How bad is obamacare for our nations families financially? Really bad.

a reply to: carewemust

Exactly, that's why they're opting out of those customers.

Good thoughts on AHCA and ACA too.

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
My mother has dwarfism and an unknown stomach issue that causes her to vomit up ever 3rd meal. I have to be at home most of the time to take care of her. I can only work part time. Before obamacare I could not afford health care, after obamacare I now have a great doctor. And my mothers health cost have gone way down. I'm not saying this as an emotional plea but to show ATS that not all poor and middle class have been hit with higher costs. My hope is that trumpcare will be better or at least as good as what I have now through the ACA. Just please please don't raise my mothers health costs.

first, sorry about your situation & your mom.

I'm glad Obamacare helped you. problem is, it did that by taxing and penalizing everyone else. the whole program was designed to make one group of people pay more so another group would benefit.
I'm hoping the new plan(s) will enable you to maintain your coverage.

a reply to: Dfairlite

Democrats wanted a single payer system because of the out-of-control private bureaucracy is so inefficient. So who's fault is it when compromising with Republicans continues the 20% per year average rise in insurance premiums that was happening before and after ACA. Do you really think ACA is responsible for the rise? Did you even look at the 15 years of data leading up to ACA going into affect?

originally posted by: PistolPete
a reply to: carewemust

Obamacare is a joke. It was a money grab for insurance companies.

One thing I know Donald Trump understands is the massive pile of money that businesses sit under with health insurance fees and as someone that has negotiated contracts with employers it's the main thing keeping wages and full-time employment down.

Universal would cure a lot of that. Respect to you for examining the situation. Stars all over.

Obamacare was not a money grab for insurance companies. I worked for one and saw the big red money amount on the bottom line.

Almost all insurance companies lost money on it and had to make it up by increasing premiums and deductibles for everyone else.

Well all I have to say is I told you so. You better hope the GOP has something better that won't cause you to choose between medical care and food on the table or a roof over your head.

originally posted by: 4N0M4LY
Well all I have to say is I told you so. You better hope the GOP has something better that won't cause you to choose between medical care and food on the table or a roof over your head.

Better is subjective based on what you value as important. If the private individual has to pay double and the richest members of our society get all the ACA taxes rescinded then if that is your metric the new GOP bill is GREAT!

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: Dfairlite

Democrats wanted a single payer system because of the out-of-control private bureaucracy is so inefficient. So who's fault is it when compromising with Republicans continues the 20% per year average rise in insurance premiums that was happening before and after ACA. Do you really think ACA is responsible for the rise? Did you even look at the 15 years of data leading up to ACA going into affect?

I only know what I used to pay. Before Obamacare, I paid less than $200 a month for me. it was a good policy that I could actually use. Now, it's over $400 and my deductible is $5000. So I have to spend 5 grand before my insurance that I pay 400 a month for can be used. Do you even understand math?

The whole point of Obamacare was for the govt to have a direct say over what health care coverage you get. It wasn't to make it cheaper (OBVIOUSLY), and it wasn't to insure the 10% - 15% who didn't have coverage (for any number of reasons). No the USA health system is worse than ever and the future is looking bleak.

The real problem is the baby boomers, when they were young, healthy,working and paying tons of money to insurance companies,everything worked fine and everyone was happy. when they were young and working most companies offered health insurance to their employees and paid for it.

now, the baby boomers are old and need a lot of medical care as most old people do.
add to that, the number of people buying health insurance decreased dramatically not only because birth rates were down after the boomers were born but also because a lot companies stopped offering health insurance to employees.

the situation with the boomers getting old and putting a strain on social security and the health care system was completely expected and foreseeable but the politicians kept kicking that can down the road.

I guess the situation became critical and the only solution was to enact a law forcing people to buy health insurance no matter how much it cost or how much of a financial burden it was.

before the obamacare fiasco people who had health insurance had reasonable deductables and premiums things were working ok.
the problem was how to allow people who didn`t have insurance to get medical care.
the obvious solution would have been to require medical providers to bill uninsured people based on their ability to pay,just like our tax system does,the more you make the more you pay.

but once again greed raised it`s ugly head and obamacare was born.

a reply to: Dfairlite

I hear you and I understand there are massive problems in the ACA for families not getting subsidies or who have large unaffordable deductibles.

However - there are plenty of folks on the individual market that benefitted. There are millions who received health care through their companies that otherwise would not have provided insurance for their employees. Did you know that prior to the ACA 45,000 people per year died due to lack of insurance for their health care? This is from a Harvard study. We don't want to go back to the pre-ACA horror-fest, I assure you. That you might be ignorant of how bad it was is only due to your good fortune, and not the awesomeness of "what was."


There are definite issues with premiums rising in the ACA. It is important to realize that a chunk of that rise was due to the GOP not funding the risk management portion of the law at 100% but only giving 12% of what was needed to stabilize the market.

Market stabilization for insurance changes is common, by the way, and happens with Medicare and such historically without Congress batting an eyelash.

The ACA was purposefully subverted and Congress did this knowing premiums would rise for your family. Yes. They did this, in part, to you.

There are other reasons, of course, and that's because health care in our country is extremely expensive. Plans in the past that were "affordable" were also crap plans - they didn't cover tons of stuff and you might not even know until that trip to the ER and ambulance ride bill came due? Or you didn't have that "pregnancy rider" so the expense of your child's birth was all on your plate, including a C-section and all prenatal care.

Health care was going to go up no matter what. It always did. Every year they added hundreds of dollars onto our premiums for the same plan or less coverage.

Deductibles are up, too, and look -- there are serious problems with the amount we are expected to pay for our healthcare in the United States. We pay more here than in any other civilized country on the planet. This is what needs to be solved for, in addition to creating an efficient, affordable, well-managed and accessible health care system in our country.

Needing health care isn't a matter if IF, it is a matter of WHEN.

- AB

There is already a model for the US. It's the Swiss system. They have universal coverage and competition between non profit medical insurance companies.

a reply to: Dfairlite

The best part is that the young "progressives" just opt out and choose to pay the fine. They're smart enough to know the cost isn't worth it, but they won't put their money where their mouth is when it comes to contributing towards their socialist ideals. I mean, why contribute towards the society you demand when you can just mandate someone else do it for you?

it`s not just the never ending increases in premiums and deductibles that is making us ALL poorer but has anyone figured out yet how much more national debt we are incurring every year to pay all these health insurance subsidies?

a reply to: Tardacus

Perfect time for big tax cuts to decrease revanue.

originally posted by: bender151
a reply to: Dfairlite

The best part is that the young "progressives" just opt out and choose to pay the fine. They're smart enough to know the cost isn't worth it, but they won't put their money where their mouth is when it comes to contributing towards their socialist ideals. I mean, why contribute towards the society you demand when you can just mandate someone else do it for you?

I am not sure what people expect to happen when lobby power continues to grow our oligarchy. We are putting the bull before the cart even trying to adress the situation.

Healthcare isn't broken. The politicians get great coverage, make commission for supporting or not supporting bills, and get to polarize the public.

It's working great for them.

a reply to: Xtrozero

the young people in my life worked for companies that really didn't pitch in that much for that health policy and also didn't pay enough for them to be able to pay for that policy and still have a roof over their head..

if they were living in another state, they probably would have qualified for medicaid, but my state didn't extend it, so they just claimed exempt just like I did...

still say that the health insurance industry got burned in the last banking failure and obamacare was an attempt to bail them out!!

I work for a Fortune 100 company and have the wife's school retirement insurance and it's great. My coworkers we're hit with a doubling of rates this year and co pays that went up 500% because they could to help offset. Many people are leaving and looking for jobs with good insurance. So if your company can provide you will get the cream of the crop.

You know, health care isn't that complicated until we try to make it complicated. There are a few simple facts that need to be considered, but apparently aren't:

• Everyone dies. All of us are going to die. There is no medicine, no health plan, no doctor, no treatment that will prevent that. The best we can do is sometimes delay it.
  
  
• People get sick. And it's a different sickness for different people. A close friend has two bad knees needing replacement, a weight issue, and a leg infection preventing the knee replacement. My stepfather has advanced dementia and type I diabetes. My wife has type II diabetes and migraines. My nephew has a degenerative spine disease. I have Raynaud's Syndrome and a malformed stomach. My mother has advanced Scleroderma. Each of us has different medical needs.
  
  
• Quality of life matters. Life is more than breathing. It is doing things one loves to do, being able to interface with others, and having some sense of dignity. Hospitals do not give great quality of life... they aren't designed to. They give assistance to keep one from dying as fast.
  
  
• Medical science doesn't have all the answers. They just don't. They can fix a few things, help us live with more, and are completely clueless about others.
  
  
• People don't work for free. That includes doctors, nurses, insurance agents, and EMTs. Everyone who works, does so in order to make a living, and the harder it is to enter the profession, the more money they expect to make. It is very very difficult to become a doctor.
  
  
• Insurance companies are not doctors. They are insurance, which is, by definition, sellers of a promise: pay us now and if you have specific issues later we'll pay for it. That's all they do, and they expect to make a profit too.

With those things in mind, it becomes clear that healthcare is something deeply personal and highly individualized... and very expensive. Obamacare ignored all those points above, and tried to force insurance. That raised cost, in line with every economic theory ever developed. It also required the assistance of private insurers, which necessitated further financial assurances from the Federal government to ensure their ability to make a profit. To placate people, it required coverage for pre-existing conditions, which caused the insurance companies to pay out much more in claims and thereby forced them to raise rates further. Subsidies were used to try and minimize these rate hikes, but they were obviously insufficient and also drained the national economy.

There are only two possibilities to have reasonable health care in this country. Nothing else has a snowball's chance in Hell of working. Either we leave government completely out of the health care issue, throwing some people to the wolves of capitalism, or we nationalize healthcare. Unfortunately, capitalism is loathe to decrease financial burdens on a population that desperately needs goods and services, so the former option is now, thanks in large part to the DNC and Obama's ill-conceived attempt to fix a problem with more problems, a somewhat horrific option in the short term.

The latter, then, socialized healthcare, seems to now be our only option. It must be implemented without regard to insurance, however, since it is plainly obvious even the financial might of the Federal government is woefully insufficient to support additional middlemen. That brings us to single-payer.

The purpose of the Federal government, domestically, is to provide needed services in areas which cannot be effectively served by private industry. We did it with the post office, providing a communication/delivery service when many households were unserved by private industry. We did it with the Interstate highway system to provide a medium for transportation that was unprofitable for private interests. And now, it appears we are forced to do it with healthcare, albeit this time due less to impotence of private industry and more to incompetence and overreach of government itself.

That's a solution that will have many downsides in the long term. Individualized care is gone. New and expensive advances are going to happen much, much slower with the extreme profit potential gone and precious few potential customers. Taxation will move to a whole new level to cover costs. Quality of life for the sick will probably decrease.

And people will still die.

TheRedneck

I still feel there will be no fix till you kill the insurance companies for the broader market, the extreme poor sure the Govt should do something to assist them.

But when you look at the cost of surgeries at the places that will quote you a binding price vs places that accept medicare (usually only see those from testimonials which you have to take with a grain of salt, but the FED will not allow hospitals to advertise prices if they accept govt insurance) It seems that it is the insurance companies that are the common factor in rising health care costs.

a reply to: Dfairlite

It should be noted that the rate of change of cost increases for insurance actually decreased despite costs still increasing. But conservatives like to ignore that detail when pitching their "Obamacare is the source of all evils!" shtick they do.