chatillion 71M
2289 posts
3/22/2015 10:09 am
Obamacare...


I've been hearing a lot of complaints about the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) from people who don't have it and they all appear to be experts.

I was paying $1,400 a month for health insurance HMO. No surprise the rates went up every year, as much as 10%

The market came along, I qualified for a subsidy and I signed up. Changing to a PPO with some medium low deductibles, I was able to use all the same doctors, include a dental plan and brought my premiums below $700 a month.

Maybe you have personally experienced a horror story (and not repeating something you heard on the news or at the water cooler) it would be interesting to hear something (good or bad) about it, as my experience was/is good.

chatillion 71M
1567 posts
3/22/2015 1:05 pm

I needed an MRI (somewhere in 2005) they delayed the appointment because they were waiting for approval from my insurance company. I asked prices and it was $2,500. I said "If I came off the street and paid you cash, how much would it cost me?" The girl told me she wasn't supposed to say it but the cost was $500. So who's ripping off insurance companies?


beyondfantasy3 113M
4740 posts
3/22/2015 5:34 pm

I think its a great program and should have existed decades before. the anti health care people can keep their anguish.
many people did not care because they had job sponsored coverage, but now jobs are not giving it, and suddenly people realize the exchange is the best option to get health care.
They posted a report which said over all because of ACA, the cost have come down 60% in some areas and there are across the board lower cost for services.
Medical billing is the problem, facilities habitually over bill, and thanks to ACA, it challenges that madness and it will continue to challenge it. Hopefully some of the systemic over-biller's will get arrested and locked up.
Thanks to ACA many people cannot be denied due to pre-existing conditions and yearly out of pocket caps, means people won't have liens placed on their homes. I've heard many say they get test now they could not get before... and people who had the HMO no longer have to be delayed and denied under ACA to get the needed test.

Some people who are well to do, will never support anything that benefits the masses. That's just how the nature of elitism functions. But thankfully, they don't get the make the decisions for the masses of American people.
There have been so many people helped, and many hospitals now get money for service in areas they did not get before.
even hospitals before that serviced people who did not have insurance, got tax write off as well as gov. subsides for the services they provided, so its not like they did not get a profit benefit.

If you listen to any executive of any business, they will always come up with self serving crap. and while they are flapping their lips they have their staff applying for government subsidies and chasing down government contracts.
I don't care much for the people with the anti government mentality about things, when most of them talk and talk and very company they work for is probably receiving some form of government subsidy or seeking some tax concession based on some government benefit.

Public service money are spent with people in the professional and semi professional communities, and these are the very same people who are quick to complain about government programs, but they are the first to submit their applications for contracts and concessions.
People are not as smart as they claim, if they were, they'd know these things. but they listed to talking heads in the media. The congressman benefit even more from the programs, so while they talk about it negatively, they do exactly what many did about stimulus money... Publicly whine, while at the same time, trying to enter the back door to get their hands on the funds.

I know this as a fact, when I worked with some of the programs, and saw the people in the various professional fields as well as the merchants who benefited from the funding's. If government funds did not help this nation, it would not be the nation that it is. We can know that even more so by the nations who's government does not have the money to help its nation.

ACA will over time prove to be even better and it will help if the Republican ever wake up, it will help curb the pharmaceutical companies from gouging and it will help curb many of the hospitals from over charging. What we really need is to see some of the executives arrested... then we will see rapid change in price decreases.