In addition to those problems, the voucher system (depending on how its implemented) could mean that you are shit-out-of-luck if you have health problems that make you a poor prospect and hence subject to very high premiums.
I have a perfect example of this: Around 1990, when I was in my 20s in grad school, some grad students were concerned that the health insurance that our school offered us had a maximum amount it would pay out ($50,000?) So, they got the insurance company that was providing it to come in and offer a supplemental policy with a $50,000 deductible that would insure up to $1 million or something. So, I went to see the insurance agent they had come in. When he learned I had had a kidney stone in the last few years, he told me that this would be excluded a a pre-existing condition. Then, he asked’ “You’ve just had one, right?” and I said, “Well, no I have had 3 over the past decade.” He looked up in his little book for multiple kidney stone events and told me I was “NCA” (no converage available) - the best he could do is write me an accident-only policy.
I mean, geezus fuckin’ Christ…I am a young healthy person in my 20s who is in good physical shape, doesn’t smoke, and even I can’t get health insurance. (Never mind the fact that they were writing a policy with a $50,000 deductible and all the expenses I have had for kidney stones…or anything else over my entire life…probably hasn’t run that high!)
That told me all that I needed to know about health insurance: It can’t be handled by the free market. The insurance companies only want to insure (extremely) healthy people.
I just talked with her this morning about it. The plan they have her on costs my dad $1150 a month, Dad’s is covered by where he works. Her plan doesn’t start paying anything towards her doctor’s visits or anything. She isn’t sure what it actually does cover because her cardiologist and her kidney doc (her kidneys are bad too, but I can’t remember the weird name what a kidney doctor is) submit for payment and she gets a letter saying that its not covered and what not. She would technically qualify for disability I would think because she can’t really remain upright for a long time before she passes out , because to keep her heart working they have to keep her blood pressure really low and things like standing for too long or sitting up in a chair for a long time make her get really weak and pass out. I wouldn’t think its a deductible problem because she spends gobs of money on it a year, she guesses a little over 2000 a month (her meds aren’t covered as well.)
There aren’t any other doctors in her area for her to try. I am guessing its disaster insurance only, but the doctors keep her out of the hospital for the most part. She has only had to go in three times this year.
The best she can hope for is to eventually be on Medicaid. My dad just turned 60 and she is 59, so its going to be a bit before she would qualify being in Texas. She worked on and off while I was growing up so I don’t know if she paid in enough to SS to get anything from it.
My dad is essentially stuck at the job he is at because he is afraid of losing the insurance they do have. Evidently my dad looked on the Marketplace in January or whenever the open period was and determined what they get through his work is better, but I didn’t see it so I wouldn’t know.
My mom told me she is terrified of DT this morning for what its worth, which is strange, because she has always been a Republican since Carter lost.
I was thinking before this thread that if everyone lost their insurance, maybe hers would be cheaper because the insurance company would need more money coming in, but that doesn’t appear to be right now that I am understanding the individual mandate and why that was.
Not to hijack my own thread, but did anyone pay the penalty for not having insurance this year? I didn’t have to pay it last for my 2015 taxes, even though we couldn’t afford the insurance. My wife and I made about 60k last year according to our taxes, but we couldn’t afford the monthly payments for the marketplace. There was a box on our form that we were supposed to check that we couldn’t afford it, and the fee was waived. All of my family in Texas had to pay this penalty, and they made less than I did (average about 30k for each family). My friends all had to pay the penalty as well, but the penalty was cheaper than insurance. Consequentially most of my family saves the tax return they get all year for Christmas presents for their kids. So Christmas has sorta sucked for all of my nephews and little cousins and whatnot. My cousin and I moved at different times to the Pacific NW to get a better paying job so we could finally break the 40k barrier. If where I work can get it together enough to actually make payroll eventually, hopefully I will return to 40k eventually, and then I could get off of the Medicaid of Oregon and maybe some other insurance, but its probably going to cost me more in the long run. We found that when we were making 60k a year the market place was 700 a month for each of us. We support my mother in law as well so it would have been 2100 a month, which would have put us homeless.
The penalty is why most of the people I know that voted for Trump. The only health insurance I had growing up was CHIP, and that stops when you are 18. Nobody in my extended family has health insurance except for my grandparents. He worked at the IRS in Austin and is on whatever the government had for them, I’m guessing Medicaid.
Another reason this election mattered to me: we almost had a President who wanted to sink some serious money into Alzheimer’s research, to try to find a cure.
In my previous post, I mentioned my wife and her mother and grandmother. Now I’ll (briefly) add in her great-grandmother.
The great-grandmother, who died many years ago now, had dementia for several years before she died. The 92 year old grandmother is in the nursing home on account of dementia. the 71 year old mother is still mostly with it, but is starting to show signs of dementia. My wife and I are not just scared about the possibility of her mother’s mental decline, but also about what this might mean for my wife in another 20 years or so.
And my mother started to show signs of dementia as she got into her early to mid 80s. Now she’s 90, and needs round-the-clock supervision. So that could be coming at me in 20 years as well.
(No, I don’t know that any of the dementia patients in my wife’s and my families have Alzheimer’s. Apparently the only definitive way to determine that is to do an autopsy and see if the telltale tangles of nerves are present in the brain. But my mother’s and my wife’s grandmother’s symptoms are certainly consistent with Alzheimer’s.)
So this is personal.
And it is going to be a public health crisis if nothing’s done. The first Baby Boomers turned 70 this year. In another 12-15 years, the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation will be getting to the age where dementia tends to become too much of a problem for their relatives to keep them at home anymore.
Right now, the nursing homes are filled with people born in the 1920s and 1930s. There were a lot fewer people born in that era than during the 1946-64 era that defines the baby boom, plus a lot more of us are living into our 80s. If we Boomers get dementia at the same rate as the preceding generations did, we’re going to have far greater numbers of dementia patients, numbers far greater than our current supply of nursing homes is capable of housing.
I was very relieved to know that we were going to have a President who was going to try to do something about this. Only now we aren’t.
This attitude surprises me greatly. Sure, the Head of Government X has little effect on Country Y for most pairs (X,Y), but there are a few individuals with huge worldwide influence. The only living mortal I can think of whose effect on world affairs is likely to be greater than that of POTUS is Vladimir Putin.
With his power to appoint top officials, sign executive orders, refuse to enforce certain laws, negotiate personally with foreign leaders, command the military, amd propose and veto legislation, the U.S. President has much more power than most heads of government, certainly more than any P.M. in a Westminster model.
The TPP alone would have had a measurable effect on Australia’s economy; that’s out-the-window with the election. Even more importantly, the world economy is increasingly fragile. Brazil continues in its worst recession in a century; Russia’s economy is contracting sharply; Taiwan is threatened with recession; growth in countries like Japan and France remains anemic. And much of the world’s economy is largely driven by American prosperity, the continued urge of Americans to import goods with their strong dollar. I’m not going to predict financial future, but the U.S. long bond yield has soared from 2.6% to 3.2% since Election Day. If the U.S. economy sputters, so will most of the other economies around the world.
And I haven’t even mentioned the risk of war. Putin and Trump both speak of nuclear weapons as if they were “no big deal.” The reach of the P.O.T. U.S. extends far beyond the U.S.
