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Heeeeeeere's Obamacare!

Kestrel said:
Ah yes, the freedom to not have insurance. Because sharing risks with other people is socialism or something.
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I hate being forced to purchase the care, though I don't necessarily regret having it now that it's sort of "affordable". The subsidy program bumped the coverage price down just enough for me to be able to budget it.

The sticker shock from the actual care I've gotten in practice though is still staggering regardless of what I'm liable for paying out of pocket. The way I see it, the bill still only makes care affordable by redistributing money around instead of attacking the damn problem source though, which is the actual cost of the care... and interestingly enough while in Ireland last month I saw that the local health care system in the UK was a point of strong debate for some of the same reasons. They have an aging population putting quite a strain on the funding and they'd been looking at higher tabacco taxes and mansion taxes to take up the slack.

Point being... much as people seem to be celebrating the law for championing affordable care, and for as much as I benefit from it, it's just delaying more problems for down the road by doing nothing to address the problem source. Screw the "socialism" label and the praise...
 
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Kestrel said:
Have any of the "my insurance premuim doubled due to Obamacare" horror stories being spread by ACA opponents ever stood up to a close examination?
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I frequent an aviation forum.

In a similar thread there, a fellow pilot said his rates doubled and his deductible increased substantially.

I take that at face value, as I do the success stories.

I guess he might be lying or exaggerating, but to assume such is not my first instinct.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I frequent an aviation forum.

In a similar thread there, a fellow pilot said his rates doubled and his deductible increased substantially.

I take that at face value, as I do the success stories.

I guess he might be lying or exaggerating, but to assume such is not my first instinct.
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I don't find it hard to believe that his premium doubled and his deductible went up. The problem is believing the old insurance had coverage that was similar to the ACA policy at half the price.
 
Grizzly Bear said:
The way I see it, the bill still only makes care affordable by redistributing money around instead of attacking the damn problem source though, which is the actual cost of the care..
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That's... the entire point of insurance? Not just health insurance, even.

Then there's the fact that the best way to decrease costs is to remove the ability to profit from medical care. The US spends 2.5 times as much as the UK per person on healthcare. 1.5 times as much as Canada.
 
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Kestrel said:
I don't find it hard to believe that his premium doubled and his deductible went up. The problem is believing the old insurance had coverage that was similar to the ACA policy at half the price.
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Sure.

But what I see is ACA proponents wanting to discount every "horror story", while opponents want to give them undue emphasis while discounting the success stories.

I can only hope that down the road we'll have objective numbers with which to weigh the success of the plan.

As an aside, on the other forum there is discussion that the powers that be are intentionally withholding information on upcoming rate hikes until after the midterm elections. What say you?
 
There are some parts of the ACA intended to reduce costs.

Medicare and Medicaid no longer reimburse hospitals for the cost of treating hospital acquired infections. This has resulted in widespread adaption of checklists and other proceedures that not only reduced costs but improved the quality of care for all hospital patients.

Medicaid has implemented medical hot spot programs that assign a nurse to coordinate the care for patients that frequently show up at the ER.

Health insurance cards now have a machine readable ID number to cut back on billing errors.

Perhaps the largest restraint on costs comes from the exchange marketplace. The standardized metal levels of available policies make it easier to compare prices. Insurance companies with a cost efficient network can sell policies at a lower price.
 
I can certainly see the political motive for having the open enrollment period start after the election. Medical inflation is no longer in double digits, but it still exists. The Democrats know that even a modest rise in premiums will be used against them. The voters have forgotten that health insurance rates were rising at double digit rates six years ago.

Some states such as California already have 2015 rate information available on the state run exchange. My home state of Colorado has said that average premiums will go up by just over 1%, and that premiums in Denver and the mountain resort areas will drop substantially. There will of course be specific policies that go up sharply, and you can bet that ACA opponents will use those as examples.

In the corporate world, employees find out about the new plans and rates when the package is delivered at the start of open enrollment. They get two to four weeks typically starting sometime in November to make a decision for next years benefits. Not really any different from using the exchange.
 
ehcks said:
That's... the entire point of insurance? Not just health insurance, even.
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You may have a point, though I have a hard time swalling how a 2 day hospital stay in ICU can cost tens of thousands of dollars, (nearly 100,000 for a friend of mine). I know insurance is supposed to distribute costs, but the immense costs associated with healthcare itself have put a large cost burden just to pay for the insurance, and thats usually what I refer to when I say its just shifting money around.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
As an aside, on the other forum there is discussion that the powers that be are intentionally withholding information on upcoming rate hikes until after the midterm elections. What say you?
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I'd say they're conspiracy theorists who deny information that conflicts with their biases.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-city-health-insure-20140906-story.html

Obamacare premiums in Los Angeles will rise less than 1% next year for the most widely sold coverage, a new study shows.

Across the country, rates for a benchmark silver plan will actually go down slightly in 2015, according to an analysis of health insurance prices in 16 major U.S. cities released Friday.

The report by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that changes in premiums will vary widely in the second year of the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansion. The next open enrollment starts Nov. 15.
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There will be some areas with higher premium increases. But since the subsidy is based on the second lowest cost silver plan on the exchange, those who qualify for a subsidy will not see much change in rates.
 
From the New York Times, Obama’s Health Law: Who Was Helped Most

We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act. But until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details.

Now a large set of data — from Enroll America, the group trying to sign up people for the program, and from the data firm Civis Analytics — is allowing a much clearer picture. The data shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades.
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Lots of details of what groups gained health care under the ACA. The initial graphics that shows the geographic distribution of changes in the uninsured rate makes it clear that state policy had a large effect.
 
I'm getting ready to find new coverage this year (I may stay with Moda, but other insurers are competitive this year).

It looks like Oregon’s Health CO-OP, which is a non-profit, will give me similar coverage to what I had this year (Moda Gold plan) but for almost $100 cheaper.

THANKS OBAMA!

https://www.ohcoop.org/

(I need to do more research, though)

ETA: That's cheaper per month, which means I'd save $1,200.
 
Video of MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber explaining how Obamacare was intentionally designed to mislead the American public because otherwise the bill could not have been passed.

THANKS GRUBER!

 
Unabogie said:
I'm getting ready to find new coverage this year (I may stay with Moda, but other insurers are competitive this year).

It looks like Oregon’s Health CO-OP, which is a non-profit, will give me similar coverage to what I had this year (Moda Gold plan) but for almost $100 cheaper.

THANKS OBAMA!

https://www.ohcoop.org/

(I need to do more research, though)

ETA: That's cheaper per month, which means I'd save $1,200.
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It's a good thing you don't live in Massachusetts. Imagine having to say, Thanks Mitt Romney. :D
 
sunmaster14 said:
Video of MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber explaining how Obamacare was intentionally designed to mislead the American public because otherwise the bill could not have been passed.

THANKS GRUBER!

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I thought the designer of the ACA was Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel
 
DGM said:
It's a good thing you don't live in Massachusetts. Imagine having to say, Thanks Mitt Romney. :D
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I'd be happy to if the GOP would just stop the silliness about the ACA being some sort of commie plot. I wonder how things would have turned out if the GOP had claimed ownership of Obamacare and tried really hard to make it work? How many millions more people would be covered? I think they'd still be in control of the Senate this year, but the country wouldn't be so polarized and we'd all be much better off.

This campaign of fear that the GOP ran against Obama has resulted in a starkly racially segregated government.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...014-midterm-loss-end-white-southern-democrats

This is not good for anyone.
 
Unabogie said:
I'd be happy to if the GOP would just stop the silliness about the ACA being some sort of commie plot. I wonder how things would have turned out if the GOP had claimed ownership of Obamacare and tried really hard to make it work? How many millions more people would be covered? I think they'd still be in control of the Senate this year, but the country wouldn't be so polarized and we'd all be much better off.

This campaign of fear that the GOP ran against Obama has resulted in a starkly racially segregated government.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...014-midterm-loss-end-white-southern-democrats

This is not good for anyone.
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I think a lot of it is blown out of proportion and not by the GOP. The DEM has done a lot of blame shifting for the poor execution to save face.

The idea is good. The execution was poor.

Will you argue that or will you blame the Republicans?
 
DGM said:
I think a lot of it is blown out of proportion and not by the GOP. The DEM has done a lot of blame shifting for the poor execution to save face.

The idea is good. The execution was poor.

Will you argue that or will you blame the Republicans?
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Well I do blame the Republicans, and I'll explain why. When the ACA passed, the GOP had just won Ted Kennedy's seat and the dems no longer had 60 votes. Had the GOP not been 100% obstructionist, 60 votes wouldn't have mattered, but they were. So the crafters of the bill couldn't do any of the usual conference committee work of fine tuning the law before it was signed by Obama. This resulted in some of the poorly worded phrasing that's allowing the Halbig stuff to even happen, and that's allowed far too many states to opt out of Medicaid expansion for the sole purpose of appearing to fight the tyranny of the ACA. But again, had the GOP been part of the process apart from attempting to "kill the bill", then the execution would have gone smoother, kinks in the law would have been smoothed out over the last 5 years, and there's be no reason to doubt that future kinks wouldn't be smoothed over as well. Medicaid expansion would be working as designed, and people in red states would have cheaper insurance right now. Believe me, I am a strong believer in a two party system, and I don't think liberals are always right. I just think that the modern GOP has chosen to appeal to some really ugly base instincts as a strategy to win, and the result is not only that the ACA execution is poor, but we now live in a country where nothing gets done. All issues are insurmountable because we can't pass a budget. We can't agree on any laws. We can't improve anyone's lives. And we can't even keep up our infrastructure. I fear that we're going to be a failed state, in large part because a huge portion of the country thinks that President Obama literally wants to kill Americans because his loyalties lie with foreign muslim terrorists. It's crazy.
 
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