I was getting cheap enough health coverage that I had no premiums, they’re gone up infinite % from $0 to $245 per month for Health Insurance with a $7500 deductible, and no dental.
I work in a call center that helps employees of companies select their coverage and process their enrollment with carriers. This will be my 4th time through the annual enrollment period, and it’s been by far the biggest jump in price that I’ve seen. Last year monthy premiums went up between 15-20% for the policies we administrate. This year prices jumped up 45-55%.
Annual enrollment is the busiest 2 weeks of the year for us since everyone needs to get their elections in, but this year I’ve noticed that I’ve taken more calls from retirees dropping their policies than employees renewing them. Most people’s pensions simply do not cover the cost of Healthcare, god forbid they need $10 a month left over to pay for food.
As someone who works with Healthcare everyday, it is exactly as bleak as you think it is.
For profit healthcare is evil.
You are all going to die.
And in a very selective manner
That is how entropy works, yes.
This has the potential for a death spiral on all of the US economy. 1. its highly inflationary. 2. People choosing to not have health insurance is a drop in GDP, and a cause of hospital closures which is another drop in GDP, and access to healthcare. People dying hurts GDP too.
US economy already is highly inflated due to 5% points of GDP higher than every other nation spent on healthcare. Obamacare/ACA was a republican compromise to prevent Berniecare/mediare for all. The GOP criticisms that public subsidies for private extortion just makes the private extortion harsher. But only Berniecare is the answer.
Why would GDP drop if people stopped having insurance? (Serious question)
both your insurance payments and healthcare costs/wages count as GDP.
I’m no expert, but i suppose because it reduces the flow of money - fewer transactions (people not getting healthcare, not billing insurance, insurance not paying for healthcare given to people because they’re not getting any healthcare) = reduced total domestic product. Whether it’s reduced by a measurable amount is another question.
I think also the fact that sick people usually don’t work, and in the US they don’t get paid when sick, so less money available to be spent.
Thanks Obama
/s
Healthcare should have never been for profit. That about tops my list of things I consider antihuman.
I feel sorry for every anti-fascist yank in that “free” shit hole.
The ACA is just bad policy built on bad policy built on the prevailing belief here in the US that it’s a-okay to create the conditions that kill people for profit. Just slap a smiling, relatable, white face on it in public and you’ll be fine.
The big thing about the ACA credits that were approved during the pandemic was that small businesses and self-employed found them incredibly useful. Now that was not what they were originally for, but it has been an unexpected success. It has increased the risk pool and provided the ability for job creators to have insurance for themselves or their employees.
Republicans have seen this success and for the most obvious reasons are looking to end it, because any success by ACA threatens their narrative of the ACA being a failure.
This is a typical example of the different standards applied to Republican and Democratic initiatives.
Even the weakest Democratic compromise on healthcare reform has to have a specific plan and measures of success and meet them exactly, and even then have to overcome GOP propaganda to succeed - unexpected success like what you reference won’t be counted or acknowledged.
On the other side, Republican initiatives can be nebulous and philosophically-based, to the point of delusion. Their policy to hand trillions over the last 30 years in tax benefits, subsidies and contracts to rich people and companies, not only on just the presumption they will stimulate growth, but despite evidence to the contrary, just persist based on nothing but dogma. Their healthcare plan is “no,” which is objectively the plan nobody can say is likely to succeed.
Yet somehow people give both similar attention and credibility.
Narrative? 300% increase in already vastly inflated prices is failure. What success are you even talking about. The only thing they have done with ACA is line insurance companies owners pockets, and vastly eroded the quality of care.
The 300% increase is because of Republican cuts from OBBBA. Republicans continually do things to reduce the quality and deliverablity of care from these markets. That’s the thing, every “failure” can be traced back to Republicans enacting law that greatly affects the overall success of the program.
What’s even more interesting is how flexible the market has been in spite of Republican meddling. But the ACA has offered new avenues for people to have insurance when their situation wouldn’t have qualified them for such. This has provided a much needed peace of mind to a large segment of the population.
For all the things that Republicans tend to throw to deride the program, it continues to provide coverage for people in ways that lawmakers don’t always foresee. And that has provided care to people who usually would not have care. Allowed people to go on to make small businesses that would not have otherwise taken the risk. Allow people to get regular checkups and routine care that would have otherwise gone without.
Republicans have a funny definition of success in the medical domain. Once that circles around dollars to care, when the goal should be amount of care. Or at least in my most humble opinion, we should look at the amount of care we provide to the population as a metric of success. To then toss dollars on top of that metric really begs the question of what is the worth of a person’s life? Yes, the ACA lacks a single provider negotiated benefit. Republicans have sought to never allow that to happen. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a very clear loss for the ACA program, but again, that’s at the behest of Republicans.
It all comes down to the fact that MAGA simply doesn’t care at all about providing quality health care, they only care about increasing profits, which requires providing as little as possible, in exchange for as much money as possible. Quality of care doesn’t figure into their calculations.
I kind of agree with you. I think people aren’t seeing that without the subsidies, the 300% price increase is just the actual price. ACA did a lot of good things, but the real insanity is the government subsidizing ACA plans but not directly offering a public option. Frickin Lieberman
While my shitlib friends were all celebrating the ACA in 2010, I was complaining that it wouldn’t fix anything. It curbed some egregious abuses but I said the issues raised by private insurance would never go away
Here we are and it’s exactly like I predicted
