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> 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 highwa

> 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...
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >thus cost everyone including the government even more money... Americans were simply going without healthcare, so it was unavoidable that it was going to cost the whole country more money. >I cant fathom why the majority of Americans are ok with their weird sociopathic Job = Health Insurance based system. Because once the government gives a subsidy to a certain tribe, that tribe no longer has an incentive to vote to increase that subsidy to members of other tribes. For example, in the US, old people have had healthcare for many decades. And they have the highest voting rates. But as a politician, you are not going to get far advertising that you will increase their taxes so that non old people can receive healthcare, especially if many of those non old people do not look like the old people. But, completely screwing people is also politically unpopular, so what can pass is a half measure, like Medicaid, where politicians can say they helped people get healthcare, but also keep taxes low. How? Well, you simply pay the doctors and drug makers and dentists less for people covered by Medicaid. And you pay more for people covered by Medicare. And as the tribes get more and more politically influential, you can keep adding various tiers of subsidy recipients. And that is the beauty of “health insurance companies”, or rather, “managed care organizations”. Businesses with young, healthy, office workers can pool their health risks into less risky pools and pay much higher reimbursements so they get premium healthcare. Poor people get directed to Medicaid, which will have a network of fewer and overburden doctors so they get less care, and less quality care. Medicare will provide old people with enough healthcare to keep their votes coming. Federal and military employees get decent healthcare because their coverage pays more. Others get dumped onto the statewide exchanges that are you get what you pay for type deals. And all of this is funneled through the managed care organizations so that people cannot easily measure who is getting what and who is getting more from the system versus less. So tl:dr is that as a country, we do not actually want to help everyone equally. Just enough to say they were helped, but at the same time, make sure we get as much of the pie for ourselves as possible, and give up as little as possible.

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...

lotsofpulp 4y ago
>thus cost everyone including the government even more money... Americans were simply going without healthcare, so it was unavoidable that it was going to cost the whole country more money. >I cant fathom why the majority of Americans are ok with their weird sociopathic Job = Health Insurance based system. Because once the government gives a subsidy to a certain tribe, that tribe no longer has an incentive to vote to increase that subsidy to members of other tribes. For example, in the US, old people have had healthcare for many decades. And they have the highest voting rates. But as a politician, you are not going to get far advertising that you will increase their taxes so that non old people can receive healthcare, especially if many of those non old people do not look like the old people. But, completely screwing people is also politically unpopular, so what can pass is a half measure, like Medicaid, where politicians can say they helped people get healthcare, but also keep taxes low. How? Well, you simply pay the doctors and drug makers and dentists less for people covered by Medicaid. And you pay more for people covered by Medicare. And as the tribes get more and more politically influential, you can keep adding various tiers of subsidy recipients. And that is the beauty of “health insurance companies”, or rather, “managed care organizations”. Businesses with young, healthy, office workers can pool their health risks into less risky pools and pay much higher reimbursements so they get premium healthcare. Poor people get directed to Medicaid, which will have a network of fewer and overburden doctors so they get less care, and less quality care. Medicare will provide old people with enough healthcare to keep their votes coming. Federal and military employees get decent healthcare because their coverage pays more. Others get dumped onto the statewide exchanges that are you get what you pay for type deals. And all of this is funneled through the managed care organizations so that people cannot easily measure who is getting what and who is getting more from the system versus less. So tl:dr is that as a country, we do not actually want to help everyone equally. Just enough to say they were helped, but at the same time, make sure we get as much of the pie for ourselves as possible, and give up as little as possible.