Summer of Obamacare
When Hillary Clinton decided to run as the third term of Obama she probably didn't anticipate that she would be having to deal with a crisis in Obama's signature piece of legislation.
Aetna the nation's fourth-largest health insurer, just decided to stop offering plans on Obamacare's exchanges in all but four states in 2017....
Aetna isn't the only insurer giving up on Obamacare. UnitedHealth, America's biggest insurer, will sell plans in just three states next year, down from 34 this year. Humana will offer coverage in just 156 counties in 2017, 88 percent fewer than this year.
In other words, the insurance "death spiral" has arrived. Obamacare's critics have long predicted that exchange plans' high premiums and deductibles would keep all but the sickest Americans from enrolling. These people would need so much medical care that insurers would lose money no matter how much they raised premiums. Eventually, insurers would have no choice but to pull out.
I don't recall that being the reason to oppose Obamacare in 2009. I remember bullsh*t arguments about socialism.
Nevertheless, that appears to be what is happening.
If three of the nation's largest insurers can't make it on the Obamacare exchanges, can anyone?
That's the question hanging over President Obama's signature health reform law less than three months before enrollment begins for 2017....
There's no question many insurers are losing big money on Obamacare. Costs exceeded income by 5% in 2014, and that figure doubled the following year, according to McKinsey's Center for U.S. Health System Reform. Losses are expected to grow this year.
Around one in seven Obamacare customers is about to lose their insurance plan.
"It's especially disturbing that this move could negatively impact nearly 10,000 citizens enrolled in Obamacare in Pinal County, Ariz., where not a single health insurer has filed to offer federal exchange plans," he said.
The premiums and deductibles are so high in Obamacare that healthy, young people are doing the math and realizing that a modest tax hit makes a lot more sense than paying for something they can't afford to use.
This decision is going to become even more extreme in 2017.
Insurers are seeking approval for average national premium increases of 24%, according to calculations by Charles Gaba of ACAsignups.net.
Some will point out that what is requested and what the government approves are two different things.
However, so far the approved rate hikes are averaging 17%, and less than two percent lower than what was requested in each case.
There is no way in this universe that Congress will approve a massive tax penalty this year in order to save Obamacare. So expect more healthy, young people to drop out.
People over at TOP will probably deny that Obamacare is so poorly designed that insurers are losing money, but the actual markets say otherwise.
Generally speaking, a company’s abdication of a revenue-bearing market would usually be met with jeers, and a stock’s plunge. AET shares haven’t budged, though. Shareholders are more than well aware the Obamacare market isn’t a good business to be in.
All but seven of the twenty-three Obamacare co-ops have gone under.
There is one other Obamacare number that you won't read about on TOP as well - it's a job killer.
Many companies are cutting jobs in response to rising health care costs spurred by the Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Roughly one-fifth of service sector and manufacturing company executives said they are reducing the number of workers in response to provisions in the healthcare law, according to the Empire State Manufacturing Survey and the Business Leaders Survey.
The dramatic hike in 2017 premiums are going to make this even worse.
Can we have single payer now?
Comments
Single payer?
Not in this lifetime. The worker has to be skinned for the game. Or something like that.
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
This is all posturing, say the Hillboughts
That's been Krugman's line. And some of it is posturing. Companies often like to threaten tantrums. Aetna is pounding the carpet partly because its proposed merger hasn't been approved.
But the fact is, Obamacare really is a mess. The premiums have been way too high from the beginning. Excuse me for daring to be middle-class, but I'm not eligible for the subsidies. Without them, the sticker price shock is a sick joke. Millions of Americans today are "contractors," part of the "sharing" economy and other such positions of peonage. They can't afford to go without health insurance, but they can't afford Obamacare either. Maybe we can all go broke and get on Medicaid.
It's like the DNC hack
Part of the reason for Aetna pulling out is the proposed merger.
My response is the same as the claim that Russia was behind the DNC hack: "So what? It doesn't change the bottom line."
Hillbots and liberals are bad as right-wingers these days.
Brainwrap wrote a diary about Humana pulling out of the
ACA unless the DOJ will allow the two companies to merge.
After reading this about this here, I wanted to get his take on in. Both essays agree with each other.
However in the comments many people are saying that this country needs Single Payer.
Gee, if people wanted that then maybe they would have voted for the candidate that was running on it instead of the candidate that said that it " would never, ever happen".
How does one fix stupid?
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Yep, brainwrap (Charles Gaba) lost all credibility when he
jumped on the Hillary train and wrote a huge pile of bullshit about how he just couldn't support Bernie, because Bernie didn't have a "detailed plan" for single payer -- so instead, he chose to support Hillary, the candidate who said single payer will "never, ever happen" -- but never fear, he still supports single payer! Right. He's ridiculous; I stopped reading anything he had to say after that.
I tried very, very hard to enlighten him
but yeah, he's a web developer, numbers guy who has a vested interest in the ACA at this point. I think he bought into Chelsea's lies that Sanders was going to immediately shut down the ACA on day 1 or something. Once he jumped on the Hillary train, there was no letting go for him ...
~OaWN
I had a couple of brief interactions with him over it
I won't say I tried very hard, but I did point out that his reasoning made no sense, and asked him to explain his statement that Hillz, who had just stated that single payer would never, ever happen and she wouldn't even try, was "more likely to get us closer to it" than having a president who was pushing for it and educating the public about it. He didn't even bother answering that one.
I don't think he's so dumb as to believe the Clintons' lies (although I could be wrong about that). My own conclusion was that he's a disingenuous jerk who doesn't actually give a shit about advocating single payer or real universal healthcare in this country. He cannot be taken seriously on the subject after that twisted "logic" and no way to explain it, just harping on plans and how Bernie didn't have one, so Hillz (who also doesn't have a plan or even want one) was better.
FYI, I wrote an entire essay just for you!
Lol, there was so much that I wanted to say as part of this dialog, but I think I would have overwhelmed this fine essay. Here is a link to the new essay:
My experience with private insurance before the ACA, and my thoughts re the viability of Obamacare.
~OaWN
He got his fifteen minutes of fame defending Obamacare years ago
No way he was going to stop hyping it now.
Do we actually know how people voted?
Since I was referring to an article on DK
I thought my comment would have been clear about what site I was referring to.
As most of the posters there are in the Hillary camp, that's who I was writing about.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
It was clear, but I was making the point that we may not
know how people voted in the primary.
"Brainwrap" should ...
... unwrap his brain and reinstall it in his head.
This is one...
of the reasons that Democrats are so awful. They try to address an issue that progressives (and Americans in general) want to see addressed, they compromise too much away and then things get worse. This makes it impossible to create positive, lasting change on the issue for a generation. Then it feeds into the narrative that government can't do anything right...
And I am using...
"compromise" very loosely. Given my lack of confidence in the Democratic Party, I can't say without a doubt that this wasn' their goal all along...
One thing we do know; Medicare for all was never Obama's goal.
Or Billary's. Or Carter's.
Exactly.
They try to use the "public private partnership" paradigm they're so fond of -- helping the people WHILE helping the corporations and the rich --and it always blows up in their faces. these people need to realize they can't always keep their big donors happy.
Twain Disciple
How has anything blown up in their faces?
The Clintons did not even manage to get the Heritage Foundation plan passed. Bill Clinton got only an anemic primary challenge and was re-nominated and re-elected. And now Hillary is the nominee. Obama promised a strong public option and did not even try to get one. He got zero primary challenge and he got re-elected.
ACA was what the insurance industry wanted
ACA was written by and for the insurance industry, Pharms and the medical industrial pal complex. IMO. The so called compromises were just so much smoke and mirrors.
Obamacare perfectly served its real purpose
as an insurance corp bailout.
What is the Goal of Republicans? What Was the Goal of
Romneycare?
I would say that the goal of this corporate sponsored crap is to give government a black eye. They knew it wasn't going to work, just like they know Trickle Down doesn't work.
When competent person/institution continues to make such terrible decisions and implement such terrible policies for achieving a stated goal, one has to question if the goal is not something else.
Trickle Down economics. The goal obviously isn't to lift all boats. Then what is it?
Ingratiating the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors? That goal certainly fits.
With health care, the ACA in particuclar, the stated goal is cheap and affordable healthcare. Guess I didn't know that a $5000 deductible is affordable. I also didn't know that private insurance (with a $5000 deductible) = healthcare.
The obvious answer is that they are not. The stated goal is not even remotely achieved.
But if the goal is to punish poor people, to transfer wealth from the working poor to corporate slush funds, to give government a black eye, and to do so while placating the affluent with empathy, then the ACA is a great idea.
The worst thing about this, IMO, is that the ACA will be a failure of socialism and meddlesome government -- the ACA will be a failure of the Left. Obamacare is just what happens with public health care. See Bernie: QED.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
The "government takeover of health care" talking point was b.s.
The right-wing "government takeover of health care" talking point was total b.s. What really happened was a corporate takeover of government. The ACA offered no public option, no federal regulations on health insurance plans, an individual mandate enforced by the IRS, and no way to control skyrocketing costs. Medicaid expansion was the only good thing, and the Tea-GOP sabotaged that in 22 states.
"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
You got it. Now ask who and why the foundation
of the entire law was left vulnerable to annual Congressional whim.
It was created to get the issue off the table without solving the problem because everybody knows that the main problem is the insurance industry.
There really are other culprits too, but insurace was THE place
to start.
Part of the problem was the feeling that healthchare was completely free because somebody else (the insurance companies) were paying for it. And that impacted both consumers, but also cynical healthcare providers who would recommend unnecessary treatment.
Sadly, in today's model there is not an incentive to reduce costs. And that is really fucking bad. The insurance companies actually have an incentive to let providers go hog wild in what they charge, because the ACA "limits the take" of what the insurance guys get to 15% to 20% of what the providers charge. The more the doctors charge, the more that the insurance companies make! So it's a win-win for everyone, except the poor schmucks who cannot afford to pay the outrageous premium costs.
And it is all because of the out of control greed of different factions in this country. I'm not sure folks will learn until the entire system comes crumbling down ...
~OaWN
Obama used it, too, when he said no one would want
Medicare for all because no one wanted government taking over health care. He ended that with a snarky comment about the postal service.
Not Obama's finest moment but an all too typical one.
The promises of the campaign trail one by one turned out to be lies. Anything to aid the rank and file citizen, like the card check for unionization, was jettisoned to please his corporate moneymen.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
What? We can be a liberal and criticize Obama?
I thought there was a memo or something that said we couldn't do that.
I remember Obama saying, "I expect you to hold my feet to the fire to get these things done that I promised in my campaign!"
And every time someone lit a match there were 100 fire extinguishers spraying foam onto the person who lit it. "You can't criticize Obama!" "You're a Republican!" "You're going to ruin everything!"
If Hillary gets elected, we can hold her feet to the fire on her promises? There are already a gazillion fire marshals with extinguishers at the ready. If that doesn't work, they'll run over you with their CTR firetrucks. Go ahead, light a match -- I dare you.
Bern it down. Vote 3rd party. No one gets 270 electoral votes = no mandate! Congress can appoint the person that we can 'hold feet to fire'. Might get a little toasty!
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.
--Plato
The Secret Service would likely have a problem with
someone attempting to hold the feet of a POTUS to any fire. Of course, it's a metaphor, but Obama proved very capable of ignoring, criticizing or ridiculing anything short of hero worshipping him unconditionally.
The Government's promised reimbursements weren't funded
I recall Rubio being very proud of that. Isn't that a key reason for the monstrous insurance company losses and the ongoing collapse of the coops?
Twain Disciple
Yes
I've read about half a dozen co-ops are suing the Fed about unpaid reimbursements.
I'm sure the Republicans are thrilled
that they kicked the key support out from under the Obamacare system, then. The lack of government reimbursement, coupled with the refusal of so many states to permit the feds to fund additional medicaid clients, chops huge holes in the overall statutory scheme.
Twain Disciple
The coop I was using went belly up last month.
They claimed the government owned them money, and instead the government said they were owned money by the coop. Luckily found another plan after given just 2 week notice.
But 31 of the 56 Senate votes that passed the cut, from Dems. NT
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Hell with single payer!
National Health Service!
That's the starting point to fight from. Rich assholes can have their private doctors and all the fake ailments they want to pay for.
The rest of us will be fine with a NHS. (Neo-liberals trying to destroy it in Britain, but since when have I ever cared what Neo-liberals thought?)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I agree totally.
"Single payer" is the compromise. I want real socialized medicine. Why not? We have socialized education.
Twain Disciple
Agreed: Single payer is the fallback position but socialized
medicine like the UK and our VA would be preferred.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Remember: "they" are trying to kill socialized education
Just saying ...
~OaWN
"They" being the Obama administration & the one to follow
are indeed trying to kill universal free public education. Look what "they" did to New Orleans.
Neoliberals and paleoconservatives resent anything that is held in common by the American people when "they" can skim profits from them and leave the husk behind.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
The problem with Obamacare is that most of the cost controls
were dropped.
The system in it's current form is unsustainable. Perhaps it's better to have it crash and die sooner rather than later, so the NEED for a better solution will be shared by everyone.
~OaWN
No real cost controls
The only cost control that was allowed was making the deductibles and co pays so high that people cannot afford to get actual health care even after being forced to buy insurance.
This was by design and not a bug in the system.
No, then you'd see a bunch of really sick people suddenly
unable to get care, cancer patients and diabetics etc. dying in huge numbers. Sick people can't wait years for the give and take of politics before they finally get care. I doubt the Repugs who never wanted a better system funded in the first place would budge just because there was no system any more. The Repug governors sure don't care that thousands of their citizens die every year. I think one Repug eventually gave in and allowed Medicaid expansion in his state.
Problem is, the need for a better solution is never shared by everyone. The rich can always afford to pay. The pols always have their government-sponsored plans.
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When the ACA became law there were no effective cost controls
in place and none are going to be in place. Obama was fine with that.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
So how do they explain this then?
From Aetna CEO Compensation Rises on Higher Stock, Option Awards
Or this Top health insurance CEO pay exceeds $10 million in 2014
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
That's nothing
The whole market pricing system is broken. Not to mention corporate compensation.
Markets don't work for health care
Yet they keep trying to use them.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Hillary will let her true progressive flag...
...fly and get true universal care legislation passed! Medicare for all! Back in this universe: And they said we Bernie supporters were for unicorn pie-in-the-sky.
Why all the sad faces?
Obamacare accomplished exactly what it was supposed to do. We all have crappy high cost, high deductible health 'insurance' and health 'savings' accounts. We are no longer patients, but we are now 'health consumers' - empowered to make our own health care purchase decisions! At least if John McCain was elected in 2008, Sarah Palin would have been entertaining.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
The Health system itself...
is designed for profit not people. Went to the eye doctor today. Office was full. Taken in the first room an hour after my appt. Did some tests, dilated eyes. Go sit in another room for 20 more min. Then taken for a scan, and finally deposited in the last room. Waited another 30 min and finally got my exam and new scrip. Over 2.5 hours - and that's routine stuff.
I've run cattle through shoots for worming and such, and that's what our med system reminds me of - working cattle. (I also feel that way when flying.) Insurance is just part of the scam!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I'll bet that they could worm 1000 cattle in the time it took
them to do one eye exam on a human.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.
--Plato
Hunh?
"I don't recall that being the reason to oppose Obamacare in 2009."
I remember that. Because I made that argument and was told Republican talking points and f-----g wingnut and those were the nice things I was told. Even amongst the 'left' making any use of common sense to oppose Obamacare was absolutely verboten. Am I too heterodox to be here? Will I now be banned as I was so promptly banned at K4S?
If the ban hammer has not dropped yet let me tell you something as a lifelong Chicagoan. I clearly remember State Senator Obama. I remember his campaign for US Senate. The single issue he talked about at any length was single-payer. He was for it. His line was any person in a policy position who had looked at healthcare at all knew that single payer was the only way to go. And he said the only reason any politician opposed single payer was they were taking money from the insurance industry. And he would never waver in his support for single payer. If he ever did waver he wanted us to hold his feet to the fire. He used that feet to the fire line once in a living room where I was present and I broke out laughing. Made me unpopular that did. When have the Democratic sheep ever held Dear Leader's feet to the fire? One example? Anyway we all knew that Lester Crown had given Obama the nod and it was all a done deal. This was just our chance to see him in the flesh before he was sequestered in the bubble.
Anyone who has paid attention at all has known from the beginning that Obamacare would never work. Anyone who knew that and did not wish to be considered a fascist had to keep their mouth shut.
Why would you be banned?
It just shows you were paying closer attention than I was.
I opposed it simply because it was a market-based half-measure sold as "a fix".
This isn't TOP. People don't get banned here for speaking the truth.
Shoot, we don't even get banned here for speaking nonsense.
Just as long as we don't start a pie fight.
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Ha thanks for the lol amongst all the sad news.
Hell, remember when America was 'great' , not that long ago, when we were number 37?
We are lower than a whale's belly now....
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
By the time he was Presidential nominee Obama, he was mocking
single payer and claiming that a strong public option was a necessity. By the time he was President Obama, the strong public option was a sliver that the nutty left should STFU about.
He "evolved" on equal marriage in a similar way. For it when he ran for state senator, but God was "In the mix" when he campaigned in 2008. For years, his D of J used the same "bestiality and incest" arguments against it as Bush's D of J had used. Those of us who complained were told that the President has no control over his own D of J. Then, Obama announced he was going to have his D of J stop doing that--and those who ahd claimed he had no control over his D of J praised him for issuing this order to his D of J.
Winston Smith and his memory hole have nothing on Democratic message board posters.
great minds. I used the 'feet to the fire'
phrase elsewhere in this thread.
link
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.
--Plato
Welcome to the calm blue waters of C99, where opinions
don't get you banned. All we ask is reasonably respectful conversation - try to avoid ad hominem attacks. There are some things I liked Obama for; his tendency to compromise with himself before ever approaching Congress was not one of those things.
We love our ability to freely discuss all sides of issues around here. You're not even close to getting banned.
I too have not yet figured out how one holds a politician's feet to the fire. If supporting Bernie couldn't do it, I don't think anything will get through to them. They just lie and cheat to get their way. On the other side, Trump isn't so much changing the Repug party as raising the establishment's ire. No introspection on either side regarding how to best represent the mass of voters, as far as I can see.
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Saw it when first proposed.
I read about Obamacare from a Kaiser Foundation report as it was being completed. Report was not opinion, but just a straight out description of the plan. It was obviously to me that starting with lower middle class families it would create a huge extra financial burden. A working couple would not qualify for help, and would have to face the large payments themselves--this is not including high deductibles. The best parts of Obamacare were no pre-existing conditions and putting on children until the age of 26. I thought the Democrats would have enough sense to see the problems and work to correct them after the bill was passed. Not aware of anything done to fix the holes.
Yep, Me Too
I knew it was crap from the beginning, and I DID speak out against it from a leftist viewpoint.
Just as you point out--a couple good things in it.
But, NO cost controls! NO Public Option! And now we're seeing the result.
I hate being right all the time.
What you considered problems were a feature, not a bug.
In their minds.
Really, did no one foresee?
Now Obamacare looks like planned obsolescence. TFSM I am a retired NYS employee. Nice for any new Prez!
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
They foresaw.
IMO, Dems didn't view the extra financial burden as 'a problem.'
Nor do I believe that this was an unintended consequence. Quite the opposite.
Lawmakers' intent was to make folks 'have more skin in the game,' in hopes of limiting health care services sought, and rendered.
Which, from what I've read, they've achieved in spades.
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and, therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
National Mill Dog Rescue (NMDR) - Dogs Available For Adoption
Update: Misty May has been adopted. Yeah!
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
As is typical of Obama
rather than go with one or the other, he decided to do a non-Solomon and divide the baby in half.
Hence the Save Health Insurance Today Act.
How wise is that? Wise enough for large earnings after his attempt to be president. Ivy League schools and beyond are expensive.
He has his, and you don't.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
I see people are feeling anxious and a little bit pissed today
... and it shows in the comments, but have we considered the counterfactual?
Where would we be today if Obamacare never passed?
Insurance rates were already increasing at 10-20% per year. Insurance companies could charge what they wanted, not capped at 20% of actual medical loss. There was no yearly cap on your healthcare spending after which the government covers the costs. (in addition to the pre-existing conditions, employers over 50(?) employees having to offer healthcare, and children under age 26).
Yes, premiums are too high. Yes, drug companies are still screwing the system. As are hospitals, doctors, and anyone who can file fraud claims and get away with it. Obamacare was not primarily about cost controls - because if it was, pharma and insurance would have lobbied it out of existence, just like 1994. The cap on insurance company profits was just a beginning. The goal (which hasn't been achieved) was that of universal access. Obamacare was never the destination --- it was a stop in the journey. It's a lot harder to take something away from someone who has something than it is to never give it to them. That was the political calculation.
I hate to be the voice of incrementalism here, and I REALLY hate to have to give a nod to Hillary here, but she already dented her head back in 1994 trying to build a better plan without consensus, and when that failed, we had nothing. Is nothing better than something? Don't think so. Especially don't think so for those people who now at least have access to care that they didn't have before, and there is at least a chance that they won't go bankrupt paying medical bills.
Could it be better? Should we still fight for single payer / socialized medicine? You bet. Would you rather be glad that while we're doing that, we're getting better health outcomes as a country?
You decide.
Obamacare will ultimately fail, long live Obamacare!
Fuck Romneycare.
We already knew it didn't work and what the results would be when they passed it.
All it did was let Obama and his cronies demand we shut up about it because it was a "Step" in the right direction... which was then immediately treated as the solution.
It was a lie from the start, but we weren't allowed to complain because we would "Hurt Obama". His legacy is no longer my concern.
Fuck him and his lies.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
remember how the conversation
went from single payer/universal healthcare to affordable health insurance almost overnight. No explanation no analysis in the media - it just happened.
and then remember how it came to light that this was always the plan - Obama was in league with the health insurance industry from day one? All of their anger was nothing more than play acting - they knew that, courtesy of Obama and Harry Reid, the fix was in.
Shove incrementalism - that thinking allows for this type of corruption of the process.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
iirc: Obama started caving before even approaching republicans.
"Well, we won't be able to do that free stuff, so we'll let the republicans tell us what they want."
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.
--Plato
ACA put the insurance industry back in business
The insurance industry and the medical industrial complex had come to the point where they had almost priced themselves out of business. A large segment of the population could not afford health insurance premiums and were aware of the fact that paying the premium did not mean they would receive what they paid for if they got sick. Research indicated that more and more people would opt out of buying insurance and more employers were stating that they would discontinue providing employees health insurance.
Without receiving a government bail out in the form of the ACA legislation, the for profit health insurance industry would have collapsed under its own weight and our country would have been forced to come up with a more cost effective alternative
ACA kept the overpriced insurance industry, Pharma and the medical complex in business. That was and is the primary objective of ACA.
Too many people are currently forced to purchase costly insurance that is cost prohibitive to use.
Where we would be today if Obamacare never passed
is in a country madder than hell and demanding single payer if we hadn't already gotten it.
Since you asked.
Incrementalism my ass: that's how we get something we don't want that will shut us up for a while and then leave us starting over yet again. But even sheep can eventually learn, and many seem to be doing so.
It worked pretty well for the first year or so, getting people
treated who couldn't afford to get treated before. Saved the lives of some cancer patients etc.
But remember the Congress that passed it was Democratic. Obama was determined to pass a plan the Repugs would agree to, which never happened. He could have and should have gone back and made it more than it was while he had the chance. Hell, he shouldn't have put up a compromise plan in the first place. You can't compromise all by yourself. He could see the blowup in the future. Once he had a Repug Congress, any further improvements never went anywhere. They were only interested in killing it.
So yes, something is better than nothing. But it looks like we will soon once again have nothing. IF we get a Democratic Congress all the way around, then it will be interesting to hear the excuses - "We can't pass single payer because... somehow the Repugs are stopping us".
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Still working here in Romneyland ...
And for the lowest cost plans on the exchange, it's about 1/3 of what I was quoted before ACA when I looked at leaving a job and getting insurance as an individual. ACA (and the yearly cap) gave me the opportunity to move on without as much financial worry.
6,850 dollar deductible is really affordible.
And at just under 200 bucks a month too! Really affordable!
As an individual... You'd only have to work... One week at a standard minimum wage job to afford it for the full month.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
If you have a minimum wage job, you won't have to pay the
sticker price. The deductible is still unaffordable, and it's when your income starts climbing but still below a living wage that the prices start to hit hard.
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But you
won't be able to afford to live.
Which I'm beginning to think is a feature, not a bug.
Although if they want to thin the herd, wouldn't it be easier to stop fighting free birth control?
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Here's the thing..........
You wouldn't have to worry about leaving a job and gaining new insurance if you lived in a rational society where healthcare is healthcare and 'insurance' is redundant.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
agreed
but that's not the system we have, and you're not going to get there without a fight. What do you want to do in the interim? I may not be that old, but I'm not going to live forever. I will take the win I get here and continue to look for the bigger win down the road, possibly for the next generation.
Barry's Sorry Legacy
I remember that lying son-of-a-bitch telling us how he'd push for single-payer, only to tell us when he failed to deliver that he couldn't get the GOP to go along with any plan more ambitious than the one he'd allowed the insurance companies to write. All along he was stabbing us in the back with his "shut up and let me handle it" attitude. All of us "fucking hippies" just needed to grow up and face reality, that the Obummer Ass-ministration knew better than we did what was possible.
Well if that were true, they would have seen this collapse of their lame effort long before it arrived.
Anyone with a functioning brain cell could have foreseen this. Anything which threatens the growth of profits (and thus executive bonuses) is going to be the loser in the contest. All because Barry is a chicken-shit loser who doesn't fight for anything which benefits We the People.
I said during the 2012 campaign that if the GOP had put up a candidate people could get behind, Barry would have fulfilled Mitch McConnell's fervent desire. Barry should have sent the GOP a very nice thank you gift when the best they could come up with was Mr. 47%.
I hope that Wall Street suck-ass enjoys his retirement, a cushy sinecure paid for by the very people who aren't going to have any healthcare, much less a program which doesn't come close to what he's going to enjoy.
Then I hope he dies young.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
6850 < infinite ...
... and that's precisely the calculation I made. My max out of pocket is my monthly payment + that cap. Since I am relatively healthy and don't use a lot of healthcare, the *insurance* part of it (say, I get hit by a bus) allowed me to take the risk.
The cheapest individual plan I priced out pre-ACA was over 900/month, with no yearly cap on what I could spend, but with a lifetime million dollar payout from the insurance company. I could not leave employment spending 900*12 / year at minimum and take that risk. It was that simple in the end.
YMMV. That's my actual mileage.
Do I think I could spend half as much as I do now if we had nationalized health like Canada? Yeah. Do I want that? Yeah.
You have a HELL of a lot more money than I do...
If you think a 6850 deductible... AFTER 2 grand a year is anywhere near reasonable.
I fully expect the next big push in legislation to be a nice quiet push to make Medical bills similar to Student Loans. (Government guaranteed, and NOT discharged in bankruptcy)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
It's not reasonable
But it is less.
Remember one of the points of the ACA was to attempt to prevent pushing people into bankruptcy in the first place.
If you're right, then entire generations may be lost --- both young and old. I'm not that pessimistic.
I bet the next thing is that student debt is forgiven, and we start making progress on a public option.
I cannot go negative with you --- too many of my Republican friends are like that, and all they want to do is blow shit up.
Being nice and nonconfrontational is what got us here.
Into this situation where the lies were accepted and the end result was exactly the same except now there's a bunch of lies about how successful it was...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfzlXcFbQ9I]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
+1 for the firefly reference
... but who said anything about nice and non-confrontational?
I come up short of lobbing grenades, because there tends to be collateral damage.
Those who conspire to make Peaceful change impossible...
are completely responsible for anything that happens.
Bring me a bowl, because I wash my hands of this.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I love the fact that you made a Firefly reference--
but must point out that it is somewhat misplaced, because in that episode, it DID go well!
I can't find video clips of them (what good am I?) but the "That went well" from Grosse Pointe Blank (delivered by Jeremy Piven to John Cusack) or the one in Serendipity (delivered by Cusack to Piven) are more appropos.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Yeah I couldn't find that clip either.
Because I was thinking of it too, but google only gave me the Firefly clip, and I thought, Hell with it.
This one also works...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oBx7Jg4m-o]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Wow, you got my references before I made them.
We really must meet.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Yeah, but unfortunately, Portland Meetup...
this weekend is probably a bit out of your travel Sphere.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I like most of your comments on this site--
but I really, REALLY hate that argument. It's the lesser-of-two-evils/incremental improvement argument, and I've been hearing it from various sources for about 30 years. It's the same argument my conservative friend Tim made to me when he said that a homeless person was better off if they got payed a quarter for a day's work than if they had no work at all--because they were 25c richer.
These are perfect, unanswerable arguments, b/c nobody can deny that the homeless person does have 25c more than they did before. But these are also arguments that justify doing rotten things to people. Because they could always have it worse. They're 25 c richer, after all!
It puts people who want to make things RIGHT on the defensive as out-of-touch dreamers--instead of just getting the policy right in the first place. Interestingly, it actually makes substantive critique of policy into a failing on the part of the critic--rather than criticizing DC for being a place where good policy goes to die.
The idea is that we should be so grateful things aren't worse that we shouldn't point out how rotten things are.
And then somehow, invisibly, the lesser evil that we resign ourselves to becomes accepted as the norm. A little while later, and it becomes a good that only fringe right-wingers would ever oppose. And the idea that there was once a better way of doing things recedes quietly into the distance.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
look ...
... i hear myself making that argument, I really do. In fact, you saw me say I hate giving props to Hillary, and I meant it. But she tried an over all makeover of healthcare back in 1994 by edict and without buy in from stakeholders, and all she got in the end was chased back into the kitchen to bake cookies. That was when she used to be at least somewhat liberal.
When you're trying to change large systems from the inside, it takes time and you have to move stakeholders along. Any one of you working in a corporation should recognize this. There are occasionally events that shock the system that force major changes (think the Great Depression, WWII, 2008) where there are much greater opportunities for immediate changes, but they are rarer.
We have a system of government that is naturally resistant to change, by design. That's what the founders intended. That we have two parties that can't agree what color black is and what color white is exacerbates that. We have several competing visions in this country about how we should move forward, and each vision pulls us in a different direction.
With all that said --- that should never be taken as license to be satisfied for the way things are, or to stop speaking out. Nowhere in my writing will you ever see that. It's good that you're not satisfied - it's good that you hate the way things are and that you see a better way. Better if you're willing to put effort into making things right, as you see right to be.
Recognize that if you're doing this progressive thing right, it will be that way until the day you die.
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