6 ms·

You do realize that it was under democratic leadership that healthcare costs shot up so much. Obamacare increased my monthly payment almost 2X.

knuththetruth 8y ago
...implementing a healthcare policy cooked up by conservative think tanks in the 1990s. The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  So the democrats are not to blame for implementing it? I don't see how you can single out any particular party for this situation and if I had to, I'd go with the people that actually jacked up my premiums (democrats).
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    Oh, they’re entirely to blame and I’m just as angry as anyone for them furthering this broken system. But their choice of doing so was guided by right-wing ideology. The Democratic Party is a center-right party. You might not be able to single out any one party for this problem, but you can certainly indict those who further this kind of thinking in the face of its demonstrable moral and economic failure.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      I'm sorry but the sheer amount of regulation around healthcare is not a right-wing ideology. Let's get the free market in here and watch costs come crashing down. Do away with mandatory coverage, subscription windows, the government run "marketplace" and costs will come down. There's nothing right-wing about any of those features.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        > mandatory coverage Yes, removing this reduces costs - by creating a category of people who can't get insurance at anything resembling a price they can afford, and therefore either have to suffer, go bankrupt, die, or all three.
      - komali2 8y ago
        In a free market, why would the insurance companies continue to cover someone that got cancer? And then, when coverage was revoked, why would any other person insure this new cancer patient?
  - sv123 8y ago
    The democrats big mistake was trying to compromise with the republicans, who still refused to work on it. it's clear the whole system is borked, and I only see one party at least trying to do something about it.
    - RightMillennial 8y ago
      What compromise? The ACA passed the House [1] and Senate [2] without a single Republican vote. [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/21/AR2010032100943.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03... > The House voted 219 to 212 to approve the measure, with every Republican voting no. [2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122400662.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12... > Vice President Biden presided over the 60 to 39 party-line vote, ...
      - sv123 8y ago
        It was watered down to make it a "budget bill" under the Senate rules so it could withstand filibuster. (In doing this, the ACA had to be stripped of almost all its cost-containment features.)
        komali2 8y ago
        It's incredible to witness, real-time, people such as who you're replying to trying to change the facts of history mere years after the thing occurred. This is in line with my original point - since when did facts become so malleable?
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake. Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems. Canada runs healthcare at the provincial level. France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, etc. - all of those countries use private systems that cannot reasonably be called a "national healthcare system", unless you're going to stretch the definition so far as to say that countries like India (and the US) also have national healthcare systems.
  - richmarr 8y ago
    > Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI. This handy graphic explains in case of confusion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/British_Isles_Euler_diagram_15.svg/300px-British_Isles_Euler_diagram_15.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Br...
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI. ...yes, that's the point. When people talk about "the NHS", as they usually do on HN, they're conflating four different systems (or, more commonly, thinking only of NHS England). The point, in case you missed it is that nobody outside the UK has what can reasonably be called a "national healthcare system" in this context.
maxxxxx 8y ago
In all fairness health care costs were shooting up long before Obamacare. Obamacare just did nothing to change that trend.
- whatok 8y ago
  What's the first word in the act's name?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I agree that it failed to achieve that goal but it also didn't make the rising health care costs worse. You are making the big (and very american) mistake to attribute all problems to the party or president you don't like while overlooking the systemic problems that are there long term no matter who is in power.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Affordable. You opened the can of worms, now eat it. Healthcare costs were always increasing. That trend slowed under Obama. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde... Democrats wanted a much better of the ACA, but let's not forget that Republicans were walking around talking about how they'd "oppose anything Obama did," without even reading the texts of the bills http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/ http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-det... So back to my original point - Republicans, why they be like they do?
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I would have much more respect for the Republicans if they had actually come up with some reality based proposals how to improve things for not wealthy patients instead of pretending that getting rid of Obamacare is the only thing needed to fix the "best healthcare system in the world".
isolli 8y ago
All the Obamacare horror stories paraded in 2010 were easily debunked. Everyone acknowledged that some people would be hurt in the transition. The surprising fact was that it was so hard to find someone who was convincingly, demonstrably hurt.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  From Forbes: "premium increases averaged about 60 percent from 2013, the last year before ACA reforms took effect, to 2017" https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/03/22/yes-it-was-the-affordable-care-act-that-increased-premiums/#4782f86c11d2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/03/22/yes-it...
  - komali2 8y ago
    Healthcare costs increases slowed under ACA. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde...
Bender_Donaghy 8y ago
You also realize that medical bankruptcies almost ceased to exist once The Affordable Healthcare Act started to work. Source: I've been in the Medical Field for 20+years. We used to get 3-4 bankruptcy notices a month for our small single practice office, the bankruptcies were not usually from us, but because if you're in my office you're usually deep in the medical system. Now we get one or two a year because those people still choose not to have medical insurance. The problem is we have higher than average healthcare costs, but it's not the doctors fault, it's the 15 million employees in the US that are nothing but middlemen, look into the Buffet, Bezos, Dimond project and their stance on Healthcare, it's the future.
andybak 8y ago
1. The discussion is about US healthcare costs compared to the rest of the world which is different to your monthly payments. 2. "Obamacare" seems to an outsider to have been a hellish compromise - the only thing that could get passed considering the political balance of power at the time. It was far from the legislation that was originally intended - and that even legislation (what was deemed politically possible in advance) is probably far from what would be needed to fix the US healthcare system. So it's entirely possible you ended up with a terrible outcome instead of the merely inadequate outcome that might have transpired in a different climate.
chrisbennet 8y ago
Health care costs were (and are) increasing. The rate of increase slowed under the last administration. [1] Your costs may have gone up if you were part of a low risk group because under Obamacare, low risk individuals were made to share the cost of other insureds who were stupid enough to get old, be poor or have existing health issues that made them unprofitable for insurance companies to insure. Obamacare also removed the low price "scam" insurances that would deny coverage on flimsy "pre-existing condition" pretenses. If I'd kept the same program that I had under the Obama administration, my costs would have doubled under the current administration (800->$1600mo). [1] https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde... "..the average premium for single coverage through employers has gone up 28 percent “under Obama” That’s right again, but much lower than the growth of individual premiums during Bush’s first six years. That increase was 72 percent."
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > low risk individuals were made to share the cost of other insureds Yes, that's a huge part of the problem right there. If I'm healthy and work hard to be healthy, I have zero interest in paying for someone else's health problems. I have my own family to feed and we're talking about massive amounts of money that I get no direct benefit from.
  - komali2 8y ago
    >massive amounts of money that I get no direct benefit from If your value system is "let the lepers die in the street," our value systems are so far removed from each other that the best thing we can do is respectfully not engage. But because we're both already here, and you seem to care a lot about money, maybe we should talk about money? Do you like living in a city, country, state with high GDP? This can improve the price of goods locally as your country has a stronger bargaining position in international trade agreements. This means higher paying jobs are available because bigger companies are willing to play ball to set up shop locally. The health of the general population is tied directly to GDP. Healthier population, better GDP. If you like $$$, support universal healthcare. It's a good long term investment.

knuththetruth 8y ago

...implementing a healthcare policy cooked up by conservative think tanks in the 1990s. The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake.

malvosenior 8y ago
So the democrats are not to blame for implementing it? I don't see how you can single out any particular party for this situation and if I had to, I'd go with the people that actually jacked up my premiums (democrats).
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Oh, they’re entirely to blame and I’m just as angry as anyone for them furthering this broken system. But their choice of doing so was guided by right-wing ideology. The Democratic Party is a center-right party. You might not be able to single out any one party for this problem, but you can certainly indict those who further this kind of thinking in the face of its demonstrable moral and economic failure.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I'm sorry but the sheer amount of regulation around healthcare is not a right-wing ideology. Let's get the free market in here and watch costs come crashing down. Do away with mandatory coverage, subscription windows, the government run "marketplace" and costs will come down. There's nothing right-wing about any of those features.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > mandatory coverage Yes, removing this reduces costs - by creating a category of people who can't get insurance at anything resembling a price they can afford, and therefore either have to suffer, go bankrupt, die, or all three.
    - komali2 8y ago
      In a free market, why would the insurance companies continue to cover someone that got cancer? And then, when coverage was revoked, why would any other person insure this new cancer patient?
- sv123 8y ago
  The democrats big mistake was trying to compromise with the republicans, who still refused to work on it. it's clear the whole system is borked, and I only see one party at least trying to do something about it.
  - RightMillennial 8y ago
    What compromise? The ACA passed the House [1] and Senate [2] without a single Republican vote. [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/21/AR2010032100943.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03... > The House voted 219 to 212 to approve the measure, with every Republican voting no. [2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122400662.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12... > Vice President Biden presided over the 60 to 39 party-line vote, ...
    - sv123 8y ago
      It was watered down to make it a "budget bill" under the Senate rules so it could withstand filibuster. (In doing this, the ACA had to be stripped of almost all its cost-containment features.)
      - komali2 8y ago
        It's incredible to witness, real-time, people such as who you're replying to trying to change the facts of history mere years after the thing occurred. This is in line with my original point - since when did facts become so malleable?
chimeracoder 8y ago
> The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake. Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems. Canada runs healthcare at the provincial level. France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, etc. - all of those countries use private systems that cannot reasonably be called a "national healthcare system", unless you're going to stretch the definition so far as to say that countries like India (and the US) also have national healthcare systems.
- richmarr 8y ago
  > Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI. This handy graphic explains in case of confusion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/British_Isles_Euler_diagram_15.svg/300px-British_Isles_Euler_diagram_15.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Br...
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI. ...yes, that's the point. When people talk about "the NHS", as they usually do on HN, they're conflating four different systems (or, more commonly, thinking only of NHS England). The point, in case you missed it is that nobody outside the UK has what can reasonably be called a "national healthcare system" in this context.

maxxxxx 8y ago

In all fairness health care costs were shooting up long before Obamacare. Obamacare just did nothing to change that trend.

whatok 8y ago
What's the first word in the act's name?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I agree that it failed to achieve that goal but it also didn't make the rising health care costs worse. You are making the big (and very american) mistake to attribute all problems to the party or president you don't like while overlooking the systemic problems that are there long term no matter who is in power.
- komali2 8y ago
  Affordable. You opened the can of worms, now eat it. Healthcare costs were always increasing. That trend slowed under Obama. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde... Democrats wanted a much better of the ACA, but let's not forget that Republicans were walking around talking about how they'd "oppose anything Obama did," without even reading the texts of the bills http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/ http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-det... So back to my original point - Republicans, why they be like they do?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I would have much more respect for the Republicans if they had actually come up with some reality based proposals how to improve things for not wealthy patients instead of pretending that getting rid of Obamacare is the only thing needed to fix the "best healthcare system in the world".

isolli 8y ago

All the Obamacare horror stories paraded in 2010 were easily debunked. Everyone acknowledged that some people would be hurt in the transition. The surprising fact was that it was so hard to find someone who was convincingly, demonstrably hurt.

malvosenior 8y ago
From Forbes: "premium increases averaged about 60 percent from 2013, the last year before ACA reforms took effect, to 2017" https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/03/22/yes-it-was-the-affordable-care-act-that-increased-premiums/#4782f86c11d2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/03/22/yes-it...
- komali2 8y ago
  Healthcare costs increases slowed under ACA. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde...

Bender_Donaghy 8y ago

You also realize that medical bankruptcies almost ceased to exist once The Affordable Healthcare Act started to work. Source: I've been in the Medical Field for 20+years. We used to get 3-4 bankruptcy notices a month for our small single practice office, the bankruptcies were not usually from us, but because if you're in my office you're usually deep in the medical system. Now we get one or two a year because those people still choose not to have medical insurance. The problem is we have higher than average healthcare costs, but it's not the doctors fault, it's the 15 million employees in the US that are nothing but middlemen, look into the Buffet, Bezos, Dimond project and their stance on Healthcare, it's the future.

andybak 8y ago

1. The discussion is about US healthcare costs compared to the rest of the world which is different to your monthly payments. 2. "Obamacare" seems to an outsider to have been a hellish compromise - the only thing that could get passed considering the political balance of power at the time. It was far from the legislation that was originally intended - and that even legislation (what was deemed politically possible in advance) is probably far from what would be needed to fix the US healthcare system. So it's entirely possible you ended up with a terrible outcome instead of the merely inadequate outcome that might have transpired in a different climate.

chrisbennet 8y ago

Health care costs were (and are) increasing. The rate of increase slowed under the last administration. [1] Your costs may have gone up if you were part of a low risk group because under Obamacare, low risk individuals were made to share the cost of other insureds who were stupid enough to get old, be poor or have existing health issues that made them unprofitable for insurance companies to insure. Obamacare also removed the low price "scam" insurances that would deny coverage on flimsy "pre-existing condition" pretenses. If I'd kept the same program that I had under the Obama administration, my costs would have doubled under the current administration (800->$1600mo). [1] https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/ https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde... "..the average premium for single coverage through employers has gone up 28 percent “under Obama” That’s right again, but much lower than the growth of individual premiums during Bush’s first six years. That increase was 72 percent."

malvosenior 8y ago
> low risk individuals were made to share the cost of other insureds Yes, that's a huge part of the problem right there. If I'm healthy and work hard to be healthy, I have zero interest in paying for someone else's health problems. I have my own family to feed and we're talking about massive amounts of money that I get no direct benefit from.
- komali2 8y ago
  >massive amounts of money that I get no direct benefit from If your value system is "let the lepers die in the street," our value systems are so far removed from each other that the best thing we can do is respectfully not engage. But because we're both already here, and you seem to care a lot about money, maybe we should talk about money? Do you like living in a city, country, state with high GDP? This can improve the price of goods locally as your country has a stronger bargaining position in international trade agreements. This means higher paying jobs are available because bigger companies are willing to play ball to set up shop locally. The health of the general population is tied directly to GDP. Healthier population, better GDP. If you like $$$, support universal healthcare. It's a good long term investment.