It is given that you had a system in which the vast majority were happy with their health insurance. Taking things away from people based on deceitful salesmanship is never politically healthy.
actually, it’s so unhealthy that it’s never been done before. Republicans never lied and took away Social Security. Democrats lied and took away people’s health insurance. Some will get Medicaid. I’m sure they’ll be so thrilled. Others will pay more than they did. They’ll be dancing in the streets over that one.
But hey, the poor will get better care. You know, the people who already supported the Democrats. The middle class vote, however, looks like it’s going firmly back into the Republican camp where it belongs.
This is definitely wrong. A large number of those people would have still received cancellation notices, with offers to more expensive plans that did even less than their already shitty insurance. That happens every year, with more and more people not even getting the more expensive options because the insurance companies didn’t think they would make money on the sick ones. And that doesn’t even count the hundreds of thousands that lost coverage every year because of pre-existing conditions, including infants.
In fact, is is happening right now, with insurance companies taking the opportunity to blame the loss on the ACA, then offering insurance that doesn’t meet the minimum standards at a higher price, so the person buying it will get hit with either buying more insurance or paying the penalty.
All this furor over cancellations for so few people when compared to the 50 million uninsured. Cancellations affect perhaps 5% of covered individuals or about 2 million, half of whom will probably find better and cheaper coverage.
Can you imagine the controversy in 2017 if a president were to eliminate the ACA with the stroke of a pen? Tens of millions (or more) lose their health coverage. We might not have another Republican president for generations.
It’s a major fucking disaster. It needs to be ripped out by the roots, have a stake driven through its heart, whatever it takes to be rid of it forever.
What would you suggest to replace it? Please don’t say tort reform, that’s not a real answer, it would at best estimates save 2% of medical costs.
Also don’t say across state lines, because that would lead to the state with the most lax insurance laws becoming the new home state of every insurance company there is and only make pre-existing conditions and lifetime limits much worse.
But other than that, I’d honestly like to know what you think would work to fix our system.
First, tens of millions have to sign up first. If only say, 1 million sign up in the end, then 1 million lose their coverage, while 100 million pay less. I think the GOP can weather that little storm.
Also watch the “repeal” poll numbers. It doesn’t matter how many losers repealing ACA creates, so long as a majority wants repeal. So far, the numbers look good for Republicans:
More than 10 million already purchase insurance on the private market. Having made the responsible decision to pay their own way, few will drop coverage under ACA. With over 45 million uninsured today, in four years a good percentage will have coverage under the ACA. Easily, tens of millions will owe their health coverage to the ACA. (Even more if employers accelerate the rate at which they drop coverage to enhance the bottom line)
Forget polls for this discussion, just assume ACA is eliminated in 2017. At that point, with no mandate, essential benefits, ban on pre-existing denial, etc. every single person covered under an ACA compliant policy or Medicaid will see change to their coverage - many being dropped or forced to pay higher rates.
That number will dwarf the number of policyholders who are now complaining about not being able to keep their pre-ACA policy.
Dude, there are going to be WAY more than one million people who sign up for insurance under the ACA; thinking that the number will be so low by 2017 is phenomenally wishful thinking.
I also think it’s worth noting how dismissive you are of poor people, and how willing you are to screw them over. Congratu-fuckin’-lations to you.
Also, and this is the thing that’s getting lost in the GOP bubble, the Repugs would have to expend MASSIVE political capital in order to repeal the ACA, a level of capital that would dwarf the effort that the Dems exerted to pass it in the first place. Never-mind that such an action would erase Obama’s place in the history books - which, let’s be honest, has been the GOP goal for nearly five years now - but an ACA repeal would also TAKE AWAY health insurance from x million people who will be benefiting from it by 2017. They’ll never have the numbers in the Senate to override unified Democratic opposition against repeal, so any maneuvers to which they’d resort in order to facilitate ACA abolition would have to be legally questionable.
Keep in mind, even now when the GOP’s entire power base in DC is vested in the House, they don’t even have the will of the electorate backing themselves up considering that they lost the popular vote in the last election by more than a million votes. So in all of this, you’d be looking at a situation in which the House votes for repeal with no mandate from the electorate, when the Senate resorts to parliamentary tricks to get repeal passed out of its chamber, when millions of people are benefiting from the ACA and will instantly have their insurance retracted, and when the legacy of a two-term president (elected by a landslide both times) would be wiped from the history books.
Moreover, repeal would actually move the US in the direction of LESS health coverage, which would be a certifiably backwards action. Again, there are huge political expenditures associated with repeal that the GOP hasn’t been able to grasp.
And these are the kinds of posts liberals around here get away with. No facts. No figures. Just baseless conjecture.
I lol’d at the “tens of millions” figure. Where on Earth did you get that from? Where on Earth did you get that the rate for health insurance would be higher sans Obamacare (the main reason for the increase in costs is because of Obamacare)? Wishful thinking? Where is you’re concern for the plans that are being dropped now (please don’t pull the “they weren’t great plans anyway!” card)?
Well, my original point was that repeal in four years would impact more people than the current cancellations.
Here is how I calculated “tens of millions” who would be impacted. With 9% of Americans enrolled in the current, pre-ACA individual insurance market and 16%/49M uninsured (easy figures to find in the Wiki) - simple math gives us the size of the market for ACA coverage. In four years, if as few as half have coverage under the ACA, we easily reach tens of millions whose coverage would change if the ACA is repealed. (Massachusetts went from 6% to 2% uninsured in four years).
Admittedly, these are my own back-of-the-envelope-numbers. For a more rigorous set of numbers. here is an Accenture study (PDF warning) which gives a 2017 estimate of 30M covered (second sentence). If goes on to bring up the possible impact of another 30M in ACA private exchanges under ACA regulations rather than corporate or existing government health programs.
That gives an estimate of 60M in 2017 who could see ACA repeal changes to their health insurance - probably not in their favor, but I guess we might get an answer in four years.
People have to actually sign up first. And individuals who were shopping for barebones care may very well decide to skip the more expensive plans they are now asked to buy.
But let’s say that all these individuals do sign up for the more expensive insurance that covers more. Republicans than repeal those requirements in 2017. So what happens? They can choose to go back to the barebones plans they liked before. Not sure how that’s a political liability for Republicans.
The only sure losers if ACA is repealed are the poor. And to address a previous poster, I’m not dismissive of the poor. I’m dismissive of that particular rationalization for ACA because that’s not how it was sold to the public. It was sold to the public as a win for the middle class. THe law should be judged by that standard, and if it’s a net loss for the middle class, it should be repealed. If you want to pass UHC for the sake of the poor, then let’s have that debate and pass a new bill. But THIS bill was not passed on that basis, so using that argument to try to preserve it is invalid.
You laugh at the liberals for posting no facts or figures, then you claim that the main reason for increases in cost this year is because of the ACA? Any facts or figures for that one? I do know for a fact that in the 30 years I have been purchasing health insurance through employers, the rates have always went up. Every single year. Until this year. Same exact rate as last year. I know this because I just finished signing up for my next year program and they actually had the numbers to compare right beside each other.
And they pointed out all the great stuff they were doing for us this year for the same cost, like removing lifetime limits on covered expenses and treating mental health the same as physical health. With not one mention that they had to do those things to meet ACA requirements.
Yes most people are having their insurance rates increase this year, just like always. But every report I have seen says the percentage of increase is much lower than in the past. Which is exactly what they were trying for. Slowing down the rate of increase until they can get it under control.
There are not likely to be any reliable facts and figures on how many people see increases. We probably won’t know the answer for sure until Nov. 2014, when people will vote on whether ACA benefitted them or hurt them.
How would you compile facts and figures of that nature anyway?
many (most?) of those that do see interests will be because of two reasons
a) Their plan now covers more things / give more benefits / has a lower co-pay etc etc
b) Is an increase that cannot be attributed to the act
But you can be very sure, that even if the increase is LESS than the historic growth rate of insurance costs AND the policy contains more things, but has nominally gone up - Obamacare will still be blamed as being “more expensive”
So far the Obamacare implementation has been a political disaster. I’d guess the Democrats were hoping the initial sign ups would go smoothly and be over before next years election gears up. The news about people getting their coverage cancelled will only get worse after Jan 1. I see some Democratic seats lost in 2014. Maybe even several governors will fall too. I know in Arkansas our Governor is term limited. His seat is wide open in 2014. Senator Pryor has been getting hammered for months by attack ads. He may not get reelected in 2014. It’ll be close.
But, like it or not Obamacare is here to stay. There’s no way they can take away coverage from disadvantaged people. The bad press alone would destroy the Tea Party. Somehow they have to get bills passed that fixes the problems. Make it work so it doesn’t bankrupt the nation.
I suppose the Medicaid expansion could be kept, plus the Medicare ‘savings’, which would mean substantial deficit reduction.
You could also keep the insurance reforms and let people keep their bare bones plans, but that would cause the system to unravel. There isn’t much about ACA that can be fixed except around the edges. If any fundamental piece doesn’t work, the whole thing doesn’t work. Which means that it has to be repealed completely or kept completely.
Once the voters see how it works in practice, that decision can be made. The parties will draw the lines clearly, and the voters’ choice will be clear. Keep it, but give it better management(which would actually help), or scrap it and start from scratch.
ACA is here to stay … it’s like a wrecked automobile in the shop right now. You want it out of the shop and back on the road to see what it can do? It can make things better for many people that had health insurance, but are you ready for this? Most of the people getting their insurance canceled did not have a hospitalization plan. I don’t know what good an insurance policy would do without the hospitalization part, do you?
It’s up to the US Congress (lawmakers is all they really are) to make it better. Obamacare/ACA is like an ice sculpture that’s never going to be finished and is melting away as we watch.
It can be fixed or we could go back to telling all of those poor people that did not have insurance, but had pre-existing health problems (you know the ones that are now being treated by ACA health plans) to go back to what they had (nothing but the money in their pockets) …
Just say, “Go on back to where you were … get out of our sight” “Go out into the forest or the desert and die” “Just make sure we don’t see you do it”
We are all watching ACA go down the way it’s going down instead of lifting the benefits up and helping others see the plan will work if given the chance. Lets all pull on the rope together and get it to the point in time that people are praising their new insurance plans.
I believe President Obama is humble in all of this and I didn’t even vote for him.