ObamaCare

Political discussion here. Any reasonable opinion is welcome, but due to the sensitive nature of the topic area, please be nice and respectful to others. No flaming or trolling, please. And please keep political commentary out of the other board areas and confine it to this area. Thanks!
Post Reply
User avatar
Mori Chu
Posts: 20895
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:05 am

ObamaCare

Post by Mori Chu »

The Republicans voted last night on a budget that will include a committee to repeal ObamaCare. What do y'all think about ACA/ObamaCare? Do you think it has been a good law? Would you like to see it repealed? What if anything about it needs to be changed or removed?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpos ... story.html

User avatar
Indy
Posts: 19339
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:21 pm
Contact:

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Indy »

I think it is a very flawed law to cover a very diverse issue. I think we needed to start some where, and considering how well off this country is compared to the rest of the world, and to know we don't provide for our citizens even close to others, it is at least a start. I would be fine with a replacement as long as it keeps some fundamental aspects like pre-existing condition coverage and a way to subsidize this for the most needy.

User avatar
In2ition
Posts: 11395
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:35 pm

Re: ObamaCare

Post by In2ition »

I myself have never used or been on ACA, but it has affected me indirectly. I have a coworker that was on it and he loved it. It was much cheaper for him than our company insurance. I like that it helps all those without capacity to have insurance, but I think it put too much burden on the middle class to pay for those.

I essentially am paying twice as much now for an inferior health insurance, which is a great burden on me and a single family income. On top of that my company went from a decent insurance in Aetna to a high deductible plan in Cigna. They won't pay a dime for nearly anything until I have paid my $2500 deductible. After that has been met, it's still only 80/20, and with the cost of hospital bills, I'll be paying for last year's bills until near the end of 2017. There has got to be a better way.
"When we all think alike, nobody is thinking" - Walter Lippmann
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." ~ Frederick Douglass

User avatar
Indy
Posts: 19339
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:21 pm
Contact:

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Indy »

In2ition wrote:I myself have never used or been on ACA, but it has affected me indirectly. I have a coworker that was on it and he loved it. It was much cheaper for him than our company insurance. I like that it helps all those without capacity to have insurance, but I think it put too much burden on the middle class to pay for those.

I essentially am paying twice as much now for an inferior health insurance, which is a great burden on me and a single family income. On top of that my company went from a decent insurance in Aetna to a high deductible plan in Cigna. They won't pay a dime for nearly anything until I have paid my $2500 deductible. After that has been met, it's still only 80/20, and with the cost of hospital bills, I'll be paying for last year's bills until near the end of 2017. There has got to be a better way.
Your insurance premium was flat and then doubled once ACA became law? I have been with the same company since 2003. My health insurance was really cheap in 2003-2005. Since then, it has basically been going up 10% or so per year. After 10 years, that really adds up. I didn't notice anything different under ACA for me or my family, but my mother in law (self-employed) has been on it and loves it.

User avatar
In2ition
Posts: 11395
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:35 pm

Re: ObamaCare

Post by In2ition »

Indy wrote:
In2ition wrote:I myself have never used or been on ACA, but it has affected me indirectly. I have a coworker that was on it and he loved it. It was much cheaper for him than our company insurance. I like that it helps all those without capacity to have insurance, but I think it put too much burden on the middle class to pay for those.

I essentially am paying twice as much now for an inferior health insurance, which is a great burden on me and a single family income. On top of that my company went from a decent insurance in Aetna to a high deductible plan in Cigna. They won't pay a dime for nearly anything until I have paid my $2500 deductible. After that has been met, it's still only 80/20, and with the cost of hospital bills, I'll be paying for last year's bills until near the end of 2017. There has got to be a better way.
Your insurance premium was flat and then doubled once ACA became law? I have been with the same company since 2003. My health insurance was really cheap in 2003-2005. Since then, it has basically been going up 10% or so per year. After 10 years, that really adds up. I didn't notice anything different under ACA for me or my family, but my mother in law (self-employed) has been on it and loves it.
It has been incremental, but mine has been almost 20% each year. The worst thing was moving from one plan and being forced to switch to the high deductible health insurance. I actually was looking into moving over to ACA this upcoming year, but did do it. If your's has increased 10% each year, by your 10th year it will be over twice as much as what it was in the past.

Where does your Mother-in-law live? I am curious if it's gone up this year for her.
"When we all think alike, nobody is thinking" - Walter Lippmann
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." ~ Frederick Douglass

User avatar
Indy
Posts: 19339
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:21 pm
Contact:

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Indy »

In2ition wrote:
Indy wrote:
In2ition wrote:I myself have never used or been on ACA, but it has affected me indirectly. I have a coworker that was on it and he loved it. It was much cheaper for him than our company insurance. I like that it helps all those without capacity to have insurance, but I think it put too much burden on the middle class to pay for those.

I essentially am paying twice as much now for an inferior health insurance, which is a great burden on me and a single family income. On top of that my company went from a decent insurance in Aetna to a high deductible plan in Cigna. They won't pay a dime for nearly anything until I have paid my $2500 deductible. After that has been met, it's still only 80/20, and with the cost of hospital bills, I'll be paying for last year's bills until near the end of 2017. There has got to be a better way.
Your insurance premium was flat and then doubled once ACA became law? I have been with the same company since 2003. My health insurance was really cheap in 2003-2005. Since then, it has basically been going up 10% or so per year. After 10 years, that really adds up. I didn't notice anything different under ACA for me or my family, but my mother in law (self-employed) has been on it and loves it.
It has been incremental, but mine has been almost 20% each year. The worst thing was moving from one plan and being forced to switch to the high deductible health insurance. I actually was looking into moving over to ACA this upcoming year, but did do it. If your's has increased 10% each year, by your 10th year it will be over twice as much as what it was in the past.

Where does your Mother-in-law live? I am curious if it's gone up this year for her.
So yours has been going up 20%/year since ACA became law? Wow, that is crazy. That would be 350%. Has the contribution your employer provides gone up that much too? The cost of healthcare is actually going down (I should say, physician salaries are staying relatively flat, and most device costs are eroding at 2-5%/year). And hospitals typically operate on 1-5% profit margins (with many losing money). Drugs keep going up, but I still don't get why HC costs are continuing to rise so much.

User avatar
Indy
Posts: 19339
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:21 pm
Contact:

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Indy »

I will ask her about the cost. She lives in AZ and owns her own small business. She has been on it since 2011.

User avatar
In2ition
Posts: 11395
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:35 pm

Re: ObamaCare

Post by In2ition »

Indy wrote:
In2ition wrote:
Indy wrote:
In2ition wrote:I myself have never used or been on ACA, but it has affected me indirectly. I have a coworker that was on it and he loved it. It was much cheaper for him than our company insurance. I like that it helps all those without capacity to have insurance, but I think it put too much burden on the middle class to pay for those.

I essentially am paying twice as much now for an inferior health insurance, which is a great burden on me and a single family income. On top of that my company went from a decent insurance in Aetna to a high deductible plan in Cigna. They won't pay a dime for nearly anything until I have paid my $2500 deductible. After that has been met, it's still only 80/20, and with the cost of hospital bills, I'll be paying for last year's bills until near the end of 2017. There has got to be a better way.
Your insurance premium was flat and then doubled once ACA became law? I have been with the same company since 2003. My health insurance was really cheap in 2003-2005. Since then, it has basically been going up 10% or so per year. After 10 years, that really adds up. I didn't notice anything different under ACA for me or my family, but my mother in law (self-employed) has been on it and loves it.
It has been incremental, but mine has been almost 20% each year. The worst thing was moving from one plan and being forced to switch to the high deductible health insurance. I actually was looking into moving over to ACA this upcoming year, but did do it. If your's has increased 10% each year, by your 10th year it will be over twice as much as what it was in the past.

Where does your Mother-in-law live? I am curious if it's gone up this year for her.
So yours has been going up 20%/year since ACA became law? Wow, that is crazy. That would be 350%. Has the contribution your employer provides gone up that much too? The cost of healthcare is actually going down (I should say, physician salaries are staying relatively flat, and most device costs are eroding at 2-5%/year). And hospitals typically operate on 1-5% profit margins (with many losing money). Drugs keep going up, but I still don't get why HC costs are continuing to rise so much.
Tell me about it. I wish I knew why it was so much. If I wasn't going to get fined heavily for not having health insurance, I would just set up an account and put money into it myself every pay check. I figured that I would be able to handle my own insurance and pay out of pocket and come out much further ahead.
"When we all think alike, nobody is thinking" - Walter Lippmann
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." ~ Frederick Douglass

User avatar
Nodack
Posts: 8517
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:50 pm

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Nodack »

I have always been a picture of health. Before this past year the worst illness I have ever had was strep throat and got a few stitches here and there. Then bam, I had two heart surgeries this past year. Without insurance I would have paid over $300,000. How much money would I have had to put in every month to have covered that? If you started putting it into a bank account now and in ten years needed the surgeries you would have had to put in $2,500 a month every to save enough. That's not going to happen is it?

I don't think Obamacare has been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It addressed the lack of people covered but, didn't address price controls other than if you get every American covered we all share the costs just like car insurance. I have posted on this subject so many times over the past 8 years that I hesitate to post because everybody has already seen it all from me so many times.

Here it goes. The US is ranked 36th in the world by the World Health organization I believe in overall health care quality right behind Costa Rica..For as rich a Super Power as we are supposed to be that number is embarrassing. Every single Industrialized nation on earth has Universal Health Care except for the US, which means that all their citizens have health care coverage of some kind. Before Obamacare there were roughly 50 million Americans that could not afford health insurance. I think it was Harvard that did a study and said that 45,000 Americans die every year in the US as a result of not having health insurance. 3000 were killed on 9/11 and we moved mountains, killed hundreds of thousands, spent trillions of dollars out of revenge(Oil) with nothing to show. 45,000 X's 15 years is 675,000 dead Americans on American soil that might have been prevented. If we spent those trillions on them instead of bombs I wonder what would have happened. But we didn't and nobody cares about stats like that when ISIS kills a few Americans every year and that is really scary. The leading cause of bankruptcy in the US is illness. In the UK nobody ever goes bankrupt because of illness because their health care is paid through taxes and there are no out of pocket costs ever except for elective surgery like getting a boob job.

As far as prices go. They have been going up for a long time. They don't ever go down.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

These charts to me illustrate that health care costs have been going up consistently for many decades and not just since Obamacare was introduced. All this outrage over the costs going up under Obama when there seemed to be no outrage before Obamacare is silly. Prices would have gone up with or without Obamacare. Obamacare put in a lot of rules regarding coverage that help Americans.

There are a lot of things that are covered by law now that weren't before Obamacare. Before Obamacare providers could set limits on your coverage. If you went over your limit they cut you off. You get cancer and 3/4 the way through your treatment the Insurance company cuts off all funding because you went over your limit they set. That cannot happen now.

Before Obamacare Ambulance rides weren't always covered. Now they are by law. No insurer can charge you more or deny you coverage based on your current health or a pre-existing condition.

All health plans issued after Sept. 23, 2010, must offer a wide array of in-network preventive services and treatments for adults and children, with no out-of-pocket costs such as copays, co-insurance or need to meet a deductible.

The Affordable Care Act fights administrative profit-taking in two ways: It makes insurers submit any proposed rate increases of 10 percent or more for federal review, and when insurers spend less than 80 percent of individual plan premiums (85 percent for group plans) on actual health care, the law requires them to refund the difference to policyholders. In 2012, the first year of the "medical loss ratio" rebates, insurers returned nearly $1.1 billion to 13 million policyholders.

The Affordable Care Act makes it illegal for insurers to cancel your policy on a whim or because you left out irrelevant details of your health history. Insurers now have only two legal reasons to cancel coverage: outright false or incomplete information on an application, or nonpayment of premiums.

When a patient's medical treatment for a serious illness fell into an unproven or experimental gray area, insurers could refuse to pay for it without having to give an explanation. Some states had consumer protections in place for these rare instances; others did not. Under health care reform, private insurers must tell you why your claim was denied and the steps you can take to challenge their decision. If your health insurance company still denies coverage after its required internal review, you can request an external review by an independent organization with the power to overturn the decision.

Bottom line for me was that Obamacare helped the country more than it hurt the country. It has plenty of room for improvement, especially costs controls. Trump talked about going after drug manufacturers who are gouging Americans and charging them a lot more for the same drugs than they charge other countries. That would be a good start. Trump was a big fan of Universal health Care and has stated that all Americans should have health insurance, which goes against the Republican norms. It would be nice if we could approach this topic as Americans and not Democrats and Republicans.
Last edited by Nodack on Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Mori Chu
Posts: 20895
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:05 am

Re: ObamaCare

Post by Mori Chu »

Wow, Nodack, that is an excellent post. I need more time to chew through all of it. Lots of great figures and information. Thank you for posting that.

Post Reply