4122

So your anecdote is better than his anecdote or my anecdote? Bad insurance companies existed. Surprise, they still exists. I find it hard to believe ACA somehow will change the way insurance companies do business. I handle insurance for a small company and what your describing has never happened with us. Doesn’t mean it won’t someday, but characterizing everything by your experiences doesn’t always cover everyone’s experience.

4123

It would also have gone upin the past 5 years.

4124

This is why I wonder whether progressives deserve any policy victories. I’m a progressive myself. I hate the fact that angry, scared old white people dominate our politics from state houses on up. But they vote. They actually spend one day every two years or so to make themselves matter.

Much of the progressive base only votes during presidential elections, and a large portion of their natural base never votes at all. That’s why places like Ferguson end up with all-white, conservative government. Because the angry, frightened old white people actually get off their duffs and vote.

No offense to you, Armando. I believe our politics are very similar, and I enjoy your posts. But this particular bit of logic drives me nuts, and I lump it in with the “it doesn’t matter anyway” or “what election?” crowds of non-voters. All these, combined, are why the GOP dominates every level of government, from school boards through state houses to congress. They do the work, so they deserve the wins.

4125

This. Health Insurance goes up every year, and it has done for a long time. Some of those increases may not have been visible, if your employer ate them, but it’s not fair to compare costs now with costs five years ago.

Also, I think most people never really knew what was in their insurance until they had to use it. Happily, I never had to. Until the ACA hit, I never even realized that my fantastic, inexpensive, no-deductibles plan from my employer had a fairly low lifetime cap.

4126

No doubt. Which is why I say ACA has done zilch to control costs. I have a crappier plan now than I did 5-10 years ago, and I pay 30-40% more for it. That isn’t ACA’s fault, but ACA did nothing to address the problem.

The ACA argument is “hey, when everyone is covered costs will drop”. It does nothing to address the costs, especially when the government is picking up so many of the costs. I have received phone calls and seen ads here (don’t know if these are a national things or a Covered California thing) telling people you can make upwards of $90k and get government help paying your health insurance. Somebody is paying for all those people while costs continue to climb 7-XX% every year.

4127

Eh, I think you misinterpreted the post somewhat. The demographics of where I live and vote have made 95% of the selections I’ve made on ballots more or less statistically irrelevant in every election I’ve voted in here and in Tennessee in the past (which, by the way, is all of the statewide and up I’ve been eligible to vote for).

Continuing to bang my head against the disgusting politics of this hellish state won’t effect any change in the world. I’d still make that meaningless gesture for a candidate in Sanders or even Stein, but a hawkish moderate on the wrong side of history and morality time and again like Hillary seems far less worth the wasted effort.

In short, barring a revolutionary statistical upheaval in the next 10 months, nothing I plan to vote in support of has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anywhere. Just like the last 4-5 times I’ve dutifully gone to the dilapidated firehouses and schools my district polls in and refuses to pay to repair…

Edit: Edit to say sorry, this is written from a dark place, and on a cellphone that made too much detail or nuance seem unfeasible. I recognize that hopelessness like mine isn’t far removed from just flat out non-participation. I’ve made a few fitful gestures toward support of progressive policies (been to and even spoken at some town halls, done a smidge of postering in the past, and made donations when able to do so), feeling limited by my job (for the state) and lack of motivation (no one around here feels and believes like I do; why try?), but I know it’s not enough to effect real change in a place like this. Much less because so much of the tide of red that’s swept over NC in the last 10 years arises from parts of the state far removed from the relatively liberal bubble of near-sanity here in the capital.

4128

Same here.

How many of you who are saying things are so much better now actually have an individual-market insurance plan, or have looked at them in-depth? My pre-ACA plan did indeed cover fewer preventative services, but I paid half what I would be paying now (woo, exemption!). My previous plan had less than half the deductible of anything I could afford now, and had basically zero costs above the deductible—the out-of-pocket max was almost purely for out-of-network care. Low-tier ACA plans (again, what I can afford) would see me responsible for basically the first $12,500 of medical expenses for me and my wife, with no insurance kick-in whatsoever. Fortunately, we found a health care sharing ministry which is superior in every way besides preventative coverage to any of the marketplace plans we could buy, so we’re doing that instead. (And an insurance plan that covers preventative care ceases to be insurance in any meaningful sense of the word; it’s a payment plan with the added bonus of lining somebody else’s pockets.)

I work for a small company that doesn’t provide health insurance, since we’re under the threshold size. We have employees across the entire country—California, Arizona, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia, at least—and not a single one of us has a different story.

4129

You’re conveniently ignoring the pre-existing condition problem we had prior to ACA. Remember when people who had an illness or a condition couldn’t really find affordable private insurance and even employer based insurance had language that prevented you from getting care for months when you switch jobs?

And if you had a serious and especially ongoing series illness you would hit lifetime maximums and annual maximums. You could certainly be ejected from your plan by hitting those. You didn’t address that part of my question at all.

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.

I don’t know why you think 100k is a lot in the health care industry. I wouldn’t even put that in the high range for the kind of surprises I’m talking about. You didn’t say much about your emergency care. Did you have a co-pay or co-insurance. Did it vary whether or not you were admitted after your ED visit?

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.

What makes you think most people on QT3 gets their insurance through their employers. I thought we had a number of students on the board. They weren’t allowed to continue to receive their insurance through their parents until the law extended it to 26.

You mentioned no drug coverage. What did you plan to do if you wound up with a serious illness that has pills that cost a few hundred dollars per pill. Was your plan a managed-care plan, a preferred provider network or POS kind of set-up.

You don’t mention what wasn’t covered besides maternity, and yeah there were some pretty stripped down plans for young people that needed to be bolstered. You can’t have all the young healthy people in one plan and all the unhealthy people on another plan and expect the plan to be profitable. Say what kind of preventative care did your plan offer?

For people who had ongoing conditions, who were not in their twenties, that hopped jobs or pulled from the private market it was entirely possible to pay insurance premiums for years only to wind up with a huge bill where suddenly a 40% co-insurance for a 500k ED bill just led to other patients with better insurance fitting the bill.

4130

Anyone with pre-existing conditions, or who couldn’t afford insurance previously, has had their situation improved to basically an infinite degree.
Folks who were already insured have had themselves, at worst, inconvenienced slightly.

This is a beneficial tradeoff for society.

4131

Single payer is the only answer. I pay $1400 a month right now ($350 from me, $350 from my employer, twice a month) for insurance that charges me $40 to see my doctor. And I have a “good” Blue Cross plan.

I try my hardest to avoid going to the doctor for anything because it costs me $40 every time I walk in the door. If he prescribes me something, that’s another $50 to $150 just to pick it up.

God forbid I get a real illness, like cancer, because I have a “deductible” which means I have to pay the first $10,000 before they’ll help. How many of you have an extra $10k a year you can spend on medical bills? Having a baby cost me $2000. $1000 copay for my wife, then another $1000 copay for the baby she popped out.

However much they increase my taxes to pay for Medicare for all, it has to be cheaper than $1400 a month.

4132

I know in California before ACA you couldn’t buy health insurance coverage that didn’t have maternity. I know, I tried.

4133

I am 5 years away from medicare, my wife 3. Our plan is to work until we can get medicare as the cost of insuring ourselves is our largest monthly expense. Medicare and a Blue Shield supplement will work great for us. I handled my fathers paperwork before he died and seeing how that worked for him has given me hope. I just can’t have a major medical problem for 5 years. :)

4134

And the reason those angry old white people get off their duffs and vote is because… they’re retired and have the day off.

4135

Ever hear of absentee ballots? I haven’t missed an hour of work to vote in 20 years.

4136

I agree, except that “at worst” is too strong a statement. With sample sizes this large, the outliers can, and do, get pretty bad. IMO it’s a disservice to those folks to just dismiss their concerns and experience out of hand. Some of those situations are probably very useful for highlighting places where the ACA has rough edges that can and should be fixed.

4137

Yeah, there isn’t really a legitimate reason to not vote.

I agree, except that “at worst” is too strong a statement. With sample sizes this large, the outliers can, and do, get pretty bad. IMO it’s a disservice to those folks to just dismiss their concerns and experience out of hand. Some of those situations are probably very useful for highlighting places where the ACA has rough edges that can and should be fixed.

The thing is though, I haven’t ever heard of any folks who have ACTUALLY suffered signficantly from the ACA. And given the politics of it, I have to assume that if such cases existed, we would definitely hear about them. It’s in the interests of the ACA’s opponents to publicize those cases. And yet there have been none.

The worst cases described were cases where people originally claimed that the ACA had ruined their insurance, like that one woman who was a cancer patient. And then it turned out that the ACA actually provided a BETTER insurance policy for her, which provided not only better coverage, but was cheaper in every respect. She had been campaigning against the ACA, and then it turned out that it had improved her life directly, and she just wasn’t aware of it.

I know people who have had their lives immeasurably improved by the ACA, and I know no one whose life has been substantially harmed by it.

I was not a supporter of the ACA originally, as I was focused on the goal of driving down costs, which the ACA fails to do… but at this point, with all the evidence I have seen, I cannot find a legitimate reason to actually oppose the ACA any more. It doesn’t fix everything, but it improved the system as a whole compared to what it was. And until some better plan is offered, I cannot seriously support the fanatical hatred that many people seem to have of it.

4138

I love the “ACA didn’t fix everything! Burn it down!” school of argument.

As someone who has directly benefited in huge ways from the ACA, kindly get fucked. Yes, we need to control costs. No, the ACA doesn’t. What it does do is remove a whoooooole bunch of dipshittery that utterly fucked the most vulnerable in society in the worst way possible when they needed help the most.

4139

I don’t know all the details, but when my dad was diagnosed with cancer he was denied coverage because it was pre-existing. He owned his own business but was losing too much money to keep it afloat during the great recession, so he retired early at 62, I think. He moved to Florida. One year later he was diagnosed so I’m not sure what he was doing for healthcare coverage, but ultimately he didn’t get any. He was too young for medicare. The ACA had been partially implemented, but the provisions that prevented an insurance company from denying you for a pre-existing condition were still ~2 years away.

4140

In California it’s awesome. You can sign up as a permanent absentee and they send you a ballot and a huge book explaining all the initiatives a month before the election.

But now I live in Georgia and it appears that they don’t take kindly to that sort of thing. I can’t find a way to get an absentee ballot reliably.

4141

You have been making some dismissive, sweeping generalizations lately that show a lack of empathy and perspective. Combined with a writing style that leaves little room for disagreement, it becomes almost maddening to read your posts.

Please try to be less dogmatic if you can.