Affordable Care Act Victims?
“People feel we’re victims in a really ugly political game,” said Ian Dixon, 38 years old, an app developer in Charlottesville whose premiums for his family of four will jump from $988 a month to $3,158 a month, according to prices he found on the ACA exchange. “We have to take this up to Capitol Hill.”
Really? The above quote came from an article in the Wall Street Journal and it is incredulous. What political game? The highly left-leaning city supported the Affordable Care Act and now they are crying about it? And “they are urging lawmakers to keep the insurance requirement because they say ending it will raise costs. And they want Congress to restore billions of dollars in federal funding that helps insurers offset the costs of subsidies for low-income consumers.” Sorry, bro, this monstrosity is about to blow up fast and you are just an offering to the insurance gods. And they don’t care about you.
The insurance companies always win. Either they gouge you as the consumer or they demand to be bailed out by the government with subsidies, which is basically more taxes on us.
The rest of the article is laughable as a few hundred people from C’ville are going to write some letters and demand the GOP change their mind. Whatever.
Chicken meet roost.
Personally, I had to drop health insurance and purchase one of the health ministry options (Liberty). Instead of paying $1800 a month I will be paying $440. Is it the same coverage? No. In some ways, it’s better and in some ways, it’s worse. I would have you look into it for yourself. Maybe if we all walk from the insurers they can go broke and real competition can bring prices down. Or we can whine like the little crybabies of Charlottesville where they cry together on a Facebook page, which will accomplish nothing.
And hugs ‘n’ kisses to CVS for buying Aetna. Consider which big fish it was that swallowed the other. Screw on the Pharm connection and the physician/NP/ locum meat-delivery machine, and you have pipeline medicine. It works in the rest of the Third World.
Steve O’ you’re harshing my mellow. Seriously, bummer. 100% correct, but depressing as hell nonetheless.
Health Ministry options are not available to non-Christians, Doug. And “None include long term maintenance drugs.” And all appear to exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions. So I hope you are enjoying your good health.
They are available to non-Christians. You have to believe in a God though or I guess a supreme being. Long term drugs can be negotiated via the ministry or you or via the company. Pre-existing conditions were not restricted when I joined. I think each year you are with them they cover more and more % of care related to those conditions. Look it up for yourself.
People don’t seem to get it. Time only flows one way. If you blow something up, you can’t buy un-dynamite to blow it back together.
And the rachet only turns in one direction. Republican, Democrat – the process of medical care can only run in one direction, and that’s downhill. Repealing ACA will not reverse ACA – simply shift the recipients of the cash flow of this enormous “industry.” And not shift it back to the patient, either.
I was little concerned when ACA was enacted, as the big picture was pretty clear. It still is. I’ve been right, but I’ve not been happy about it.
When a civilization flourishes, the capacity of its people for productivity and enterprise increases, and they each flourish to their own degree. There is enough abundance to care for the unfortunate and incapable. As the technology used in the civilization becomes ever more savvy, things become cheaper, faster, safer and more available. That is the Physiology of a Healthy Civilization.
When a civilization is ill, it retreats into a dark age. There is no abundance, and people are set against each other. The ability to prosper evaporates, and to innovate becomes impossible. Technology no longer produces anything that is of value, so technology is forgotten. Civilization winds backwards into an age more dangerous and expensive, slower and more sparse. This is what happens to sick civilizations.
Not all diseases have effective remedies. I have not yet heard one for our culture. There is inexorable progression towards dark ages. This is the terrible secret about American Medicine – the patients no longer can prosper enough to afford First World Medicine. We will have Third World Medicine, but the clinics do not have to be dirty or smelly or fly-ridden. They will be cheerful places with comfortable chairs, well lit and still with attractive plants. The superstition of IT will be worshipped like a Sky God of Healing – press the button on the app, and buy the medicine. Diagnosis will wither back to identifying “some bad thing in your protoplasm.”
I think I realized something big, when I learned that the formula for concrete was lost for 1600 years. In Roman days, they had all manner of concrete – hydraulic, marine and all that – dozens of different types for different structural demands. Then, as Rome drew backward into barbarism….who needs to build roads and bridges anymore? Who needs to write things down anymore? And the formula was forgotten until its reinvention relatively recently.
Think of that, and realize that our medicine depends upon intricate ability, training and prosperity, technology and manufacture and creativity. If CONCRETE, for god’s sake, can turn from a process into a magical unknown mystery – what about FLAIR imaging by MRI’s? Will our doctors stand in front of mammoth rusted tubes, and say – “This is what they had to use before we had apps to tell us what to do.”
Repeal it, don’t repeal it. The bleeding-away of society, culture and civilization into the Dark Ages is worrisome, and the answers are subtle.
Well said. How fearsome !
Looks like the Democrats screwed the Middle class again.
Actually the middle clas helped to screw itself, by repeatedly voting for more gov’t to provide health care, retirement security, higher education, child care, housing subsided, and a whole range of “family friendly” policies. The more gov’t has helped, the more wealth it has taken from the middle class, and the more it has encouraged people to join the dependency class.