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Statisticians Study Who Was Helped Most By Obamacare
HughPickens.com writes 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 Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and 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. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.
Despite many Republican voters' disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
Despite many Republican voters' disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
They're driving us out
We're closing up shop
Lonely is the mom-and-pop
Where are the protestors?
Where are their slogans and signs?
This will be a swift decline
A: the insurance companies.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income ...
So it is an income redistribution plan. What we really need is a prosperity plan and other than getting out of the way, that is not something government can do.
Rich or poor, Republicans are united by their insatiable lust for more money.
Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
I've observed this myself. Quite baffling that those who would profit most from social reforms mostly advocated by the left are very often politically oriented towards the right.
And then you have the super rich, who are strongly favored by right-leaning policies, asking the government to tax them more...
Crazy world.
It must be nice to have the State-run Media on you side
They gained insurance because they had to buy it. It doesn't mean their health or access to healthcare is any better. This is income redistribution if you're an insurance company - from our pockets to theirs.
Move to Kansas, mouth. HTH. HAND.
Republicanism === 'the right to be born well' W.E.D. Stokes, 1917
A fascinating read about the core principals of the Republican party.
(Note, this only applies to the top Republicans, the average "joe" working
republican isn't like this.)
Republicans === Eugenics
For most visits, you should be paying in cash. A doctor's visit should not require a full time staffer processing insurance paperwork just for a visit and a prescription or two. Heck, even most basic hospital operations (like lab work, fixing broken bones and such) should be payable in cash by anyone who has been mildly responsible with their savings and paychecks.
Price gouging, fraud and EMTALA are the main culprits. My favorite example of price gouging here is a snake anti-venom that costs $100 to make and is sold to patients in hospitals for as much as $30k. If the state is going to prosecute people who charge a 100%-200% markup for a generator after a hurricane, what possible excuse do they not have to prosecute people for a 3000% markup on a drug that is absolutely necessary to the patient's immediate survival? Fraud? How about the trending practice of having one doctor in network and one out of network so that the in-network partner can use the out of network partner to deceptively rape the assets of the patient? Or drive by doctoring at hospitals?
This is a target-rich environment for massive law enforcement clean up. Enforcing the laws combined with efforts to increase access to medical school and some other subsidies on the supply side would force the market to act like a real market, not a state-protected industry.
Socialism isn't that bad after all, isn't it?
When the lion befriends the sheep, the woman wears pants and short hair, and socialism is seen in USA, the end is near!
People hate Obama-care and like the Affordable Care Act.
are the insurance companies who are raking in tens of millions of free dollars from all the people who are forced to hand over their money to a private company or have the government reach into their bank account and forcibly extract the money.
This had nothing to do with getting insurance for people because it started with a Republican governor who saw a way to pay back his political supporters and what better way then to have the public hand over their money whether they want to or not.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You guys really aren't even trying to hide your agenda anymore, are you? Now a propaganda piece trying to show how great Obamacare is right before the November elections? You are really despicable.
29% of Louisiana Republican say Obama is to blame for the govt. response to Katrina. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/obama-hurricane-katrina_n_3790612.html
and you probably can't convince them otherwise. It's sad. Knee jerk hatred.
The rest of us are gobsmacked at how the political left is so determined that they know exactly what everybody else wants and should just follow their lead.
Those stupid motherfucker poor people. Don't they know we have their lives figured out for them?
Benjowler, when over half of the people decide to let others work and sweat to make the money and then use the political process to take it from them to support the ones who won't work, the nation is doomed to fall into poverty. This redistribution will probably convince many tired working people to just do as the majority and throw in the towel and get on the government dole too.
Show me a study that shows how much the health of people and the quality of health care has improved and what the price changes of said health care and I might find that interesting.
Just because they now have "health care" doesn't mean life got any better for them or those that have to pay for their health care.
I've heard several economists say that what really skews our health system is the lack of direct payment. Since we don't pay for anything we don't know what it costs and it makes it easier to over consume health care because we're one or more steps removed from what things cost.
I totally agree with your criticisms of what really seems like fraudulent billing with in/out of network doctors and drive-by doctoring (I read those NY Times articles, too). It really seems like a deliberately dishonest way to screw patients, especially when it involves surgeries where you had no control over the "assisting" doctor or emergency rooms where, well, it's an emergency.
It's like buying stock and selling it only to be told by your broker that they had to use another clearinghouse to sell your stock and there will be an additional brokerage fee they didn't tell you about.
I'm afraid that these and other unsavory practices will become more common, not less, with ACA and insurance providers squeeze health care costs and doctors look for more ways to rake in fees.
Sadly, I think the "market solution" probably involves having the majority of people pay more out of pocket and either refuse to buy or not be able to buy medical services to force medicine to produce a lower-cost product. As long as they can get paid at current pricing levels they won't charge less.
To the Editor:
My Blue Cross Blue Shield policy is scheduled to be canceled next summer because of Obamacare. We were promised that this would not happen. I have a very good policy with a low deductible. I have no pre-existing illnesses, but I want to have a choice in my medical providers, as I have always enjoyed. That is important to me as a former health care provider myself.
I do not qualify for a subsidy and was quoted a new premium that is close to 100 percent more than what I pay now (from $501 a month to just under $1,000 a month) for an individual policy. And to add insult to injury, from a $250 deductible to a $6,000 deductible. This is squeezing the middle class.
BARBARA SIBLEY
Key Largo, Fla., Oct. 27, 2014
- one that was billed at $900 that I can buy on Amazon for $117. Reason? That's the Medicare "book" price and no one else is interested in spending the time to create a realistic price sheet. Of course their first excuse was that it took time to size and fit the device. When I pointed out that's a personnel/visit charge not a hardware charge, they came up with the "real" reason for charging so much.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
the republican party is incredibly successful at turning the victims of their legislation into their voter base. democrats SUCK at messaging.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I honestly don't care how you color code this to make it sound warm and fuzzy. The premise of this is redistribution of wealth. I work very hard long hours to make a comfortable living for me and my family. I shouldn’t have to work even harder to pay for the insurance of the “poor”. In most instances “poor” is a life choice. What you subsidize you will get more of. Redistribution of wealth is theft.
... I mean personally.
What could you buy before and what can you buy now?
Because I am not rich... before or after... and it is more expensive now then it was before. I mean... significantly.
Now do I think we should help people that have a hard time getting medical care afford said care? Yes. Is the best method to provide that care to just throw money into the air until it covers the earth like leaves after autumn? Obviously not.
Here someone is going to say "but single payer would be better!"... Maybe... but then like... anything would be better then this stupid law. the law is dumb. What we had before for all its flaws was better. My care was cheaper. I am not in some amazing stratospheric yacht class of people that sips expensive brandies while I talk about the little people. This law made my care more expensive. Full stop.
Now here is where someone says "Okay, what is your solution because we need a better policy!". Okay, look at the price of college education over time. Graph it against the inflation rate. Notice something? Now do the same thing with the cost of housing prior to the crash. Notice something? What is happening is cost inflation due to government subsidization.
Basically what you are looking at in many markets is the effect that unlimited subsidization has on free market systems when they are purely demand side. That is, if you just give everyone money that can only be spent on a given product or service... people buy that product or service in greater volumes. That then not only consumes the supply of those products or services but also increases what people ultimately can pay for them because not only do they have their own personal resources to draw upon but also this big government check. And so naturally, even if the supply is increased, because people have more money to spend... the costs go up. And the more subsidization you throw into the market the more the prices go up. And the faster you do it, the faster the prices go up. If your level of subsidization is percentage based and not even a flat amount then your subsidization rate can feed back into the supply/demand price loop in real time. Which can mean rapid uncontrolled price inflation.
We've seen this before. It has happened many times because this is a lesson government and certain ideologues have a very hard time dealing with because it contradicts some political positions that are simply verifiability wrong.
Where am I going with this? Well, medical costs have been going through the same cost inflation for YEARS. In fact, the very justification for obamacare was that cost inflation. And the cost inflation was caused in large part by government subsidization of healthcare. Look at the price of healthcare prior to the subsidization for something like mending a broken arm. Something that hasn't changed remarkably in a generation. And you'll see the costs were a great deal lower after factoring for inflation.
So what are my solutions to this problem? Well, rather then give people money so they can pay for increasingly expensive medical care, why not try to make medical care cheaper for EVERYONE. Not by giving people money but effecting the market so that prices go down.
There are a lot of ways to do this sort of thing. There is a hospital in Texas for example that has a completely different administrative structure. They basically did away with the three upper floors of most hospitals that are full of people that just do paper work. And instead they give shift nurses administrative control over their domain. That in and of itself lowers the cost hugely.
The price of that is that the hospital outright refuses to deal with complicated paperwork from the insurance companies. They offer various ways of managing that. You can for example deal with the paper work yourself and it is your responsibility to see that the hospital gets paid or that you get reimbursed after paying the hospital out of pocket. They also have sort of a medical plan that covers JUST that hospital.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You're right. We should leave wage slaves to make their own decisions. They are free to choose higher-priced options or do without rather than being forced to pay into a system that they will invariably need someday. That we can make more money off them and pay less taxes that way is just a convenient side-effect.
It's healthcare. When do people *not* need healthcare at some point in their lives? People should have choice, but having a default option that's already paid for by taxes makes sense in the same way as education, transportation, defense, and emergency services does, all of which could also be supported by private means instead. I suppose we could do away with all of those things and thus have a much lower tax rate, but if given the choice of a society with and without those services and with and without the corresponding taxes, I find it hard to believe that most people would prefer to do without. The choice was made generations ago and most modern countries have chosen "yes", especially when it doesn't preclude people independently hiring their own private services if that's what they really want and can afford.
Healthcare is a newer question, but many industrialized countries have made their choice and most countries that chose "yes" certainly prefer it if you ask people there. The US is an oddity because people there are somehow content paying the highest per-capita medical expenses in the world, while a sizeable fraction of the population still has no healthcare coverage at all. It's bizarre. But I guess you can have the consolation of feeling freer while obviously being ripped off for the private services you get.
Poor people are stupid, proud of their lack of knowledge, and threaten the very existence of everyone else.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
Many of the poorest, most rural states also feature a large minority population disenfranchised by Voter ID laws, early voting elimination, absentee ballot restrictions, and gerrymandered districts that favour a republican leadership. Most of these states like Kentucky, Georgia, and Louisiana also strip your voter rights if youve been convicted of a felony in the past, requiring a governors pardon to restore them. Stacking the desk means people like louie gomert can call for a ban on muslim immigrants, shariah law, and female contraception because they understand no matter how incendiary their comments, the chances of their unemployment are pretty low. a large plurality of residents in these states categorically do not care for republican politicians.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So we now have around 13% of people without insurance or around 1-2% below what we before. However around 70% of those have been into Medicaid; which has alot of problems because of the way that is paid for not to mention the increasly few doctors that are accepting it; it does give the liberals their single payer system.
According to the numbers insurance for young men has gone up close to 80% yet they said it has gone down, they need to look at the numbers vs what they put in words; they do cover that by saving prices will go down in the future.
This are still parts of the web sites that are not working or have been implemented, according to the governments own reports, yet according to the article everything is great.
However at least with from the article insurance cost for company provide insurance plans have leveled off and not increased. Then you see they ignored the past couple of months, focusing only the times of economic recession and the costs that people will have to pay for insurance next year.
How about some real number like the percent of people who got âoeif you like your policy, you can keep your policyâ or those on Obamacare who had "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." work for them?
Democrats don't want money. Interesting. So glad to have been corrected.
Joe Biden made it all happen! The republicans are crying like babies because 1/3 Americans are living in poverty now!
Lord, don't I know it. Fitting that today is Halloween, as during All Hallows Eve when Obama was first running, all the Obama yard signs (and only the Obama yard signs) went missing from all the front lawns in my little burg located deep inside a deep Red State. "High school kids playing a prank", said the cops. Sure. Sure they were. But even if they were, they learned their blatant racial hatred from Mom and Dad.
It's part and parcel of the severe mental illness of poor GOP voters: "If I vote to let billionaires become trillionaires, I myself will magically become a millionaire solely because I'm White!"
Most developed countries recognize that health care is analogous to public security, not policing. The difference there is that you have an army of private, for-profit actors (like private security) and a public basic service. We expect companies to provide their own security, for example, because they have the wealth to do so and it lowers the cost on the general public. It is not acceptable to say "increase the police force 200% because Walmart and Target won't hire security staff to monitor such a large store full time." For the same reason, it's unacceptable to burden the public health care system with the middle and upper class when they have the wealth to pay private doctors.
This is a good example of why Social Security and Medicare are failing. They aren't means tested. You can have a fat pension and $2m in assets and still get the same maximum social security check as someone who was a skilled construction worker and entered old age with little more than a home and a small savings account to hopefully pass onto the kids. Should they both be entitled to these programs? Absolutely not.
1.36 trillion dollars over 10 years (http://obamacarefacts.com/costof-obamacare/). That is 136 billion dollars a year. For 10 million people to have insurance.
By my calculations, that is $13,600 per covered person, per year.
Hardly "affordable".
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
And as a single 30 year old male I was lucky enough to see my insurance premium increase almost three fold! From 100/mo for a PPO plan to 275/mo for a comparable silver Obamacare plan...
Thanks Obama!
In all seriousness though the newer plan is more expensive and still doesn't match my old plan in terms of co insurance and out of pocket costs.
At the end of the day I'm not opposed to the idea of a national health system. At a glance it seems Australia is able to provide such a system one via a 1.5% medicare tax, so if we're paying 2.9% medicare tax per employee (employee/employer total) it should be feasible.
What about older people forced to pay for pregnancy coverage they'll never use? What about healthy 20-somethings whose affordable plans (called "junk plans" by liberals, but perfectly adequate coverage for a demographic that very rarely needs anything but coverage in case of catastrophic events) were cancelled even after Obama LIED and said "if you like your insurance, you can keep it?" You don't want to mention those things because it's more regressive taxation from so-called progressives. If you liberals are hell-bent on getting rid of every inequality you think you see, why do you insist on taking money from your fellow middle-class Americans to do it instead of from the big corps you claim to despise so much? THAT's why ObamaCare is so damn unpopular, and part of the reason the Democrats will get wiped out in next week's elections. People are sick of your bullshit.
That's interesting. I'm in the UK and some of what you talk of here is implemented (not perfectly, but...)
Being of a Certain Age, I get asked to come in for scans/get flu jabs/play Pooh Sticks etc. I don't have to do it, but they are asking - because it is cheaper to catch it early rather than treat some ancient old sod (eg me) when he's really off it.
And the NHS runs an internet site where you can look for advice (and read what others think about said advice)
And there is a phone number to call for advice - you get someone who does the first, basic questions and then, if relevant, you get a callback from a medic.
I have used that; once as an anxious father worried, reassured and told what to look out for. Another time to be told 'the parameds will be with you in 10 minutes' when my partner showed worrying symptoms.
The NHS is not free. It is 'free at the point of use' - and you can pay for private if you wish.
But the above techniques work really well if they are accessible by everyone.
Perhaps I'd better shut up or I'll rattle on as much as you have.....
Plenty of people honestly. Whether through cancellation of plans due to lack of mandated coverages, or in my own personal case, being forced to a plan with weaker benefits because my wife's employer was going to be penalized for offering a "Cadillac" plan to their employee's. For those that don't know what that is, it's a mandated 40% excise tax placed on plans that offer premium coverage.
So now we pay about the same amount as before and have a deductible and coinsurance that we didn't have before. Thanks ever so much for that. Considering now we have to be concerned for up to 4800 dollars more a year in expenses. In an environment with looming inflation, and stagnant income growth. Hurray for Obama. Thanks so much for causing millions of Americans into the threat of financial instability.
If the 10 million people now being covered are primarily from poor and rural areas, you could have easily covered them by modifying existing options like medicare to better suite the needs of those unable to properly insure themselves. And probably at a lesser expense.
So yeah, lots of people have reason to hate the ACA, and the people who shoved it down our throats.
under the old system people in jail / prison got better healthcare. People who where sick and had pre existing conditions used them as the last resort places.
> democrats SUCK at making bald-faced lies to their constituents
FTFY,.
More liberal conceit. The study apparently concludes, "You hayseeds don't know what's good for you." The good people of the heartland never asked for this socialist experiment. The democrat political movement will be destroyed a few days hence.
Lets see..... I had a good health care plan. Now thanks to Obamacare, I pay more to get a lot less. I have fewer options now. The best thing is that I now the government doesn't permit me to make my own decisions but it can mandate that I have to buy whatever the lobbyists tell it to. Socialism is just a Trojan horse for crony capitalism.
Yes, the are no Democrats who are millionaires, right?
Also, Republicans === Eugenics = nonsensical comment.
I've come to consider that Republican policies are regressive because they limit the amount of money that the poor can have and Democratic policies are regressive because they limit upward mobility. Neither party has any interest in seeing the poor gain wealth and thereby power. The Democrats have just done a better job at bribing them out of what little power they do have.
Couldn't get the DNC or Whitehouse to do it for them? Why do a survey when the hard numbers are available? OH I KNOW! Because the most transparent administration in history refuses to release the numbers.
Millions have been forced out of their existing plans and into Obamacare plans and Medicaid. Massive increases in Medicaid doesn't count as new insured... That like saying massive increases in the number of unemployed means increases in the leisure class.
Estimates the total number of newly insured people, (not just shuffled), are in line with the typical annual sign up of the first time insured. This spin doesn't cut it because we live with the reality of it and are paying for it... And now, we are VOTING because of it. Spin on, it won't work anymore!
Eugenic Ideas = Progressive Left
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=16217
http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/12/british-eugenics-disabled
etc
etc
My family insurance rates went from ~$400/mo for a PPO plan in 2012, to ~$750/mo in 2013, and now just under $1000/mo in 2014, all with declining levels of coverage. Thank you 'Affordable' Care Act. Even a modest 6-figure household income can't realistically afford $1000/mo for health insurance so we dropped it. It doesn't end there either. After $12k in premiums, i have exposure for another $6000 per year. So now we have a bare bones plan and contribute less to the system overall. Worst law in the history of the United States.
Scott
Just because you have health insurance doesn't necessarily mean you were "helped". Between my contributions and my employers I'd estimate I've dumped over 60,000 dollars of money into health insurance over the past 7 or so years and I've gotten maybe saved a few hundred on a few dental visits. Maybe you could argue that eventually I'll need medical attention (wreck, old age, cancer, etc) but when I eventually do retire (arguably the point where you need it the most) that coverage will likely disappear unless I opt for expensive private coverage. If that money was simply put into an HSA account over an average employment lifetime you would accrue around $400,000, over twice the amount of money used by your average person on healthcare in a lifetime.
I find the meme about poor states = conservative to be a bit annoying and misleading. While it is true that conservative states, especially Southern states, tend to have lower median incomes, they also have significantly lower costs of living. "Studies" like this one never adjust for purchasing power parity, and that oversight always makes me question anything else they have to say.
For example, according to Wikipedia's article on household income in the United States (alas, the numbers are a couple of years old), strongly Democrat Hawaii, which is the 5th wealthiest state by income, is actually dead last adjusted for cost of living. New York ranks 44th once incomes are adjusted for purchasing power parity. Virginia and Utah are the two wealthiest states in the U.S. by PPP income. Of course, Mississippi and West Virginia are still poor no matter how you slice it, but the correlation between political orientation and real income among states is weak at best.
This should not be surprising - local government politics in the U.S. look decidedly different from national politics. This is especially true for conservatives - many Republicans are comfortable with giving powers to local or state governments that they would abhor giving to the federal government, and moreover local elections frequently come down to personal, rather than party, politics. So judging the results of a state's internal, local elections and policymaking by how its citizens voted in a national election doesn't make that much sense, because those two things are imperfectly correlated.
Sorry - that turned out to be a bit long and off topic, but I have a problem trusting articles like this that purport to investigate a fairly complicated and nuanced issue while also making such offhand implicit assumptions.
The final sentence of the summary is misleading.
Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
The link is to a 2011 article, which states the following:
Most of the 10 poorest states in the country are Republican. Mississippi is the poorest... followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama and North Carolina.
The economics of a state is more impacted by what party holds the governorship and statehouse, not by what party they voted for for president. Looking at the governorship of each of those states
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
you see that the parties of the governors of the states listed are, respectively, Republican, Democratic, Republican, Democratic, Republican, Democratic, Republican, Democratic, Republican, Republican.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Let's be very clear. The people that benefitted most from Obamacare, was the oligarchy of investers. The insurance companies, financial underwriters, politicians, and those that benefit from the other controls that gett applied to people that use it.
The people who benefited the most from Obamacare are the rich corporate executives of the insurance companies. Now they have a product that they can charge whatever they want for and the government says you legally MUST buy it. Now people who previously ha d no insurance but at least could afford healthcare instead have to spend their money on insurance and can no longer afford healthcare.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Being forced to buy insurance is not "help." It's being forced to buy insurance. It may be a good idea for some, but calling it "help" is misleading. Most people with this insurance will see more of their money spent on premiums than they would receive in payments even when they do get sick and need medical care. The medical care savings accounts would have been much more helpful for most people in reducing their medical costs and in forcing them into long-term responsible behavior. But we couldn't do that. That would be too Republican an idea.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
They went about it the wrong way I think. We don't need another insurance plan. What we need is for the HealthCare system to undergo some regulation to reign in their astronomical pricing schemes.
We wouldn't NEED health insurance if they weren't allowed to charge what they currently get away with for tests, medication and procedures.
Bring the prices down to realistic levels and a National Health Care system becomes much easier to afford and implement for everyone.
Show of hands. Who here thinks any of the following make sense:
The daily Hep C pill with a price tag of $1000 per pill
Cancer treatments that run $100,000 per year
Any hospital bill for a 30 day stay will all but bankrupt you
Seriously, take a look at a hospital bill and tell me you agree with the pricing. Go ahead.
The whole thing is so out of control that I would rather die from any injuries than go bankrupt and be a wage-slave the rest of my life to pay the bill off. ( Remember, in American hospitals you sign an agreement which states you will pay any costs the insurance does not pick up. Don't do so and they will harrass you for years. )
The only way this gets fixed is to regulate the industry. They're not going to do it on their own.
Interested to know how many of the commenters on here have actually gone through the unmitigated ordeal of having insurance you were happy with canceled, forced to put your children on the local gubmint tit, and have to pick all new doctors since the old ones that we liked, we could not keep? I, for , have indeed gone through this very scenario:
1) I had a group policy for my family, based on state law that allowed a 2 person company to be considered a group... I am a consultant, and my wife was my "employee", so we got a group rate. We picked doctors we like, who accepted our insurance.
2) We get a notice from our insurance company that due to changes in the law, our policy would not be renewed and we would have to sign up via "healthcare.gov" for a new policy...we no longer qualified as a group.
3) bugs and false starts not withstanding, we eventually were told by Healthcare.gov site that our children qualified for medicare, and we would then have to apply for that with our local county agency... the policy my wife & I were able to get of course had a higher deductible and less benefits than our previous policy.
4) After several false starts with the local agency (including me missing 2 days of work to have to go to their office because of their incompetence and misunderstanding of their own rules/laws), we received 2 sets of cards from them for our children: 1 card indicated they were enrolled in state "family care" medicare program, the other card indicating each child's policy information to provide to doctors.
5) We started to search for doctors who would accept the state policy (medicare, for the children) and the new policy my wife & I are "covered" under. None of our previous or local doctors do. We found doctors at minimum 20 minutes drive from our home-- ALL of whom were Asian (either Chinese or Indian)... interesting, but no problem as long as they are competent and have good "bedside manner" with....after finally being able to make appointments with doctors, we arrive at offices filled with people-- no special "well visit" or "sick visit" times or separations (i.e. both sick and healthy people are mingled in one large waiting room at the same time)... appointment times in all cases were minimum of 1.5 hours off (i.e. we had 3PM appointment, lucky to see someone by 4:30 PM)... we never got to see actual doctors who we "selected"-- in all cases we were seen by a PA or Nurse practitioner type person... which messed up my sons who wanted a male doctor- which we thought we selected when making the appointment, only to have a young woman come into the exam room and want to touch their nads...
6) The policy for my wife and I is a "high deductible" too, so we end up having to pay money for most of our doctor visits anyway. We had to pay for a separate "vision and dental" discount plan. We were also told that now, due to our "high deductible" policy, even prescription discounts were thrown off-- eye drops I previously paid $85/bottle at "discount" now cost $141... (never mind the unmitigated evil that this is a COMPLETE rip off, utterly unjustified by any bullshit about "research" that had to be done to develop these drops-- look at pharma's prospectus and see how many billions they earned last year, then tell me they had to charge $141 for 1/8th of an ounce of solution to cover research costs)...
7) My wife so utterly despises the ordeal of taking the children to these "clinic" type facilities, where our baby got sick afterwards, that I agreed we will just get a new policy with the kids on it... SO we contacted the insurance company to add our children to our policy and were told.... WE CAN'T. We can only change our policy in the event of a "life changing" event...
8) Oddly, a couple of days later we get a letter from our county stating that we do NOT qualify for state medicare for the children...??? This is several months after we received the insurance cards from the state....
9) This turned out to be a qualifying "life change" event-- so bac
Facts: My insurance premiums went up 21% this year and18% last year. Pretty much the week that the SCOTUS decided that this was a tax (or was it a fine), my premiums went up 20%. My health is great and I'm not in any of the high-risk groups nor have I been since I started paying for my own insurance many years ago. I see ZERO benefit from this. None.
To those who thing the docs are making money off of this, think again. Most small practices are selling out to gigantic hospital corporate entities which means they are now all on salary dictated by some useless functionary who isn't a doctor. The docs have to use a thing called the ICD (International classification of diseases). In version 9 of this list, there were roughly 13,000 codes. Now in version 10, there are 68,000. So what? Well, if you inadvertently use the wrong code, you are assumed to be guilty of fraud. And who gets the blame? Not the useless functionaries, oh no. The doc is left holding this bag of excrement. This is one big reason why small practices sold out. The back office costs kill the practice.
But then consider this: my bro-in-law is a physician and head of the department. I asked him how many people work for the hospital. He said, "5000." So I asked him how many of those are actual doctors or nurses. He said, "Fewer than 1000 and of the rest I have no idea what these people do even being head of my department."
So, who is benefiting from Obamacare? The bureaucrats and paper pushers aka Ship B people.
"We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act..."
The fact is there NEVER was anything close to that number because most of that number had some form of medical assistance or, to a lesser degree, CHOSE not to have insurance and pay out of pocket.
"...which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act."
You mean which people were forced into buying something in draconian and unconstitutional fashion.
" Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians."
True, because low income, rural voters tend to be more self sufficient than their urban counterparts who favor entitlements and don't mind relinquishing liberty and ultimately American ism and patriotism.
Obamacare doesn't redistribute from "the wealthy" to "the poor". For "the wealthy", health insurance is an insignificant expense. Obamacare, like most of those redistribution programs, redistributes from many above average income earners to many below average income earners. That is, people like software developers, engineers, and scientists tend to pay for it.
Furthermore, while the post seems to imply that this is helping people, that's doubtful. While the recipient of the redistribution enjoys a short-term benefit, long term, everybody loses. Contrary to what advocates of such programs say, redistributing money does't help people get out of poverty long term.
That perhaps also resolve the mystery why "Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians": many people want jobs and growth, not handouts and redistribution. The problem here is that wealthy liberal elites think people object to these programs because they hate the poor and are greedy, when the actual reason is that many people believe such programs to be an ineffective and potentially harmful waste of money. The record of redistributive programs and "the war on poverty" is not good.
Who Gets an Exemption From Obamacare?
How About a National Obamacare Waiver?
To date, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has approved 1,372 Obamacare waivers, covering 3.1 million Americans. Yesterday, The Daily Caller reported that among HHS’s most recent round of 204 Obamacare waivers, “38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.” That’s right: Nearly 20 percent of exemptions from Pelosi’s crowning health care achievement were doled out in her backyard.
If that’s not enough irony for you, try this waiver on for size: On Monday, the Las Vegas Sun reported that Nevada—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state—received a partial statewide Obamacare waiver, too. If you’re keeping score, Reid was Pelosi’s counterpart in the Senate fighting to get Obamacare passed into law. Now his state will be one of three to get a waiver from the law’s requirements, while the rest of America suffers.
ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
How odd that today's Democrats (*) are perfectly aligned with Nixon on just about every issue conceivable:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/2...
Who has actually benefited from ObamaCare? That would be the for-profit private insurance industry to which Obama sold out even while continuing to say he supported the public option.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
(*) not to be confused with people who are liberals.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Perhaps those of us in the middle or upper middle class will pay a little more for insurance. Oh woe is us with good paying jobs and good health care insurance should have to pay a little more. Let’s not sugar coat this – a great deal of anger over the affordable health care act is the idea that people on the lower rungs of society should have their health care subsidized at all. Better they all die without care for being stupid, lazy, or involved in self destructive habits like drugs. I mean the all deserve it after all don’t they?
Letter To Iran
Technically, we don't have Obamacare yet. The President has only implemented the 'good stuff' (insurance) and illegally delayed all the 'bad stuff' (paying for it.)
We will just ignore the losers under ObamaCare!
No sense in looking at those statistics.
Having looked at the heavily subsidized plans I can only imagine the financial crisis that will happen the first time they make a claim.
It is like a high deductible plan without the HSA to actually pay for the services.
ER visit = $1000+ out of pocket. Is that better then the full no insurance rate? I'm sure but the effect to the checkbook of the family getting the subsidy is exactly the same.
Obamacare = feel good measure for those who don't know better. The only 'good' to come out of it was forcing converge for pre-existing conditions.
The state run 'free / low cost plans' the pre-date Obamacare were FAR better for the people who needed it. Dr visit - 100% covered. ER Visit - 100% covered. Prescriptions - 100% covered.
...live in rural areas." good. so. the people who actually needed it. got it. the system werked. nicely done president.
It is what it is.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been with Slashdot for a very long time and have appreciated the stories and discussions. Most stories that were political, fringe or flame bait would never be posted if only to keep the site technical and not political.
This story has no place on Slashdot, and throwing Statistician into the title doesn't make it anymore relevant to what Slashdot is supposed to be about. Please remove my user and all of my information.
Good by and good riddance.
The author of this article obviously doesn't understand how republicans think. Areas that vote republican these do so because they are trying to suppress the (often sizable) minority of poor black people who live in their area. So the republicans in Mississippi, for example, don't WANT the poor black people in Mississippi to have health insurance. Especially if there is any possibility that it will cost them a penny anywhere, ever. The results of this survey make perfect sense if you look at it from that perspective.
Fuck those teachers with their gold-plated Celicas. We should scrap their pensions so we can give more tax breaks to the job creators. They've been doing such a bangup job creating jobs with the last ten tax cuts we've given them.
Is it really a surprise that Obama is redistributng wealth as quickly as he can? He promised to do this in his original campaign and has continually worked to take as much money away from people who have it and pass it out to those who don't. He is working as hard as he can to kill the entrepreneurial spirit in America.
I don't agree that the biggest "winners" with Obamacare have been people between 18 and 35. Their insurance rates have increased more than any other group; they have to to subsidize people who use more healthcare than they do. Claiming that increased participation is a measure of Obamacare's goodness is a little hollow too, considering that it is now a legal requirement to have health insurance: buy it or pay a fine at income tax time. Many people, particularly young people, who would choose voluntarily to forego coverage entirely are forced to pay for it now.
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I'm not saying they're right, but a lot of people who bought policies or even were enrolled in expanded Medicaid don't necessarily feel that they were "helped". They rather liked the old system where you get along with no insurance and minimal healthcare for much of your life, wait till you get a catastrophic illness in middle age, and then throw yourself on the mercy of the system, which is forced by law and tradition to provide care regardless of ability to pay. Then you just muddle along for a few years until Medicare kicks in. It was a chaotic, unfair, inefficient, expensive, and convoluted system that we all paid dearly for. But was it really that much worse than the Rube Goldberg contraption set up by ACA? Many people don't think so. And only the most deluded liberals ever thought there would be any political payoff from grateful enrollees.
Anyone whose employment was restricted to 29.5 hours a week basically got screwed big time. Add it up. 10.5 hours a week for 52 weeks per year comes to 546 hours. At the Democrats' preferred minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, that's a pre-tax loss of $5,514.60 per year. And that says nothing about any overtime such a person may have been making. Overtime would pay $15.15 per hour. The annual loss of one hour per week $787.80. Two hours per week $1,575.60. Three hours per week $2,363.40. Four hours per week $3,151.20. Five hours per week $3,939.00. Just hypothetically speaking, it would appear very likely that there are some folks who lost $10,000 per year of pre-tax income all because of Obamacare. That's gotta bite.
They're leading everyone to unemployment.
As indentured servitude to the 1% is slavery.
And the 1% thanks you for your hard hours. Perhaps they'll give you a 4% raise and a small bonus, if there's anything left over after their 40% bonus.
Just be happy you have a job because you're replaceable.
Do you have any data which shows that it isn't working? Lots more people are covered and the rate of rise of health costs has been significantly and measurably slowed. The economy is doing great; any assertions about Obamacare destroying the economy are absurd on their face.
Do you mean the 10 million more people who have access to healthcare now? or the dramatic reduction in the rate of increase of healthcare costs?
I was excited for Obamacare, until I experienced Nevada's botched implementation, and found out it's not nearly as affordable as it's made out to be. On March 28th, I received a mass email from whitehouse.gov, purporting to be from a Mark D. Bearden, Ph.D., and how he's a "staunch Republican and self-proclaimed Fox News addict". The bulk of the email was how he was a chemotherapy patient, who was paying $428/mo for health coverage and it was cancelled, so he signed up for Obamacare and found a plan for $62 a month and it's the best healthcare he ever had. I was excited, but when I tried to find a comparable plan, there wasn't anything even close. How can a Ph.D. in North Carolina find a good plan for $62 a month, but the cheapest plan I could find was $160 with a $2000 deductable? If I wanted a "manageable" deductable, closer to $500, my monthly payments went up to $300. I even tried searching in North Carolina, where he is from, and couldn't even get close to $62, even if I set my income below minimum wage, there were 0 plans for $62 month, so where did this guy get his insurance? Does he *really* exist? Why can't I find a plan like this? I emailed whitehouse.gov to get answers to this, but all I got was an autoresponder.
My problem with the whole implementation of Obamacare is that it is supposed to be affordable, however, the only way to get the payments truly affordable is to have high deductables, which means if you go to the doctor a lot for small things (most of which won't exceed the deductable), then you are paying out of pocket for most of those. On top of already having to pay out of pocket for most of your care (which you would have to do if you didn't have insurance), you are also forced to pay for the insurance, so instead of costing people less, it's actually costing people more.
If you opt for reasonable deductables, then the plans are MUCH less affordable. Basically, it seems the insurance companies have managed to massage this whole thing into just a government mandated requirement for you to get and keep insurance.
Dead poor people as food. Because even cattle get yearly physicals, as you don't want your cattle so sick they can't be sold as meat. And sure, you'll end up loading the poor people with antibiotics--sounds familiar--in their crowded ghettos--sounds familiar. And perhaps that'll lead to a collapse of society when all the common bugs become antibiotic resistant--unlikely, but whatever. But then we'd have even cheaper meat, right?
Soylent Green: Because it's the only way assholes will ever see fit to act like everyone deserves some sort of health coverage.
We now have about 42 million uninsured and AT BEST, if everything Obamacare is supposed to do happens, we'll have about 30 million uninsured.
To be fair, neither did the people who passed it.
This particular income redistribution plan is only different in that income is redistributed to the poor instead of the rich.
In that respect, it's not at all different from Medicaid, food stamps, etc.
the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income
That's not at all unusual this century. In this century, Social Security is redistributing income from workers to non-workers at a faster rate than in the previous century. In addition, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs are now redistributing income to the poor at a faster rate than they did in the 20th century.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
About a quarter of the doctors in the USA are refusing to participate in Obamacare. http://www.westernjournalism.c... The reimbursements are about 40% of what private insurance pays. The deductibles are so high, and paid directly from patient to doctor, that doctors are concerned they will not be paid. What good is insurance if there is no doctor? When price is not the market-clearing mechanism, wait times fill that role.
Year after year of tax increases contained in the ACA means that economic recovery has been delayed far longer than normal. As a result, millions of people continue to remain unemployed or underemployed. That is a massive loss of income. And just so you know where to place the blame, Pelosi and Reid came into power in 2006 with the usual Democrat threats to raise taxes, practically guaranteeing that the economy would come to a screeching halt. But when Obama became President, the Democrats all lied to you and told you that the ACA wasn't a tax. Cluster of Nasty just about sums it up.
1. I see plenty of anecdotal stories that support many views.
Well, you were the one making up anecdotal stories-- I was just listing what I'd heard from people I know. Except you didn't even have actual anecdotes from real people-- you were just making up a hypothetical, "maybe people did not want or feel they needed health care." Yeah, right. Maybe some people do prefer to rely on emergency rooms, paid for by taxpayers, if they get catastrophically sick. I do not consider this an optimal solution.
People hear what they listen for. Numbers from objective studies are what I'd pay attention to.
To the contrary. When presented with numbers, your response was "Its not that hard to play with numbers to make any point you want. "
Translation: any time you see numbers that don't support what you already have decided, you say they're not 'objective'. Great strategy: ignore anything you don't like.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What this survey doesn't show is how many people who HAD health care and now are going to just pay the fine because they can no longer afford it thanks to Obamacare. My health care cost skyrocketed. My company went to a costly, useless plan to cut costs. Now I am without. Thanks Obama.
Friend of mine was working for a company that dropped their health insurance plan, then a few months later laid off their employees. Since COBRA only covers whatever plan you had, that mean they couldn't get it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Insurance companies and the politicians they contributed to
the Political/Insurance Complex is alive and growing.
Follow the money, if you dare.
open your own eyes and wonder why "clinics" are popping up like franchises for fast food joints, with not much investment in equipment other than enough to bill insurance companies ( and by extension, everyone else) the maximum amount for any patient who comes through.
Personal experience here, Fiance needed dental work done before we married and she would be on my work insurance. Went into a well advertised "new" clinic. We're talking radio spots, mailed flyers, bus placards, etc.
Cost out of pocket to get her work done, as they even were trying to bill her "insurance" for fancy $300 electric toothbrushes and "laser cleaning" was $200 HIGHER than getting the exact same work done paid in full out of pocket at a longer established dentist who did not take her insurance at all.
People who's Ocare plans save them from out of pocket costs, I bet are taking home those fancy toothbrushes, or most likely aren't and never looked at the itemized bill. I do not expect the half dozen "Dr. Nick Riviera" clinics that started new in the last 6 months to be any different.
I have several friends who were keeping their old jobs for the insurance, and Obamacare has let them leave their jobs to do other things. One's a writer who was able to go full-time writing, and the usual software/computer consultants who are now on their own or starting startups. The lawyer who started a small partnership with a couple of friends could have done that anyway, but since she's got kids, the difference in insurance costs was significant.
Those aren't the heavily-subsidized plans - they're just the "you can buy an individual plan at similar rates to what a large company gets" plans, plus the "not denying your coverage for pre-existing conditions" effects.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe Obama did something about this quietly, but I'd think one of the first things he should have done was worked to increase medical school capacities for training doctors and nurses, along with making it easier for immigrant doctors and nurses to get licensed here. Sure, it's a long-term activity that wouldn't significantly improve health care costs or availability during his two terms, and maybe the next batch of Republicans would take credit for it, but it's still critically important.
A lot of us baby boomers are going to be retiring, or even if we can't afford to retire we'll still be getting old and decrepit. And a lot of doctors are boomers, partly because everybody recognized that as a good job when we were growing up (both financial and social good), and it was before the tech booms turned everybody into software entrepreneurs, and also we had fewer kids than our parents' generation (the Millennials are catching up demographically, but with the economy and student loan problems, fewer of them can afford med school, and med school capacities are still limited.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're a dumbass. Paying an insurance company does not make you healthier, it makes the insurance company executives richer.
First of all, please note what we have now is NOT full Obamacare. So many provisions have been pushed off beyond the next election that the actual results are not as bad as they will become - particularly next year when employers will begin throwing people off their plans in dead earnest as costs skyrocket. Tens of millions of people will find themselves in the same boat the self-employed are already trying to keep afloat, and they won't like it. And the pressure to trim full-time workers in favor of part-time will only get worse - FAR worse. Documented here:
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2014/10/25/what-obama-never-told-you-about-obamacare-costs-could-hurt-y.html
Most importantly, Obama deliberately made it difficult to tell who wins and who loses by changing how census data is collected (documented below) here are the untangled explanations:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/28/the-chart-that-could-sink-obamacare/
After 4 years:
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2014/3/24/obamacares-4th-anniversary-winners-and-losers-and-losers-and.html
Refuting Other points:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/census-bureau-changes-health-care-survey-questions-hiding-effects-of-obamacare/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/16/curl-we-completely-overhauled-american-health-care/?page=all#pagebreak
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/02/24/obamas-claim-that-7-million-got-access-to-health-care-for-the-first-time-because-of-obamacares-medicaid-expansion/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/04/49-state-analysis-obamacare-to-increase-individual-market-premiums-by-avg-of-41-subsidies-flow-to-elderly/ - please note "the elderly" control a greater proportion of the country's wealth than any other age segment.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/1.8-trillion-shock-obama-regs-cost-20-times-estimate/article/2508466
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/04/10/Two-Studies-Raise-Red-Flags-Obamacare-s-First-Round
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/04/02/fox-newser-on-obamacare-white-house-is-straight-up-lying-about-these-numbers/
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/29/Where-s-My-2-500-Just-8-Say-Obamacare-Lowered-Their-Health-Costs
The single biggest problem is that insurance is not a good fit for funding health care.
The purpose of insurance is to provide for unpredictable emergencies that financially cannot be mitigated any other way. Annual physicals, preventative medicine, and management of chronic (i.e. pre-existing) conditions are not a good fit for insurance.
To paraphrase:
The highest level of increases are in males 18-34 from lower income areas and demographics.
As a member of that group of people, I can absolutely say that it is not benefiting me at all. The law doesn't provide healthcare for me- it forces me to buy it on my own, out of pocket, during the time in my life when I have the lowest income and the highest overall health and fitness. This is straight bullying, and I am extremely upset about it. As someone who makes less than 18k a year, spending about $1000 on insurance through the course of a year (and that was when my employer was paying 50%) is about 7% of my income. I do not benefit from it all as I cannot afford the copays to go to the doctor even when I need it (which is rarely), and that money could be much better spent on things that I actually need, like food and my education.
People need to stop misrepresenting this bill as something that "helps" the majority of the people it affects. It doesn't reduce the cost of healthcare, its just a government sponsored protection racket on behalf of the insurance industry
Please forgive me if I despise Obama. I was told by him I could keep my policy if I liked it. I did like my policy. My premium was $272 per month, which I could swing. After Obamacare, I received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield saying my policy would be cancelled "due to provisions in the Affordable Health Care Act," and the replacement policy they gave me is $525 a month, which is catastrophic for me. It has altered every single thing I can do in life. To add insult to injury, I now pay a mandatory $5 a month for "pediatric dental care" and I have no children!
Small business creation is far outpacing small business failures. The only businesses hurt by the ACA were those that were providing crappy insurance or no insurance at all to their employees. Our rates went down after the ACA as we had been providing good health insurance that met the requirements of the ACA. The inconvenient truth is that the ACA is shifting costs back to where they belong, to the individual (yes, employer provided healthcare is part of the equation). No more free rides for deadbeat companies.
Other than a few anecdotal occurrences of not getting one's first choice in health providers this narrative of not being able to get an appointment is completely false.
....most favor them. That includes conservative Republican voters. Only when asked if folks like Obamacare they claim they loathe it despite agreeing with most of what it contains. Still, as one of the richest countries on the world it is disgusting that there are so many arguing against universal healthcare and instead make health as well as life and death a matter of income.
The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas.
The article defines "winner" in an odd and deliberately deceptive way, as meaning anyone who did not have a medical insurance policy and now does. Under that definition, even someone who was coerced into something harmful to their self-interest is a "winner".
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Redistribution makes sense, up to a point. Most countries in the OECD do better than the US on most important measures on quality of life, and do it far more efficiently. Probably because there is a pragmatic understanding around the world that there are times where open markets make most sense, and there are times when markets don't make sense -- and some kind of redistribution is required. For instance, the British healthcare system shits all over the American system in every conceivable way (except for really, really high-end, experimental stuff -- and I'm sure I could get it in Harley Street anyway).
I blame the American tendency towards a blinkered belief that markets can never, ever fail, and that government, as a manifestation of the collective will of the people, can never do anything right -- an extremist POV everywhere else.
Before extrapolating long-term outcome of PPACA remember that the vast majority of Americans have yet to be impacted by the legislation - at best 'only' 10 million of the estimated 43 million uninsured Americans at the time bill was passed have coverage, and the employer mandate has been delayed severs, times now (and the vast majority of Ameticans get their coverage from their employers).
Only when all Ameticans are insured AND the Employer mandate is in effect can we tell the real impact of Obamacare - as it stands right now, less than 1/4th of Americans are impacted by the legislation.
I wonder if the folks that did this study included the 'benefit' of the uninsured penalty/fee/tax some 33 million uninsured Ameticans will pay April 15, 2015?
Ken
What? The legislation that was voted against by every republican in the democratic controlled house and senate, and singed into law by the democratic president.
What weird world are you living in? It was drafted, introduced, and rammed though congress to be signed by democrats. All the weird ass concessions were to appease other dems that wanted certain concessions for their own political needs. They had the majority to do anything they wanted. They created their own blacklash.
Costs haven't tripled, deductibles haven't quadrupled--that's completely absurd. You are just a stone-cold liar. Every study shows that Obamacare has bent the cost curve, dramatically.
Liar.
Approximately 100% of these Obamacare horror stories have collapsed on deeper inspection. It's possible that you fall into some gap that is disproportionately worse off if the planets aligned just right. That would require a number of conspiring factors (too high income to qualify for rebates, replacing junk insurance, not covered by an employer plan, no chronic medical problems, etc.). It's certainly possible, but factor in your irrational ranting about Obama and Pelosi and drug addicts and it smells very much to me like someone who has just read a lot of conservative blogs and has constructed a faux martyr persona.
> (which now requires us to buy things like no-deductible comprehensive child-bearing services despite no longer young enough to even have kids, and comprehensive no-deductible drug treatment coverage for addictions we don't have)
You also don't have Ebola, but your insurance covers that. That's the way insurance works. It covers you for things you don't have yet and things you might never need--that's how risk pools work.
You're over 55, self-employed. Two people. Fairly expensive area, probably on some sort of a Bronze plan. Given all that, your health care costs look pretty reasonable to me. I can understand if you feel screwed, but in all likelihood your previous insurance was crap and [thank god] you never had to use it enough to learn that. You are getting to an age where health problems are unpredictable and costs are high--perhaps you've been lucky until now but statistically this is what it costs to insure someone in your area at your age.
I think you have this vision that your rates have been jacked up to pay for welfare queens or something; that's just not true--most of your increase is due to the new requirements blocking predatory plans (low caps on lifetime expenses, exclusions for pre-existing conditions, etc.).
Your side lost an election and elections have consequences. Democrats had a majority in the House and a super-majority in the Senate and a very popular new president. They passed sweeping health care reform which by any reasonable measure has been successful. You feel like you got the raw end of the deal and maybe you did--but that doesn't mean that there was anything nefarious going on.
Rate increases are essentially public right now and they look very reasonable. All this data is out there. ACA has been a godsend for many people, including people I know personally. The macro-economic effects are stunning.
You are just wildly lying about people losing their insurance. That *is not* happening. Look at the curves, millions and millions more people have insurance now than had it before--that's not a matter of opinion and not something I'm interested in debating because it can easily be resolved using Google. Sure, some people are paying more than they did before--generally people who had crap insurance before but were lucky enough to not have noticed it.
You hate the president and democrats and that has nothing to do with your health care costs. Let's be completely honest, if Mitt Romney had passed the exact same plan then you wouldn't have any problem with it.
Obamacare is the greatest legislative achievement in the last 50 years. I'm certainly not trying to pin it on the GOP--they fought against it tooth and nail every step of the way..,for the most part because it was proposed by an African-American democratic President.