Could you explain the mechanic behind this? Was trying to explain to my father how shitty obamacare is and how it was not a step in the right direction. (Not living in the US obviously)
It's about deductibles mostly. The deductible is how much you have to pay in a calendar year before the plan covers anything and that is several thousand dollars minimum. About 6 grand for an individual for the bronze plan I think. That's on top of the monthly cost, which is around $400, for a bronze plan individual. Of course, it's a sliding scale for plan quality with the monthly increasing and the deductible decreasing going up the scale from bronze to platinum. Fortunately, all plans have probably been calculated to fuck you over equally by a cadre of dead eyed actuarial freaks.
And that's not getting into out of network shenanigans, where they can charge you full unnegotiated price for like an anesthesiologist because they're contracted to the hospital but not in your insurance shit or whatever. I'm not even sure if that happens to ACA plans, but it probably does because why not, it was all for the insurance companies anyways
I think pretty much the only positive with the ACA is that insurance companies can't refuse to sell you or charge you more for having preexisting medical conditions, which is like the slightest alleviation of relentless barbarism
There's a reason why even the most dead-eyed Republicans and neoliberal demons still talk about protecting people with pre-existing conditions - it was absolutely relentless barbarism back before the ACA protections came into play.
Back when the ACA passed, something like 33% of Americans were effectively locked out of the private health insurance market because of a "pre-existing condition". Today, it's likely more like 40-45% of Americans. There's no way that the system would be sustainable if we got rid of those protections.
Previous to Obamacare, there was no requirement for you to have health insurance. If you were unemployed or lost your job (and your health insurance with it.
If you were self employed, you didn't have to have health insurance. Some health care businesses might refuse you service without health insurance but you weren't fined for not having a health insurance card.
After Obamacare, there was the "mandate" that required everybody have health insurance or you would be charged a fine. (I'm pretty sure Trump used an executive order to drop the dollar amount of the fine to zero dollars... so there is that). This didn't matter if you just lost your job or couldn't get a new job or couldn't afford health insurance AND rent/mortgage/food/other necessities. Now there were supposed to be "subsidies" to help us poor folks pay for that mandatory health insurance but... that essentially is just going straight from government tax revenues into the revenue streams of the health insurance companies.
So, in essence, health insurance companies suddenly found themselves with something like 30 million NEW customers!!!!! So extra revenue from people who didn't want to get hit with the penalty, the subsidies the governments provided so that us poor folks could "afford" to buy in to a plan, and (at least in the state where I live) the Medicaid expansion is managed by private insurance companies (so they're probably getting paid extra money as a subcontractor on top of the subsidies to get more people enrolled in health insurance plans).
Could you explain the mechanic behind this? Was trying to explain to my father how shitty obamacare is and how it was not a step in the right direction. (Not living in the US obviously)
It's about deductibles mostly. The deductible is how much you have to pay in a calendar year before the plan covers anything and that is several thousand dollars minimum. About 6 grand for an individual for the bronze plan I think. That's on top of the monthly cost, which is around $400, for a bronze plan individual. Of course, it's a sliding scale for plan quality with the monthly increasing and the deductible decreasing going up the scale from bronze to platinum. Fortunately, all plans have probably been calculated to fuck you over equally by a cadre of dead eyed actuarial freaks.
And that's not getting into out of network shenanigans, where they can charge you full unnegotiated price for like an anesthesiologist because they're contracted to the hospital but not in your insurance shit or whatever. I'm not even sure if that happens to ACA plans, but it probably does because why not, it was all for the insurance companies anyways
I think pretty much the only positive with the ACA is that insurance companies can't refuse to sell you or charge you more for having preexisting medical conditions, which is like the slightest alleviation of relentless barbarism
There's a reason why even the most dead-eyed Republicans and neoliberal demons still talk about protecting people with pre-existing conditions - it was absolutely relentless barbarism back before the ACA protections came into play.
Back when the ACA passed, something like 33% of Americans were effectively locked out of the private health insurance market because of a "pre-existing condition". Today, it's likely more like 40-45% of Americans. There's no way that the system would be sustainable if we got rid of those protections.
Adding some more info to this bit'o'thread...
Previous to Obamacare, there was no requirement for you to have health insurance. If you were unemployed or lost your job (and your health insurance with it.
If you were self employed, you didn't have to have health insurance. Some health care businesses might refuse you service without health insurance but you weren't fined for not having a health insurance card.
After Obamacare, there was the "mandate" that required everybody have health insurance or you would be charged a fine. (I'm pretty sure Trump used an executive order to drop the dollar amount of the fine to zero dollars... so there is that). This didn't matter if you just lost your job or couldn't get a new job or couldn't afford health insurance AND rent/mortgage/food/other necessities. Now there were supposed to be "subsidies" to help us poor folks pay for that mandatory health insurance but... that essentially is just going straight from government tax revenues into the revenue streams of the health insurance companies.
So, in essence, health insurance companies suddenly found themselves with something like 30 million NEW customers!!!!! So extra revenue from people who didn't want to get hit with the penalty, the subsidies the governments provided so that us poor folks could "afford" to buy in to a plan, and (at least in the state where I live) the Medicaid expansion is managed by private insurance companies (so they're probably getting paid extra money as a subcontractor on top of the subsidies to get more people enrolled in health insurance plans).
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