On the positive side, the first "uninsurable children" provisions kicked in July 1st, and this directly affects dozens of families I personally know whose children with pre-existing conditions were not only uninsurable, but made the entire family uninsurable, even if the family wanted a plan that didn't include the diagnosed kid.

There's still a lot of "bad things may happen" predictions out there, and some of them may come true, but right now I see actual working families who have been financially devastated by medical bills for years (or simply unable to afford treatment at all,) who are now getting medical coverage as a direct result of this bill.

Imagine that. Everyone who had insurance is going to pay more and more for the same or less service.

What are the costs clod? Have they shared any of that with you?

No, I haven't seen any real numbers yet. Part of the deal is you have to provide recent rejection letters from three insurance companies before you can get on the new plan, so all the families I know are still in the process of re-applying so they can get re-denied, and go forward from there.

I did a little preliminary checking just in case... the rates I was getting were 300-400% more than what my total premiums are now.

Up until the moment one of their family members gets severely ill... then they'll be paying "more and more" for a series of services that are still worth far, far more than they'll ever pay in for. That's the whole point of insurance, Merc. You pay more than your actual usage costs, in order to protect yourself from the chance of ever having to pay catastrophic usage costs. If you really didn't like the rules of the game, you wouldn't be carrying medical insurance on your family right now--and yet I bet you are.

Yeah, my understanding is that it's really not for people who are capable of getting any kind of medical insurance on their own. It's for those who are completely unable to get a premium of any kind, and are stuck with literally tens of thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket medical costs. 300-400% of your premium is still quite possibly less than they're currently paying in medical bills, so it's a better deal for them.

Yes it is - or potentially is. Its different if you are insured and there is the possibility of changing jobs. Its kind of a killer actually.

Yea, we carry it, but I am no different than anyone else in that case.

Right, because in the end, you do like the protection insurance gives you, just like everyone else. You just think some people shouldn't get to be part of that group... why? "I already got mine, Jack," is a bullshit philosophy to live your life by.

No where have I made that statement. In fact I said if the gobberment were going to go to the extent of controlling our lives by mandating insurance they should have gone all in and had a public option completely paid for by the gobberment and directly competed with the insurance companies. But they did not, they caved to the insurance companies by not providing the public option. So that puts the complete burden on all of us with insurance. That is a bullshit philosophy to support...

All possible plans would be funded by the people who can afford to pay, whether through taxes or premuims. I agree that a public option would add efficiency, and further believe that single payer would be even better, but we had to deal with the fact that all Republicans and some Democrats wouldn't do it.

But paying more for less coverage is the status quo, not the fault of HIR. I'm sure the Republicans and the insurance companies will take great glee in blaming all of the companies' misbehavior on the new laws, but they've been doing it for years.

They'll probably be on their worst behavior for a while, in hopes of getting a repeal. I hope it backfires on them.

So instead we have traded a good plan for "getting any plan passed" at great cost to the taxpayer that will be ineffective in controlling costs and add to the deficit? The plan is a one party plan, owned by the Dems, passed by an all Dem Congress and signed by a Dem President. It was ramrodded through passage. Not a good way to pass enormously expensive Bills. This will backfire on them.

If that's true, then why didn't they pass the plan they wanted?

Because they had to deal with the details in their own party. Don't get me wrong, if the Repub's were in charge of the whole thing they wouldn't have done any better.