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Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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Brooks127
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Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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White House knew millions could not keep plans under Obamacare

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101150855

Has your health insurance policy been canceled?

Has your health insurance premium risen?

Has your health insurance premium become more affordable?

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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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I'm self-employed, and get my insurance through Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It's a catastrophic plan (very high deductible) that costs us $360/month. We just received a letter from Blue Cross that says we're being grandfathered in. So much to my surprise we're allowed to keep our current plan, although it's going to go up $423/month.

My 25-year-old son lives in Chicago and walks dogs currently. He's not interested in making a lot of money, preferring to spend his time playing music in various bands in and around the Chicago area. We were uncomfortable with him not having health insurance so we went out and got him catastrophic coverage as well. He currently pays about $60/month. Next year, he will have to sign up for one of Obamacare's plans and it will cost about $190/month, more than triple the current rate. Now, because he's considered below the poverty line, he will be eligible for Medicaid and won't have to pay anything for his insurance. That might sound like a good deal to some people, but it's very demoralizing to me. No one in my family has ever been on Medicaid and I really don't like the idea of relying on the government when we were previously perfectly willing to handle it in the family. I'm going to be talking to my son about getting a real job and getting himself above the poverty line. We were due to have that discussion anyway. Regardless, he's going to take a hit and will have to pony up some hard-earned dough for something he doesn't value or need.

I've not been shy about sharing what I think about Obamacare. I like the idea of universal coverage, but I just don't think the government will pull it off without a vast and flawed bureaucratization that ultimately will dumb down the whole system. Recall the 'No Child Left Behind' law that I guess most teachers aren't very fond of. More importantly, it probably doesn't do what it set out to do which is to improve education for our children. Maybe it has been successful in some areas. I'd have to do more research. But someone said to me recently that No Child Left Behind means no child gets ahead either. I just don't think having the federal government involved in the minutia of our lives is ever going to be a good thing.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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I personally think it's a step in the wrong direction, even though it will likely turn out to be better than what we had previously. What we need isn't an even more privatized system. We need something public, modeled after another country that's been able to make it work.

Demand for life and health is hypothetically infinite, right? I don't see how healthcare could ever work in a fully privatized system without massive government intervention to keep priceless demand from being overpriced.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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Ironically, catastrophic coverage allows me to take a more proactive role in my own health care. Most people have their insurance companies calling the shots. I go to whatever doctor I want and discuss my health care directly with the doctor. I have to pay for everything myself, but most people do that too. They just do it through exorbitantly high insurance premiums. Why not get rid of the middle man altogether and reserve "insurance" for when something really bad happens like a serious injury or illness. Unfortunately, Obamacare, if anything, only cements the role of the insurance company into place. I just don't see how it's going to do anything to reduce health costs. But isn't that one of its goals?
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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NPR story on this. “Insurance Cancellations Elbow Out Website Woes At Health Hearing”

This is the NPR text only version. It should load quickly.

http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=241617510&rId=1001&x=1
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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Sorry to jump in again with another comment from north of the medicine line, but one can only be amazed at the debate over health care in the US.

Health care, in a modern, advanced society is not overly expensive. In my corner of the world, young people are beating down the doors of educational institutions to clammer for limited space to be trained to be doctors or other medical professionals. Many immigrants, already trained in medical specialties, hope to work in their chosen fields. The people are there.

Yes, some technology is expensive today. But also, this is offset by the fact that we know so much more about prevention today. When your correspondent was a young thing, a shot of whiskey and a cigarette were considered to be short term bolsters for one's health. Look at how far we have come. And this translates into lower overall costs.

In fact, the runaway escalation in costs we have seen have all been in areas free from oversight. In other words, let people set their own rates, and, not surprisingly, they may be high. Set them in terms of what is desirable for society, what is available, and what is needed, and the final figure may look quite different.

$400 a month for a medical premium? Who else pays this in the developed world? Now there is a question. Where is the money going? Another question.

Instead of dumping tea in the harbour, this time maybe you should think about chucking insurance companies and venture capitalist into the murky waters.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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Just to clarify, Etudiant, our coverage is catastrophic, meaning we have a $5,000 deductible per person and $10,000 for the family. Most people have much higher premiums than we do and much lower deductible. We've never actually had to have our insurance pay for anything, even this year when I had a colonoscopy.

The question comes up a lot, why is health care so much more expensive in the U.S.?

Image

Edit: I just reread your post. I think you're saying the same thing I am. Where in the world does all the money go?

The second question I have is, how is Obamacare going to address these rising costs? Obama has made a lot of promises about the ACA, but they're all starting to look like campaign promises.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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Where in the world does all the money go?
Even if the question is answered in detail and you despised it, you'd still pay for the services. The prices are high because our healthcare and insurance are private. Healthcare isn't so much a demand as it is a necessity. It's a market failure. There's no force in play to drive prices down, other than(I would hope) government. We will pay anything for our health and lives, it's in our nature. So prices creep upward.
NPR story on this. “Insurance Cancellations Elbow Out Website Woes At Health Hearing”

This is the NPR text only version. It should load quickly.
That's the consumer protection portion of the bill. Many people aren't covered in the way they think they are. If you're one of the people who has a letter saying your insurance is cancelled, ask for specifics. What wasn't covered before that's covered now. The fine print has been criminal for too long, where policies give people a false sense of security.
It's a catastrophic plan (very high deductible) that costs us $360/month. We just received a letter from Blue Cross that says we're being grandfathered in. So much to my surprise we're allowed to keep our current plan, although it's going to go up $423/month.
My insurance has been going up by an absurd amount every year. But that $60 jump is larger than I'd expect. I'd ask why, in detail.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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It's informative to trace the evolution of Obamacare, from the origins in a conservative thinktank, to Mitt Romney's implementation in Massachusetts, to what we've got now. I will say "the mess we've got now," because with the rollout being close to disastrous, and with millions being denied the right to keep their current plans, it may be true that the ACA's problems are much more than the hiccups we experienced with Medicare. And I'm someone who badly wants Obamacare to succeed. If it doesn't, what will have doomed it? It could be due to its weird mixture of free-market mechanisms and government coercion, and also simply to its complexity. A lot of people have pointed out that if Amazon and ebay can handle millions of transactions per day, then surely the govt. should have been able to set up a site designed to enroll 7 million over 6 months. While there's some truth to that, it's also true that buying most products is a simple thing, whereas heathcare.gov needs to manage a hugely complex task, taking into account different existing regulations in the 36 states that don't have their own exchanges. It was largely the ability of the states to ignore many of the ACA mandates, including having their own exchanges, that led to the govt.'s job being way larger than it had projected.

On the cost per person of U.S. healthcare, the U.S. spends about 40% more than the next country on the list, Norway. Yet the payoff for that expense is not there, with the U.S. trailing well behind in most indicators of spending effectiveness. The one area cited in which the U.S. does lead (besides overall spending) is medical research.

The ACA currently is increasing the costs for some people to find insurance. That's not acceptable for the Affordable Care Act. Whatever its flaws, contrary to widespread belief the ACA doesn't threaten to increase our national debt.
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Re: Can you afford the Affordable Care Act?

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I've been following the transition to "Obamacare" just a tad these past few days. In particular, the big stink that is being made over the website/enrollment issues.

There was a great online Coursera class about the history of healthcare in the States, particularly the astronomical costs, quality of care, and other related issues.
In the past, I had been in favor of a conservative approach to improving our HC system (increase competition to lower costs, medical malpractice control, etc), but we as a nation could have gone on and on and on arguing about this while NOTHING got done.

It's really time we get on board with what we have right now, move forward, and support Mr. Obama and stop all this bickering and slamming. Change takes time. Things need to be worked-out. It's always a work in progress. Obamacare wasn't going to roll out pristine. The big picture is that it's time that a supposed world superpower begin to make adequate healthcare available for its citizens and not just for those that can afford treatment.
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