she did get hammered by John Stewart

This was a large and highly visible project, and her baby--she is the face of it. Glitches can usually be fixed right away, so I'm going to guess that the problems go beyond a glitch.

No tax subsidies for the poorest workers who need them the most. (Because they were supposed to be covered by expanded Medicaid.)

Also, no subsidies for people with available coverage at work (even if it is shitty).

Blame it on the Supreme Court. And I think once these people see how screwed they are getting, the states will change hands.

The huge deductibles will still mean no one working in jobs like retail will be able to see a doctor when they get sick, they still won't be able to afford it.

There are three levels of care, the lowest one making sure that poor folks can't get care. Women will still have to pay for birth control pills out of pocket with the two lower tier plans and since women not making a lot of money are the women they most want to contol, that's why it was designed that way.

There needs to be one level, no deductible and the only way to do that is single payer.

This is Heritage Foundation Non Care Insurance. Please stop calling it Obamacare.

"no one working in jobs like retail will be able to see a doctor when they get sick"

Granted, they can't do that at all now, because many doctors won't enroll you as a patient or give you an appointment if you don't have insurance.

Consequently, there are a lot of folks running around with chronic, but relatively easily treatable conditions.

What everyone does get is at least one free visit a year.

While that goes under "preventive care", you have to take into account that people walking in for their annual check-up will get those chronic conditions looked into.

but those deductibles are a huge chunk of change for people making 20K or less.

Granted, there are accidents and unpredictable acute conditions of all kinds, but there are a lot more undiagnosed or ignored chronic conditions that are going to be picked up and treated before they turn into disasters, as a consequence of that annual checkup.

Some states did expand Medicaid back into the insurance program for the working poor it was always meant to be. Some states did not.

However, not all states did and even in the ones that did, many low wage workers will still not be eligible, especially in the cities where dollar amounts of pay might be higher, but are eaten up by high rents and other urban expenses.

While this Heritage Foundation plan combined with expanding Medicaid will help many people, it is definitely going to leave a lot of people behind because it's linked to arbitrary dollar amounts rather than cost of living.

Single payer is the only way to go.

years to get national coverage and 20 more years to get universal single payer coverage.

I just wanted people who are reading the thread to understand that what you are saying is not factual. Those families living in states cooperating with the ACA at the state level and are making 20K will be getting health care covered with little or no deductions.

where before, if they didn't qualify for Medicaid they got nothing.

in one of the debates he said it has a nice ring to it

but you are right it is a republican plan

It's more than just a computer "glitch". The Federal Exchanges are, relative to the amount of people who've tried to register, barely better than nonfunctional. I've repeatedly tried to get in, just to see what the system looks like, and I've only once been able to reach the registration page (And it didn't work when I got there).

One potential problem is that Obamacare lowers some people's premiums (Like the old and the sick) by increasing other people's premiums (Namely the young and healthy) compared to what you saw pre-Obamacare. It levels costs across society, but here that means that the young and healthy MUST join in large numbers for prices to remain stable. The mandate requires that most people purchase insurance, hence creating an incentive for the young and healthy to purchase these *relatively* expensive insurance plans. In effect, the old and sick pay less, the young and healthy pay more, and insurance companies are able to give those lower rates to the old and sick BECAUSE they are getting extra money from the young and healthy.

If not enough of the young and healthy sign up, the insurance companies will have no choice but to crank up their premiums in order to avoid losing money. This may further dissuade the young and healthy (the people who have the most financial incentive to gamble on not needing health insurance) from buying insurance, thus driving up insurance prices even more, causing more young and healthy to bail out, causing further price spikes. One fear related to the website is that the mandate starts out relatively light, and that the sheer cumbersome nature of the site may dissuade people who don't feel any deep need to have insurance now from buying it at the moment. If this means that a lot of young and healthy people decide to go uninsured for a year, then you'll probably see a major spike in insurance prices. That hits everyone, including the federal government, which would have to subsidize a lot of those increases.

EDIT: Here's a link to a WonkBlog post discussing what insurance "death spirals" look like.

We need to see the data, which is why I'm not going to say it's a "disaster". However, if the data did show that very few young people have signed up, then prepare for premium spikes, which even then are not necessarily a "disaster". It's something to look for. All I pointed out is a potential problem, and noted that we can't tell whether or not it exists.

Americans don't know shit from shinola.

I've seen two types of sign up success stories on this site:

1) Late 50's, pre-existing condition

2) Young, barely making enough money to stay off of Medicaid

The system relies on a pool of relatively healthy young people, who make enough money to pay in without subsidy.

These people either don't know about it, don't care about it, or don't want any part of it. They will pay the fine....many of them won't even know or care about the fine, since they pay somebody else to do their taxes.

I talked to a young woman about it two weeks ago. She had no idea there was an individual mandate, whatsoever. I'm pretty sure she is going to sit back and do nothing...out of sight, out of mind.

just bought a plan on the CA exchange last night! So excited he will finally have coverage.

I could not keep my existing policy and coverage. They no longer offer the plan.

Now I have to pay 2x the amount for less coverage and unaffordable deductibles.