Party "Strategizing" to get Votes Doesn't Help Consumers

The tabloid style, Jerry Springer style of mayhem in today's politics is as entertaining as tabloids and Jerry Springer moments often are, but it helps consumers not one bit.

Democrat and Republican "strategizing," the word used by political parties on how to con Americans into voting for them distract consumers away from issues that can and should be addressed but aren't by our crying, ranting, promising candidates. It's time to expect more…A lot more, and that requires our awareness dictating our inquiries posed to candidates.

So we're reading how Democrats are planning to rant in favor of and warn against attacks on Obamacare. This is consumers' chance to elevate a dialogue into something meaningful rather than the false narrative of Obamacare that sold it and has kept it in place.

First, did Trump on any level "kill" Obamacare? No, it's still the law. Sure, he reduced federal spending on ADVERTISING Obamacare. Just go to healthcare.gov and you'll get your advertising details for Obamacare 2019. The law's been around for eight years, do you still need your original advertising budget to make people aware of it? That would be the worst ad campaign of all time.

Second, the individual mandate, that provision of Obamacare that 'surprised' consumers when it hit the streets for the 2014 benefits season, conveniently after Obama's re-election, is still part of the law. All that's happened is the AMOUNT of penalty has been changed to zero dollars, in effect removing the penalty for not buying the consumer financial product of health insurance. If Democrats win, they can change the number and put in the former penalty amount or a higher dollar amount.

Third, Republicans are still partnered with insurance companies, just like Obama partnered with insurance companies in his creation of Obamacare, easily verified by going way back to 2008 and the insurance industry lobby's proposals for covering those with pre-existing conditions in exchange for forcing people to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, the individual mandate.

Republicans are still working with insurers, advocating continuous coverage provisions, which amount to the same thing except allowing insurance companies to charge people penalties for not purchasing their product by paying more in premiums if they haven't purchased their product continuously, if they've had a break in coverage.

Fourth, Republicans have advocated the reinstatement of the availability of short-term health insurance plans. These plans were always legal even AFTER Obamacare until the Obama Administration greatly restricted them in 2016 because the failure of Obamacare to provide affordable health insurance alternatives to many people led many of the young healthies to use these cheaper plans.

Fifth, the coverage of grown children under their parents' health insurance to the age of 26 is still in place, but NEVER should have been part of Obamacare for the obvious reason: It's in insurance companies' best interests to make this option available to parents, they get the payment of premiums (because this coverage is not free) for health insurance plans purchased by older employees which are most times more coverage plans, since it's the young-healthies who don't buy the plans with more coverage. That's why if you look back, many states and insurers ALREADY offered this option pre-Obamacare.

Sixth, coverage for pre-existing conditions is still in place. Obamacare only allows higher prices to purchase health insurance (premiums) to be charged to people who use tobacco and to people based on age. The pre-existing conditions provision of Obamacare PROHIBITS not only denial of insurance coverage (the original brutal approach of insurance companies) but PROHIBITS charging more in premiums, the cost of getting health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. This does NOT make sense, and much as people who use tobacco or who are older by Obamacare law are charged more by insurance companies in amounts of 1.5 times premiums offered to others, those with pre-existing conditions should also pay more in premium surcharges, but NOT be exposed to denial of coverage.

Seventh, the PUBLIC EMPLOYEE BENEFITS escape hatch used by the very Democrats touting the awesomeness of Obamacare is STILL in place and should have been done away with. Listening to Democrats enjoying public employee benefits where they not only get superior plan offerings but American citizens pay up to 72 percent of their premium costs should insult every consumer citizen. Instead, we were baffled with bullsh*t as we listened to Democrats explain that public employees, including Congress were just lucky, their employer, the federal government, offered them awesome plans so they didn't have to live with Obamacare…Get it? Obamacare was NEVER as cushy as the benefits we provide them with and the fact that their "employer" the federal government uses our money to finance their superior benefits, well too bad for us.

Eighth, the costs of medication were unaffected by Obamacare and today those costs, including the costs of Medicare drugs (paying attention Bernie?) have gone up 10 TIMES the rate of inflation in five years. You can go to CNN and read about that. And it's not only Medicare, prescription drug prices are out of reach for many consumers. Obamacare didn't care about that and during the eight years of Obama's presidency, Obama's Administration conveniently avoided addressing that issue. Republicans too have done nothing on this front.

Instead, insurance companies have changed their "formularies" those lists of who gets meds covered and who doesn't and expect people to KNOW the medications they'll need and shop around for a plan that covers them. This is pretty important consumers, because know this, if something is NOT covered on your plan, whatever it is, it does NOT count towards your out-of-pocket maximum for the year.

Out-of-pocket maximum is the amount of money we pay before we get everything covered under our plan covered at 100 percent. But if something isn't covered by our plan, we can spend everything we have and it will not contribute one single dollar to our out-of-pocket maximum. By the way, under Obama, that out-of-pocket maximum has gone up and up, this year it was $7,350 for an individual and $14,700 for a family.

Ninth, we still have Obama's increased threshold consumers to reach in order to have the option of the medical expense tax deduction, since Obama let legislation lapse that had that threshold at 7.5 percent of our income, after which we could deduct medical expenses, and instead it's been at 10 percent since Obama. Republicans have done NOTHING to fix that.

Tenth, balance billing is still legal EXCEPT for emergency room treatment. This means that if you get services from a nonparticipating provider, you can be billed for the balance of those services not covered by your health insurance plan. This practice also leads to the illegal but oft-practiced physician deal where these inflated "balances" are split between the participating provider and the nonparticipating provider, reported by the LA Times and others all the way back to 2014.

These are just 10 real issues that will at least start to move the discussion of our health industrial complex forward.