Start with which lie you believed:
1-Keeping the benefits you have. As unions are finding out, the employer mandate puts this promise on the chopping board. (search Labor Unions on Obamacare). As organized GROUPS, they’re already pressuring Obamacare, and lo and behold the employer mandate is delayed.
2-You’ll be able to afford your care for your pre-existing condition: Well, experience has not yet occurred on this. But what you do know is that you can’t be turned down, and you can’t be charged more in premiums. However, this added coverage for you will also likely cost you a lot more in copayments and coinsurance payments as insurers seek to get more “contribution” from their insureds. It also means that you’ll likely have to change doctors, if not this year, then soon, as insurers provide “thin” alternatives of who participates in their plans just meeting minimum standards.
3-No lifetime limits. You’ll pay for this over time since AGE is an acceptable reason to charge more in insurance premiums under the PPACA. Combined with larger amounts of money laid out for care, you’ll be on the balanced budget approach to paying for your medical care.
4-You and your spouse are safe because you each have insurance and carry one another and your dependents on your plan, so your out of pocket is reduced. We’re already seeing that companies like UPS are excluding this possibility for you by barring spouse’s who have insurance available elsewhere from participating in their employees’ plans.
5-You’re under 26, so your parents are taking care of your insurance coverage. Likely, with increased costs, the quality of your coverage will be reduced, or your parents may not be able to afford to insure you at all.
Obamacare was NEVER revolutionary. It was an attempt to codify what was already going on in our country in the different states. Obamacare is an administrative act, designed to gather information about our healthcare system in a centralized location. It provides little to no novelty in terms of addressing the biggest problems that plague our healthcare system, predatory insurance policies chasing predatory prices of healthcare.
Obamacare did nothing to resurrect the best protection provided to citizens in obtaining access to affordable, quality healthcare, the GROUP. The decades-old tool in managing healthcare is almost extinct…The delivery of a large group of insureds, such as teachers, employees of companies and their families, were a key bargaining chip for businesses to negotiate benefits for their GROUP when they bargained with insurance companies.
The deal still exists in places where you can find benefits packages that make the rest of us envy the power of groups, Federal workers, some unions (still), and even some employers. These groups are already planning to fight for CHANGES to Obamacare that will protect them, not you. In the case of Federal employees they’ve already protected themselves, (see “We Pay for Obamacare and Congress’ Benefits).
For the majority of citizens, Obamacare and health exchanges merely codified the health insurance trend that sacrificed the group in an effort to protect the profits of the healthcare industry, providers and insurers by focusing attention on an “every man for himself” approach, encouraging citizens to blame their sicker counterparts as the “problem” with healthcare.
Best con ever. It seems that few if any are willing to support change that rewards the power of group insurance plans. It is asserted here that without it, whether we have Obamacare or some other version of health insurance/care “reform” that our citizens will be the ones paying the price.
Anyone who’s been involved with insurance for any period of time knows this. It is a bargaining chip that Obamacare failed to protect, incentivize or encourage as the law attempted to sell “transparency” over the power of GROUP insurance.
Transparency can NOT make physicians participate in health insurance plans in order to gain sufficient numbers of patients in exchange for charging reasonable as opposed to runaway fees. Transparency will NOT prevent employers from looking for loopholes that allow them to balance the costs of paying for Obamacare by figuring out a way to offer insurance to fewer people or by providing worse insurance coverage that meets minimum standards under the PPACA to their employees. Transparency will NOT incentivize insurance companies to create plans that more competitively seek enrollment on any basis other than price.
Transparency is not a substitute for the power of a group, a group of diverse, sick and well, old and young, richer and poorer forcing insurance companies to come up with a better plan to win their business.
Whether it’s Obamacare or some other alternative, without incentivizing GROUP insurance plans, there is no rescue for non-governmental American workers except for a single payer plan.
Groups in jeopardy know this. That’s why unions are fighting for changes to carve out their own exception to the impact of Obamacare. The Federal government has already carved out its exception to Obamacare.
If consumers continue the trend of pretending that ANY individual can find better insurance by going it alone rather than uniting with their fellow workers or fellow citizens, even if that citizen is the perfect young, healthy specimen, that person is simply silly. Healthcare providers are consolidating, hospitals, doctor’s practices, why? First they claim that they’ll create new efficiencies. But for our pro-competition fans out there, what does it really mean when you reduce the number of participants in a marketplace?
Instead of assuming that Republicans or Democrats will rescue citizens, citizens should be working towards resurrecting and strengthening GROUP health contracts.
