just sent to Cassidy, Kennedy, and Higgins

[DanaC]

*snort*

[henry quirk]

Grave,

Not kosher to project your childhood woes onto others.


Dana,

Coke is bad for the sinuses.

[henry quirk]

On Monday, July 17, 2017, Senator John Kennedy <Senator_Kennedy@kennedy.senate.gov> wrote:

Dear Mr. Quirk:

Thank you for contacting me in support of repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare.”**I am pleased to let you know that I share your view.

Obamacare was sold as something that would provide millions of uninsured Americans with access to affordable healthcare.**Unfortunately, Obamacare failed on those promises.**Americans were promised lower health insurance premiums.**In reality, premiums will increase by an average of 25 percent this year for the millions of Americans in the exchanges.**Americans were promised “if you like your plan you can keep it.”**What really happened is that 4.7 million Americans were kicked off their health care plans by Obamacare.**Americans were also promised more choice when purchasing health insurance,*but a large part of the country has only one insurer offering plans on the Obamacare exchanges.**That’s not choice.*

Americans deserve better.**I am focused on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with personalized, patient-centered health care that will be affordable.**Americans should not be forced to buy insurance they don’t like, don’t need, and cannot afford.**I’m working to make sure they won’t have to for much longer.

As you know, the House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act on May 4.**Also, a draft Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation*Act, was released on June 22.**I am carefully studying it in its entirety to see how it would impact Louisianans.**As I am reviewing, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.**Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely,

John Kennedy
United States Senator

#


On Tuesday, July 18, 2017, Henry Quirk <hquirk@gmail.com> wrote:

"I am pleased to let you know that I share your view."

If so, you'll work to repeal THEN replace and leave all this repeal and replace manure alone, yes?

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's the problem with you right wingers, you think coke is the only snortable, when there's actually a wide array.
Why you can even snort chocolate now, and Ozzie snorted ants.

[henry quirk]

And that's the problem with you left-wingers: you think any one who disagrees with you is a right-winger...

[xoxoxoBruce]

And that's the problem with you right-wingers: you think anyone who disagrees with you is a left-winger.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

Grave,

Not kosher to project your childhood woes onto others.

Childhood? I was talking 'bout last week!

[Sheldonrs]

Republicans have spent the last 8 +/- years hating ACA but never came up with an "alternative" until that moron Trump took office. And what they came up with is so bad, their own party can't get it passed. Most admit they don't even know what's IN it.

Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to repeal the ACA when there's NOTHING to take it's place is just as stupid as that moron in the WH.

[Undertoad]

Just curious, does anyone here but me know anybody who is insured through an O-care insurance marketplace?

[Sheldonrs]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Just curious, does anyone here but me know anybody who is insured through an O-care insurance marketplace?

I had it when I was under-employed for a years or so. Never had a problem with it.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Just curious, does anyone here but me know anybody who is insured through an O-care insurance marketplace?

Not sure. Maybe my brother in law. Either that or he's paying the penalty. I don't know though.

Obamacare doesn't just touch those marketplaces though. It has lots of rules that impact employer plans. Maximum overhead charged by insurance companies is regulated, kids can stay on family plans up to age 26, pre-existing conditions are covered, free annual physicals. That's just off the top of my head.

[Undertoad]

I know, I'm just wondering because my friend Marcus is pretty unhappy. For him it's the lowest tier Aetna, and he claims he pays $325/month, POST-subsidy and still has like a $1000 deductible which he has to hit every year. This was not what I expected, but I'm suspicious of his numbers.

He makes like $15/hour at light construction, but he sells weed on the side so he can afford it.

Pre O-care, he had a heart attack on Medicaid and says it went great and he paid about nothing. This year his hip replacement put him in the poor house.

[glatt]

I have a similarly crappy plan. And I think it costs more.

For family coverage (two adults and two kids in my case) my employer pays $1,438 per month, and I pay $406 per month. There is a huge deductible for each patient, so the plan includes a pre-tax health savings account. I contribute $300 per month to that account and wind up spending about all of it.

So that's a total of $2,144 for four people or $536 per person per month. We are all basically healthy, and insurance has paid for almost nothing. My wife had the OK kind of skin cancer on her forehead and had to get surgery in each of the last two years. Insurance didn't do anything for us except negotiate a lower cost of that surgery, and then we paid the bills out of the HSA since the deductible hadn't been met.

It would be cool if Trump's $12 health insurance for a 21 year old was a real thing. His fantasy world sounds like a nice place.

Bottom line is I think our family has received about $3,000 in health care in the last year but between my employer and me we have paid $25,728 for it.

[Happy Monkey]

Medicaid expanded under the ACA, so I doubt it was the ACA (as opposed to income or recovery from disablility) that pushed him off of it (though Pennsylvania did try their own thing in 2014-2015 before switching to regular Medicaid expansion).

According to this page, assuming he's single and works exactly 40 hrs/week at $15 ($31200/yr income), and assuming I did my calculations right, post-subsidy caps should be $221/month, but I'm guessing those assumptions aren't completely accurate.

[DanaC]

The republicans and the insurance industry lobbyists made it impossible to get the Obamacare plan as initially conceived through - there is every possibility that the unwatered down plan might actually have delivered a good result. But they chiseled away much of what was truly novel because they were ideologically opposed to anything that smacked of socialism or in any way curbed the freemarket elements of healthcare and the end result was a deeply flawed system - republicans were then the loudest voices against the system for being flawed.

The same thing happens with conservatives here. They defund a public service to the point that it is operationally crippled and then say: look at that mess, it is operationally crippled, we should bring in freemarket business leaders to make it work properly.