Genuine question: are most Americans actually against the affordable health care act? No judgement, just curious to know why some people are so against Medicare.
Not really. A lot of people are pro obamacare. I was never for it. Yes I want free healthcare but unfourtunately the health care sistem here is so complicated and sometimes corrups that I knew insurances will find a way to still F%#k the people. And they did so now it is a whole mess. It benefited some but not others. Overall I get the sense most people do liked it initially because they didn't think it could go wrong while others don't like it because they believe is socialism and socialism is evil. I do agree most of the time socialism is evil but if a country is big enough to provide health care to its people or at least at a reduced rate, it should. But there is too much greed. For example, many clinics don't take obamacare because of lowet reimbursement from insurances. So people have less options.
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· 7 years ago
a lot of the people who are against it just don't want to pay an extra tax so the government can provide universal healthcare.
And for OP: firstly, no one pays these bills personally. They either have insurance or get other financial help. Every public hospital has funds to help those who cannot pay, and social workers to help find other funding, at home care, etc.
Secondly, do you really think it's free in Canadia??? SOMEONE still pays your bill.
Yet again, guestwho is correct. There is no such thing as "free". "Free" simply means someone other than you is paying for it.
Competition is the only thing that can possibly bring down the cost of healthcare. There is no need to blame big insurance or big hospitals, unless they act outside the law. The blame needs to fall on the government who failed create an enviroment that attracts or even allows competition.
If a hospital is charging to much, add another independent hospital in that market and watch the prices fall. Insurance rates to high? Allow insurance companies from all over the country to put a bid in and watch the prices fall.
The people are going to have to put some skin in the game too. If you're unhealthy overweight, live a dangerous lifestyle or choos to smoke, you better be prepared to pay more for your high risk lifestyle.
Agree with guestwho. Hospitals would still see you and I think we jusr need better screening for medicaid and medicare so people that really need it can benefit more.
Pt. 1 - Okay, so insurance - the entire industry - is based on the idea of cost-sharing. Instead of one person who has a huge loss paying it all themselves, each person who is exposed to the potential for that loss pays a small amount, and that goes towards covering the loss of the "lucky" person who actually experiences the loss. The real basic version of this in the modern market is called a Mutual insurance company, and unused premiums that aren't either used to offset processing costs (such as paying the people who actually write the policies, etc.), to pay off losses, or to ensure the financial stability of the fund are returned as dividends to the consumer. Most insurance, esp. health insurance, however, is run by for-profit corporations. And, while it's relatively easy for a for-profit corporation to get out of hand if not carefully regulated, in most types of insurance, I have no problem with this. A corporation is, at base, a machine to generate money/value for (con't)
Pt. 2 - the people who have invested its capital. And they do it remarkably well, especially in terms of cost control - most insurance maintains profitability both through investment and through what is called "underwriting discipline," which consists of carefully pruning the types of risk retained in order to mitigate losses and maintain a reasonable "combined ratio," which is a fancy way of working out the cost-to-profit margin. However. There are certain reasons this is not a very good model for health care management. One is that the very nature of underwriting discipline eventually disadvantages the very people whom healthcare coverage is intended to benefit the most. For instance, one thing the ACA mandates is the removal of "pre-existing conditions," a cost control method that allows companies to cut out coverage of chronic conditions or conditions arising from injuries that a person suffered before coverage. For instance, if my (39-year firefighter) father were to need (con't)
Pt. 3 - to seek new coverage in a marketplace in which pre-existing conditions are allowed, he might not be able to find coverage which handles his diabetes. The second is a related problem: the costs of *not* providing health coverage to people who need it actually go far beyond the individual themselves. When we lose someone from the work force because of poor health coverage and poor health care, we lose most of the investment made into their education, the expertises they've built over the years (and I assure you, anyone who's been in a call center over two years is probably a better therapist than some licensed therapists I've been to, so don't discount "unskilled labor" as nonvaluable), their investments in the economy, not to mention the cash flow into the economy that we're not getting from whoever happens to be their social support structure and now paying their rent instead of buying things for themselves, the kid who now has to drop out of school to care for Mom (con't)
Pt. 4, final - their part-time job, etc. I'm not saying full socialized health care is the way to go, but the ACA at least made an attempt at fixing the GLARING problems with a minimally regulated "free" market. Remember, a free market is only free if you're the one who owns the capital. A "free market" only exists without anti-monopoly laws, and we saw what happened back before we had those.
Tl;Dr
But the so-called "affordable care act" has done nothing but drive up costs, drive insurers out of markets or entirely out of business, and has not only NOT insured all those poor souls we were told were about to die immediately if this monstrosity wasn't passed (we still have about the same number of uninsured as before), but the people who do have insurance can't afford to use it because the copays and deductables are so astronomically high. Furthermore, and let me try to be as clear as possible for those of you with limited cognitive abilities, It. Was. Meant. To. Fail.
The Democrats' plan all along has been to create such a mess of our healthcare system that we would beg them to fix it once and for all. That means government run, socialized healthcare. Obama is on video admitting this to a group of union thugs in 2006, and many other Dems have talked about this for decades. In fact, the modern push for socialized healthcare in this country began under Kennedy.
Actually, the original ACA had a lot of safeguards against exactly those problems. Until Repulican opposition stonewalling gutted most of the useful provisions and passed a version without the majority of original protections. And why are you bothering to reply if you're too lazy to read the equivalent of a single page of a novel?
Slightly incorrect there.
The Republicans didn't have enough votes at the time to do a damn thing. The ONLY holdouts were Democrats who had to be bribed into voting for it. Try doing a little research somewhere besides the Huffington Post or the DNC website.
Noooo, the Republicans had the one vote necessary at the time to make up 41 votes in the Senate due to an emergency mid-term election, and in the form the bill was originally proposed to the Senate, it required 60 votes to pass. It had to be radically changed and passed instead as a budget reconciliation, bringing the required threshhold down to 51 votes, from whence it returned to the House to be reapproved and then could go on to be signed. Maybe you should try reading something other than Fox or Breitbart.
Also, in regards to having roughly the same number of uninsured - per CDC reports, the numbers of uninsured persons fell from 16.0% to 8.9% between Jan. and June 2016.
Yeah that's a false number. But the point remains that the only people any better off no matter how you want to spin it are those on welfare and the public exchanges who get taxpayer "subsidies". In other words, I'm paying for their freaking cold medicine and condoms while I can't afford to go get my cholesterol checked!
Really good stuff. Yeah, let's have more of your socialist lies and BS.
I'm self-employed, before the "Affordable" Care Act I paid about $300/month for insurance, now I'm paying $729/month. So, yeah, not a big fan of the ACA.
Many medical bills are unavoidable. But many are very avoidable. I have the extreme fortune of being on the health end of the spectrom and i'm greatful every day for that. So if you're asking me if i would like to financially help out a person who developed MLS, or a family who's baby was born with complications, sign me up in a heartbeat. If your asking me to financially help a lifelong smoker pay for lung cancer treatment or a 25 year old's leg reconstruction after his parachute didnt open while he was "chasing thrills"......dont hold your breath.
So my issues with obamacare are two fold:
1)given the inefficiency of our current government, if it completely takes over healthcare, it will end up looking like the current collegiate education system (an open checkbook to colleges/hospitals that will cause a mind blowing increase in prices)
2)obamacare puts far to much dependancy on the government. As government dependancy goes up, freedom goes down PERIOD.
The opposition to public health care asides the "principles" crowd is that public almost anything sucks. We whine about public schools: crowding, teacher pay, quality, restrictions on where you can go, etc. so many hear public health care and realize that there's no reason to believe it would be any better. Then there's corruption, the fact your taxes increase to pay healthcare but they take the money and remodel buildings or buy new fire equipment; or it just gets embezzled (and/or used to pay a politicians buddy's company.)
It's a cycle. The law says you can't have one price for uninsured and charge insurance a different bill. Insurance companies are free to use their size (if blue cross doesn't allow members to go to you, you lost a lot of customers,) to push around hospitals for discounts though. So if the hospital charges $3 for soap, insurance pays $2. Hospitals raise it to $6 so they get $3 from insurance. Then There's middle men, companies and reps looking for profit.
Did your doctor ever ask you half an hour before operation "Did you (the patient) buy the anesthesia? " If not, STFU and be fucking proud of the best country in the world called USA, you whinny little sh*ts!! Or I swear the god......
Secondly, do you really think it's free in Canadia??? SOMEONE still pays your bill.
Competition is the only thing that can possibly bring down the cost of healthcare. There is no need to blame big insurance or big hospitals, unless they act outside the law. The blame needs to fall on the government who failed create an enviroment that attracts or even allows competition.
If a hospital is charging to much, add another independent hospital in that market and watch the prices fall. Insurance rates to high? Allow insurance companies from all over the country to put a bid in and watch the prices fall.
The people are going to have to put some skin in the game too. If you're unhealthy overweight, live a dangerous lifestyle or choos to smoke, you better be prepared to pay more for your high risk lifestyle.
But the so-called "affordable care act" has done nothing but drive up costs, drive insurers out of markets or entirely out of business, and has not only NOT insured all those poor souls we were told were about to die immediately if this monstrosity wasn't passed (we still have about the same number of uninsured as before), but the people who do have insurance can't afford to use it because the copays and deductables are so astronomically high. Furthermore, and let me try to be as clear as possible for those of you with limited cognitive abilities, It. Was. Meant. To. Fail.
The Democrats' plan all along has been to create such a mess of our healthcare system that we would beg them to fix it once and for all. That means government run, socialized healthcare. Obama is on video admitting this to a group of union thugs in 2006, and many other Dems have talked about this for decades. In fact, the modern push for socialized healthcare in this country began under Kennedy.
The Republicans didn't have enough votes at the time to do a damn thing. The ONLY holdouts were Democrats who had to be bribed into voting for it. Try doing a little research somewhere besides the Huffington Post or the DNC website.
Really good stuff. Yeah, let's have more of your socialist lies and BS.
So my issues with obamacare are two fold:
1)given the inefficiency of our current government, if it completely takes over healthcare, it will end up looking like the current collegiate education system (an open checkbook to colleges/hospitals that will cause a mind blowing increase in prices)
2)obamacare puts far to much dependancy on the government. As government dependancy goes up, freedom goes down PERIOD.
It's a cycle. The law says you can't have one price for uninsured and charge insurance a different bill. Insurance companies are free to use their size (if blue cross doesn't allow members to go to you, you lost a lot of customers,) to push around hospitals for discounts though. So if the hospital charges $3 for soap, insurance pays $2. Hospitals raise it to $6 so they get $3 from insurance. Then There's middle men, companies and reps looking for profit.
Wait... Um
Whatever.
Yeah!