and yet you seem thrilled with a program that took a bad system and is making it worse for that majority of the people using it.

7/6/2015 4:16:12 PM

That's a really cool line yanked straight from the campaigns of the GOP clown car, but it simply has not been true. The whole thing may very well be a house of cards, but by every available metric, it's been working great so far.

7/6/2015 4:19:45 PM

Quote :

"It's also kind of suspect that after an era of insurance companies raking in multi-billion dollar profits, they are now whining about single year deficits in the hundreds of millions. Where did all those billions go? Oh yeah, straight to the pockets of their executives and shareholders."

Multi-billion dollar profits or revenue? Because the 2011 BCBSNC numbers, looked something like this:

5.5 Billion Revenue
177 Million net income (profit)
~10 Million in executive compensation



[Edited on July 6, 2015 at 4:37 PM. Reason : asgafsh]

7/6/2015 4:36:24 PM

Well, considering pricing was, in many ways, based on throwing a dart at a wall it's hardly surprising that rates are going to increase. Even now we have noncompliant plans that are allowed and exceptions being made for all manner of reasons.

Once those noncompliant plans are eliminated in 2017 and some of the temporary buffers expire there will be more cost increases. It's absolutely a house of cards.

7/6/2015 4:51:26 PM

It's not really a house of cards. The costs are just more transparent now, so it's easy to attack the health system on the basis of costs, and that's what people are doing.

The broader point is that the core reason for ACA existing, providing healthcare to sick people in a manageable way, has succeeded, and we don't like the implications. There's lots of details that can and should be changed, but the core system is here to say.

You can't repeal the system, because that would be admitting that you want sick people to have a hard time getting health care, and the Republicans already have an image gap here. The only way forward without looking foolish is "fixing it" which involves, among other things, increasing government funding for healthcare.

7/6/2015 5:05:40 PM

There's also often ignored rule changes that make your health insurance .... well .... actually insurance. Before Obamacare, regardless of how much or how little you paid, there was no guarantee that your insurer would fulfill their commitments. They could drop you or refuse to pay for a life saving procedure for practically any made up reason, with your only recourse being a lawsuit against a multi-billionaire dollar corporation. Lifetime limits would leave people with chronic conditions sick and broke, getting insurance after a lapse in coverage proved impossible for many, and people stayed in shit jobs for no other reason than keeping their plans.

It's easy to say "well I'm paying 25% more now than before" , but you're getting a much better product in a much fairer system.

[Edited on July 6, 2015 at 7:32 PM. Reason : .]

7/6/2015 7:16:24 PM

Suggesting that Obamacare made health insurance act more like insurance is easily the most absurd thing I have heard in years. Stop drinking the koolaid. The ACA was meant to destroy insurance so that liberals could come back in a decade with a shit-eating grin on their face and say "see, the free market doesn't work!"

7/7/2015 12:27:08 AM

Quote :

"It's easy to say "well I'm paying 25% more now than before" , but you're getting a much better product in a much fairer system."

I'm paying 25% more, and am getting the exact same product I had 10 years ago. So no, I'm not getting a much better product in a much fairer system.

It still amazes me that people are ok with a government that requires its citizens to purchase something from a private market. Then to add insult to injury, the same government comes along, takes that turd, tries to paint it with tax colored paint to try and make it ok.

7/7/2015 8:39:29 AM

If only failures to purchase insurance didn't turn into public costs.

7/7/2015 1:05:04 PM

Best thing since sliced bread

7/7/2015 2:31:06 PM

Quote :

""It's easy to say "well I'm paying 25% more now than before" , but you're getting a much better product in a much fairer system.""

Not if you are a young, healthy male, we got shafted by the ACA.

7/7/2015 4:58:22 PM

I love me some obamacare. I am sure everyone was saying the same thing about car insurance when it became compulsory.

It is nice to know I can just buy insurance without having to get a fucking physical or justify I am in perfect health.

7/12/2015 1:29:48 AM

It's great that insurance isn't actually insurance anymore! What could possibly go wrong?

7/12/2015 2:48:27 PM

We've made the argument before. Car insurance isn't compulsory. You don't have to drive. By right of birth in this country you are required to have health insurance.

7/13/2015 7:24:46 AM

I don't understand how any libertarians or fiscal conservative could be against the insurance mandate. I know we are against the mean evil government telling us to have health insurance but typically a rational adult would be able to understand that even having catastrophic insurance though a high-deductible plan is critical for one's financial security.

The alternative is the false logic of "oh i'm young and health and don't need insurance" or from a poor person's perspective "i'd rather be spending my monies on a new iPhone or some 40's of Miller High Life." Then when they get the flu,accidentally injure themselves, or contract a serious illness they rush to the ER where the costs for treatment can be $10,000's of dollars. Sure the cocky entrepreneur will get slapped
with a hearty bill that he'll have to pay but for your average blue collar worker the bill will end up getting subsidized by everyone else when the patient can't afford to pay. The passing the cost on to other patients and the tax-payer does not sound very "libertarian" to me.

I see the ACA insurance mandate as getting people to correct their own shitty prioritization of spending. If only we corrected welfare and
food stamps to ensure the monies were going to the right things not buying gas for their SUV and on HoHo's at the local 7/11.

7/13/2015 11:39:33 AM

JCE2011 said:

Quote :

"Not if you are a young, healthy male, we got shafted by the ACA."

Even assuming that's true, who gives a shit? Fuck your couch. Get shafted, bitch. Almost everything in life is tilted to the advantage of the young male. Fuck that motherfucker. He can take it.

7/13/2015 3:17:55 PM

Quote :

"Almost everything in life is tilted to the advantage of the young male."

TROLOLOLOL.

7/13/2015 3:18:58 PM

also HUR can eat a dick and Fry you can eat what he doesn't finish

[Edited on July 13, 2015 at 3:19 PM. Reason : Post #49,394.]

7/13/2015 3:19:31 PM

10/10 I lol'ed.

7/13/2015 3:19:56 PM

Quote :

"It's easy to say "well I'm paying 25% more now than before" , but you're getting a much better product in a much fairer system."

Not everyone. For example, my parents had the same insurance for close to 20 years now. That company was continuing to cover my sister, who will forever be taken care of by my parents (and when they die, me), despite the fact that she was way past their normal "age out" for dependant coverage. Sure, she has access to medicaid, but my parents would (reasonably) rather she be able to go to all the same providers they go to, and the old insurance company after receiving the documentation regarding my sister agreed to cover her indefinitely for as long as my parents were covered. When the ACA went into effect, the number of plans that were in compliance (or grandfathered) and thus offered by my parents employer dropped. This year, they have 2 plans to chose from, neither is with the old insurance. They can't afford the old insurance privately (employer coverage available == no subsidy) and while the new insurer has agreed to provide coverage for my sister, they had to provide quite a bit of extra documentation an exams, and the agreed coverage is only good for a year, after which they will need to go through the whole certification process again. And then again the next year, and the year after that. That's certainly not 25% more for a better product.

7/14/2015 2:13:53 PM

NO BENEFIT IS VALID UNLESS ALL BENEFIT

7/14/2015 2:21:17 PM

Quote :

"We've made the argument before. Car insurance isn't compulsory. You don't have to drive. By right of birth in this country you are required to have health insurance."

I think technically you are not required to do shit, you are supposed to pay a penalty if you don't comply though, which is the case for many things in our society.

7/14/2015 2:37:00 PM

Quote :

"I don't understand how any libertarians or fiscal conservative could be against the insurance mandate."

Because the govt forcing you to buy something you don't want is anathema to them, even if that purchase seems like a good thing to you? Also, the insurance you must purchase isn't simply a catastrophic plan (aka, not actually insurance). Government mandated "choices" aren't actually choices

7/14/2015 8:47:05 PM

So by exercising your freedom to not have insurance, I have my liberty impeded when you get stabbed by a random gangster on the street and force your medical costs to be distributed to all other patients when you can't afford to pay your medical costs.

I'm actually 100% for eliminating the mandate if hospitals can throw patients on the street if they can't provide proof they have means to pay the bill.

7/14/2015 10:18:02 PM

That is a good point, that actually should be the conservative stance. If you cant pay, cant stay, no ER for you.

The market will solve the problem of poor people who have medical problems, I know it will!

7/14/2015 10:23:15 PM

Remember, the hospital mandate is yet another govt interference in the market. I would be all for letting hospitals kick people out of the ER who didn't really need to be there. But with a mandate to treat everyone, they can't make those choices. Likewise, by removing market forces from the healthcare system, things like catastrophic insurance simply don't exist, or, worse, are forbidden by the govt. so, you get the fucked up mess we have today. Your complaints aren't against a market, but against a market highly distorted by govt interference to this point that it no longer functions.

And yes, that should be the correct stance: if you can't pay for the product of someone else's labor and you can't convince anyone else to pay for you, then you don't get that service. That we've fucked up the system so badly that people can't pay isn't an argument against this premise; it's an argument against how badly we've fucked up the system in the first place.

[Edited on July 14, 2015 at 11:06 PM. Reason : ]

7/14/2015 11:03:14 PM

Quote :

"Your complaints aren't against a market, but against a market highly distorted by govt interference to this point that it no longer functions. "

Functioning for a health system is defined as the ability to provide care, not the ability to make profit. It wasn't functioning before, it's functioning better now in most regards.

7/14/2015 11:08:09 PM

Nowhere did I mention profit as being what makes a market functional, much less a healthcare market.

And I would posit that our healthcare system is functioning even more poorly than before. We've further entrenched the chief problem with it, which is the employer-sponsored model. Just about every economist, left or right, agrees that the employer-sponsored system is horribly inefficient and is at the heart of almost all the problems in our current system.they may disagree with what the proper approach is, but there's absolutely no disagreement that this one is not it.

[Edited on July 14, 2015 at 11:15 PM. Reason : ]

7/14/2015 11:10:20 PM

I guess my question to the republicans is if you are ok with a law requiring the hospital to treat everyone even those who can not pay, then what is so wrong with requiring people to have a plan to pay since most everyone ends up at the hospital at some point in their life?

7/14/2015 11:12:33 PM

You'd have to ask them, because I don't think there should be either mandate. If you held a gun to my head and said there had to be some mandate, I would say if you could make a catastrophic only plan, then require people to purchase at least that, but I really wouldn't like even that.

7/14/2015 11:18:32 PM

Quote :

" I would be all for letting hospitals kick people out of the ER who didn't really need to be there."

I should have clarified that this is my position. Folks in the ER with a sniffle, due to their diabetes medication making them dizzy, or because they have a hangnail are the one that should be kicked out due to inability to pay. I do have enough empathy to u derstand treatment of someone critically wounded or showing symptoms of a potential life threatening condition.

7/15/2015 12:24:06 AM

http://www.rollcall.com/news/judge_says_house_can_sue_administration_over_obamacare_spending-243550-1.html

Quote :

"The House lawsuit asks the court to declare the president acted unconstitutionally in making payments to insurance companies under Section 1402 of the health care overhaul law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) and to stop the payments."

9/9/2015 5:41:53 PM

these are always fun: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/03/09/3631281/obamacare-economy-predictions/

9/25/2015 11:35:48 AM

^

Quote :

"Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): ‘There will be no insurance industry left in three years.’ (October 12, 2010)"

if he had said 25 years i would believe him. Single payer is inevitable

9/26/2015 6:20:24 AM

Not sure where to put this, since there isnt an active thread on Obamacare. But the HHS has released the 2018 premiums report. As expected, prices are soaring, and insurers are exiting the marketplace.

- $4,932 – The average annual premium for the benchmark plan for a 27-year old, up from $2,616 during Obamacare’s first year.

-17% - The average premium increase for the lowest cost silver plan. Last year, this premium increased 27%.

-45% - The average percent increase in Obamacare’s tax credit, rising from $382 to $555 and by 114% from PY14 ($259). Ever-growing subsidies are chasing skyrocketing premiums, pricing out middle-income Americans and turning Obamacare’s exchange into a de facto high-risk pool.

-29% - The percent of enrollees who will have the option of only one health insurance issuer offering Obamacare exchange plans, up from 20% in 2017 and 2% in 2016.

-8 – The number of entire states with only one issuer offering plans on the Obamacare exchange.

-132 – The total number of state issuers for the upcoming plan year, down from 237 just two years ago.

-CMS now estimates 51% of all counties in America will have just one insurer in Obamacare for the 2018 plan year.

Not good, Bob.

10/30/2017 11:37:21 AM

this is why we needed a public option

also, isn't a significant part of the premium increase from defunding the subsidies?

10/30/2017 12:11:20 PM

^

10/30/2017 12:24:05 PM

17% increase would sound great right now mine is going to be 270% according to what BCBS has told me.

10/30/2017 12:35:25 PM

Quote :

"lso, isn't a significant part of the premium increase from defunding the subsidies?"

Yeah, but the argument (and data support this) is that this just expedited an already failed system. I guess the point is that the current "public option" is clearly no where near better than our previous system, so why would we want to move even further into that direction?

10/30/2017 1:06:09 PM

the current public option? um... what? the public option was removed from ACA

10/30/2017 1:49:45 PM

pay us subsidies or we will raise the prices!

10/30/2017 9:52:34 PM

I just priced insurance for North Carolina. $530 a month for the cheapest silver plan in Wake County. $660 for the cheapest silver plan in Cumberland County. These prices art insane

11/4/2017 10:16:21 AM

what are the deductibles?

11/4/2017 10:46:32 AM

$400 in cumberland county, $150 in Wake.

11/5/2017 1:52:04 AM

That has to be a typo, or if not price a reasonable deductible

11/5/2017 7:28:39 AM

Looks like most of the new plans BCBS is rolling us into are 6k+ deductibles

11/5/2017 7:02:29 PM

Not if your income is reported low enough. You get access to "special" Silver plans.

11/5/2017 7:25:09 PM

God damn poor people and their lack of money!!!!

[Edited on November 5, 2017 at 9:08 PM. Reason : Who the fuck do they think they are?]

11/5/2017 9:08:03 PM

I am not sure how BCBS stays in business after this. We are going to see a ton of people go uninsured next year and just take the penalty and put their old premiums into a savings account and hope for the best. The rate increases are just astronomical they had to have known that people were not going to be able to afford them even if they wanted to. I guess maybe the group plans through work might still be reasonable but anyone that paid for theirs individually or were self employed you may as well just pay another mortgage or two for some people and sell those if you need money later on.

11/6/2017 8:27:48 AM

Quote :

"We are going to see a ton of people go uninsured next year and just take the penalty and put their old premiums into a savings account spend the money on other things and hope for the best."

Fixed it for you.

11/6/2017 9:11:05 AM