Effect of ACA on politics now that it is going into effect

  1. So reading up on a cite to a previous question I wrote. Apparently, illegal immigrants do not have to buy insurance and will not be penalized if they do not have insurance.

  2. Many people are having their policies cancelled despite President Obama promising you could keep you plan in you wanted.

  3. Perhaps this is better answered tomorrow when the exchange prices are coming out but it seems many people now are going to pay more for their coverage to cover the high risk pool.

  4. Individual coverage is limited to 9.5% of your income but the price is unlimited for covering spouses and children - but you still need to cover them.

  5. Estimates of those previously uninsured that will now have access to insurance has been cut in half by Sibilius. Mostly because the Medicaid mandate was ruled unconstitutional.

So starting tomorrow when exchange numbers come out and starting 1/1/14 when people need to pay out of pocket.
a) What will the reaction of average Americans be.
b) What impact will it have on 2014 midterms / 2016 presidential election
c) What impact on the repeal Obamacare or change ACA will there be?

I don’t recall Obama promising that the various private insurance companies would be forbidden from modifying or ending any given plan they offer.

In 25 years, Republicans will be claiming that Obamacare was their idea all along and that Obama was a conservative.

Just like they do with MLK, Lincoln, and every other person who was opposed by conservatives on the wrong side of history.

I’d have to find it, but there is a speech he gave where he said you could keep your insurance plan if you wanted to. I believe I saw it on the Jon Stewart show a week or so ago. Of course that means that insurance companies could come up with more plans if they wanted.

Wow, not having insurance is protection against deportation now? Talk about your unintended consequences!

There are likely to be some birthing pains, confusion and wrinkles to work out at the start but in the long term as people get used to the system and realize that the government isn’t out to kill grandma, they will wonder what the big fuss was about and wonder why the Republicans were so opposed to the extent that they would throw a hissy fit and shut down the government. Eventually (in the next decade) even the Republican states will get their collective heads out of the sand and get with the program for the good of their citizens.

Most people will find that the horror stories that Republicans said would come to pass under Obamacare will fail to materialize. For the vast majority of people it won’t make a difference. If they are Republicans they will find something to complain about (if Obama gave them a free steak dinner they would complain that it was overcooked). If they are Obama supporters they will thinks it was a good idea. Some people might feel worse under the system. Those who had bare bones policies that didn’t actually cover them will find that they plans they had are no longer offered and so they have to pony up more dough to actually get real coverage. Some others might be affected in weird ways by the family loophole (which should be closed). But these will be outnumbered by the previously uninsured and in many cases uninsurable who now have coverage.

This is the reason the Republicans are so eager to kill the law now before anyone realizes that like same sex marriage didn’t destroy the family, Obamacare won’t destroy America.

Which you can. Nothing in the ACA is forcing you to change plans. Whether or not your provider chooses to continue offering a given plan is outside Obama’s ability to control.

The effects so far is to see the Republicans attempting to deny that there is a law to begin with.

‘Hey, the American public can not tell us that we are against the law, or above the law or that we are making a mockery of the old “we are a nation of laws” bit if we call the ACA a bill no?’

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/325277-gop-lawmakers-bridle-at-calling-obamacare-the-law#ixzz2gOPPlA6s

The sad thing is, I would not be surprised if their internal polls are telling them that their ruse is working with a lot of the people in their base.

“I’m not touching ya! I’m not touching ya!”

Depends on who you are.

University of Virginia Cuts Some Health Benefits, Citing ObamaCare Costs

United Parcel Service has told its white-collar employees that it will stop providing health care coverage to their spouses who can obtain coverage through their own employers, joining an increasing number of companies that are restricting or eliminating spousal health benefits.

And there are those whose hours and pay have been cut back due to the PPACA.

Which section of the ACA requires the University of Virginia to cut some health benefits?

There is none.

It is not within the power of Obama or the federal government to prevent an employer/provider/etc. from ever eliminating a plan that currently exists, and Obama’s statement was never intended to mean that every existing provider would be obligated by law to continue providing its existing plans without change from now until the heat-death of the universe.

The ACA raises taxes on some health insurance plans, requires plans to cover a long list of things which they previously weren’t required to cover, forces all plans to accept patients with certain pre-existing conditions, and does many other things which raises the cost of health insurance. As a result, in many cases where it was previously financially feasible for an employer to offer health insurance, it no longer is, and cutbacks are force. The University of Virginia is one such employer.

I’m waiting for the part where you demonstrate that Obama is responsible for the business practices of private insurance companies.

All of which is beyond the federal government’s ability to control, unless your argument is that Obama should be exerting more authority over the healthcare industry.

Obama’s statement that you can keep your current plan if you want to was intended as a counterargument against Republican conspiracy theories that the government was going to force everyone to quit their HMOs and join some sort of new program, not as a guarantee that no company in America would ever ever change their coverage options.

So the actual contents of the PPACA, which was written and made law by the federal government, is “beyond the federal government’s ability to control”? As Treebeard once said, that doesn’t make any sense to me.

If the federal government had not decided to pass a piece of legislation that caused health care costs to skyrocket, then UVA and others would still be able to afford to offer health insurance to the spouses of employees, and other cuts would be avoided. But the federal government decided to pass that legislation, leading to many people losing the health insurance that they had. Since the federal government made the decision to pass that legislation, the federal government had control over the matter, by definition of the word “control”. Saying Obama “did not guarantee that no company in America would ever ever change their coverage options” is irrelevant, since no one is suggesting that Obama guaranteed such things.

That was the Republican plan anyhow. The ACA is based on the template Republicans that the Republicans recommended to use against the Clinton Health care plan.

You are falling for the propaganda, the prices were already skyrocketing, Obamacare or not.

The point stands then. The tree you need to bark at was with the current health care system that we have that is way more expensive than the one other nations have and does not cover all the people. And prevents most competition, as Hans Rosling put it, it is really sad to see America deciding that there should not be real competition in health care.

I’d like to know how many GOP congresspeople held office in the mid 90s. You can’t really hold the individual members to support of a plan they may not have supported in the first place.

I’d honestly like to know the answer to this. If it turns out that the majority of GOP congresspeople were in office in the mid 90s, then you can expect them to still support the ACA if they want to be consistent.

Indeed, my coverage is increasing in price, but less than I expected it to.

This guy, for starters.

That was not the point, the point was that there is a reason why it is so “hands off” to businesses. In a better environment a similar plan (and similar to Romney’s too) would had been proposed by Republicans as it still allows business to compete; the implied point is also that most Democrats are not liberal, but also look at business for handling most of the effort; and yes, I do take into consideration that many Democrats are also in favor of big businesses. As the cartoon of Rawls points out, the current fight is between the moderate center-right against the extreme right wing.

Indeed, elsewhere I noticed that the current insane profits are a part of the expense of the current system, it is logical that a lot of jobs are not here because companies are not hiring more people because instead they have to pay for the extra expense of high insurance prices thanks to having less competition.

Here’s 26 Republicans who voted against Obamacare who were also in Congress at the time of Hillarycare.
C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla. Jan. 3, 1971
Don Young, R-Alaska March 6, 1973
Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. Jan. 3, 1979
Tom Petri, R-Wis. April 3, 1979
Ralph M. Hall, R-Texas Jan. 3, 1981
Harold Rogers, R-Ky. Jan. 3, 1981
Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J. Jan. 3, 1981
Frank R. Wolf, R-Va. Jan. 3, 1981
Joe L. Barton, R-Texas Jan. 3, 1985
Howard Coble, R-N.C. Jan. 3, 1985
Lamar Smith, R-Texas Jan. 3, 1987
Fred Upton, R-Mich. Jan. 3, 1987
John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn. Nov. 8, 1988
Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. Jan. 3, 1989
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. Aug. 29, 1989
John A. Boehner, R-Ohio Jan. 3, 1991
Dave Camp, R-Mich. Jan. 3, 1991
Sam Johnson, R-Texas May 8, 1991
Spencer Bachus, R-Ala. Jan. 3, 1993
Ken Calvert, R-Calif. Jan. 3, 1993
Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va. Jan. 3, 1993
Peter T. King, R-N.Y. Jan. 3, 1993
Jack Kingston, R-Ga. Jan. 3, 1993
Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif. Jan. 3, 1993
John L. Mica, R-Fla. Jan. 3, 1993
Ed Royce, R-Calif. Jan. 3, 1993

I leave it to you to figure out if they supported individual mandates and other similar features of the ACA when they were conservative ideas in the 1990s.