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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
It is true that your premiums may go up, your deductible may be higher, and it is true that the current plan you are on may be terminated by your insurance company.
BUT!
Part of the ACA is that preventative treatments and medications (the kind of medical care young people need 99% of the time) now comes with no member liability. That means that it carries no copay, is paid at 100%, and the deductible does not apply.
So while your premium may go up, your actual costs will likely go down, since you will have fewer copays, fewer services that require a deductible, and fewer coinsurances.
Be a real American and sign up. To help yourself and your neighbors.
Since then, my wife has had emergency gall bladder surgery, which we were able to get taken care of without being bankrupted. I've found out I have cataracts and will be able to get them taken care of as well.
The ACA is an important first step towards single payer and justice in health care access.
I have insurance now because I'm married to someone who works for a corporation. But I'm a college instructor and make about the same as when I was a bartender—in the 1990s. There is no way I could afford ACA if I was single. My students have said the same: they resent that this is marketed toward young people yet they can't imagine having $250 extra a month.
When I was 25, I wasn't allowed to be on my parents' health insurance anymore, and was living on my own with my first very own apartment. Luckily, I was working for an employer who provided coverage. I got appendicitis and ended up in the ER, surgery, and four days in the hospital. I was perfectly healthy and happy the day before this developed. I can't imagine what that would have done to my fragile finances if I didn't have insurance. It may have changed my entire future.
Don't let an unforeseeable illness or injury also be an unforeseen financial disaster. Get health insurance!
The ACA is a good thing - not the best thing but a step in the right direction. The only reason conservatives hate this plan is because it was a huge accomplishment by President Obama. That is the only reason. The ACA is literally the conservatives plan from the nineties with a few minor tweaks that help more low income people. Fuck the liars and their lies.
Anyone who rails against the ACA hasn't been in the scary place of being uninsured (or they are a Tea Party Bigot).
Sign up! I did and it took about 30 minutes and I was covered retroactively to the first of the month. I got my health card in the mail just two days later. No problems, easy as pie and now I'm covered! No complaints here!
Excuse me? How about a little gratitude? Maybe a "thank you"? To whom, you might ask? To me!, and all the other "makers" who are partially or wholly paying for health insurance for "the takers".
And you wonder why we are so opposed to most public assistance? It's attitudes like the author's.
Unbelievable . . .
The main conclusion of this meta-study is that "efficient investment in health care programs are roughly equal for prevention and treatment". For certain preventive measures like vaccinations and smoking prevention programs, there is a clear win for prevention, but for other conditions it's not always clear.
I "make" and some of that goes to pay for people who receive publicly subsidized insurance.
Care to rephrase?
The problem, of course, is that no one believes they will be a "taker" until it happens to them, often unexpectedly. Some day you may become a taker. I hope that never happens, but accidents or chance diseases can befall anyone.
Most of the people who go bankrupt due to medical costs DID have insurance. Pre-ACA though, insurance companies could simply drop those people if they ever had to cover them.
No, of course not. It's all negotiated. The point is, it's a voluntary relationship; me and my employer. If anything is being "taken" from me, it's only because I consent.
There is no consent when the title to some of my hard earned money is somehow transferred (by force) to another individual.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ...
This isn't a dictatorship. The majority voted for this. It happened with our consent. We consent to allow representatives to vote yes or no on things. You didn't want the ACA, but the majority did. I didn't want the Iraq war, but the majority did. It is not fucking forced on us. We vote for it.
Representatives are elected. If the ones you wanted didn't get in, then go out and support them next time, or run for office yourself.
So if it's not forced on us, then if I resist by all means , nothing will happen to me? Please . . .
The whole scheme fails without the threat of force.
"was that your employer pays for employees' insurance BECAUSE they are forced to by regulatory action. "
Not before ACA they weren't. I had a policy procured through negotiation that (because of ACA) I wasn't allowed to keep, the president's promises notwithstanding. There's that Force word again. You've used it properly. Good for you. "forced to by regulatory action."
ACA means a friend of mine WHO WAS WILLING TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE can now have health insurance. As a breast cancer survivor - she was diagnosed at Stage IV with both inflammatory and the more common form of BC - she was turned down by every fucking insurance company out there. She could not work full time while she was going through her treatment - go figure! - and was eventually let go by her employer. When she started working again, she started her own business so she could work the hours she needed to maintain her health (she's a maker, you fucking asswipe) but she could not get health insurance; they all denied her coverage because of her "pre-existing condition" - surviving cancer. She did eventually find one catastrophic insurance policy that was pretty worthless and still outrageously priced, but she paid for that anyway, just in case, and because she felt it was the responsible thing to do. Now, with ACA, she is able to get regular health insurance. No one could deny her coverage just because she was a breast cancer survivor. She is HAPPY to pay her health insurance premium each month, because to her it represents proof of life and health. And, while her business is too small for her to have to provide her employees with coverage, she does what she can to help them, including paying a set fee each month to one of those medical services company that guarantees her employees access to a doctor, inexpensive labs & X-rays, etc.
So once again @14, fuck off. ACA allows my friend to live. My friend can now live without the fear of going bankrupt should her cancer ever return, she can live like a normal person paying for health insurance, and she can live out her dream of her owning own business without forcing her to return to the corporate world just so she could get health coverage.
If you refuse to participate (or in your case are ineligible to participate because you're already covered by an employer-sponsored ASO group) then the exchanges aren't costing you anything, except to the extent that tax dollars are used to set up the exchanges.
By your logic, the US military and everyone in it is the biggest "taker" in the country - although, since you benefit from being defended by the military, it's a weak argument. So it is with the ACA. You benefit even if you don't directly participate.
Part of the problem with the private healthcare insurance is the death spiral that has been taking place, as private insurers have been focusing their resources on the healthy by finding ways to exclude high cost catastrophic patients, and eventually abandoning them to the state. There are multiple problems, and certainly, people who are poor will be taking advantage of the new healthcare insurance to address their problems, as they should, because acute conditions that blossom into chronic conditions cost a lot of money. Yes, you, personally, will pay more, as you should, so that you can help insure the integrity of the system, because eventually, the rest of us will be paying for your care when you're least able to afford it. Nonetheless, the ACA contains a lot of reforms to address the other side of the equation, cost containment, and if you glance through the provisions hopefully you'll find something to like.
It would have been simpler to send out a Medicare card (full medical, dental, vision) to everyone and use private insurance as a stopgap measure for whatever Medicare didn't cover, but the insurance industry is thoroughly embedded in the US body politic, and their bribes paid off.
If nothing else, think of the kids.
Yes, you live in an imperfect world. Maybe a terrible, tyrannical world where you're forced to do things you don't want to do. Sorry to break it to you. Yes, that's the world you live in.
If you want it to be different, if you want to change it, if you want everyone to have the ability to reject whatever they want to reject, then vote those people in office... or run for office yourself on that platform... or move to a country where that isn't the way of things. But you currently live in a country where you're forced to do what you don't want to do. If you want to change it, the nice thing is, this country allows you to change it. So change it.
Here are some numbers that put the decision of purchasing health insurance in context for young uninsureds. See more: http://www.healthcaretownhall.com/?p=732…
I had a "real" job, and had health insurance through that, but if I hadn't, The Cuff offered a very generous plan for not very much money. Perhaps I'm naive, but however did you bartend all those years without the ability to pay a $250 health care premium, if you had the opportunity?
We live in a society, not an anarchy. We take care of each other, to an extent, not just because it's the right thing to do. We do it because it's the smart thing to do. It's self-preservation.
Besides, we already paid for the uninsured, through unpaid bills and debts that got passed on to paying customers. The method is different, that's all.
If I have no catastrophic injuries, the insurance is useless and designed to be that way. I am diabetic (non-insulin) and would need to spend about $400 per month on meds and testing supplies without insurance. That's $3600 per year, or just over half the deductible that would need to be met before a single aspirin is covered. There is no way for me to afford $400 for medicine and $250 for insurance each month. It would be cheaper for me to live without the insurance and just pay for the meds myself. So now I get to choose between meds to control my diabetes and insurance in case I have a huge health crisis of some kind. Like the one I will most certainly have if I don't get my meds. What we NEED is insurance reform that makes health insurance part of our ongoing health care not a gambling program set up to favor the house.