I get your point but they are not the ones blaming it all on Obama. It’s the thinking that if there is something wrong it must be Obama’s fault that annoys me.
That kind of thinking (and it can apply to any president) keeps the Secret Service up at night.
And what would you have done before? Did you ever try to get insurance on your own? If so, you would have found that most insurance companies would not cover you, and those that would would charge very high rates but not cover your depression because they consider it a pre-existing condition. Then if you got really sick, they would drop you from the plan.
I’m sure you’re not happy about having to pay a premium now, but at least you have a reasonable level of costs for your care. Before the ACA, you would have had many fewer options and they would have cost much more.
Have you thought about moving to a state which would allow you to be added to their Medicare plans? I know that’s more money you don’t have, but if you could move then you wouldn’t have to worry about your health so much.
You just need to stop being poor.
Yep, heard this on TV.
Is he? I thought that was Paul Ryan. Can’t tell the Wisconsinites without a scorecard.*
(Not that either of them actually want to do anything besides show sympathy, and then take away any benefits so that they’re properly motivated to find jobs that don’t exist. But you knew that already.)
- A scorecard, courtesy of the excellent Charles P. Pierce:
Paul Ryan: the zombie-eyed granny starver from Wisconsin and First Runner-Up in our most recent Vice Presidential Pageant.
Scott Walker: the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.
You’ve got that the wrong way around, I’m afraid. The President is already at fault 24 hours a day-It is the naysayers’ job to find events for him to be at fault with. It is the right-wing equivalent to Christians’ “God is the Answer to everything!”
Actually, I get all my healthcare from Canada or Great Britain. It’s better. Fuck you if you can’t afford a plane ticket.
Don’t annoy the Americans. We’re not quite sane on our best days. And there aren’t that many of those.
AND we’re heavily armed!
I’m Canadian, asshole.
How did you afford a psychiatrist and meds before insurance? I’m honestly curious.
This is backwards, Walker has the zombie eyes and Ryan is google-eyed.
I thought this was going to be a thread about how great the ACA is.
My insurance rates dropped over 30% and my individual deductible dropped from $3000 to $1900! My office visit co-pay did go up $5.
Thanks ACA!
MOOCH! YOU’RE WELCOME!
…or something…
Goddamn neighbor’s dog has been barking all night!
Thanks, Obama!
That’s super-simplistic, verging on the idiotic.
Sure the insurance companies use actuarial tables, but I seriously doubt they use the same ones, and beyond that, the real competition comes in with their negotiation muscle with healthcare providers. The idea is that if the risk is roughly the same, and the benefits are roughly the same, they can offer lower premiums if they negotiate a better deal with the providers, thereby paying less and keeping more of the premiums they collected.
You’re right in that it doesn’t really matter to the end consumer much- with the ACA, the plans and premiums are standardized, and for non-ACA people, there’s not much choice either- it’s what your employer offers, or you go to the ACA plans.
Oh, you “seriously doubt”! Goodness, confronted with such rock-solid information, I must retreat in disarray! Well, paint my butt blue and call me Ricky Retardo.
My problem must be that I lack your intuitive grasp of mathematical reality, I’ve always found arithmetic to be very unforgiving. But no! Turns out, if you got a guy smokes three packs a day and considers bacon to be a food group, he might be assessed by GreedCo Insurance to be very risky, according to their proprietary actuarial tables, but MammonGroup Insurance might find him to be an excellent risk.
Wow! I had no idea! Probably everybody else already knew this, but perhaps you will expand further on this astonishing revelation? Are there any actual facts to support this? You know how picky and particular some people are, they simply won’t accept your intuitive grasp of the situation as readily as I. Hell, some of them won’t even accept “seriously doubt” as a fact-based argument, you know how some people can be…
And now that you mention the negotiating power of larger insurance pools, isn’t that rather a good argument for the largest possible pool? Like, single payer? Just as you say, I’m not all that bright, perhaps you’ll help me out with this?
Shhhhh!!! Can’t you see he’d rather have his grievance?!
I am not bump, and I am in favor of single payer, but I think you are going off the rails a little here. As I understand it, actuary tables are proprietary (I am sure for car insurance, but have no personal knowledge for medical). I do know that different companies require different information for setting rates. Sometimes gender, age, and smoking status is all you need. Sometimes you need to provide BMI, and physical results. Companies can slice the data in many ways. If Aetna thinks they can make more profit by giving a discount to skinny people (really more of a surcharge on overweight people) based on being above or below a specific BMI value, while Blue shield thinks that dividing rates into four tiers based on measured body fat %, why wouldn’t they? They probably all commission their own studies to try to find competitive advantages where ever they can.
Most of us belong to work insurance where little of that matters (we may get a non-smoking discount, but that’s about it). But on the individual market they can parse you medical history/conditions however the law doesn’t specifically forbid.