Obamacare...(new title): GOP DEATH PLAN: Don-Ryan's Express

[twa]

On 10/26/2016 at 5:09 PM, AlvinWaltonIsMyBoy said:

I'm self employed living in NC as well.  I'm a liberal, but Obamacare has been an absolute disaster in our state.  

I'm grateful that people with pre-existing conditions can get the coverage they need, but I see and hear of many stories like yours from my family and friends.  Under no circumstances should any family have to bear these kinds of financial burdens for healthcare.  It's criminal.  

 

Self employed as well

Just got my renewal notice, $1,936 a damn month for me and the wife for a silver marketplace plan....a 46% increase from last year. 

Definitely going shopping or doing w/o

[skinsmarydu]

That's the whole point, Alvin.  Healthcare for profit is criminal. 

 

[Predicto]

28 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Self employed as well

Just got my renewal notice, $1,936 a damn month for me and the wife for a silver marketplace plan....a 46% increase from last year. 

Definitely going shopping or doing w/o

 

You should go shopping.   After all, remember the wonders of the free market and the miracle of capitalism.  The insurers must be competing heavily with each other on price.     

[twa]

Just now, Predicto said:

 

You should go shopping.   After all, remember the wonders of the free market and the miracle of capitalism.  The insurers must be competing heavily with each other on price.     

 

OK, gun and ammo shopping.....and rope 

[USS Redskins]

Self employed. I have had Obamacare for the last year and it's nothing short of a nightmare here too. Huge monthly payment, $800 and $6k deductibles per family member... no pharmacy. Every dr visit with labs is $125... Aetna silver. They are dropping from KY totally... can't see how they didn't make money. Nearly bankrupted us.

If we renewed it would be in the $1350/ month range. We would def take the penalty  in 2017.

luckily the wife moved positions and gets benefits now. Whew. 1/3 the cost. 

I don't know how to fix but wow, what a mess. Maybe Canada has it right. 

[Elessar78]

On 10/26/2016 at 10:39 AM, Corcaigh said:

My anecdotal experience is that through aggressive shopping around over the past few years our company costs have stayed the same. It's a pain for our HR folks to work with the broker on this every year but we're getting results.

Our CFO is great. We meet every year about our company's healthcare costs-the actual numbers we spent in the previous year as a company. Same we shopped it around and actually had TWO providers we could choose from. 

[Elessar78]

9 hours ago, USS Redskins said:

 

I don't know how to fix but wow, what a mess. Maybe Canada has it right. 

Some of my family is Swedish. They get good medical care but sometimes it's tough to get access, particularly to specialists. Basic care is wonderful, accessible and no out of pocket for tests etc. but it S deceotive as you pay 40% in taxes.

but as we can see, some are already near that threshold when you factor taxes and health care costs.

In a way we pay a premium to have IMMEDIATE access to any surgeon/specialist you want anywhere in the country. Their system has geographical limits in this regard.

 

Edited October 29, 2016 by Elessar78

[Elessar78]

On another note their healthcare is less than 8% of GDP and steady. In the US, it's 18% with no controls really.

[skinsmarydu]

28 minutes ago, Elessar78 said:

Some of my family is Swedish. They get good medical care but sometimes it's tough to get access, particularly to specialists. Basic care is wonderful, accessible and no out of pocket for tests etc. but it S deceotive as you pay 40% in taxes.

but as we can see, some are already near that threshold when you factor taxes and health care costs.

In a way we pay a premium to have IMMEDIATE access to any surgeon/specialist you want anywhere in the country. Their system has geographical limits in this regard.

 

 

18 minutes ago, Elessar78 said:

On another note their healthcare is less than 8% of GDP and steady. In the US, it's 18% with no controls really.

And there we have it, folks...the good and the bad comparison.  Thanks, El.

Finally someone with a fact or two. 

 

[Elessar78]

https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/02/09/the-u-s-does-not-have-a-debt-problem-it-has-a-health-care-cost-problem/amp/?client=safari

 

here's a great article on the subject from Forbes (inspired by the Economist)-both are far from liberal magazines:

America doesn't have a deficit/foreign debt problem-it has a healthcare problem. Healthcare costs are crushing us. Obamacare is based on a MAssachusetts model they passed under Gov. Romney. it helped MA get their costs under control to 1% growth per year.

I know, I know it doesn't feel like that to individuals-some have seen a 100% increase. Overall seems to be bending the curve (less steep). Overall rise is 3% since inception, as opposed to close to 8% before.

For me, its all intertwined. We have lots of food subsidies for corn for example that make all kinds of food cheap and abundant-problem is that that's causing an obesity epidemic. Subsidized oil leads to people live further from work and get less exercise. Urban planning had the same effect. 

Anyway, bend the curve or we'll be paying Sweden like taxes eventually. There won't be a thing a Republican or Democrat can do about it-that's just reality.

[twa]

shopping the marketplace......keep your dr if you can afford 2k a month maybe

Damn and I was kinda attached to my cajun/vietcong one 

scanning the providers and the only one I recognize sucks.....**** this

[TimmySmith]

7 hours ago, twa said:

shopping the marketplace......keep your dr if you can afford 2k a month maybe

Damn and I was kinda attached to my cajun/vietcong one 

scanning the providers and the only one I recognize sucks.....**** this

Sadly, for those of us who actually use the exchanges, and the ACA is a reality, there is a real decision about not having insurance.  Paying 15-20k a year to be insured is far more than we would pay out of pocket in a normal year. It's rolling the dice against catastrophe.  What a horrible position to be put in.

There is only 1 possible solution.  Every single American must go through the exchanges.  They should be the only source for health insurance. 

[skinsmarydu]

14 minutes ago, TimmySmith said:

 

There is only 1 possible solution.  Every single American must go through the exchanges.  They should be the only source for health insurance. 

We have a guy at work from England, half his left arm has scars from being in the Bomb Division of the Royal Army, he'll be going back soon (plans have been in place for almost a year, not a kneejerk move).  He pays 120 pounds/month for health coverage.  His point was that if EVERYONE pays in, it works.  (Not for boob-jobs, for HEALTHCARE.)  Not to fix the problems that came with your chin-lift, for HEALTHCARE.

[skinsmarydu]

Interesting segment on Vice News last night was about the Medicaid expansion in Kentucky (one of the few states to pick it up via the ACA), and how they're helping repeat drug offenders in jail opt in and get help instead of repeated incarcerations.  The lady the segment focused on gets one shot a month to keep her off heroin, it's a shot kinda like Antabuse is for alcoholics, blocks the cravings and...makes you sick if you use.

Her words:  "I'd rather get one shot a month & stay clean than stick a couple needles in my arm every day." 

Hail to Kentucky, for trying to help.  Every state who didn't opt in to expand Medicaid and do something to help their citizens should be ashamed. 

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

And Rand Paul, of Kentucky, just dodged the question.  And not one person has asked him about the addiction problem.

[Riggo-toni]

Addiction rates would drop dramatically, or at least stop growing exponentially, if medical marijuana could be prescribed instead of opioids for pain relief.

That was an excellent segment on ViceNews...which has become the best news source on TV. So sick of every other network and their predictably pointless panels of opposing partisan talking heads debating each other over Trump's latest ignorant tweet...

Anyways, sorry to go off on a tangent.

 

Here's a basic healthcare reform: replace all state charters and regulations with a single set of federal guidelines that includes standard universal forms that must be used by all insurers. We spend roughly double the cost on paperwork for healthcare as anybody else. Not as exciting or sexy as debating whether employers have to pay for contraception, but as mundane a topic as paperwork is, there's some real savings there.

[LadySkinsFan]

Here's why single payer and common paperwork wasn't included in the ACA. Not only would it cut down paperwork, but all those forms are used to delay/deny benefit payments. And if it took less time, people would lose their jobs, and the national workforce couldn't absorb all the people laid off, and unemployment benefit structure would be overwhelmed. So obviously Republicans wouldn't sign up for that because they want to keep the for profit health care industry, and Democrats wouldn't get on board because of the unemployment situation.

[No Excuses]

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Too bad we didn't have those numbers before the election, but they could have used 2015 figures.

[alexey]

One of the biggest problems with Obamacare is that it became the default explanation for all problems with our healtrhcare system.

 

Maybe the conversation changes once it gets repealed.

[Hersh]

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/obama-health-care-affordable-care-act.html

 

This is a great article on some of the less talked about aspect of Obamacare which are making big differences. Maybe the most telling part of the article is the end in which two people that benefited greatly from the law, didn't know anything about it or who was responsible for it. For whatever reason, I am unable to copy stuff off the NYT or I'd post it here. 

[Riggo-toni]

Medicaid has paid for virtually all of his cancer care, including a one-week hospitalization after the diagnosis, months of chemotherapy, and frequent scans and blood tests.

But Mr. Kloski and his mother, Renee Epperson, are still not fans of the health law over all. They believed that it required that Mr. Kloski be dropped, when he turned 26, from the health plan his mother has through her job at Target — not understanding that it was the law that kept him on the plan until he was 26.

Mr. Kloski paid a penalty for going uninsured in 2014 rather than even explore whether he might qualify for a subsidy and find an affordable private plan through the marketplaces.

“There were so many horror stories about how expensive it was going to be,” Ms. Epperson, 47, recalled. “Justin said, ‘I’m not even going to try it, Mom.’”

And until they were interviewed for this article, the mother and son did not know that the law was responsible for the expansion of Medicaid that Mr. Kloski benefited from. Neither voted in last year’s presidential election; 

[Larry]

But every person in America who's insurance premiums went up, for eight years, was due to Obamacare.  

 

As was every person whose insurance company chose to cancel his policy.  And every person whose doctor isn't on his approved list any more.  

 

[Riggo-toni]

Prior to Obama, the company I worked for in NYC changed insurers almost every year because of rising premiums. Every year I saw my deductibles and premiums rise.

That continued with my subsequent employer in NJ after Obamacare, and suddenly the same trend I had seen for the last decade was all laid at the feet of the ACA.  There are a lot of things I disagree with regarding Obamacare, but I don't consider it to be the apocalyptic catastrophe, nor the utopian panacea either party makes it out to be.

Edited January 4, 2017 by Riggo-toni

[twa]

Have you had Obamacare Riggo?

I have, and am less than impressed.

 

Though I doubt I'll be happy with what Congress comes up with next either.