OBAMACARE, FOR-PROFIT INSURERS, AND THE LUCKLESS PEOPLE UNDER THEM - Another Outrage Brewing
When I first met the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Ombamacare, in 2012, I read and read and read, trying to comprehend what the "system" was, and the only two things I discovered were both negative--and, as it turns out, the sure undoings of this legislation.
NUMBER ONE: The presence of private insurers
A dreadful fact of American health care is the highly touted principle of "choice," i.e. leaving tens of millions of people in the hands of for-profit health insurers. We all know the story: arbitrary rules, refusal to cover per-existing conditions, constant penalties if you get sick, premium jack-ups every now and then, often without any warning, and exclusion of large groups of people private executives deem bad for business.
Allowing this robber's club to control the ACA (contrary to what the administration claimed) was a fatal flaw that now triggers the uprising of the profit makers. Despite fabulous wealth and profits, one by one the giants in the business announce they will pull out from the ACA exchanges because they are "losing money."
NUMBER TWO: The assumption that healthy people seeking insurance will outnumber those in need
Try to convince a 25-year old, who spends weekends climbing mountains or surfing in freezing waters, that he/she needs health insurance. The answer is obvious: young age is incompatible with health fears. Imposing tax "penalties" on this lot was a lose-lose proposition. Who would buy insurance at $300/month when the tax "penalty" is $90 the first year and then increases by minimum annual amounts after that? No surprise then when the profit makers discover themselves obliged to offer true health care to people with often life-threatening conditions and begin balking at the very idea of doing so because insurance is only for healthy people who don't get sick (this species is unique in that it exists ONLY in insurance company internal memos.)
Let's face it, "choice" based on the ability to pay outrageous premiums is no choice at all
If there is a lesson one learns early on in life is that in an "open and free market" choice does not exist when one has no money to buy it. This simple and glaringly obvious discovery is ignored for obvious reasons by all the enemies of single-payer systems. To them bringing the entire population under the protective umbrella of a national health system is the equivalent of allying with the devil. The "alternative" they insist upon has failed since day one but who dares challenge this notion? He'd be instantly declared a "socialist" conspiring against all the freedoms and guarantees under the Constitution.
Don't believe the for-profit "pro-choice" advocates, look at how other prosperous countries do it
The most obvious example is Canada next door. Few up there in the northern forests are complaining--and even those who do complain know they won't be left by the wayside if they are struck down by Fate. Look at almost all European countries. One of the reasons illegal immigration has invaded the old Continent is that because vast throngs from tinpot war-torn countries have realized that, once inside Germany or Holland, they've got it made: they can claim first rate health care just like all citizens of the country and without having to pay a penny. That the politicians of the developed European states are stupid or deliberately working to undermine their own societies, or both, is another matter. The fact of universal health care is one of the foundations of the system--although now being challenged disastrously by "privatization."
We cannot allow private insurance companies to hold an entire society hostage to their profit targets
I know that the mere mention of "morality" nowadays draws cries of derision, but the whole question of universal health care is, ultimately, a moral issue of the utmost gravity--at least for a country claiming to be the grandest democracy in the world. Years ago, I found myself in a top hospital to undergo an outpatient procedure. The place was brilliant, far better looking and feeling than a five-star hotel. Marble floors, a waiting room dwarfing First Class lounges at big airports, a front desk very much like the reception desk of a top rated French hotel, and armies of starched nurses and doctors gliding around in quiet confidence. This hospital though lacked one key ingredient: patients. I walked past dozens of empty rooms equipped with the latest technologies and ran by nurses' stations, fully staffed but without much to do. Later, when I got the $10,000 bill for a procedure that lasted under half an hour, I understood some of the loony economics involved in that outrage (do the math to see what's the equivalent of the amount of late eighties $10,000 today).
Obamacare was an acceptable first try but it needs to go in favor of a single payer system NOT RUN BY FOR-PROFIT INSURERS
Between 2013 and today, my premiums went up by 70 percent. I was forced to buy a lower-priced plan and change insurers in 2014. I was lucky that the "lesser" plan turned out to be far better than my original one. Little reason to breathe easier though: the threat of the for-profit insurers sabotaging the whole system and CANCELING policies at their whim is very real. Few of our "leaders" seem perplexed over what is going to happen to those (millions and millions) of us in real need when the CEOs decide to pull the plug. All's is up in the air--again.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
@blue1950
This quote right here is exactly how I lost my PPO to the ACA.
Pre-ACA Era, I was actually able to afford my private insurance, pick my doctors, and was just fine with my healthcare plan. Post-ACA Era, my premiums more than doubled while my coverage was reduced. In the end I had to give up the insurance and primary care provider that I was with for many years. The ACA did the exact opposite of what it's name would suggest. Being a member of the working middle class allowed the ACA to screw me by raising my rates, lowering my coverage and then threatening to penalize me if I didn't opt in to "Obamacare". I was just fine with the way things were prior to the ACA.
Because of the ACA, my assigned doctors are terrible, my new coverage is mandated (lest I be fined) and the whole thing was a mess to sign up for. My favorite example of what a big failure the whole program started as was their lack of ability to even keep a website up and running. It was such a joke that mainstream media outlets like CNN would have people try to sign-up live on air with a clock running. The sign-up just kept rolling on but no one was able to enroll in a reasonable and timely fashion so they had too keep checking back though out the course of the entire day to ask, "Did you finish yet???"
The whole deal was a joke from day one and many of us had to suffer because of it...
The whole thing was so badly planned that even those supposedly in charge of "helping" were all helpless. The website story is only one macabre example... I struggled for 16 month trying to convince the "exchange" that I was paying the company what the company was asking!!!! They had ZERO interface with the company when THEY were the ones issuing the subsidies going TO the company so that I could get the reduced low income prices... They kept sending me bills for thousands of dollars and then assigning "customer assistants" to work out what was wrong. They ended up accepting my reckoning based on payments through my bank account. I am still waiting for replies to my dozens of HELP ME emails... and all this is just the surface of the tribulation. I pray daily that my present plan keeps working the way it does. It was pure stroke of good luck. I hope you find a similar exit from your present predicament...
You may think that universal health care is a moral issue, but not everyone would see the morality of the issue the same way, and in fact would see a moral issue of not being forced into a government healthcare scheme you don't want to take part in.
There is absolutely nothing open and free about the healthcare market in the US, if that is what you think.
protective umbrella of a national health system -really? What a simplistic and naive statement.
You are obviously a "pro-choice" advocate, which is of course your democratic right. As for the naivete of a national health system, experience from an overwhelming number of advanced countries refutes your claim without difficulty.
"There is absolutely nothing open and free about the healthcare market in the US"!!! I agree 100 percent.
Medical services in Europe and Canada aren't free either. But, how do you explain the ability of these countries to manage these non-free goods (let's call them 'goods') in ways that both balance the books (with varying degrees of success) AND covering adequately the overwhelming number of people out there who CANNOT be "pro-choice" because choice requires money, and LOTS of it??
That you do not want to participate in a government healthcare program is your right and I would offer, if I could, an opt-out clause for you. I suppose your objections relate to the need for national taxation to sustain the system. But, like so many other things in our "democracies," we have only minimum (if any) choice of opting out of many things. Alternatively, if you don't want to use the national health system, be our guest and purchase private insurance at your cost (as many do in England, for example, but, usually, ONLY as supplementary to the National Heath Service.) Think though for a moment what would happen to you and your family in case of catastrophic illness. Your private insurer will kick you out in not time once to go below the "ceilings" and "thresholds" decided WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT. If you indeed want to put your life in the hands of your insurance agents, go ahead, by all means. Millions of others are frightened out of their wits at the prospect, both unacceptable and... brrr... yes... immoral.
In the end, it is the easiest thing to accuse others of naivete when you cannot, really, offer a convincing case for allowing tens of millions of people to go uninsured -- and many of them to die -- because the "choice" you advocate is limited to those with above-average incomes. Your objection, in fact, goes to the very root of what "pluralist democracy" and "equality for all" mean. Both questions of course address issues that are anathemas to "free market" and for-profit control of all of our lives.
Thank you for your contribution.
Before long replies please try to understand what I said.
I said nothing about free services, but about a free market, which does not exist in the US. The government regulates an industry to death and then people claim it does not work.
And I called neither you nor the notion of single payer healthcare naive. Just the simplistic way you put it as if there is a safety umbrella you just need to decide to use. It is a complex issue with many trade-offs.
I understood what you said and I thank you for the further clarification. And, yes, it is a complex issue and I do not underestimate the great difficulties involved. As for regulating an industry, I will offer again models from other countries on how we can avoid smothering the good parts and accentuating the bad. It has been done elsewhere and I can't see why we cannot use lessons and learn from others before we go into trying to learn from our mistakes (NOT learning from our mistakes has become a habit.) In the end, I still believe we need to move on Obamacare etc BEFORE the "free market" writes the death sentence yet again for millions of people who cannot buy "choice." Health care is not a commodity to be traded--and that's the view that enrages many for the wrong reasons in the US. We are again unique in this respect compared to almost all other Western countries.
I, on the other hand, live in a country with full government healthcare where you mostly hope not to get sick. Because if you do ... So government healthcare goes multiple ways.