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I agree with a lot of what you're saying but the evidence that Obamacare ballooned healthcare expenses isn't there. Obamacare also has a huge positive impact b

I agree with a lot of what you're saying but the evidence that Obamacare ballooned healthcare expenses isn't there. Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. For instance I couldn't have started a startup without it, and it's much easier to hire contract workers because of it.

mjevans 4y ago
I'm still so irked that they didn't go full single payer and put everyone into one coverage pool. Still, the supply side support necessary would also be an issue. For markets where the local going rate is expensive enough it would make a ton of sense to allocate military medical units to supplant the local market until more doctors of that type were in the area. If it takes long enough the military supply might even retire from the forces to open practices in that area.
_hyn3 4y ago
My insurance is literally more than 3x higher than it was 15 years ago. It's literally more than my mortgage, and I don't live in a shanty.
- hmmmmmm111 4y ago
  What do you think the difference in premiums are between a 20 year old and a 35 year old? What about between 35 and 50? I mean I know only two interesting facts about you, the difference in time, and I already know a common sense reason why your price today is much higher than it would be when you were 15 years younger, in “literally” any time in history, and perhaps it was always about 3x more expensive premiums.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Young people subsidize older people due to the Affordable Care Act forcing it. https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums > Age: Premiums can be up to 3 times higher for older people than for younger ones. It is actually very available information. See age rating factors in these pdfs: https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcrates2023.pdf https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra... For example, in New Jersey, a gold metal level plan would cost a 64 year old 3 * $730.86 ~ $2,200 per month, which legally has to cover 80% of a person’s expected healthcare costs. For a silver level plan, ~$1,300 per month will cover 70% of the healthcare costs. That just shows how much more healthcare people need as they get older.
testfoobar 4y ago
Lets look at stock market returns from when Obamacare passed, March-2010, to today for tech and health insurance stocks: SPY: about 4X QQQ: about 6X GOOGL: about 6X CI: about 9X (Cigna health) ELV: about 10x (formerly Anthem) AAPL: about 19X UNH: about 20X (united healthcare) Health Insurance stocks in the US did better than tech stocks after Obamacare passed. Why?
- NLPlatypus 4y ago
  Perhaps it was revenue from the tens of millions of Americans now getting healthcare? This analysis shows the majority of health insurers becoming less profitable after Obamacare? https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2016/jul/how-has-affordable-care-act-affected-health-insurers-financial https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    So you think that a 10% increase in customers should lead to a 500% increase in revenue?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      It would depend on the cost of healthcare being delivered to those customers. Considering that an out of pocket maximum did not exist prior to affordable care act, and insurers were allowed to deny people with pre existing conditions, I would expect drastically higher spending on new insureds because they would finally start getting healthcare. Now the insurance company has to pay the hundreds of thousands and millions per NICU/hemophiliacs/cancer patients etc, so why wouldn’t their expenses go drastically higher?
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        That's profit, not revenue. I'm asking why their revenue for increased exponentially for having 10% more clients.
robomartin 4y ago
> Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. <rant-on> Sure. On my back, and that of countless others. It's fucking highway robbery. Before Obamacare we had excellent health insurance with excellent coverage, doctors and low deductibles for $650 per month. When we were shoved into Obamacare, our rate TRIPLED to $1,800 per month. Today we are paying nearly $2,300 per month. This is equivalent to a mortgage payment or non-trivial savings either for personal use or to help your kids with college. There is no other way to put it: We are being robbed. Put some numbers to it for context: Over ten years the increase amounts to about TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Money taken from us, by law. This doesn't even include a calculation of what this would be if invested in a low risk mutual fund or real estate. The concept that a family has to pay so much PER MONTH for health insurance should make everyone take pause. This kind of thing is why I have always had a strong negative reaction to anything government-driven. It never ends well. Even worse, Obama lied to all of us. His promise to the nation, easily found on countless videos, was that families would save in the order of $2,500 per year on health insurance. Right. How do these people get a free pass on shit like that? Why? I don't know if this is even possible. I wish someone could organize a massive class action lawsuit against all who forced this on us. I am happy for those for whom things improved. I truly am. However, doing it by causing serious financial harm to likely millions of families is not right, at all. We (my family) are burning --quite literally-- tens of thousands of dollars per year on healthcare because of Obamacare. The other part people don't understand is that deductibles have gone up and insurance does not trigger until you spent a certain amount per person per year. In our case my entire family would have to be run over by a semi truck before we actually start to see significant benefits. In other words, the cost isn't just the premiums, but the expenses we have to incur before benefits actually kick in. Here's an example: One of my kids ended-up in the hospital with myocarditis due to the Covid vaccine. That cost us over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, cash. Needless to say, every time I see Obama, Pelosi and the bunch I have to try very hard not to launch into projectile vomiting. I know many people idolize them. Sorry, you have chosen to admire liars and criminals. <rant-off>
- techdragon 4y ago
  My genuinely overkill for my needs private health insurance as someone living in Australia where theres a public health care system that looks after everyone... costs less than half your pre-obamacare insurance, factoring in the exchange rate. I cant fathom why the majority of Americans are ok with their weird sociopathic Job = Health Insurance based system. While not as nearly unanimous as the metric system, well funded Public Health Care to a level where most people don't need health insurance to cover an emergency hospital visit for say a broken leg... is basically what everyone else around the world in other countries considers a normal and good thing... In essence... You were already getting ripped off, now you're getting ripped off even more. In England, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, etc, etc, etc... The treatment for your child would likely have cost you nothing, or nearly nothing. The fact it cost you over $10,000 is not entirely the Obama's fault, it's the collective fault of nearly a century of American citizens who have accepted the status quo and not pressed for any sort of change prior to Obama promising to change it single handedly, since that worked about as well as most people watching from other developed countries with modern socially supported public health care expected it to... it was a best case train wreck because of health care industry self interested lobbying efforts from pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospital management companies, all the companies... not because it was a bad idea to stop the fright train that is employer provided health care in the USA. They just managed to convince them to stop the metaphorical train in such a way they could profit even more, and thus cost everyone including the government even more money...

mjevans 4y ago

I'm still so irked that they didn't go full single payer and put everyone into one coverage pool. Still, the supply side support necessary would also be an issue. For markets where the local going rate is expensive enough it would make a ton of sense to allocate military medical units to supplant the local market until more doctors of that type were in the area. If it takes long enough the military supply might even retire from the forces to open practices in that area.

_hyn3 4y ago

My insurance is literally more than 3x higher than it was 15 years ago. It's literally more than my mortgage, and I don't live in a shanty.

hmmmmmm111 4y ago
What do you think the difference in premiums are between a 20 year old and a 35 year old? What about between 35 and 50? I mean I know only two interesting facts about you, the difference in time, and I already know a common sense reason why your price today is much higher than it would be when you were 15 years younger, in “literally” any time in history, and perhaps it was always about 3x more expensive premiums.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Young people subsidize older people due to the Affordable Care Act forcing it. https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums > Age: Premiums can be up to 3 times higher for older people than for younger ones. It is actually very available information. See age rating factors in these pdfs: https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcrates2023.pdf https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra... For example, in New Jersey, a gold metal level plan would cost a 64 year old 3 * $730.86 ~ $2,200 per month, which legally has to cover 80% of a person’s expected healthcare costs. For a silver level plan, ~$1,300 per month will cover 70% of the healthcare costs. That just shows how much more healthcare people need as they get older.

testfoobar 4y ago

Lets look at stock market returns from when Obamacare passed, March-2010, to today for tech and health insurance stocks: SPY: about 4X QQQ: about 6X GOOGL: about 6X CI: about 9X (Cigna health) ELV: about 10x (formerly Anthem) AAPL: about 19X UNH: about 20X (united healthcare) Health Insurance stocks in the US did better than tech stocks after Obamacare passed. Why?

NLPlatypus 4y ago
Perhaps it was revenue from the tens of millions of Americans now getting healthcare? This analysis shows the majority of health insurers becoming less profitable after Obamacare? https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2016/jul/how-has-affordable-care-act-affected-health-insurers-financial https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
- thrown_22 4y ago
  So you think that a 10% increase in customers should lead to a 500% increase in revenue?
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It would depend on the cost of healthcare being delivered to those customers. Considering that an out of pocket maximum did not exist prior to affordable care act, and insurers were allowed to deny people with pre existing conditions, I would expect drastically higher spending on new insureds because they would finally start getting healthcare. Now the insurance company has to pay the hundreds of thousands and millions per NICU/hemophiliacs/cancer patients etc, so why wouldn’t their expenses go drastically higher?
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      That's profit, not revenue. I'm asking why their revenue for increased exponentially for having 10% more clients.

robomartin 4y ago

> Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. <rant-on> Sure. On my back, and that of countless others. It's fucking highway robbery. Before Obamacare we had excellent health insurance with excellent coverage, doctors and low deductibles for $650 per month. When we were shoved into Obamacare, our rate TRIPLED to $1,800 per month. Today we are paying nearly $2,300 per month. This is equivalent to a mortgage payment or non-trivial savings either for personal use or to help your kids with college. There is no other way to put it: We are being robbed. Put some numbers to it for context: Over ten years the increase amounts to about TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Money taken from us, by law. This doesn't even include a calculation of what this would be if invested in a low risk mutual fund or real estate. The concept that a family has to pay so much PER MONTH for health insurance should make everyone take pause. This kind of thing is why I have always had a strong negative reaction to anything government-driven. It never ends well. Even worse, Obama lied to all of us. His promise to the nation, easily found on countless videos, was that families would save in the order of $2,500 per year on health insurance. Right. How do these people get a free pass on shit like that? Why? I don't know if this is even possible. I wish someone could organize a massive class action lawsuit against all who forced this on us. I am happy for those for whom things improved. I truly am. However, doing it by causing serious financial harm to likely millions of families is not right, at all. We (my family) are burning --quite literally-- tens of thousands of dollars per year on healthcare because of Obamacare. The other part people don't understand is that deductibles have gone up and insurance does not trigger until you spent a certain amount per person per year. In our case my entire family would have to be run over by a semi truck before we actually start to see significant benefits. In other words, the cost isn't just the premiums, but the expenses we have to incur before benefits actually kick in. Here's an example: One of my kids ended-up in the hospital with myocarditis due to the Covid vaccine. That cost us over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, cash. Needless to say, every time I see Obama, Pelosi and the bunch I have to try very hard not to launch into projectile vomiting. I know many people idolize them. Sorry, you have chosen to admire liars and criminals. <rant-off>

techdragon 4y ago
My genuinely overkill for my needs private health insurance as someone living in Australia where theres a public health care system that looks after everyone... costs less than half your pre-obamacare insurance, factoring in the exchange rate. I cant fathom why the majority of Americans are ok with their weird sociopathic Job = Health Insurance based system. While not as nearly unanimous as the metric system, well funded Public Health Care to a level where most people don't need health insurance to cover an emergency hospital visit for say a broken leg... is basically what everyone else around the world in other countries considers a normal and good thing... In essence... You were already getting ripped off, now you're getting ripped off even more. In England, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, etc, etc, etc... The treatment for your child would likely have cost you nothing, or nearly nothing. The fact it cost you over $10,000 is not entirely the Obama's fault, it's the collective fault of nearly a century of American citizens who have accepted the status quo and not pressed for any sort of change prior to Obama promising to change it single handedly, since that worked about as well as most people watching from other developed countries with modern socially supported public health care expected it to... it was a best case train wreck because of health care industry self interested lobbying efforts from pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospital management companies, all the companies... not because it was a bad idea to stop the fright train that is employer provided health care in the USA. They just managed to convince them to stop the metaphorical train in such a way they could profit even more, and thus cost everyone including the government even more money...