Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/18/entrepreneurs-explain-how-obam.html
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This has always been one of the major reasons big American corporations are opposed to single-payer universal health insurance: employees would be a lot less terrified to leave exploitative, abusive, or just plain crappy jobs.
As a self-employed person, before ACA was put in place my choices were to either go through a friendly client’s corporate plan (a dodgy move that involves all sorts of hassle and risk to them), pay exorbitant rates directly to the insurer, or join a freelancer’s association that offered a plan that was usually more expensive than the corporate ones with fewer benefits and options.
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Really CNN, now you have the guts to publish a bold contrarian storyline like this, after the election?
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I’m early 40s and relatively healthy, so my choice before the ACA was to hope nothing went wrong. Gratefully, it didn’t.
If the ACA goes away, I guess I’m back to hoping nothing goes wrong. I just don’t have the money to pay for an expensive plan.
Honestly, it feels like my life, and the lives of so many others, have zero value to many of our fellow citizens. It’s demoralizing.
Edit: I guess I should say that I am self-employed / freelance.
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Count me in this list also. I quit my old job and started consulting. My family had pre-existing conditions.
I anticipated ObamaCare and so I paid for COBRA (thank you, Hilary) for 18 months through the statrt of ObamaCare, and then switched to Obama Care (thank you, Barack). I make 50% more than i used to, but can only do it because of the ban on consideration of pre-existing conditions… and also the MarketPlace, by putting all the options in one place, makes it super-easy to sign up.
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Once you hit your 40s having to take that risk is terrifying even if you’re healthy. As others have said about getting through the next four years, take what time you can for self-care: a better diet, exercise, sunshine and fresh air. It’s not much considering the crap shoot that is health, but it all helps.
[quote=“anon36081309, post:4, topic:89732, full:true”]
Honestly, it feels like my life, and the lives of so many others, have zero value to many of our fellow citizens. It’s demoralizing.[/quote]
As always with those fellow citizens you mention, it’s a self-destructive impulse that eventually bites them in the arse. Wipe out the ACA and we’re back to people using the emergency room as their primary care physician.
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I’d like to see a study on how many US citizens died just from being denied health insurance just for “pre existing conditions”. That’d be interesting.
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A study I read a year or two ago found that the rate of entrepreneurship in the EU is actually higher than in the US, and cited their public health care systems as a major reason.
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Without the ACA all these entrepreneurs would be forced by necessity to become corporate workers. Bug or feature?
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…a better diet, exercise, sunshine and fresh air."
Not sure how long that last one will be around with Trump at the helm.
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Well… we can’t really have true feudalism if all these people go around being acting like they are free, now can we? Peasants need to know their place, after all.
(fuck me that was supposed to be hyperbole but it doesn’t feel so far-fetched)
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My son has Type 1 diabetes, which is a relatively expensive condition to be stuck with. If the government mandates some sort of health care for him, he could follow his dream and open his own small business and maybe create a couple jobs, if he so chooses. Without that mandate, he’s stuck trying to find a job somewhere that provides a generous health plan, whether he likes the job or not.
Which of these scenarios sounds more like freedom?
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“War is peace”
“Freedom is slavery”
“Ignorance is strength”
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
This is truly the age of doublethink.
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I wish I could laugh at The Onion again, but these days their ‘satire’ seems to all be ooming true. 
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2017 is the year my family can no longer afford insurance through ACA. I would love to hear the actual details of other folks’ coverage, because it’s shite here in NC. I guess it all comes down to pre-existing conditions; otherwise, I don’t understand how different my family’s ACA experience can be from other folks’.
The cheapest Bronze level plan for us is $1200/month. That’s with a $14,000 in-network family deductible, and a $57,000 out-of-network family deductible. How could anyone consider that a good deal? When people like Cory talk about how great their ACA experience has been, I feel like I must be living on a totally different planet.
I don’t mean this as an attack on people who like the ACA. It initially did a lot of good. But I don’t understand why folks still like it.
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It was ever only a stopgap until we decided to put pharma and med tech patentholders in check. One of these generations we’ll get around to it. Not this one, though.
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Aside from the cost, we’ve encountered two show-stopping ACA problems:
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In 2014, we couldn’t sign up for ACA because our children might have qualified for Medicaid. ACA wouldn’t let us complete our 2014 enrollment until we enrolled or declined Medicaid coverage for our children. This created a Catch-22 that kept us from enrolling in the ACA at all. We didn’t hear from NC’s Dept. of Health and Human Services until June of 2014, six months after ACA open enrollment ended we were compelled to purchase insurance privately.
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In 2016, we attempted to purchase health insurance from Covenant through the Marketplace. When we got our paperwork from them, we saw that they listed our 10-year old son as the primary person on the policy. We called Covenant and they said it was a problem with the way the data was transmitted from the Marketplace. We called the Marketplace and they said everything was fine on their end, and Covenant needed to fix it on the other end. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ultimately neither party would take responsibility for this, but both parties confirmed that it would not be ok to have a 10-year-old as the primary on the policy. So we purchased our policy privately again.
And of course in the background there’s the issue that we have had to change policies every year, and consequently we’ve had to change physicians every year. There’s also the issue that in 2017, there is only one ACA insurer left in North Carolina: Blue Cross Blue Shield. I can’t point to a positive experience I’ve had with them.
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America needs a patriotic healthcare system for its citizens, because there is one thing upon which we can agree: healthcare costs are too damn high. Insurance companies and healthcare providers won’t contain their desire for profit until we, Americans, make profiting off of sick Americans sick.
Americare, anyone?
USCares?
USAlive?
Ooh, I like the last one best. “We, Americans, are alive and capable to lead the world by example again…USAlive.”
You may use that freely; for America, my people, my State, my home, I love this fuckin’ country.
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Feature. It keeps disruptive entrepreneurship down and makes good employees cheaper. Total win-win.
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