The ACA (NixonCare/RomeyCare/ObamaCare) is a great 1st step and was a fine system when Romney proved the scheme could work. I was so disappointed when the GOP to disavow their own plan once Obama built his own plan on Romney's. Should've included a public option, though. That would have better hedged against price inflation.
No, you literally couldn't spend $50k in copays. If you hit $6450 you'd max out. You are right though that a family has a higher out of pocket maximum though. I hate to break it to you though, before the ACA the plan didn't have an out of pocket maximum that included copays or Rx at all. Your financial risk is definitely lower in terms of total exposure thanks to the ACA. Simple fact.
Fair enough. I'm just saying for people who are truly broke, so broke that they can't afford insurance without being forced to have it, they won't be able to afford paying the premiums every month PLUS a 6k deductible for a single person or 13K for a family plan. If you are truly broke, it doesn't matter if your bill is 13K or 100K, you can't pay either. For the most part, the ACA is the illusion of access to many without actually providing any more access to health care than was had before. The only difference is that now you can tax the hell out of the poorest people every single month on top of them not having any better access to healthcare.
Um, what? 13k is a manageable amount you get pay down with a payment plan. 100k is a near life destroying slave collar you wear for the rest of your life. Where in the world do you come up with this nonsense?
Ah ok so they fell in between the gaps before. Yeah that has been one of the good things. I wish the ACA would have banned urgent care clinics and stand alone ERs. They are **** and can't perform hardly any procedures outside of very basic stuff. They can even cause more harm because people go there thinking they can get serious emergencies taken care of, but instead have to get sent to a regular ER. They are total insurance scams. If I'm wrong someone please convince me otherwise. spoiler for rant story Spoiler I got cauliflower ear from jiujitsu and I tried to get into an ENT on a Friday, but it was too late in the day. I knew I didn't have days to take care of it so I went to an urgent care clinic and I just wanted to get it drained and have them apply some sort of pressure bandage. A very simple procedure. The doctor there didn't know how to do it and had never heard of cauliflower ear. She called another doctor who told me I needed to go to an ER (wtf?). I stopped by a stand alone ER and the doc was at least nice enough to see me for free and tell me there was nothing to be done about it, because too much time had passed since the injury and he didn't think it was that bad. So I just went to HEB and bought some insulin needles and then tried to drain it on my own. The needles were too small, and it was hard doing it on my own since I had no clue what I was doing. Got a little blood out, but whatever. **** urgent care. Also **** ENT doctors too. I went to one for throat pain and the dude was upselling me for more testing that I didn't need and one procedure that wasn't covered by insurance. I ended up figuring out what the problem was (I was clinching my teeth at night) when I was in the doctor's office. I was pissed at myself for going along with it, but I was 35 and hadn't had any major check ups and I had the money so I went with it. I even refused it the first time and then he wore me down. It was a worthless out of pocket procedure that took all of 60 seconds. He was even saying he had to pay the rent and that's why it wasn't cheaper. What an *******. Also, I'm curious do you really feel like the cost of removing the metal shaving was a $6,000 job? Like did it require general anesthesia?
Yes it is lower, but is it economically viable? By that I mean are people on the whole actually saving money by having insurance versus not having it? You have to have some catastrophic bills before you start seeing savings. Am I off in thinking that?
I guess it just depends on who you are. For a lot of people, the only difference it makes is that they now have to pay monthly premiums that they didn't pay before because they couldn't afford it. Now they have to find a way to pay insurance premiums and practically speaking they have no more access to healthcare than they did before. If you are truly broke, it makes no difference. If you have no disposable income 13K might as well be 130K. Of course, you are probably too out of touch with real poor people to understand that.
The ACA is great for us, of course the change to Blue Cross HMO did suck. There was no prior indication that 0 doctors would take it, it was so rushed. But that was Blue Cross, Aetna Memorial Herman EPO seems fine, affordable, pays for itself in discounted fees. We both have 3 routine labs a year.
Just to be clear.... Trump advocated a single payer system similar to Canada's in his 2000 book "The America We Deserve" before suddenly reversing course in a 2011 CPAC speech. Of course, in 2000 he was contemplating a run for President as a member of the now defunct "Reform Party". So he was for Single Payer before he was against it.
A Republican who could make a Republican like Ben Stein vote for Hillary Clinton isn't a real Republican or a real conservative.
People blaming the PPACA for their costs going up down or sideways do not understand the legislation. Your healthcare costs, plan choices and plan costs are based on where you live and what's available in your area and what your employer is willing to cover in terms of costs. You can share across state lines all you want but as someone mentioned in an earlier post healthcare is local and your available plans have to contract with local hospitals and practices. The basic changes due to the PPACA: Children staying on their parent's plans until they are 26. Win for everyone since this age group was largely uninsured and when hurt or sick would go to the ER run up a huge bill and not pay it. Leading to increased costs from uncompensated care. Doing away with pre-existing condition discrimination: Biggest win of all. Now all that can be asked of you is your age and whether you smoke or not. This was a death sentence for many people who couldn't get a private policy and a policy through your job would go through these conditions and charge your employer more who in turn would charge more to the employees. Mandate: Necessary since for decades the ER uncompensated care was driving up costs for hospitals who passed those costs onto managed care plans. If you expect the ER to remove that appendix you should be expected to have insurance. Medicaid expansion: Low income folks forced to have insurance or be penalized so let's sweep in more under Medicaid. Necessary and at a state's discretion. However this is not a long term solution. Medicaid is bankrupting states as it has for years. Arizona looked into eliminating Medicaid but decided against it. Medicare Part C subsidy reductions: This was to offset the Medicaid expansion costs. I suppose you can complain if you have one of these plans as many were eliminated or the costs increased. But that was a choice of the insurer. FSA limits Prior to the PPACA there were no set limits on how much you could set aside. The new limit was capped to $2,500 and has increased slightly since. Again to offset the cost of the Medicaid expansion. Free preventative healthcare: Huge win. Vaccines, well child checkups, mammograms, etc. all now free and no excuse not to get done. Closing the Medicare Part D donut hole: Major bane to seniors was this gap in coverage for prescriptions. Will be phased out. Those are the most salient changes. Anyone who thinks the law is somehow bad and should be repealed (short of replaced with single payer) needs to have their head examined.
