Let’s say the Republicans are able to successfully to repeal Obamacare, with nothing to replace it.
Personally, I don’t know how this would affect me since I have employer-provided healthcare. I’m sure there would be an effect, though.
But there are 24 million people who rely on Obamacare for health coverage. Some of them are right here on the SDMB, no doubt.
If you are one of these people, would you mind talking about your experiences with the program and how you think will adjust without it?
Nothing directly, but my son, who is dependent upon state aid for his serious medical issues, could be in jeopardy, which would then in turn impact me financially.
Nothing right now, as I have employer-provided health insurance.
However, it will effectively take away any chance I have of ever becoming self-employed again, or starting my own business, as I am uninsurable in the open market without the pre-existing condition clause the ACA provides. If I get fired or laid off I’m at risk as well, not right away, but I may find myself in a situation where I have to scramble to get a job simply for the health insurance.
So no immediate shittiness, but I’ll definitely be pissed & grumpy.
Who knows?
I bought insurance off-exchange this year, since the ACA-exchange plans in Arizona sucked (to put it mildly). I paid less and got better insurance going through a broker. The insurance I got is supposed to be ACA-compliant, so no tax penalty.
But “replying ACA” is too vague to make a guess about what will happen. If Trump waves is magic orange wand and puts everything back where it was before ACA, my guess is that I will not be able to buy insurance at any price in 2018, since I have a heart condition. The ironic thing is that I’m training for a bodybuilding competition, and my HDL and LDL levels are almost off-the-charts (good).
I am self-employed, and losing the ACA could potentially have disastrous results for me.
I was insured through my husband’s employer. When he moved here from Australia, this was our actual strategy, that one of us be employed by an employer offering good benefits. Since I was already self-employed part time and was ready to give up the day job, we decided it would be him.
Then he died very suddenly. I was able to COBRA his insurance plan for 3 years, but it was very expensive. Still, that’s what I did.
Then I was on my own. In Oregon, health insurance companies were schmucking people off regular insurance and into “high risk” categories as fast as they could. First they ignored the continuous coverage proviso in ERISA that forces them to ignore preexisting conditions by simply not offering coverage until the ERISA continuous coverage period (66 days, if memory serves) expired. Then they required me to fill out a massive pages-long preexisting condition application and then find any reason they could to designate me as “high risk.” In my case, it was a note made in my chart by a physician nearly 5 years previous that I suffered from age-related spinal stenosis. I do, but it hardly bothers me at all. I was just curious why my hands sometimes go to sleep at night when I sleep in certain positions. I’ve never had any medical treatment of any kind for this affliction. But that little note in my chart cost me big, I can tell you.
My “high risk” policy cost me nearly $1,000 per month. In my mid-50s at that time and continuing to present, I am fortunate to have virtually no health issues. I really only wanted catastrophic coverage and basic medical checkups. When I couldn’t afford the nearly $12,000 per year for “high risk” insurance, I finally caved and purchased a straight catastrophic policy, self-insured for the periodic checkups and lab work. For doing so, the insurance industry barred me from obtaining regular coverage for 2 years. But that’s what I did, gambling the ACA would pass. Luckily, it did.
I finally have coverage for a reasonable price, with some decent choices (until this year, anyway) for a policy that best fits my needs. If they take away the ACA, I’ll be back where I was before: Self-insuring for most things and carrying a catastrophic policy for anything else. Basically fingers crossed that my good health continues until I qualify for Medicare. But… oh, wait. They’re planning to make severe cuts to that, too.
You can do everything right, but for fuck’s sake, don’t find yourself a self-employed widow and no ACA.
Bad stuff. I’m old (but not old enough for Medicare) and buy my insurance from the Marketplace. 
Maybe if we get enough responses, we can email the link the thread’s url to our Republican Senators and congressional representatives.
So keep 'em coming, folks.
Keep in mind that if you cut medical care… That means LOSS OF MONEY to doctors, hospitals, and drug companies! [jobs]
And the way this country works is that the U.S. Congress is BOUGHT AND PAID FOR by large corporations and special interests…
Congress will get BURNED with a quickness by their sugar daddies in the medical field and will soon see the error of their ways!
To me, nothing (at least, right away), as I have employer-provided insurance.
Many of my friends, however, are potentially screwed, due to pre-existing conditions and self-employment.
My business partner and I dropped the $500/year membership to the local small business association and dropped the health insurance we were getting through their group, and saved about $800/mo by each of us getting our own ACA plan. The company reimburses us for our plans.
Since the ACA was implemented I was diagnosed with diabetes. I know my partner’s wife has pre-existing conditions too. Not sure if we’ll be able to get back on the group plan we left.
If we can, the company will be more in debt than it already is. If we can’t, we’ll be personally more in debt than we already are.
By the way - it has always been my position that there is no way my company would have to pay more in taxes than it pays in insurance premiums if there was a single payer system.
Socialist California has Medi-Cal for the indigent (and, alas, I qualify.)
If Trump strips federal funding away from California (which others have threatened he might do) then Medi-Cal money might be diverted to schools, so who the hell knows what tomorrow will bring?
I agree. We have over 20 people on our plan at work. It costs us about $1,000 per month per employee. We pay 100% of the cost of the insurance. I’d rather pay taxes for universal care.
Doesn’t effect me. I still have my health plan and I still pay a lot.
If my cancer recurred, I’d probably die. What may save me is that I live in a blue state. I have no idea. I’ve been very stressed about it all. Fuck Trump and fuck Paul Ryan. With cactuses.
At the moment nothing, as I have excellent insurance from my employer. But I am also exempt from the penalty since I live overseas.
But I’ve been wanting to move back to the States. And I am going through some potentially serious and costly medical stuff now. I have no idea if my current overseas coverage would meet the coverage requirements under ERISA to allow my pre-exisiting conditions to be covered at a new US employer.
Short version… I may not be able to afford to move back to the United States if the PPACA is totally eliminated. Which means my step kids would not qualify for US citizenship. It could permanently separate my family.
Nothing.
I have excellent employer-provided insurer, but I’d be sad to give up any hope of ever starting my own business or freelancing. I’d also feel sad for friends and family who are entrepreneurs, freelancers, independent artists, or between gigs.
It irritates me that conservatives are completely fine with coercive nanny-state rationing and control of medical care, just as long as it’s controlled by unaccountable corporate interests. But put it in the hands of elected officials, and suddenly Obama wants to put Grandma in front of a death panel.
Not entirely sure about my situation - the Healthy Indiana Plan pre-dated the ACA, but it might be folded into it now. If that is the case I’ll probably be fine but my husband, who was just diagnosed with bladder cancer, will go from “will be treated and, if that is not successful, transferred to hospice for the kindest possible death” to “at home, no treatment, hope we can afford painkiller and a doctor to prescribe it out of pocket”.
He’s been waking up screaming about once or twice a week since mid-December. Without treatment he will die in agony. (That has improved since getting minor surgery to unblock his kidneys but, again, no treatment means a return of this sort of thing).
If I thought it would do any good I would record his moaning, begging, pleading, crying, yelling, and screaming and send the audio to the fucking pieces of shit who think it’s a good idea to dump people onto the street to die screaming in pain.
It’ll be interesting.
One of the reasons that I quit my old job and went to work for myself was specifically because for the first time, I was going to be able to get comprehensive insurance as an individual and no longer needed to work for someone else.
When I signed up on the marketplace, I barely qualified for the subsidies, last year not at all, and the previous, I was getting about $5 a month towards my insurance, whoo! So it is not the loss of the subsidy that is a problem, at least not for me, though I am sure it will be fore millions of other Americans.
I am not sure how this will effect me. I have the money now to buy into a plan, though if it goes back to how it was, I will no longer be covered on anything involving my back or joints, which is rather annoying.
This will have an effect on my business as well. I have considered getting health insurance for my employees, but it is pretty expensive. Most of them are on ACA in one way or the other, so if it gets pulled, my employees no longer have insurance, so that will be an interesting effect. I don’t know exactly how bad it will be, but it will be entirely negative to my worker’s moral, and my bottom line. It is likely that I lose some of my better employees to jobs they don’t want, because they need to get a job that provides insurance.
So, me? I dunno, I may weather it fine, even if it does cause hardship, but I do end up living in a country and community that is poorer and sicker than it was with the ACA.
I’m not sure. I quit my job a year ago, knowing that ACA insurance was available to me. The main reason I was staying in that awful job was because of the insurance. I obtained a Kaiser Gold level policy through the ACA/Covered California exchange for about half what COBRA continuation of my workplace Kaiser would have been. No subsidy for me, our household income is too high. So if the ACA is repealed and Covered California no longer exists, perhaps I’ll be lucky and Kaiser will sell me an individual policy. Perhaps I’ll have to find a full time job, that I don’t actually need, just to get insurance, and will be at the mercy of that employer as to what coverage I’ll have. My husband is disabled and on Medicare so I don’t have to worry about him, at least - until Paul Ryan succeeds in dismantling Medicare, then we’re screwed.