What happens after Obamacare

N&P: Discuss governments, nations, politics and recent related news here.

Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital

Post Reply
User avatar
mr friendly guy
The Doctor
Posts: 11235
Joined: 2004-12-12 10:55pm
Location: In a 1960s police telephone box somewhere in Australia

What happens after Obamacare

Post by mr friendly guy »

BBC has a story where they interview people who benefited and didn't from the Affordable Care Act

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38590922
US patients await Obamacare's fate
By Jessica Lussenhop
BBC News
13 January 2017


As Republicans begin their repeal of the Affordable Care Act, patients weigh in on how the act has changed their medical care.
At first, 20-year-old Duncan DeLoach figured that the persistent, squeezing feeling he had at the base of his spine was just a pulled muscle.
But the pain intensified to the point where, on the evening of Thanksgiving 2014, DeLoach's mother Cathy found him collapsed on the floor of their Fairfax, Virginia, home. Not long after, he went in for a full-body MRI scan.
"I was in so much back pain they actually had to tie my legs together," says DeLoach. "I couldn't stay still."
The images showed ghostly white glimmers dotting his organs. Cathy DeLoach remembers thinking, "That looks like cancer."
Why is Obamacare so controversial?
Can Obamacare be repealed?
Obama urges 'fight' for healthcare law
Testicular cancer, it turned out, so advanced that it had already spread to Duncan's lymph nodes and liver, dotting his spine, lungs and skull.

To save Duncan's life, treatment began immediately - an orchiectomy to remove his right testicle, followed by 12 weeks of aggressive chemotherapy. There was no time to think about how the family would pay for the treatment, and luckily they didn't need to.
Duncan was covered under his father's health insurance, thanks to a provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
Before the law passed in 2010, Duncan would have been kicked off his parent's plan at 18, since he wasn't a full-time student. His job with a landscaping company didn't offer health care coverage.
But since he became one of the estimated 5.7 million young adults able to remain on a parent's health care under the ACA, Duncan was able to access top-notch treatment thanks to his father's high-quality plan.
"In 15 days, we racked up $29,000 [in treatment costs]," recalls Cathy. "I stayed with him in the hospital and I had a lot of time to think about how grateful I was for the Affordable Care Act."
Both Duncan's mother and father say they are "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" - neither voted for Barack Obama in either 2008 or 2012, and Cathy said that when the ACA first passed she was not a fan. She thought it was too expensive and rammed through by Democrats.
But sitting by Duncan's beside, Cathy completely changed her mind. Not only was she grateful for the coverage her son received, she also became a fan of other effects of the ACA: coverage for birth control, cancer screenings and the requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide a health care plan.

Now, she's terrified that Republicans, along with the new Trump administration, will take away her son's coverage and make it more difficult for him to be insured in the future.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has fundamentally changed the way many Americans access their health care. An estimated 20 million Americans have insurance under its provisions, and the number of uninsured has dropped to a historic low of 9%.
Three of law's biggest tenets include requiring all Americans to have insurance or pay a penalty, widely expanding the number of people eligible for the government-funded Medicaid programme, and establishing online marketplaces, called exchanges where patients can comparatively shop for plans.
The enormous package included many other provisions, such as making it illegal for patients with pre-existing conditions to be denied insurance, changing the ways doctors and hospitals are reimbursed by the federal government for care, and - as in Duncan's case - allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until the age of 26.
While some Republicans have said they would like to keep the young people's provision, a repeal of the act could leave people like Duncan suddenly uninsured.
"I'm so furious about what's happening," says Cathy. "I'm in a position where I can afford it, but a lot of people are not.
"This really is something that could be so awful for so many people, and so many poor people, and it's wrong."

Shredding the Affordable Care Act was a key campaign promise made by Donald Trump. Now that Republicans control the House, Senate and the White House, plans are moving forward to dismantle Obama's signature policy. This week, Republicans in the House and Senate passed a budget resolution which set in motion a plan to repeal key parts of the law.
Republicans do not yet have a replacement plan. At his first press conference of the year, President-elect Trump vowed that he would have a new plan as soon as his pick for secretary of Health And Human Services, Tom Price, is confirmed.
"Obamacare is a complete and total disaster," he told reporters. "We're going to have a health care that is far less expensive and far better."
It is still unclear how he plans to do this. However, some Americans are happy to see the ACA repealed - especially those who had negative health care experiences as a result of its enactment.
This group includes people like Bob Frank, who until 2010 had a plan he purchased as an individual from Blue Cross Blue Shield in Maryland.
Frank was in good health, and says he paid about $360 a month and had a $2,000 deductible - the amount he would pay out of pocket before insurance began to cover costs. But his policy was cancelled because it didn't cover all of the "essential" kinds of health care mandated by the ACA - in Frank's case, his plan had no coverage for pregnancy, maternal or paediatric care.

As a 62-year-old single man with grown children, Frank says he had absolutely no need for these services, but was forced to pay for them - under the new, ACA-compliant plan he was offered, his deductible tripled and his premiums ticked up year after year.
"This then started a snowball of chaos," he says.
In 2014, after three hours of surgery to repair discs in his neck, Frank says he woke up to a shocking bit of news - while he was under anesthesia, his policy had been cancelled. Frank's insurance company had confused his current and cancelled plan, and claimed he had not been paying his bills.
Without coverage, Frank's bill for the surgery came to $36,000. It took weeks to straighten out the confusion and get the surgery covered.
"The whole Affordable Care Act experience was terrible," he says. "We were told our premiums were going to drop, everybody's going to save $2,500 - this is all a racket.
"I'm in favour of them repealing it not because I want to spite President Obama. I want to repeal it because it doesn't work."

Premiums for Obamacare plans have shot up around the country - an average of 22% nationwide - and insurance companies are abandoning what were supposed to be the competitive, cost-reducing exchanges. As a result, some people have lost their ACA plans and have fewer replacement options in some counties and states.
Beverly Hallberg, a 37-year-old small business owner in Washington DC, says she's seen her premiums triple in the last few years, and her deductible is sky high. Critics say that having impossibly high deductibles is almost the same as having no healthcare at all. The consequences are identical: people are reluctant to go to the doctor.
"I like to say, my health hasn't changed, yet my health care costs have. I don't think I went to the doctor once this year," says Hallberg.

Tracy Pate, a health care navigator with a non-profit called Project Access in north-eastern Tennessee, has heard plenty of complaints from her clients about the rising premium costs and narrowing plan options. In fact, she's experienced it herself - her monthly payment has gone from $50 a month to $200.
"But I'm still thankful I have health insurance - I couldn't get health insurance because I had pre-existing conditions," she says. "You may not like the cost of insurance, but that's just a small part of the pie known as Affordable Care Act."
Pate says that when she first started trying to sign people up for Obamacare, doors would close in her face - she serves a largely conservative community with no love for the outgoing president. But now that some years have passed and people have experienced the benefits of health care coverage, Pate says she no longer has to hit the streets - people are calling her to make appointments.
She says despite rate increases, she's still been able to steer her clients to affordable options using the healthcare exchange, and the majority of the clients pay less than $200 a month. The thought of all the people she's signed up losing their coverage overnight is "scary".
"How can you tell 22 million people, 'No, sorry, you can't go to your doctor tomorrow.'" she says.

Even families like the DeLoach's can sympathise with critiques of the ACA. While the law was vital to Duncan's care, they have an older daughter who recently bought a plan through an ACA exchange and was shocked by the cost.
Mike DeLoach, Duncan's father, says he has a fundamental problem with being required by the government to buy health insurance - a component necessary to fund the provisions he does like, including the 26-year-old coverage rule and the pre-existing condition rule,
Still, just a few days ago he wrote a letter to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, telling him Duncan's story and asking him to delay the repeal of Obamacare.
"The chance of somebody who doesn't have a college degree getting a job that's going to give them health insurance right now is slim. So I said, 'Why don't you hold off'.
"Fix that - then reform [ACA]."
As for Duncan, now 22, his doctor declared his cancer in remission in April 2015. He celebrated by moving to Utah for a almost a year to work at a ski resort.
Now that he's back in Virginia and the reality of the election has set in, he says he is very concerned about his future. Doctors are keeping a close eye on a residual mass near one of his kidneys, and Duncan returns for blood tests and scans every few months.
"It's a pretty active worry," he says. "It costs a lot of money to go through what I have to go through."
Although he is not very politically active, Duncan says that in the future he will vote with one thing in mind.
"I'll vote for my health insurance. That's pretty much it."
Another Republican supporter also said to Paul Ryan in a town hall that he wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for the ACA.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/12/polit ... obamacare/ (video in link)

I find it disheartening there are people who only think health care is good when it happens to them? Its not like humans cannot think in abstract terms.

In other Obama care news, idiot on Facebook celebrates Obamacare repeal, then finds out Obamacare is another name for the ACA he depends on.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jacob-geers/2 ... obamacare/

Jesus Christ. With voters like this, no wonder healthcare reform is long in coming.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
User avatar
MKSheppard
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Posts: 29842
Joined: 2002-07-06 06:34pm

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by MKSheppard »

Maybe my relatively affordable healthcare won't grenade upwards in price soon (TM).
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
User avatar
The Romulan Republic
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 21559
Joined: 2008-10-15 01:37am

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by The Romulan Republic »

What happens? Nothing. The Republicans have no real plan, except privatization.

So poor people die and go bankrupt, and Republicans are happy (until it happens to them), because they're poor people so they had it coming to them.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
User avatar
Flagg
CUNTS FOR EYES!
Posts: 12797
Joined: 2005-06-09 09:56pm
Location: Hell. In The Room Right Next to Reagan. He's Fucking Bonzo. No, wait... Bonzo's fucking HIM.

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Flagg »

The people who bitched and moaned about having to buy affordable health insurance will bitch and moan about not being to afford health insurance and all the time, money, and effort that went into merging all the various systems together so that all of your health information would be available to all of your various doctors and pharmacies ends up being a waste and health insurance ends up more expensive than before and unfortunately it will effect the trailer trash and racists who voted for Donnie Douchebag just as much as actual people who deserve human rights.
We pissing our pants yet?
-Negan

You got your shittin' pants on? Because you’re about to
Shit. Your. Pants!
-Negan

He who can,
does; he who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
User avatar
Tribble
Sith Devotee
Posts: 3082
Joined: 2008-11-18 11:28am
Location: stardestroyer.net

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Tribble »

The Romulan Republic wrote:What happens? Nothing. The Republicans have no real plan, except privatization.

So poor people die and go bankrupt, and Republicans are happy (until it happens to them), because they're poor people so they had it coming to them.
That's exactly it: the Republican plan is to have no plan and no replacement. What's worse is that's probably the best case scenario; it seems to be increasingly likely that getting rid of Obamacare is merely stage 1 of their plan, and stage 2 is to defund / repeal as much of Medicare, Medicaid and other "Socialist services" as much as possible. IMO their end game is probably 100% privatization with no government funding or regulations, or as close to that as possible. With appropriate tax cuts to the rich, of course.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
User avatar
Flagg
CUNTS FOR EYES!
Posts: 12797
Joined: 2005-06-09 09:56pm
Location: Hell. In The Room Right Next to Reagan. He's Fucking Bonzo. No, wait... Bonzo's fucking HIM.

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Flagg »

Tribble wrote:
The Romulan Republic wrote:What happens? Nothing. The Republicans have no real plan, except privatization.

So poor people die and go bankrupt, and Republicans are happy (until it happens to them), because they're poor people so they had it coming to them.
That's exactly it: the Republican plan is to have no plan and no replacement. What's worse is that's probably the best case scenario; it seems to be increasingly likely that getting rid of Obamacare is merely stage 1 of their plan, and stage 2 is to defund / repeal as much of Medicare, Medicaid and other "Socialist services" as much as possible. IMO their end game is probably 100% privatization with no government funding or regulations, or as close to that as possible. With appropriate tax cuts to the rich, of course.
That's exactly it. Anyone 55 and older (stupid old shits who destroyed this country and reliable Trumpazi voting block) will see no change, those of us on social security disability (which includes Medicare) may be grandfathered in (but Trumpazi's being hateful, vindictive, shitstains who are the only reason hell should exist mean they, aka me, likely won't). Everyone else under 55 will supposedly be given some kind of "healthcare voucher" when they reach whichever age the Trumpazi's pick, probably 70-75. If social security survives in any form it will almost certainly be full privatized so the Trumpazi's and the rest of their subhuman ilk will be able to rob it blind.

Anyone with an issue with the madness will be mocked as a "retard" by the Trumpazi's on Fox and CNN, and "dead intern" Joe Scarborough on MSNBZzzzzzzz.
We pissing our pants yet?
-Negan

You got your shittin' pants on? Because you’re about to
Shit. Your. Pants!
-Negan

He who can,
does; he who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28724
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Broomstick »

Happy to have insurance, of course, even if there are always issues with getting to actually pay for shit. But if the Repulitards have their way I'll be holding a fundraiser to pay for my spouse's morphine as he dies at home without any sort of treatment whatsoever for his cancer.

Rinse and repeat millions of times - and these asshats don't give a shit.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
User avatar
General Zod
Never Shuts Up
Posts: 29205
Joined: 2003-11-18 03:08pm
Location: The Clearance Rack
Contact:

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by General Zod »

The really sad thing is a lot of Republican voters who are on the ACA are actually glad that Obamacare is getting repealed because they don't realize they're the same fucking thing.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
User avatar
Flagg
CUNTS FOR EYES!
Posts: 12797
Joined: 2005-06-09 09:56pm
Location: Hell. In The Room Right Next to Reagan. He's Fucking Bonzo. No, wait... Bonzo's fucking HIM.

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Flagg »

Broomstick wrote:Happy to have insurance, of course, even if there are always issues with getting to actually pay for shit. But if the Repulitards have their way I'll be holding a fundraiser to pay for my spouse's morphine as he dies at home without any sort of treatment whatsoever for his cancer.

Rinse and repeat millions of times - and these asshats don't give a shit.
That's the type of shit that makes me see fucking red. My maternal grandmother was a psychopathic cunt who deserved to die long before she did, but she was still (barely) a human being and keeping her "snowed" as nurses put it in hospice care was the humane way for her to end her life, but since Obama got in, some stupid celebrity pricks OD, and suddenly the FDA and DEA are seriously going after hospice clinics where the purpose is to end inhumane life prolonging bullshit yet the jackbooted thugs won't allow it.

So when the ACA goes bye bye (and it will) they will just take patients who can't afford what hospice care is left and leave them to die with or without family in a regular hospital bed (if lucky) in some room off in the corner (if not just put in a hallway) and code blue them for half a minute them send them to the mortuary, it's fucking discustingly inhumane and family pets are treated better.

I'm sorry for your situation.
We pissing our pants yet?
-Negan

You got your shittin' pants on? Because you’re about to
Shit. Your. Pants!
-Negan

He who can,
does; he who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
User avatar
Knife
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 15769
Joined: 2002-08-30 02:40pm
Location: Behind the Zion Curtain

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Knife »

What happens? We reset back 8 years. Prices keep going up because people will always need healthcare and companies who provided it or pieces of it want a bigger profit motive. People who can't afford it are screwed, continue to overwhelm the few places that by law cannot turn them away IE: emergency departments.

The only saving grace, if there is one, is that when either Democrats or at least the not-crazy-right get off their ass and get some political power we might actually get universal healthcare like every other first world country.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
User avatar
mr friendly guy
The Doctor
Posts: 11235
Joined: 2004-12-12 10:55pm
Location: In a 1960s police telephone box somewhere in Australia

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by mr friendly guy »


Jesus Christ. People who benefit from Obamacare on why they voted Trump who campaigned to repeal Obamacare.

1. I think he will bring in something better. Because he is a businessman. Sure he hasn't outlined his plan yet, but I hope he will replace it with something better.

2. I just don't like Obama even though the ACA treated me when I had breast cancer. :roll: I am sure we should stop using the Haber process for producing ammonia because Haber was responsible for the poison gas the Germans used against the allies in WWI.

3. Its expensive. This is actually a legitimate one, although it runs into the problem that Trump hasn't actually stated a better plan.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Simon_Jester »

This is one of the reasons quite a few people on the left* are saying that knee-jerk bigotry played such a big role in getting Trump into power. People who would support the ACA, some of them people who need the ACA in order to live, if they just sat down and judged it on its merits... These same people become opponents of the ACA because it has Obama's name on it.

And Obama simply has not done any specific, tangible thing that can explain why they would despise his name so much. Not so much that they would be willing to risk their own lives to destroy a thing with his name on it. This level of contempt can only be explained if there is an underlying impulse to loathe Obama's name, in and of itself, because of something about Obama, rather than something Obama did.

Gee, I wonder what thing about Obama might cause him to be the target of such loathing? Why would people think Obama is so terrible that they think someone should bring down the law that allowed them to get a cure for their cancer?
__________________________

*Some of whom are being mocked by self-identified 'moderates' or whatever they call themselves. Because IT'S NOT ABOUT RACISM! IT'S NOT ABOUT SEXISM! IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MEDIA PARROTING LIES! IT'S ABOUT ECONOMIC ISSUES! IT'S ABOUT HILLARY BEING UNAPPROACHABLE!

No, really. If it weren't for the racism and the media parroting lies... we might see a lot of Republicans voting against Obama, but not nearly as many of them would be voting against ObamaCARE.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Tsyroc
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13746
Joined: 2002-07-29 08:35am
Location: Tucson, Arizona

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Tsyroc »

The COO of the hospital I work act recently wrote an article for the local paper on how the ACA has helped hospitals.

The last year before the ACA the hospital ate $25 million in unpaid costs from uninsured patients. Last year the hospital only ate $8 million of those same costs.

Most people don't realize that hospitals are required by law to treat people whether they can pay or not. Obviously there's some sort of cut off but I don't know what it is. We are a not for profit hospital, and the only hospital in Tucson not owned by a corporation. We still need to make a profit to stay viable and go forward but we're not in it to make money.
By the pricking of my thumb,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
User avatar
Tribble
Sith Devotee
Posts: 3082
Joined: 2008-11-18 11:28am
Location: stardestroyer.net

Re: What happens after Obamacare

Post by Tribble »

Hmmm, I wonder what it is about Obama that right-wing white-males hate so much that they are willing to destroy their own livelihood so long as it brings him down... even though the Affordable Care Act is based at least in part on Mitt Romney's health care reform in Massachusetts, a fellow Republican...
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
Post Reply