it's been so demonized here it feels like a pipe dream.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

FWIW, AMAC is a conservative senior citizen group that thinks the non-partisan AARP is too liberal. It was founded by an insurance agency owner and AMAC also markets and sells it's own health insurance.

That's fine, but they posted a video from a news channel. I didn't even read what they had to say, I just watched the video.

 

[egan.]

I gotcha, but you said you didn't know if they were biased and I explained who they were. The one point I'd make about the video is they they calculated their increases based on plans chosen for them by their insurance salesmen. They also aren't factoring in subsidies and TBH if you think $800 is a mortgage payment there is a good chance you're eligible for a subsidy.

edit: Just to be clear, I'm hearing these stories too and they are horrifying and I don't doubt these people feel totally helpless. What confuses me is that I can't replicate these insane increases when shopping for healthcare even if I fake all of my info. For example, I just pretended to be a 40 year old who makes a million dollars a year and I couldn't get a plan more expensive than $550/mo on the CA exchange. Even when I added 4 kids I couldn't get it past $1370. So I can't help but be really suspicious of the (several) for profit businesses between these folks and their healthcare. Granted it's a different state but some of these folks had premium increases greater than the total unsubsidized payment on the most expensive plan available for purchase I could find.
edit to the edit: I just shopped for plans on the marketplace in PA and I couldn't find a plan for a 45 yr/old man for more than $400.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

They also aren't factoring in subsidies and TBH if you think $800 is a mortgage payment there is a good chance you're eligible for a subsidy.

If you don't count taxes, $800 a month gets you a lot of house where I live. If you include taxes it gets you very little.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

It was kind of a paint to use the NY one so I never found out what the exchanges are here.

 

[egan.]

If you don't count taxes, $800 a month gets you a lot of house where I live. If you include taxes it gets you very little.

Same in NC. Not so much in CA. I was more pointing at the fact that the subsidy cut off is 400% the federal poverty level and $800/mo is a very middle class mortgage. For the record the subsidy cut offs are:
family size---income (MAGI)---yearly premium cap
1--------------$45,960-----------$4,366
2--------------$62,040-----------$5,893
3--------------$78,120-----------$7,421
4--------------$94,200-----------$8,949

Obviously the less you make the greater the subsidy and some states kick in beyond what the federal government does.

After some consideration I think at least part of the issue is that a lot of people just sign up for whatever their employer hands them. As some one who's bought their own insurance for a decade, shopping around, understanding the tax implications and trying to understand the system is sort of old news to me so I have a different frame of reference. I think the government, the insurance companies, employers and the media have done a bad job of educating people. And people as a whole are taking what they are told in soundbite form at face value.

 

[scorpio01169]

What we have been hearing a lot lately is that a lot of the people who claim their HC cost have gone up from the ACA is because they were told by their insurance companies that their existing plans were insufficient under the ACA and the insurance company offered them something way more expensive...almost $700 more expensive. But these people were so anti anything Obama that they refused to get on the HC website and find that they will find plans much about what they were paying or cost being lower. Some say why if the cost is the same why bother well.....your benefits under the ACA are far more better than the play you were paying the same amout. I am a die hard liberal and I always hear conservatives say liberals only support the ACA is because they think they are getting free healthcare and what I found out in a lot of the backlash from a small part of liberals is because....well... they thought it would be free healthcare. On the flip side of that coin, I know some conservatives that hate the ACA because you are now forced to pay for your own healthcare and they just dont have the money, things were just fine when you could walk into an emergency room and they'd take care of you, which contradict those conservative argument that liberals are the freeloaders and want everything for free. So yeah, if you're freeloading and have to start paying up yeah it's expensive.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

How on earth could going it alone be cheaper than an employer offered health plan even with subsidies?

 

[scorpio01169]

How on earth could going it alone be cheaper than an employer offered health plan even with subsidies?

IDK, I know when I had a job that offered health insurance we were only offered the levels of plans by one insurance company and we had a choice of PCPs from a book provided by the insurance companies.

 

[egan.]

How on earth could going it alone be cheaper than an employer offered health plan even with subsidies?

I had a part time job where I could buy into the health plan but they wouldn't kick in and it cost 2.5x my self-pay plan. That was pre-ACA but I was surprised.

BTW, I found this:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/11/05/insurance-companies-obamacare-scam/