...observation of insurance. It seems spot on!

It was the best, most realistic choice I had at the time. I used the poilicy each time I went to the doctor in terms of receiving reduced rates for professional and lab services. When the bills got high enough, the insurance picked up the remainder fro my hospital room


My other "choice" was for a very expensive plan - the only one which would take me wiht my pre-existing conditions.

It was insurance - and it was a good option for me at the time.

I know of other cases where people have a very high deductible, so high that they are going to pay for anything other than catastrophic events, out of pocket. But they do get the benefit of negotiated rates, which are significantly less that what is generally charged completely uninsured people.

nation on earth where what Ms Toad just described is considered to be "Health Care Reform."

We voted for a man and for a party that told us we could get ourselves what other nations have, But instead of MediCare for all, or Single Payer Univeral HC, we got a mandated "tax," with 30% or more of the profits going off to the coffers of the Big Insurers, Big Hospital Management firms, and Big Pharma, and when we gripe, we are told, well, it used to be even worse!

80% of your premiums have to be used on medical care,
So I don't believe your premise
30% or more of the profits going off to the coffers of the Big Insurers, Big Hospital Management firms, and Big Pharma. . .

Also, Medicare is Single Payer, which I prefer.

Here is as link from earlier this year
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/health-insurance-rebates_n_3472978.html

[font size=6]Spending Chart


Here's another[/font]


I'm so naive.

whose head was appointed by the Presdient.

So I'd ahve tosay that the chart is not that believable.

After all, we already know that there were far too many give aways by the Congress and the President to get the ACA to go through.

Number one on my gripe list is the twenty billion bucks given to the Hospitals in the USA by ACA provisions so they can digitize their records.

Some of these hospitals have already billed the communities they are located in some $ 300,000 per hospital facility for that digitalization. This is one of the more fraudulent billings ever. Why? Because as a friend explained, the local hospital I knew of doing that Sutter, that controls Marin General in Marin County calif., is part of a chain. So once any other franchise member has spent the monies and designed the computer software program, there is no need whatever to hire programmers to re-do such a thing.

Yet Sutter officials told the community with a very straight face, that this money was needed, as this programming needed to be done!

I imagine those same hospital officials have gone a-beggin' to the Federal Government and gotten an additional compensation monies amount from the AcA 20 billion dollar fund. Never letting on they have already fleeced the individual taxpayers for a program they already had!

Sorry I am such a cynic. I wouldn't be so skeptical, but have watched over and over again as Obama appointees lie - even to Congress, about this or that or the other thing. Just reading at another OP, about how this past week, Icelandic leaders have again heisted BACK the monies stolen by Big Banking Community. So the citizens recoup their losses, while the F___Wads are in orange jumpsuits in a penal colony. Meanwhile in America, Obama's "Good Buddy" Tim Geithner repeatedly told Congress that there was no way in the world to do this, and we HAD TO DO THE BIG BANK BAIL OUTs.

A lie before Congress should get the individual in question impeached, but Geithner remained fat and sassy at US Treasury, until he finally went off to plush Wall Street job his lies had secured for him

I would prefer single payer.
But even with the "lies" or the over spending, it beats the system
we had.
I'm pretty sure if we got single payer you'd find fault with that.
The way I see I'd rather get to single payer in baby steps then trying
to get it all at once and not get it at all.
Sen. Edward Kennedy could have had more then the ACA back in the
70's, but he wanted all or nothing, and 20 years later regretted not
getting single payer gradually.

I object to the ACA for being a for profit of Big Insurers, Big Hospital Management, Big Pharma.

While curtailing some 500 billions of dollars from MediCare! yes, in order for the President to say that the costs would be contained, they swiped money from MediCare.

But I guess we are not allowed to call the president's lies lies.

Until you have an 18-month period like my husband had. We have a new plan now, but with our previous plan, we had significant deductibles/copays and coinsurance. Hubby just had everything go wrong with several days of hospitalization in a couple of visits. He required two surgeries, lots of imaging, physical therapy, etc. So, the insurance company spent well over $100K on him in a short period of time. Bad stuff can happen. I'm guessing that we've gotten more out in payments to providers on our behalf than what we paid in over the years.

Paying an insurance premium of $250 a month with a $10,000 out of pocket maximum or

Paying $1200 a month with everything covered?

Justification of this POS legislation is that something else would be worse.

i didn't vote for Varack bama in 2008 so that I could get a piece of legislation that is a giveaway tot he Big Insurers and Big Pharma execs, and the Big Medical nmanagement firms.

I believed him when he said there would be reform.

Then once elected, he went into hiding, saying the entire summer of 2009 that he couldn't address the issue on account of separation of powers - executive branch, from legislative from judicial.

Funny how that separation didn't have him stopping Rahm Emanuel and Ms Fowler from sitting in the WH basement writing out the legalese of the legislation itself.

This woman is one to behold. Probably the single biggest factor in convincing President Obama to "change his mind" on the mandates that he campaigned against.

I know people make fun of David Ickes and his lizard people theories, but to see K.I. in action is to begin to believe. I see no other explanation for K.I. other than that there really is a reptilian race that has descended (in shape shifter form) upon our planet, to exploit and cannibalize the masses.

Just watching her say something for two or three minutes on TV used to give me nightmares for a week.

Most Americans don't.

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/77-percent-of-all-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-at-least-part-of-the-time

At least with the $10,000 deductible policy you only have to come with the $10,000 if you get catastrophically ill. With the $1200 a month policy you have to come up with it in the first year whether you get sick or not.

With a $10,000 deductible if you have an extra $800 - $1000 a month you can put in an HSA and its yours until you get sick.

With a $1000-$1200 a month policy that money is all gone to the insurance company, no matter what.

These policies are/were not junk and made good sense for most people.

Youre a funny one.

If they were paying for a $10,000 deductible policy, that has now been canceled because it is 'junk'. They now have to come up with $800-$1000 a month for a new policy.

They can't. Before ACA they had a catastrophic policy. After ACA, they cannot afford any insurance and have to pay a fine.

Or hundreds or thousands of dollars available a month. I mean, 10 grand is a little less than half my annual salary and 1200 dollars is about 90% of my tale home pay a month.

anything close to $1200 a month.

some people believe there should be zero deductible/copay...it would be nice..health insurance has become strictly for catastrophic illness and injury. If you have no insurance you will not have the same treatment options (in case of serious medical conditions) as you will with insurance. With some healthcare issues a $10k deductible leads to 1/4 million or more medical bills..you will receive most treatments even if you can't afford to pay the deductible/co-pay..

And true, true, true.

I've been paying for auto and home insurance for most of my adult life and almost never used either. I've never used my life insurance even once. I paid thousands for three different mortgage insurance policies I've never used. Medicare and Social Security have yet to send me a dime despite thousands paid to them each year. Never used worker's compensation. I have an insurance policy on my airplane that's never been used. I had flood insurance on a previous home that I never made a claim against. I've bought a few travel insurance policies that never got used.

If you want something that actually has a chance of working for everyone, Vermont seems to have the right idea. I don't think we should call that insurance. Doesn't seem to fit.

Vermont is only special because they've taken the profit motive out, and made the pool who share the risk the largest possible for Vermont.

And the fact one has never had to use their car, or life, or fire inurance is fortuitous. You should be thankful, not disappointed that you never "cashed in".

I've always thought the primary purpose of any insurance is to protect me from catastrophic loss.

And that's not the only thing special about Vermont, so you might want to read what their plan is. Their method covers everyone whether they are paying in or not and there are no premiums. It's a completely different way of financing health care.

I will look into how Vermont finances their healthcare, but the money ultimately derives from the citizenry, which I think is perfectly fine.

ACA actually offers a catastrophic plan that nobody really knows about. I'm not sure if it's a great deal for anyone because it's reportedly only marginally cheaper than the bronze plan. But this is the actual "insurance" part of the equation.

Catastrophic coverage is that which keeps you from losing everything you have if something really bad happens to you. That's what insurance really is. Everything above that is about financing your health care needs. The reason I think Vermont has the right idea is they are looking at the bigger picture rather than just looking at insurance. Insurance is always a gamble. You are gambling that the insurance company will have to pay you more than you have to pay them. It's a gamble that everyone has to make whether you choose to play or not because if you don't play and lose, you lose everything. Vermont is looking at this from the perspective of how are we going to finance health care. It's a much smarter approach which looks at the real problem and proposes a real solution rather than trying to propose a solution that only addresses a symptom of the problem. Insurance companies are a lousy way to finance health care.

THIS is the truth, and it needs to be realized by more and more Americans so we can smartly finance our health care needs.

We need to have campaigns that help people come to this realization because the corporate media is not going to help us with that, and neither are elected Democrats.

Last edited Sat Nov 30, 2013, 03:09 AM - Edit history (4)

he/she is lying.

Can't spin it away. "You can keep your plan" was a lie. And when the employee mandate goes into effect next year, millions more will be hit by that lie. There's a reason they pushed that back until after the election.

Let's be honest here.

Btw, while I appreciate the effort to do something to help those uninsured, like I have been since 2009, I don't see how anything sold with a lie (or lies) is any kind of solution. There is a reason we shifted from talking about health care for all, to access to health care for all, to health insurance for all.

It was also stated that that costs for consumers would be lower, and the fact is that many people are paying more (and not necessarily for better insurance).

The ACA didn't help my situation at all, and probably made it worse. Individual policies for me in the private, individual market before the ACA were running under $200 mo. Now the lowest plan, even in the ACA exchange, for me is ~$350 mo, and that is with a crazy high deductible that must be met (yes, that's right) before any benefits kick in.

The ACA did NOT eliminate huge deductibles. It just isn't so.

And a lie is a lie. Sorry, that's what it is.

it's going up significantly . I'm not sure how my employer is going to deal with this.
Everyone is worried there.

I hope someone has an answer for that because "It was a crappy doctor anyway" isn't going to cut it.

Period.
The TRUTH about false insurance is accepted to whatever varying degree at the detriment of those willing to use it. Be that as it may - this has no bearing on President Obama being so specific in what he repeatedly said. This is his fault and though not a lie (he actually predicted the problems) you cannot put to lie what we know to exist repeatedly with video and audio evidence.
He has apologized, corrected the record and is moving forward I think in the best possible way.
Trying to go back and explain/deny/justify the PERIOD statements-by telling the listener 'hey-you are an idiot with worthless insurance' is a dead end game. You'll never win that argument. Door is closed, only people left in room are RW'ers begging everyone to stay so they can gloat. Leave them behind - President Obama has and in due time so will the American people.

What matters now is what's happening because of the ACA

I seriously think my employer is going to drop our insurance or it's going up a lot in 2014

It's Poifect.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024110621

what they want for the crap they are selling.

A lot of people want prepaid medical care, but that winds up costing way too much.

And they were all ready to attack Syria.

There's plenty of money for the too big to fails- witness the printing of $80 billion per month to buy dirty paper off of the hands of frauds and con artists

but there's not plenty of money for We The People.

>$2000 per second is stolen from the future every minute of every day of every year. The slaves don't fully realize it yet- and the ones that will be most upset haven't even been born.

Legacy smegacy. Who cares. The worst generation continues burning and looting. No one can stop them now.

We are addicted to launching lavishly expensive drone attacks on a whim, we have yet to meet a war of choice we see as costing way too much...what's wrong with this picture?

What we had before, what we have now and what we will continue to have in the future is a third-party payment system.

It is not insurance by any tortured definition anyone can conjure.

It's a giveaway to the insurance companies that sets in stone all of the worst aspects of the previous system, keeps profits high and costs escalating.

Single provider is the only logical and viable answer.

than for profit insurance. Civilized countries get 100% coverage at a fraction of what we pay. STOP LYING.

We're the only country that prices medicine the way we do, and it's an absolute disaster. Medicare is cheaper than smaller private pools, but OTOH even Medicare pays vastly more for the same procedures, equipment, and drugs than insurance regimes, public or private, pay in other countries.

For that matter, if treatments were cheap enough that Medicare's budget wasn't a worry, they'd be cheap enough for normal people to afford them anyways...

How can letting profiteers take 20% of the pot make things cheaper to the consumers?

That's why I said even Medicare is still significantly more expensive than insurance, public or private, in other countries, because we have had no cost controls whatsoever and can't seem to figure out a way to make them work.

be lower in cost and the same people could afford lower deductibles.

This is the problem; even with single payer, the funds have to come from somewhere.

This is really a complaint about the costs being so high. The ACA does have some features aimed at lowering the costs.

That's another question, and something can be done about that too. But not with Republicans in power.

he just left out the part about the government lacking complete control over insurance companies. you'd think the conservatives would like that. those companies were free to cancel policies and write new ones, and they did. not a shocker.

and plenty of things that deserve strong criticism,

...but the website,
and that statement made by President Obama about "keeping your (worthless) Insurance" are not among the things that are wrong with the ACA.

K&R

What you describe applies to policies that no longer can be offered.

Clearly, you read my OP with your normal filter. I am not surprised in the least.

Here's a peace offering: You don't comment on my threads and I won't comment on yours?

Fair enough?

Many others here have criticized the ACA in the way you criticized other insurance.

Did you expect DUers to be familiar with your previous posts?