I am 2 years to young for medicare. Too broke to pay $800 month for piss poor insurance. My bills are upwards of 65k and the surgeon still has to do the left side. He said don't worry about paying the hospital they have plenty of money. I make payments to him at 50 bucks a pop, don't want him cutting me and thinking, cheap bastard.

tarheel

This is incorrect. We've deducted between $17,000 and $40,000 in medical costs every single year since 2009. You get to deduct only the amount over 10% (used to be 7.5% a couple years back,) not all of it.

This is not to say I'm opposed to ACA, in that I think these premiums were already on a path to rise in exactly this same way, because premiums and costs have both been skyrocketing long before Obama got into office, and also because I believe in my heart the whole point of going through with ACA after the Republicans killed single payer was to make things worse and get people onto the concept of single payer after all.

Apologies again; I did misread that web page.

I agree.

Is it working?

Not for me. I'm this close >< to paying the fine. Seriously - I just don't have the money in my budget.

But I mean, is it working to put you in favor of single payer? Would you vote for the politician who promised to enact a single payer system?

I have no insurance to pay 187k in hospital bills and the left artery is still to be done. I have applied to emergency medicaid. If not approved I will pay $50 month forever. Still cheaper than insurance. I don't file taxes, have no visible income and don't have to pay a fine. By the way the 2nd stroke was lighter than the first and all is back to normal.

tarheel

I'd prefer it without the deceit but I could vote for that. As a country we'd have to not let every coverage and $ discussion derail it, which means grown-ups in the House of Representatives which seems unlikely. I remember the death panels nonsense and know we have to be better.

Pre ACA my insurance PPO with BCBS, through my Fortune 500 employer was going up 20% each year, with declining benefits, higher co pays and calendar year minimums.

Since ACA its been 3-4%.

I believe something had to be done, ACA isn't what anybody wanted but it's all they could get done, intended to be fixed later to a better system

Don't forget that ACA is very similar to one of the repubican plans which was proposed to counter Hillary's plan in 1993

Honestly, I'm not sure. I see where other peoples situations have gotten better, but for the most part many are paying far more - I am certainly one of them. It seems as though they could have addressed the few that needed better/expanded/any coverage without screwing so many more that were happy.
I couldn't keep my doctor, I'm not saving $2500 yr and I now don't have dental nor vision because I cannot afford it. Just to name a few.

We're all paying more. The rates just keep going up and up and up.

But I think Beest is right. While I haven't crunched my own numbers, my recollection is that Beest's 20% increases per year before Obamacare was pretty close to my own situation.

Obamacare slowed the rate of the increases.

Sure, many of the promises of ACA were unrealistic. But never mind the past; single-payer could improve your personal situation now, yes?

Perhaps Clod, depends on the outcome.

glatt - my increases were nowhere near that prior to the ACA. This is what amazes me - my experiences seem to be polar opposites of others here. strange world indeed.

If you've got pre-existing conditions, get insurance before January. They'll repeal Obamacare before they have anything to replace it with.

And since the pre-existing condition support is a major cost factor, don't expect it to be in any eventual replacement.

As I see the insurance industry there are a number of parallels between it and casino gambling. Essentially, insurance companies are betting you will be healthy and you are betting you will get sick. With actuarial tables insurance companies can predict with exceptional accuracy the likelihood of anyone making a claim and what that claim will cost them. That is one of the reasons that they want to be able to cherry pick their policy holders. Just as a casino will bar card counters and people with "photographic memories" an other people who win too often, insurance companies prefer healthy people over sick or sickness prone people. The house doesn't like to pay out.

The only way it works is when there is a preponderance of losers gambling against the house. Healthy people unlikely to get sick, betting that they will get sick, and unskilled gamblers betting that they will win.

Obamacare is essentially compelling the casinos to allow big winners, card counters, and other drains against the house to continue to gamble, while also compelling non gamblers to also bet against the house.

So the insurance companies have to take the sick people, but they are promised healthy, non-claim making people to offset their costs.

Frankly, I don't see where the government gets off compelling you to have health insurance. Auto insurance is optional in that if you don't want to have auto insurance you don't have to own a car.

They don't compel you; they incentivize you, with subsidies and penalties; much more lenient than the auto insurance requirement. Classicman has been considering opting out.The reasoning for mandatory auto insurance and health insurance is identical, but there's no way to opt out of potentially needing medical care. How would that work? Some sort of "do not treat" tattoo if you're brought into the ER? Like a DNR but for everything?

I'm not worried. I find that about as likely as them rounding up 12,000,000 illegals, shipping them to Mexico and sending all the muslims back to the middle east. Not gonna happen.

You think that if they can't rely on Obama to veto, they'll vote no?

[eta] Though I suppose they can still rely on the filibuster in the Senate to block them.

Some states don't have mandatory auto insurance. You don't opt out of potentially needing medical care, you are self insured.

Only three states don't have mandatory auto insurance, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Mississippi. All have other financial requirements instead:

The question remains, how to willfully choose not to treat those self-insured who don't have wads of cash in their pockets at the moment the piano falls on their head? There was a thread here awhile back about a fire department that watched a house burn down because the homeowners had refused to sign up and pay for the service (it was a remote area with no city taxes to pay for it.)

The outrage in response to that story was palpable--not to mention the homeowner himself was running back and forth screaming that he'd pay it now, he'd pay it--and they didn't even let someone die. We are a society that will treat people if they need medical care. That's a reality. So the rest of our decisions have to be based on that fact, and not pretend that it would ever go any other way when someone in severe need of medical care walks into a hospital.

Not letting a patient die is a far cry from the $2 million in bills classic man's son tallied up.

What percentage of that was racked up in the first 4 weeks of keeping him alive, versus the therapy and recovery afterwards? My bet is it was about half. $1 million is still not a cost we can just absorb for the person who chooses not to pay for insurance.

Emergency care adds up fast, but millions ring a large bell with insurance companies. They don't give a rat's ass about people, only bottom line.

Absolutely. Single payer is the only real way to go, IMHO. My only point is that allowing people to opt out completely is not a financially feasible system, because no one is ever really opted out.

BTW, on the day after the election over 100,000 new people signed up for Obamacare, because as always, folks are going to whine about how awful it is right up until it looks like it's going to be taken away.

But it might not matter, because Trump actually has just decided he likes Obamacare:

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37953528

Perhaps thats because the open enrollment just began and hundreds of thousands sign up every day now through the end of enrollment because - well because they have to.

You don't have to...

Doc says you're gonna die.















In debtor's prison.

That doesn't include the helicopter evac...

No way.

Another day, another new "stupidest thing I've ever seen"

.:facepalm:

Looks like there are competing bills. Here's another, with a less ridiculous name.

Actual numbers. I received the following email from my employer today. Edited for privacy.
$242.12. Thank you Obama. And thanks for keeping the insurance companies honest in this area.

My friend Working Class Marcus will need some of that because his O-care premiums went up like $150.

I think his 17-yr-old son is on his plan too

Marcus will just sell more weed but what about the working class people who don't sell weed?

Marcus might have to sell a lot more when Congress gets done "fixing" Obamacare.:rolleyes:

Prior to Obamacare, did Marcus have better insurance, or no insurance?

No insurance

So, cheaper for him, but ready to fuck the rest of us over when he showed up in an ER with medical needs he couldn't pay for but would still receive.

For minimum impact on his preferred lifestyle, all he has to do instead is pay the penalty (much cheaper than premium-plus-$150) and keep living like he's invincible.

"cheaper for him" Working class, they don't buy things they can't afford. He wouldn't have paid for insurance because it would have busted him. Now he is forced to pay for it although it is busting him. * s h r u g *

So all that is correct, and that will be his decision; now extend it to the rest of the working class, and there they are. Will they pay the penalty? Will they take their chances? Will they sell weed? Will they fuck us over? Will we notice?

And yet, he bought an actual insurance policy last year instead of paying the penalty. He's not forced to pay for the thing that costs hundreds a month and just involuntarily went up another $150 a month. For 2016, the penalty for going without insurance is just $57.90 a month if your annual salary is $27,800 or lower. $40K a year gets you $83.30 a month, $60K a year is $125 a month.

The system is fucked, and I'm not saying he can afford the actual insurance. But he could afford the penalty, meaning Obamacare wasn't the thing that fucked him.

Before Obamacare, MA already had a mandatory system my bother bitched about mightily. When Obamacare came along with the preexisting condition clause he didn't see why he couldn't skip insurance and just buy it if he came down with something serious. :rolleyes:

That's what's so great about the penalty--it's sliding with income, so if you're poor it's cheap, but if you make plenty of money the penalty ends up costing quite a bit more than just buying a policy in the first place. So, okay, he could lie about having policy and not pay the penalty, but it's part of your annual tax bill, which means he's in the crosshairs of the IRS if they ever catch him.

Also, after the initial "let's get everyone going on this new system" rush, open enrollment is now limited to just once a year, so if he gets cancer in January he's fucked until November.

It's not a bad system. There are problems with it that allow the insurance companies to fuck us over, but they were already able to fuck us over in those same ways before. There are now slightly fewer ways for them to fuck us over, but somehow Obamacare keeps getting blamed for all the bases they didn't cover--and not just in a "you weren't thorough" way, but in a "you did this to me!" kind of way.

Life is easier when you have a scapegoat.

I agree with all that, but this is not the bottom line we were actually hoping for when this whole thing began.

Oh, for sure. Me personally, I was hoping for single payer.

That will not happen until we get rid of the present congress, and president.

You say that like it's unlikely. Step one is less than a year away.


Also: I have seen statistical analysis that has convinced me that the voting machines in key states/counties were hacked, and the evidence is building. It's going to get a lot uglier before it gets better, but by the 2020 election, we'll be using paper ballots nationwide. You heard it here first.

It was hoped that any kinks would be worked out in the future, but instead, when people complain about issues where it didn't go far enough, the only response from Congress is to try to roll back the things it does.

Why would people voted in by hacked machines vote to change the machines?

It didn't go far enough because they had to compromise in order to get the people who had bought the congressmen on board or we would have got nothing. The hope was improvements would be made step by step, but the GOP going into full attack mode killed that hope.

Well, the hope is that the hacking would be exposed, and the outcry would be so great that even a Republican majority couldn't defy their constituents, as happened with the healthcare repeal earlier this year. Also, it gives Republicans an "out" to disassociate themselves with Trump, since presumably the primaries were hacked, too. It's a "forgive us, because it turns out we weren't responsible for him after all" kind of move.

QFT.

I'm right there with you, sister. Attachment 62602

This is a national map of personal debt in collections. Not those getting screwed by the system, just those who have fallen behind.
At this link is an interactive map where you can choose a county where it will tell you the debt and how much of it is medical debt.

Good news from Marcus, who reports that his subsidy has increased substantially. So although his premiums went up, his overall bill will be going down. He must have had more reported income the previous year or something. I feel better

good

My premiums went up to over $9200 for 2018. Thats about a $3000 INCREASE... AGAIN!
WTF? There is no way I can afford that. I have opted out of the circus and joined a Christian alternative healthcare plan for under $2000 a year. I a responsible for anything under $500 and the plan covers me for things over $500. Stay tuned ... ... ...