Obamacare cost...

[SCcoug]

Looks like this story from July: "Health Plan Cost for New Yorkers Set to Fall 50%" didn't apply to working NYC professionals who are getting their plans canceled (or maybe they just got the sign wrong on that 50% less expensive figure).

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
...
It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

[imanihonjin]

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

How can one be for something without knowing (or at least pretending to know) the reality of what it is they are for?

[Uncle Ted]

How can one be for something without knowing (or at least pretending to know) the reality of what it is they are for?

We have to pass bills and spend hundreds of millions to figure these things out...

[Uncle Ted]

ACA_Impact-C_s640x427.jpg

Obamacare has become a never-ending Opposite Day — the opposite of what was promised:

• By 14-to-1, more people have lost health insurance than gained it due to Obamacare. Millions more will lose coverage next year.
• Health insurance is not more affordable; it’s more expensive despite Obama’s promised savings of $2,500 per family per year.
• Even if you like your plan, you cannot choose whether to keep it.
• Even if you like your doctors, you cannot choose whether to keep them.
• Even if you enrolled in Obamacare, there’s a good chance the website lost your data, and you aren’t really enrolled.
• This is the most open, transparent and honest White House in history, except when you have an important question.

Opposite Day is fun for young children, but it’s no joke to the estimated 7 million who so far have lost their health insurance due to Obamacare. For most, replacement coverage will cost thousands of dollars extra next year. There goes the family vacation. Or the kids’ braces. Or violin lessons. Or savings for college. Or all of the above.

Many have decided to go without insurance, so look for an onslaught of personal disasters next year when newly-uninsured families suffer emergency needs. Even worse, their ranks will grow from millions more whose group policies will be wiped out next year by the harsh requirements of Obamacare.


Countless families face tragedies. As noted by California’s Rep. Darrell Issa, Obamacare puts a multitude of lives at risk. It didn’t have to happen, but President Obama and his know-it-all buddies made existing and affordable coverage illegal. It was outlawed.
[...]

http://communities.washingtontimes.c...verse-14-1-mar

Well, at least 800,000 people who qualify for the expanded medicaid will get "affordable" health care thanks to all the hard work of the american tax payer. We can be thankful for that, I guess.

[imanihonjin]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3558[/ATTACH]


http://communities.washingtontimes.c...verse-14-1-mar

Well, at least 800,000 people who qualify for the expanded medicaid will get "affordable" health care thanks to all the hard work of the american tax payer. We can be thankful for that, I guess.

I honestly cannot believe that Republicans screwed us like this.

[Katy Lied]

Jonah Goldberg has a new op ed piece out, asking the insurance industry how many times they need to be kicked before they bite back. The Obama administration keeps moving the goalposts, delaying some rules and reversing themselves on other rules. Then, they blame everything on the insurance industry.

White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted that it was the insurance companies that unilaterally decided not to grandfather existing plans (the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" columnist, Glenn Kessler, gave this claim "Three Pinocchios").

Then, just last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius announced that she was "urging" insurers to ignore their contracts, the law and simply cover people on the honor system — as if they were enrolled and paid up. She also wants doctors and hospitals to take patients, regardless of whether they are in a patients' insurance network or even if the patient is properly insured at all. Just go ahead and extend the deadline for paying, she urged insurers; we'll work out the paperwork later.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/comme...#ixzz2nmZ3gRkP

That's only going to work in a single payer environment, right? right?

[Pelado]

Politicians and pundits are particularly good at refusing to acknowledge the tremendous downsides, unintended consequences and painful trade-offs of major government action.

But if Americans who are “for it” could work a bit more with the Americans who are asking “what is the reality of it?” we might be able to avoid some of the major mistakes we’ve made in recent years.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/16/im-reality/

[CardiacCoug]

I think what people say they are "for it" they probably mean they are for the idea that everybody have access to health care services regardless of pre-existing conditions.

My only experience trying to go through medical underwriting was trying to get an individual policy for my wife when we were first married.

She was 23 and about the healthiest person on earth -- a great distance swimmer and distance runner. But she has always had a prescription for an albuterol inhaler. Honestly I think she has always used this more as a performance enhancer for sports rather than for asthma. But filling out the forms with "exercised-induced asthma" and that she takes albuterol made it so she got denied for insurance by multiple companies.

It was so ridiculous. Do you want health insurance? YES. Have you ever used health insurance for anything in the past? Uh, yeah. OK, then you can't have insurance.

I think people think health insurance was broken and they're right about that, no? What liberals fail to appreciate is that the invisible hand of market forces is better at providing high quality and low cost goods and services than any highly regulated system could ever be. The only way health care will ever get cheaper in the country will be to either get rid of health insurance except for truly catastrophic events (over $20K?) or to go single government payer.

Health "insurance" (third party payers for every single health expenditure) is the problem, not the solution. Health insurance is the reason health care is so ridiculously expensive in this country and so Obamacare or any other legislation that props up the current system of health "insurance" will just perpetuate the problem of ridiculously high costs.

[PaloAltoCougar]

...The only way health care will ever get cheaper in the country will be to either get rid of health insurance except for truly catastrophic events (over $20K?) or to go single government payer...

I would LOVE the former, but expect we'll end up eventually with the latter.

[Uncle Ted]

I would LOVE the former, but expect we'll end up eventually with the latter.

It seems that medicaid only expands... (e.g. as a percentage of GDP):

U.S._healthcare_GDP.jpg

We will most likely end up with an expansion of medicaid but less and less health care providers that accept it. Medicaid dental (for poor children) is already suffering from this problem. Because of low reimbursement rates and lots of paper work a lot of dentists don''t even want to mess with it.

I am guessing that unions will most likely put up a good fight to keep their cadillac healthcare benefits. They might give the most push back against single payer.

[imanihonjin]

This case is starting to get some pub.....it really should worry any Obamacare supporter as it may bring the ACA to its knees.

http://www.newsweek.com/case-could-t...amacare-224747

[byu71]

This case is starting to get some pub.....it really should worry any Obamacare supporter as it may bring the ACA to its knees.

http://www.newsweek.com/case-could-t...amacare-224747

We have seen how President Obama operates. When a glitch or something significant occurs, he steps in and changes the law. With the move Harry Reid and the dems made on the filabuster, the dems will be able to load the courts with Judges sympathetic to letting Obama have as much power as he needs.

So let's say the law doesn't allow a subsidy in cases that really hurts the ACA. Obama by executive order changes it so those people aren't hurt. What are republicans going to do. Fight Obama so that the people will get hurt?

The ACA is a piece of crap. However, the executive branch with the aid of Harry Reid is going to patch and patch and manipulate and manipulate to keep the harm as low key as possible until after the election. I predict the press for the most part will move back to emphasizing the positive. They surely don't want the Senate back in the control of the Republicans.

[imanihonjin]

We have seen how President Obama operates. When a glitch or something significant occurs, he steps in and changes the law. With the move Harry Reid and the dems made on the filabuster, the dems will be able to load the courts with Judges sympathetic to letting Obama have as much power as he needs.

So let's say the law doesn't allow a subsidy in cases that really hurts the ACA. Obama by executive order changes it so those people aren't hurt. What are republicans going to do. Fight Obama so that the people will get hurt?

The ACA is a piece of crap. However, the executive branch with the aid of Harry Reid is going to patch and patch and manipulate and manipulate to keep the harm as low key as possible until after the election. I predict the press for the most part will move back to emphasizing the positive. They surely don't want the Senate back in the control of the Republicans.

I get your reasons for being skeptical. I hope you are wrong, but fear your predicted result is right. Never the less it is going to be a good fight.

[All-American]

Excellent article by a Chicago business school professor about how to go about replacing obamacare.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...93594?mobile=y

[Goatnapper'96]

Excellent article by a Chicago business school professor about how to go about replacing obamacare.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...93594?mobile=y

I am not sure where and I am not sure which one, but I am pretty sure that article proved at least one of VirginiaCoug's points on the subject.