How To Feel About Anti-Healthcare Reform Messages

How do you guys feel about politicians saying how horrible health care reform is, and how it needs to repealed immediately?

I live in Nebraska, and we just had the primary elections. The politicians are all saying how they are going to work diligently to repeal obamacare, and it just scares me. It just seems like they do not care at all about people like ourselves.

Have any of you heard alternatives that sound feasible?

Please don't turn this into a politically heated thread... I'm just writing it as a chronically ill person that would like to see hope for the future.

Not to turn it into a political free for all but you really don't have to worry. It basically can't be repealed. In order to repeal it the Republicans would have to control 2/3 of both the House and the Senate AND have a Republican president. That's not happening anytime in the near future. Most Republicans (not the Tea Party nutsos) know that the law has progressed far enough now that repealing it would be impossible and cause mass chaos. They may be able to tweak it in different ways but even the Democrats realize that it needs tweaking.

I think it's just a lot of talk from the politicians. I don't think it will be repealed. I believe the Health Care law is seriously flawed but it also has some great features---free preventive services, end of preexisting condition restrictions, age 26 dependent coverage, and the lifetime max removals.

Even on this forum, with all of us having a chronic, incurable disease you'll find people who are in favor and others who are violently opposed. I think it depends a lot on what sort of insurance coverage you had pre-ACA. And, of course, how closely you hew to a political party line.

After a long career as a nurse and also years of seeing here how lack of insurance devastates some lives, I'm glad to see health insurance starting to be made available to all. I hope the coverage will indeed become more universal as time passes.

So you want a thread about a completely political tactic that isn't politically heated?


I simply don't think you can do a fair, balanced and honest review of the two political parties on this issue without one of them coming off wearing a really black hat. The other guys may have a kind of grey hat but the ACA was copied from a GOP plan in the 1990s and it was done to get the interest groups that opposed single payer in the past on board. Business groups, insurance companies, pharma, hospitals, doctors groups...not socialists but mainstream republicans for the most part.

The propaganda from one side is so false and spread so thick that if you ask 10 relatively reasonable people what the ACA does, they can't tell you. I bet you won't get a accurate list of faults in the ACA on this board. Many people that are effected by the law know the positives but can't list any real negatives. The main negative is that it wasn't a total single payer overhaul but that simply wasn't going to happen.

The most insane thing done so far is states refusing the medicaid expansion. It can not be rationally explained. I live in Arizona which is a very red state and hard core republican business interests basically forced the governor to take the expansion. Hospitals taxed themselves to pay for it because they know that uninsured people get healthcare just the most expensive kind and the shifting of costs increases premiums driving even more people off the insurance rolls. You can't mandate that all be treated without regard to ability to pay and allow people to opt out of insurance or get primary care in an ER.

Don't even get me started on tea party republicans decrying the socialism of mandatory insurance while two seconds later scaring seniors about losing medicare. Medicare is (almost) socialism. The attacks on the ACA are almost entirely fabricated. The real faults are that it didn't have 1500 more pages, force more people onto coverage, and go after the players in healthcare MORE.

Imagine the results of an uninsured person with UC on the rest of society..it doesn't save the rest of us money if they have access to a ER . It costs us more. The facts are there. We have 60 million uninsured and we spend twice per capita what any other developed country does, and every other developed country has universal coverage. Both our private sector and the government independently spend more per capita than any other country does in total.

Post Edited (AZYooper) : 5/14/2014 9:35:57 AM (GMT-6)

I just worry that with how sour and nasty the politics have been around obamacare/aca, that meaningful legislative change to our healthcare system will be so toxic a topic, that nobody will want/dare to touch it for a very long while.

Regardless of one's feelings about obamacare/aca, there is a lot that still needs to be done to improve the healthcare system. Costs are out of control for both the insured and uninsured alike. Despite the crazy amount of GDP the USA throws at healthcare under prior and current systems, the outcome of patients is not better than other countries. In a lot of cases the USA outcomes of healthcare treatment are much worse than other countries.

And to top it off a lot of profit is present in keeping with the status quo, even though an increase in efficiency would benefit us all. Any change, no matter which political party initiates it, is going to cause industries (pharma, hospitals, insurance groups, etc.) to loose money and that they will fight to prevent.

garylouisville said...
It's just liberal propoganda where they just refuse to believe that there are a lot of people worse off due to the ACA. It's very foolish to believe that you can make such sweeping changes and then turn around and claim that there are no horror stories of any kind.

How can one be worse off by now being able to afford health insurance? Health policies change every year, costs go up every year, deductibles and copays increase every year. Now, obamacare/aca is to blame for any change to one's policy. Even though our benefits have been eroding for decades, and costs have been increasing for decades. That has noting to do with the obamacare/aca, rather it is a decades long trend. Now obamacare/aca is just a scapegoat for any worsening of one's policy by those who oppose it. There are a lot of underlying issues within the healthcare system as a whole and obamacare/aca is a babystep in the right direction but a lot more must be done to truly fix it. Obamacare/Aca does not, however, tackle exploding costs all that directly (just indirectly by getting more people insured). And that is the real problem that's been going on for decades with our healthcare system.

Gary, I am not naive lol. I previously said that out of control cost of the USA healthcare system was not something obamacare/aca tackled full-head-on but rather it still needs to be done. Increased cost of policies, increased cost sharing through increased deductibles, copays and so forth is a very long term trend; not something new to obamacare/aca. In many years the cost increase in healthcare policies was 10% or more than the prior year. Under obamacare/aca that cost increase percentage has been much, much lower in the single digits so there are some signs it is working some.

garylouisville said...
Not every section of the country has been effected by the ACA equally, even state by state. Some area's premiums went way down while in other areas premiums went way up.

The reason for disproportionate increase in some states versus reductions in other states is due to obamacare/aca adding a national minimum for what a healthcare policy must cover (before it was a patchwork of states each determining what constitutes a policy within their state and it varied quite widely). Some states, such as MA and NY already exceeded the obamacare/aca minimum qualifications and their costs likely went down due to more enrollments in policies and therefore an increased size of the risk pool. Other states where policies did not cover a lot of those newly required minimums saw their coverages increase in policies, and the costs increase in tandem with the new coverages. In the end if you lived in one of those aforementioned states, you get a better policy, but guess what you have to pay more for it.

garylouisville said...
Many Obamacare policies also have more limited networks and more limited formularies than previous policies

This is an attempt at cost-control introduced by insurance companies. Having patients go to the most cost-effective places to have procedures done. Obamacare/aca did not require this. Most insurers have different policies at different costs, one of the differences being how big the network is. Insurers were doing this before Obamacare/aca, so it is nothing new. It certainly has accelerated since though as a way to drop the cost of policies and offer cheaper ones.

It should be made clear that the ACA effected the policies and rates for individual coverage which only a minority of Americans have(I think less than 10% of the insured). If you think Obamacare caused the rates, copays and deductibles to go up or changed the network or drug list for your group(company) policy or on your medicare, you are being tooled.

You can't ignore that being uninsured is rational choice if you have no positive assets. You have no wealth to insure and can simply go bankrupt. A very large percentage of the self employed fit that category and not surprising that they will embrace they idea that they aren't deadbeats but victims. Those are most of the people claiming negative effects from the ACA.

One of the faults in the ACA is that if you earn less than 130% of poverty, you lose all subsidies. In states that adopted expanded medicaid, you are forced to pay full price(impossible), go on medicaid (which angers some low income workers..ie going on "welfare".) or continue as a legal uninsured. In states that refused medicaid, you either buy insurance at full price(impossible) or go without insurance.

By the way, nobody promised overnight drops in premiums. If you paid attention at all, the promises were growth in cost would slow over time and eventually stabilize at the rate of inflation. That is something because health costs have exceeded an average 10% growth per year for that last 30 years which is more than twice the inflation rate.

"This is an attempt at cost-control introduced by insurance companies. Having patients go to the most cost-effective places to have procedures done. Obamacare/aca did not require this. Most insurers have different policies at different costs, one of the differences being how big the network is. Insurers were doing this before Obamacare/aca, so it is nothing new."

Exactly and because of the insanely high cost of healthcare companies and individuals choose to buy restricted less expensive policies then often blame Obama. The companies that sold premium policies on the market place lost market share.

A pox on both their houses!! My bad health care plan, got even worse this year! Higher deductible, higher copay and my prescription plan is way worse. Additionally, Amerihealth, my carrier, who always had reasonable customer service has me now waiting a minimum of 40 minutes when I call. Than I get a pleasant but extremely unknowledgeable rep.

I've also come to find out that according to the new law my husband and I will be thrown out of small business coverage next year due to changes. I am extremely disenchanted, disappointed and pissed. If the law is so great...why doesn't congress go on the exchanges like the rest of us "lucky ducks".

Sorry to rant, but I think they all suck..too bad we are stuck with these clowns. Rant over.

" then Republicans get control of the land and are able to pass several "tweaks" to make it much better. They're not the evil hate the poor party that some people make them out to be, but, they do have a hard time getting across to the average Joe and Jane what it is they are actually trying to accomplish. They need the new blood of the Marco Rubios who don't come across as the stuffed shirt party against women, other minorities, and the poor. The real Republicans want everyone to prosper, right down to the little guy (and gal)."

hateuc said...
A pox on both their houses!! My bad health care plan, got even worse this year! Higher deductible, higher copay and my prescription plan is way worse. Additionally, Amerihealth, my carrier, who always had reasonable customer service has me now waiting a minimum of 40 minutes when I call. Than I get a pleasant but extremely unknowledgeable rep.

I've also come to find out that according to the new law my husband and I will be thrown out of small business coverage next year due to changes. I am extremely disenchanted, disappointed and pissed. If the law is so great...why doesn't congress go on the exchanges like the rest of us "lucky ducks".

Sorry to rant, but I think they all suck..too bad we are stuck with these clowns. Rant over.

You have to remember that the ACA are the minimum standards for health plans for the Nation. Every State is different on their requirements and minimums for their state, they just have to meet the national standards. I live in NY so my health insurance premiums have been higher then the national average for years but the coverage is for almost everything that I have ever needed. Actually my next year's premiums are going down for the same coverages. A lot of the blame for your situation should be directed towards your State Officials.