That is f’n amazing. So absolutely spot-on. His acknowledgement that he’s no Lincoln or Roosevelt. . .I have nothing but respect for the humility behind that.
Alstein
4103
I’d take my pre-ACA insurance over post-ACA insurance, and a lot of other Americans would to, because it was 50% cheaper and had lower deductibles. I’m glad I have an exemption because I used the private insurance market before the ACA. Saves me $1000/yr.
I understand there are also people who benefitted, but the ACA was a tax to benefit the poor and sickly that is super-regressive on the middle class. The subsidies should have been paid for by an increase in capital gains taxes for non-IRA funds.
On CNN, former Obama staffer Van Jones, called it the "probably the best opposition response speech ever ", and the panel seemed to agree. I did.
I also loved the fourth part of President Obama speech. But sadly his message seems to have been already lost in the QT3 echo chamber.
The woman completely rejected Trump, and his anti-immigration stance, she acknowledged that Republican bear part of the responsibility for the dysfunction in Washington. She called for a less angry, loud debate, and then singled out members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as showing us a way forward. Even though, I doubt I single one of the members of the church voted for her.
Timex
4105
I specifically liked that Haley rejected the angry nonsense from people like trump.
Nesrie
4106
And you’d have the rest of us foot the bill when you realize it doesn’t cover anything. Why the hell should I cover your piss poor insurance with my good insurance?
Timex
4107
It’s actually possible that he had a decent insurance policy that was cheap due to him being a low risk person.
Nesrie
4108
Highly unlikely. I’d like to have him post the entire language of the plan, not the summary, complete with lifetime and annual maximums a lot of them had, along with co-insurances and list of procedures that won’t be covered. There’s one group that probably did get squeezed more and they’re typically under 25. They’d run into problems as they got older.
He’d still remain a low risk person. Unlike what Alstein is implying, the subsidies are being government funded out of the tax base, not increased premiums on other insured. Yes, we arguably all pay for ACA coverage for the poor, but we do it at the federal level, not a transfer from one insured policyholder to the other.
The only significant reason that would cause his premium to go up would be that the new policy includes coverage for things that he did not have coverage for before. There’s possibly some increase due to the overall insured base being “unhealthier” (e.g., the requirement to insure pre-existing conditions), but it is highly unlikely to cause some sort of drastic jump. Alstein can reasonable disagree with whether the additional coverage was needed or beneficial, but it isn’t what he’s implying with his post.
So I got a little drunk and I’m now embroiled in a Facebook fight with one of my crazy Aunt’s crazy friends because Obama didn’t mention the 10 captured sailors in the SOTU.
cheers!
My pre ACA coverage with Kaiser was way better than any ACA coverage I could get and $50/month cheaper. It had much lower deductibles $2,000 vs $6,500, lower co-pays, and less expensive hospital coverage. What the ACA covered was maternity coverage, drug coverage, and slightly better mental health. None of which I cared about.
ShivaX
4112
Don’t worry once you tried to use it, someone in their department would deny everything and they’d drop you.
I don’t get this line of logic. Yes, you might pay more, but they actually have to cover you now. Before they just denied you service and dropped you, which they could do for basically any reason. Considering we’re talking about for-profit companies, of course the price goes up once they have to actually provide the service to everyone. That shit cuts into the bottom line.
I mean I could sell you insurance really cheap that did nothing. But it would be really cheap, because I’m just pocketing everything and I used the money to hire a guy who is an expert at finding incorrect paperwork. Paperwork that I made so arcane and confusing that 95% of the populace couldn’t fill it out correctly anyway.
That simply isn’t true. First much if not most insurance in the US is delivered by not-for-profit corporations, Kaiser and the vast majority of Blue Cross affiliates are non-profit. In the case of many Kaiser locations they are truly non-profit many were losing money even before ACA. In addition, most large corporation self-insure so there isn’t much of an incentive for their captured insurance units to make a profit.
Second, it is been illegal for insurance companies to drop existing customers just because they get sick for decades. In some rare number of cases insurance companies dropped people because of dispute about them not disclosing prior conditions. During the ACA debate, for the most part, you only heard the person side of it, not the insurance company or, more importantly, the State Insurance commissioners side. It is very hard for an insurance company to drop a patient, and almost always can be appealed to the state insurance commission.
I personally have 1/2 dozen friends who have gone through cancer treatments, in 3 cases more than one cancer. The insurance companies forked over $>100,000 and none had any threat of being dropped. Go back and read Tom’s cancer thread, how many people who had cancer were threatened by their insurance company for being dropped? That isn’t to say that disputes don’t happen with insurance companies, they do. But the believe that insurance companies just routinely dropped customers when they got sick pre-ACA is just a myth.
No, actually you couldn’t sell me or anybody else insurance without the approval of the government, specifically the state insurance commission/board. Many people seemed to think that insurance companies could do anything they want prior to ACA. In fact, health insurance has always been a highly regulated business, and rates and the coverage provide have always been subject to government oversight.
What ACA provided is the ability to switch insurance companies regardless of pre-existing conditions. Most people on QT3 have insurance via their employers for those of us who bought our insurance and were happy with our company, all ACA did was raise premiums and deductibles.
ShivaX
4114
Yeah, anecdotes are great. Want to hear about how insurance companies retroactively denied payment for shit they already approved for my step-father’s shit after he died? Or the things they randomly refused to pay for even though his doctors all said he needed them? Or how about how my mother who worked in hospitals for decades could only just barely manage the to cut through the bullshit and try to make them pay for things spending dozens of hours on phone calls and dozens more filling out paperwork to not get shafted with the bill? No?
I’m glad someone didn’t try to fuck you over while you were arranging funerals and shit. That’s great, but lets not pretend that shit didn’t happen constantly to lots of people and that insurance companies didn’t reward employees for denying coverage to people who needed it. If you want that info maybe you can look up the Congressional testimonies or the thousands of examples that are readily available on the internet.
wahoo
4115
The addition of Many ehb’s caused premiums to increase. This is one reason Gruber and others testified against including many things on Ehb’s. Younget people are paying higher due to the 3 to one band rating. Older people paying less.
Exchange plans are screwed because the Adminstration kept the enrolle period open leading people to enroll when sick and then stop paying premiums when better. That is why many carriers talking about pulling out of exchanges and now CMS trying to narrow the window. Insurers are bleeding $ on exchange.
Good news Iran freed the sailors. I would predict these activities continue.
Timex
4116
The washington post had this nice summary of the SOTU and Haley’s response.
Good news Iran freed the sailors. I would predict these activities continue.
I’m happy to admit error, I honestly didn’t expect it to be cleared up that fast.
The new Washington Post/ABC Poll shows that no one likes any of the candidates except for Bernie.
If you take the net favorable/unfavorable scores for the front-runners, it looks like this:
Trump -27
Cruz -1
Rubio -3
Bush -23
Carson -2
Hilary Clinton -1
Sanders +4
For comparisons sake, the poll also asked folks how they felt about Bill Clinton, and he got a +10 with the highest “favorable” rating of anyone on the list: 53.
I was honestly surprised that Ted Cruz only had a net of -1 or that Rubio had a negative rating at all.
Menzo
4118
Interesting, but it doesn’t really matter. As soon as the nominee is official, everyone who said they hated him/her during the primaries pretends that never happened and acts like they’ve liked him/her all along.
The election will be close, because the country is divided. There are plenty of people who would prefer Cruz over Trump, but they’re not going to vote for Clinton or Sanders ever.
Yes, you’re absolutely correct for these “early” numbers… Bill Clinton in 92, Bush (II) in 2004 and Obama in 2012 all had net negative numbers in January of the election year and still won. But I would point out that no candidate has ever won with an early net unavailability rating as low as Trump or Bush’s. In fact, no one has even been NOMINATED with numbers that low in January of the election year.
I’d also point out that although many (probably most) party-line voters will never in a million years vote for the other party’s candidate even if they dislike their own party’s nod… likeability does tend to drive voter turn-out. There is a fairly strong correlation between late-election favorability numbers and election results and a VERY strong correlation between (late) net favorability and margin of victory.
Yeah, in the vein of turnout, if Hill gets the nom, with the way polling’s probably going to look in NC come November, there’d be little reason for me to go to the trouble of leaving work that day. The local State House D who has been gerrymandered into my 70%+ non-white district here in Raleigh will win in a landslide, as he does every 2 years, while the rest of the state will continue its inexorable slide toward shit and every candidate I’d have even the slightest interest in will lose by a country mile.
On the flipside, if Bernie actually made it through to November, I’d at least go cast my meaningless votes as a show of support for genuine progressivism.
Scuzz
4121
Why do people insist that cheaper pre-ACA insurance was somehow “piss poor”? My insurance was better and cheaper pre-Obama, pre-ACA. I had smaller deductibles, smaller premiums and better options. This myth that everybody with cheaper insurance pre-ACA had crap is just that, a myth.
Now don’t get me wrong. Our health insurance system was broken and people were being denied coverage. But ACA has done nothing to control costs or reduce costs for those who already had insurance. Something needed to be done, I just don’t know that ACA was the answer.
