My boyfriend works for the largest insurance company in Massachusetts, a company that should have every reason to hate Obamacare. But their take is this: it’s not perfect. It has problems. But it’s a huge improvement and is helping tons of people every single day.
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No reason to feel sorry for me. I’m still alive after 16 months. I did it without the aid of the government - without the aid of insurance companies. I have a good oncologist who I pay out of pocket at negotiated discount rates for regular monthly treatments, and I live off of the largesse of pharmaceutical companies who, through compassionate care programs, provide me free medicine. If I live until November then I’ll finally be eligible for Medicare and can afford the diagnostics and surgery.
That is my reality. It is the only reality that matters to me. Not all of the vacuous promises and rhetoric that this heavily polarized political system has tried to pass off as “universal health care.”
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Just to clarify, nobody, including Obama, ever positioned Obamacare as being “universal health care”. It was never meant to be so. Its aim was to help people who couldn’t previously get insurance to be covered: people who couldn’t afford it, people with pre-existing conditions, people who didn’t have an employer subsidizing their coverage. It’s a shame that a lot of states have muddied it with their own politics and regulations that create lousy situations like yours.
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No clarification required. It’s irrelevant what you want to call it. It failed to work for myself and [as my URL demonstrates] for millions like me.
Don’t forget that the Obamacare we have now is a gutted version of what was originally proposed. It’s a sad compromise from what Obama actually tried to do.
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The point is that we would have something that works better (and surely that would have not failed you) had certain groups not forced unnecessary compromise.
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I liked your comment for this particular section. While no one claimed it was universal, the polarized political rhetoric on both sides (along with the legal challenges) has screwed up the original objectives. Furthermore, using the insurance companies to deliver health care just ensures that their stockholders make even more dividends. And before anyone cites adverse financial risk to these companies, please remember that they decided to operate in the health industry by essentially taking bets. When the companies had to pay out on these bets, they looked at ways to increase the house odds. Increasing the sheer number of enrollees helps to increase the dividends paid to stockholders and dilute the risk. This is why there wasn’t an outcry from the insurance industry. They saw dollar signs. For them to increase premiums for existing policy holders was just plain greed.
I’m truly saddened by your experience, but I will keep good thoughts for you. Also, I’m very happy that your doctor is helping you out to the extent that he/she can.
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Sorry you’re in the situation you’re in. What State do you live in? There are programs that can help people in the situation you’re in in some.
Also if your problem is that you have $2500 in the bank why not move it into some other kind of asset that won’t make you ineligible for Medicaid? You’d save well more than $2500.
One point, though, the linked article explains clearly that it was Republican state governors deliberately choosing to not take the Medicaid expansion that was part of the ACA plan (in a profoundly cynical political ploy of favoring their political party over the well being of the people of their States) that resulted in those millions being in that situation.
The core problem is relying on having a broken system that relies on private health insurance companies at all, rather than pooling resources into a more efficient and effective solution.
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You had BCBS? And not via your employer?
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That’s pretty amazing (in other words, I don’t believe the word of a stranger on the internet over the very real experience and I and other loved ones have had with BCBS) and
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Almost everyone who had individual health insurance before (such as you seem to be implying that you had) found their rates went down and/or their coverage went up substantially (again, including me and loved ones). Everything doubled due to ACA? Hmmm…
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Actually, I had Blue Shield of California that I paid for myself before ACA and it did in fact nearly double after ACA and my deductible went way up on top of it (like from $500 to $3000). Blue Shield rolled my plan over into a compliant one automatically - I didn’t actually go to the California exchange. I did look at the exchange though and found the same plan I was rolled onto for the same price.
I don’t qualify for any subsidies and I’m glad other people got insurance, but it did have a negative impact for some of us.
Exactly. All of the details put together didn’t add up. Someone either doesn’t know how to do basic research or they’re obfuscating to make a point against a program that has been proven to be a better solution for the vast majority of citizens.
Like most other posters here, I wish we had real single payer health insurance like all the civilized countries do, but the ACA is still significantly better than no insurance or virtually-no-insurance-with-a-big-monthly-price-tag-anyway (both of which I’ve had to deal with, for decades).
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Yep, there is a lot about Obamacare that is not ideal. But whenever I’ve seen comments like this, about doubling rates and unaffordable coverage (as if it was affordable before!), it turned out to be either someone misrepresenting facts, or who didn’t bother to shop the exchange and just paid what their insurance company billed for the plan they had before, or who previously had crap insurance with low maximum caps or other serious limitations. It pays to remember that most people who suffered medical bankruptcies in years past had insurance- or thought they did. It just didn’t turn out to provide coverage when it was actually needed. Fortunately, under ACA, those kinds of policies are no longer legal.
The only people who as a group are worse off under ACA are some of those with high incomes, who will pay a slightly higher tax rate to subsidize it. And even they will benefit from bending the curve of heath care cost increases.
It’s curious now, but I notice my post you replied to above, in which I asked questions, offered help, and pointed out that Jim would definitely be eligible for ACA subsidies if he had an income of 24K, that he could get excellent coverage with a maximum out of pocket of $5200 for slightly over $100/ month in California- that post has now been deleted, and not by me. I would be very interested to know why. It was civil, on topic, and fact based.
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Jim, Your URL shows only that some governors and state legislators blocked Obamacare from working for low income people in some states, by blocking medicaid expansion. It’s not a failure of the program, it’s a failure of those state governments and of the Supreme Court. It shows their willingness to throw their citizens under the bus in an ideological hissy fit.
You say:
’m 54 years, with my only income now Social Security. I found out I’m ineligible for Medicare until two years after the onset of the cancer. I have too much money ($2,500) in savings to get Medicaid. The deductible plus out-of-pocket for the “best” ACA plan is $12,000. That’s nearly one half of what I get in Social Security.
You need to get some help, or better information. I’m posting this not just for you, but in case others are looking for information regarding ACA and health care insurance.
- Under ACA, the deductible is included in the maximum out of pocket, it is not added on.
- A California resident your age with a $24,000 income would definitely be eligible for subsidies. Subsidies go up to 400% of federal poverty level, for an individual currently that is $46,680.
The online calculator here: Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator | KFF gives an average cost for your age group (non-smoking), and a Silver level plan as $131 per month. Silver plans have a maximum out of pocket limit of $5200 per year- that includes the deductible. A Gold plan’s cap would be $1000 less and with your income the premium may not be much more at all. Costs vary with location, this is based on San Francisco, one of the most expensive areas in California. But that would mean that the total out of pocket costs for your situation, premiums and co-payments, would be $6772. A lot on a low income, and not single payer, but far better than anything you could possibly have purchased before the ACA and its subsidies for low incomes.
So I don’t understand how you can claim to have lost your insurance due to the ACA.
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Ooh, yeah…what happened, @Falcor?
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It’s true that it hasn’t been 100% better for everyone. I’m sorry to hear that you’re one of the ones affected. However, I’m wondering how you got such a low deductible+premium? I don’t know anyone who had both low deductible AND premium, even people with work coverage, so having that combo in a private policy is quite unusual. Was it through an affinity group, or credit union, or something?
Also, did you ever have to to test the efficacy of that former policy?
If more people had what it seems you had, we wouldn’t have been so desperate for a solution.
When @Bullying_Wedsite started insulting other commenters some of his/her posts were eaten. That includes replies to posts. #burp#
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No, I just signed up through their website. I’ve had Blue Shield of California through various companies since I was 18, so maybe when I signed up on my own they checked my medical history to give me a discount?
Luckily, I’ve been quite healthy. I do go to the doctor several times per year, but not for anything serious. I used to have a small $10 copay that I paid. Even that has gone up significantly. Now it is actually often cheaper to pay my doctor’s cash rate of $100 than bill through insurance - except of course for yearly physicals.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that only responses which fanned the same flames would be collaterally eaten, and the post in question by @Oceanconcepts truly had no snark or ill will apparent in it. Too bad, because there were a number of good points that might have been useful to someone else. But a Don’t Push Your Luck Dragon’s gotta do what a Don’t Push Your Luck Dragon’s gotta do, right?
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I’m really fascinated by your example. Maybe because it’s California? I also had BCBS right out of college with a perfect medical history, until I had to drop it a few years later because the monthly premiums cost as much as my rent, which together made up 90% of my take-home pay (and I had student loans to pay back out of the last 10%). That’s with absolutely NO medical problems, barely out of college. Half of my friends are doctors, so the subject of medical insurance is something we talk about, and my experience (here in the Midwest, at least) is considered common, not unusual at all.
And the fact that your doctor’s cash rate is $100 is making me quite envious! Apparently they do things very differently out there. Better weather, too…
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