I think their motive was: we believe this is a good idea, so we’ll say whatever we need to say to get it passed, because, frankly, we know better than these poor schlubs who, likely as not, will vote against their own best interests.
I think you have to understand the context of what’s going on. People like us said that ACA would cause job losses, people to lose their insurance, rationing of care, and blow up the deficit. We were basically called liars by our government.
So this more about vindication than vindictiveness.
Is this the first time you’ve encountered lying politicians?
It’s very simple. Obama believed that his approach to health care was the best approach overall. Other people disagreed. Obama’s goal was to rally the public behind his position. There are winners and losers in every system, and Obama tried to convince the public that winner/loser ratio would be a lot higher than it was actually going to be. He himself thought even the higher number of losers was OK, because he thought the advantages of his plan outweighed this. But others might have disagreed so he shaded the truth.
This is SOP for politicians, and Obama in particular is a past master of doublespeak.
I am concerned for me. I have to change my insurance to a crappier one with higher premiums, higher deductible, higher out of pocket and smaller doctor pool.
The insurance companies are certainly going to lose on having to cover some people they wouldn’t insure before, but with all the millions of new policies I expect it will be a big net positive effect on their income.
$105 a month was a lot for me to afford, $153 is a lot more. I’m a ~40 year old male, no health conditions, non-smoker. I make just enough so I don’t think I will get any tax break on the premiums. I assume my plan is good, it’s one my ex-wife picked out and she works with health insurance in HR. It’s an Anthem plan and they are a major health insurance company, it had prescription drug benefits and a fairly high deductible since I never go to the doctor.
I got onto the healthcare.gov marketplace last night (they let you look at plans now without requiring registration) and saw one or two plans a bit cheaper cheaper but they didn’t list any details, even the deductibles. Most or all were Anthem HMO plans, I guess Anthem is chosen/dominant in VA.
It matters to me because I’m personally the piece of the pie that might be affected by these disingenuous statements. I’m 29 years old, healthy, and buy my own high-deductible health plan. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m watching the mail every day for when Humana will send me a cancellation notification. I really hope it doesn’t happen, but I’m pretty pessimistic that it will stick around given that it is a better deal for me than anything offered on the exchanges. The closest option available on the exchange for me will entail a 50% increase in monthly premium and $1k more in yearly deductible.
I don’t give a shit about what color jersey Obama has on or who gets points on the political scoreboard.
Hopefully my generation will be able to get the American system a little closer to what the rest of the 1st world has.
Assuming reasonable implementation? I’m not holding out hope for that.
More people covered? The question is are more people covered because they want to be or because they have to be?
How many is “many” that will save money? What about the people spending more money on health care & insurance?
Reducing health care costs how? Will that saving be passed on to consumers or insurance companies?
I’m thinking more about how you don’t often hear about people in Germany going bankrupt due to medical bills or losing coverage because they lost their job at Megacorp.
Nice, this was a question that was left hanging since Fotheringay-Phipps questioning my logical assumption that coverage had to get worse for it to lose its grandfathered status. Here’s the answer from from hhs.gov:
So, in other words, contrary to everything Terr posted about his insurance on page 2.
This is all just a lot of flipping out because people have to accommodate changes and it’s irritating. It’s understandable but these people are definitely not getting the shaft in this.
No, no, no! We promised not to press for anything sensible, likes single payer plans, if we just get this one thing! Honest, we won’t come back again and ask for more! See these big brown innocent eyes? Total sincerity. Really, just this ACA, and we give up.
So, if it lowers health care costs it will lower health care costs? Oh, okay. Seriously, you’re right in that the ramifications of the ACA are very difficult to calculate. So, since you admit that, it might be helpful to not make claims that imply the contrary.
One question is how much more will the bill be? While each incident of people using emergency rooms like clinic will create a savings, we don’t know how many more visits to doctors will result.
As far as you be willing to pay more, that’s great. I would too. But how much more are you willing to pay? 10% more? 75%? 200%? 500%? For some it may be simply be the appetite they have for wanting to help others. For others, though, they’re going to have to find that extra X hundreds or thousands of dollars nut changing the way they live. Is that right? Especially for people who may have voted for Dems in large part for the ACA bill that, they were promised, would allow them to keep the plans they’ve had.?