Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/16/obamacare-saved-my-life.html
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I’ve been thinking about the ACA recently. There’s the guy who famously was cheering for the demise of Obamacare while saying he would be okay because he’s covered by the ACA. There’s Donald Trump, whose ACA replacement was described as “insure everybody”
Does anyone else wonder if we could just rename the ACA as “TrumpCare”?
Paul Ryan would still want to kill it but what about everyone else? Would Trump really be willing to kill a massive insurance law with his name on it? I suspect his supporters probably would be quite happy to receive TrumpCare. And Trump himself has demonstrated that he’s quite happy to slap his name on things he didn’t build.
So. . . what’s wrong with this plan?
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I’ve been wondering this same thing. Trump is a big, insecure wimp. ACA rallies are hitting him hard. The 67% disapproval rating with how he’s handling the transition is hitting him hard. Numbers showing that his voters will be among the most impacted by loss of the ACA, and their Twitter rage is hitting him hard. Can’t we leverage that weakness and insecurity to fracture the R’s control?
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You guys are right. Obamacare is the worst!
puts Obamacare behind back, switches it from left hand to right hand and presents it to audience
That’s why we created Trumpcare!
thunderous applause
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Obama has basically said as much, that it’ll survive, just under another name.
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As a non-US poster I … well, I dont understand half of what you people have in terms of medical coverage, insurance, etc. Its all alien to me in my “socialist” “free” healthcare system.
So, can anybody explain to me why insurance companies are so against the ACA? For what I kinda get, they are angry because now … they have a bigger market of people? A ton of subsidies? … nothing seems to make much sense.
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It’s a Republican idea anyway, so that would make sense. Except that it’ll be worse in every way.
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Seems like, in this case, the goal is not to gut the bill, it’s to gut Obama’s legacy. God forbid the first black president be considered a good president by posterity… why, other black people might begin to think they can also run for president! /s
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I don’t think the insurance companies necessarily are. They were in the room when they hammered out the program with Obama and members of congress. They dislike things such as not being able to nix pre-existing conditions or being able to deny what they feel will be too expensive coverage for people who buy from them. They are in the business of making a profit off of health care, and if they have to pay out, it cuts into their bottom line.
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Because they are used to being able to do anything they want to anyone they want with impunity, and they dislike regulations that prevent them from fucking people over when they’re sick. Every cent they don’t have to pay out is profit.
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But that only makes sense if they are actually losing profits. I mean, you would have to be a very bad capitalist overlord if you opposed legislation that gave you more money, just because you want to be the arbiter of life or death over people while making less money.
I’m willing to believe they would put more profits before human dignity, but … are they really “losing” money over the ACA?
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I think a lot of insurance companies privately believe the ACA was a godsend, because they realized that the previous situation was not sustainable and the other long-term option would be to cut private insurers out altogether and replace them with a single-payer system like every other developed country has.
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So basically they would be ok with the ACA IF they could also keep dooming people to not have any real medical attention, thus having all the extra business and none of the actual expenses. Got it right?
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I’m also not american, but I imagine that for insurance companies, the ACA legislation is a complicated mix of carrots and sticks. On one hand, they do get a much expanded pool of clients. On the other hand, the law will have costs for insurance companies as well.
Under the ACA, you can’t be denied for a pre-existing condition. People with pre-existing conditions generally cost more than they pay into insurance, pre-ACA you’d be uninsurable unless you got a plan through your employer.
There are also new rules for what plans have to cover. Pre-ACA, some insurance policies were cheap because they didn’t cover much. And if you never needed your insurance, you’d never find out how little it covered.
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I saw that screen grab too, but I sort of assumed that it was phony. Not that there’s not people who think they’re two different things.
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Force healthy people to buy insurance but deny coverage to people who are ill, or who might incur some medical expenses in the future - sounds like a winner!
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I don’t think insurance companies hate it.
The ACA mandated a bunch of things – some preventive care had to be covered, having catastrophic only insurance doesn’t count as health insurance anymore, they have to cover peoples children till they are 27 or so, and the big one is they can’t deny people insurance if they have pre-existing conditions. So… they said “ok - if you say so” (because what else can they do at this point - nothing). Aaaaand then they jacked up their premiums and/or raised deducibles and/or raised copays and/or paid out less to doctors and/or covered other things to a lesser degree so that they could still make a profit.
I don’t think they quite care.
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But they are! A lot of medical testing and treatment are mandated by the ACA. Things like mammograms and colonoscopies are expensive and they are happy to arbitrarily deny them if they can, or require a huge copay. They also don’t like to have to cover pre-existing conditions. Having to pay for things required by the law costs them money. And many of those additional insured are actually covered by Medicare and Medicaid, which don’t make them any money at all. They would love to cover young healthy people, who have few medical issues, but many of them opt-out and pay the fine instead, or select only catastrophic-care policies with very high deductibles that don’t make the insurance companies any money either.
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I’m sure that’s not how they see it, but yeah. They don’t want to pay for any “unnecessary” coverage, but they don’t want to let doctors and patients decide what is unnecessary, I think. They want to make those decisions by algorithm and the bottom line rather than by anything else.
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Since this happened for a mammogram for me… Yes, they will deny if they don’t see it as “medically necessary” or if they can get away with calling it that.
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