Sorry I missed this the first time - please check - eligibility, as I understand it, is NOT:
“Access to other insurance”
BUT
“Access to Affordable insurance”.
I’m getting the impression that “Affordable” is defined as something on the order of 9% of income.
If your employer policy requires 10% of your salary/wages as premiums, you just might qualify.
For those with high deductibles, what if the
(annual deductible / 12) + monthly premium > 9% (or whatever the limit)?
Does it still qualify as “affordable”?
So far, the calculations ask only number of persons in household and their ages. It does not ask about existing coverages or options for coverage.
I’m thinking, unless your name is Gates, Buffet, or Rockefeller, maybe filling out an application just might not be the worst use of an hour or so.
Dental and vision care is critical for children - nail the problems before they get fully developed. Think Orthodontist. Don’t know if RK or other such treatment is preformed on the up-to-18 age group or not.
For most people, vision is not an issue beyond corrective lenses. I have no idea if diseases of the eye are lumped under “vision” or “just another disease”.
Why is it less critical for adults? That’s like saying adults don’t need to see an MD, either. We’re done growing after all, it’s not like adults get sick or our bodies wear out over time… oh wait.
Corrective lenses are pretty damn critical too, unless you want half-blind people driving themselves to work. Vision can fluctuate over time, as well, so it’s not like you can get your one pair of glasses as a kid and expect to wear them for the rest of your life. I HAVE had to go so long between eye exams due to lack of money that I could no longer read at any kind of distance – is that someone you want driving on the streets? Teeth wear out. Gums recede. Cavities develop. This does not magically stop happening on the 18th birthday.
Not to mention that adults on occasion get orthodontia too.
Maybe you should move to a red state so you won’t need to worry so much that the first cut of national coverage didn’t tuck you in at night. You can worry about whether or not the Courts allow the Federal government to buy insurance for you at all.
I have 20/200 and am not complaining.
You want dental and/or vision insurance?
Buy it. I do.
For all the grief raised by Pubbies about Socialism, your complaint that it does buy you glasses is rather pathetic. My last pair of glasses cost about $100.
Since that was in response to my earlier post about a $2000/year plan: my name isn’t Gates, but I work for a company he founded: I’m 100% sure I don’t qualify. My company is actually famous for it’s (now very slightly less) excellent benefits. They make up for the borderline psychotic review system.
Then you’re either lucky or have a prescription the discount vendors can fill. My glasses run about that same amount, but Mrs. “Crappyeyes” TimeWinder has never in her life had a pair that cost less than about $800 in today’s dollars. That’s a prohibitive cost for the kinds of people the ACA is aimed at helping most, and without them she’d certainly be unable to do most jobs.
Since the poor (at least in CA) can get basic health insurance free, and better-than-my-500/mo for a $100, the savings on other health matters would quite possibly free up enough money for either glasses or vision insurance to pay for them.
I’ll be damned if I"m going to quibble over vision or dental programs when even getting ANY form of universal coverage in this country.
I thought I’d see grass legalized (years ago, actually)
Did not expect to live long enough to see a black person elected President
It was a toss-up on gay marriage
But Universal Healthcare? Never dreamed.
You are lucky enough to have a fabulously rich, and generous employer.
Few have 100% employer-paid policies, and the number is not rising.
This is a quibble over benefits few Medical policies have. I have Blue Shield of CA PPO for Medical. The dental is a separate policy.
Color me surprised if the Exchange policies follow the same model.
Who knows - there may be a provider of some ACA plan in some state which DOES include either or both of those coverages - the Fed guidelines do not require it. Insurers can offer it if they chose. The guidelines only specify MINIMUM coverage at each level, not MAXIMUM. One of the 5 or 6 providers available to me is much higher than the others - it may well be that it includes dental or vision benes.
Good lord people - a friggin’ miracle happens and the US gets universal coverage, and still people want to whine.
If the Red States get their way and prevent their residents from receiving subsidies, you can bitch.
Or you can try to get rid of the morons who are still fighting (41 bills to destroy ACA have now been enacted by the House). They will let the US default on its bills before they will accept it.
Dental and vision may not be cheap, but it isn’t scary expensive in the way medical emergencies can be. I’m never going to go to the dentist and find out I have a 50K problem.
Oh, yeah. It’s not the price that gets them bumped. If they are approved for your diagnosis, it is cool; if it is an off-label application, it won’t be approved. Unfortunately, her illness was so rare it was all off-label. She was taking Viagra three times a day for pulmonary hypertension, but they wouldn’t pay for that. Pfizer donated it, if you can believe that; $900 a month of Viagra, at no charge. They also wouldn’t pay for Cellcept, because it was only approved for kidney transplant patients.
I can’t imagine any way for a one-size-fits-all program to handle something so off-the-wall and still not be handing out money for anybody who can fill out a form.
Being cynical, I’m guessing Pfizer was not acting completely out of compassion so much as to rack up a case study to establish an additional use of the drug, or just to document that it did no harm.
My insurance once offered to assign an RN to my case - that’s as close to “personal service” I"ve heard.
And they still won’t cover a $150/month pill to keep me from using a drug combination which generally makes the news in reference to a suicide. And that’s just to get to sleep. Even after my doc sent them a letter explaining the situation.
I’d also like to point out that even $100 is a fucking lot of money when your income hovers around the poverty line. Try squeezing an extra $100 out of your budget when your income is $12,000-$15,000 (roughly 100-130% of the Illinois poverty line).
Sure, Obamacare is better than nothing, and I’m glad we got something pushed through in spite of the obstructionism – I’ve already said that. But it very plainly doesn’t go far enough – it should be single-payer, but it won’t be for a while – and I, for one, am sick of institutionalized discrimination against adults in these kinds of policies. I need dental and vision NO LESS than kids do, but I can’t get it because a bureaucrat somewhere decided it wasn’t “essential” after I grew up (which is, as I’ve pointed out, bullshit), and I’m too bloody poor to buy my own, which is kind of the POINT of the ACA – you know, Affordable Care?
Treatment for TMJ – a relatively common ADULT ailment that is generally accompanied by anywhere from a little to a lot of chronic pain – is nearly always referred though a dentist.
No, I can’t get basic healthcare for free. In fact, there’s very little assistance I qualify for. Not unless I’m willing to crank out babies. And if I can’t afford a pair of glasses, how on earth am I going to pay for a kid? (Aside from the fact that I don’t want one.) I love how you just admonish me to “buy it” for vision and dental, as if we haven’t been talking about making healthcare accessible to people who are poor.
So yes, I’m going to speak up about this (you can dismiss it by calling it whining, whatever), because we need to start having public conversations and bringing out into the open why exactly ARE people okay with this kind of institutionalized age discrimination?
If you are below the Federal poverty line, and still can’t get at least the 60% (bronze) plan free, why not?
If you can’t get it, why do you care what it covers?
Sounds a lot like bitching for the sake of bitching.
If you can’t scrape up $100, you can’t afford much in the line of medical care.
If glasses are your biggest body-related issues, (you aren’t going to die from poor eyesight, so don’t call it medical) is vision, you don’t have much to complain about.
And, before you make the clever argument that poor vision can lead to any number of fatal accidents, well, consider the point made - and also dismissed by rational persons.
You know, just because they call them strawmen, doesn’t mean you have to print them one line at a time like pieces of straw. Or maybe you do; I haven’t seen so many in one place before.