(UPDATED) Trying to stay out of the Obamacare debate...

jeffbr · August 2016

mace1229 said:

I've even learned to ask for the cash price when filling a prescription because I've found that my plan, that I have no choice in, often has a higher co-pay for prescription than the cash out-of-pocket price. A copay might be $30 to fill a prescription, but the cash price is only $12, how does that make any sense?

Me, too. It makes no sense at all. I tell the pharmacist at the grocery store that I don't have insurance, and they give me the cash price. For a while it was $4 for generics, so it was way cheaper than my prescription co-pay.

Between our unwieldy regulatory environment, greedy big pharma, and asshole insurance companies, our healthcare system is a mess.

PJ_Soul · August 2016

Reading this thread... oh man.

gimmesometruth27 · August 2016

here is a solution.

everyone pays cash. full cost of everything billed is your out of pocket responsibility.

i'll bet that terrible obamacare looks pretty good in that situation.

jeffbr · August 2016

gimmesometruth27 said:
here is a solution.

everyone pays cash. full cost of everything billed is your out of pocket responsibility.

i'll bet that terrible obamacare looks pretty good in that situation.

If it went that direction patients would become consumers and would price shop. $1,500 bills would suddenly become $100 bills. I'm not advocating for that but most of the bloat is due to regulation and insurance companies. All current pricing is completely detached from any market forces. Totally artificial. Something has to change and the ACA is a misnomer. "Affordable" is some sort of Orwellian newspeak.

Shawshank · August 2016

And just to be clear, I'm not bitching about Obamacare in general, or even the exchange. When I first created this thread, like 3 years ago, I was pissed because the insurance I was told I could keep, I couldn't. And the policy was cancelled because it didn't comply. However, at the time, the insurance I got through the exchange in many ways was actually better than I had before...at least that first year.

The problem now has become that I am extremely restricted on choices for health coverage through the exchange. My current insurance plan/company is exiting the marketplace. It allowed me to see local doctors, and while comparable to what I had before Obamacare in both coverage and costs, it was still considerably more expensive than the previous two years. The one I the year before that was the shittiest insurance I've ever had, and none of my doctors were in their network, which sucked because we had to drive 45 miles to see a doctor. They too exited the market place. The one I had the year before that...the first year of Obamacare...was the best coverage I've had...and it also exited the marketplace.

The first year we signed up I think we had probably 12 to 16 companies to choose from. The following year it was barely half that. When I signed up last year I had 4 choices for insurance providers. Only one of them had our doctors in their network. So obviously we took that one. Now that insurance company is exiting the marketplace.

Are there seriously only a couple of people on these boards that realize what a fucking disaster that is? I'm wondering what could possibly be blinding some of you to the reality that many people are experiencing. Granted what I've described is just my experience, but it is far from an isolated case. Even the post that was linked to earlier today, lauding that Obamacare isn't in as bad of shape as people say it is, shows that many markets only have one or two choices for insurance. In what universe is that considered a success??

What does that do to the people who do have cancer and other serious ailments, who do want to continue seeing their current specialists, who don't want to change doctors, who don't have the means to drive 30, 40 or 60+ miles to stay within the network of some shitty insurance plan???

mace1229 · August 2016

gimmesometruth27 said:
here is a solution.

everyone pays cash. full cost of everything billed is your out of pocket responsibility.

i'll bet that terrible obamacare looks pretty good in that situation.

not really.
If I get to keep an extra $1500 a month, and if the hospital would only bill me $2500 like they billed my insurance for having a kid instead of the ridiculous fees they charge the uninsured, then we'd all be better off.

Instead, if you dont have insurance they bill you 10 times what they bill insurance. Knowing people who didnt have insurance, and looking at our original bills, they charge more than 20K for a baby, but the "negotiated" fees were reduced to $2500 through insurance.

If they charged those reasonable rates to begin with, we wouldnt need insurance and I'd keep an extra $1500 a month that would easily cover any of my medical expenses.
And the premiums are so ridiculously high that the insurance makes money even during the months of when I have expensive healthcare issues, because my premium more than covers the expenses in every month I've ever hard it except when I had a baby, and it only saved me about $200-$300 by using it for that month. The rest of the time I'm being forced to pay $1500 a month for nearly nothing.

gimmesometruth27 · August 2016

health care providers and hospitals need to charge 3 times the rate because insurance negotiates them down from that billed price. i work with a surgeon. we gets thousands less than what is billed because of buerocracy and red tape and resistance from insurance companies.

united health care takes everyone's premiums, denies payment to doctors, sticks their customers with high out of pocket costs, and their executives get billion dollar bonuses each year. that to me is the definition of criminal.

Shawshank · August 2016

gimmesometruth27 said:

united health care takes everyone's premiums, denies payment to doctors, sticks their customers with high out of pocket costs, and their executives get billion dollar bonuses each year. that to me is the definition of criminal.

I thought those typed of plans were prohibited since Obamacare was enacted?

gimmesometruth27 · August 2016

Shawshank said:

gimmesometruth27 said:

united health care takes everyone's premiums, denies payment to doctors, sticks their customers with high out of pocket costs, and their executives get billion dollar bonuses each year. that to me is the definition of criminal.
I thought those typed of plans were prohibited since Obamacare was enacted?

i work with a specialist. maybe they could not deny services for primary care/preventive stuff. god knows united denies our hip arthroscopies 90% of the time and we have to appeal only to get denied again. then we try to set up a peer to peer with my doctor and an insurance company doctor. they ask us for 3 different dates/times that my doctor is available to review case with their doctor. they don't call during those times, instead they call after hours. we appeal, they said they called, which they were obligated to do. they win by technicality. fuck united health care with a big metal dildo.

i was taught that high deductible plans were illegal under obamacare. i have found out that we were misinformed.

Shawshank · August 2016

gimmesometruth27 said:
fuck united health care with a big metal dildo.

Bahahahaha!!! Perfect!!

Yeah I was told my pre-obamacare plan was illegal and had to be terminated, even though it was perfect for us. Now my deductible and max out of pocket is actually higher than that one was.

mace1229 · September 2016

gimmesometruth27 said:
health care providers and hospitals need to charge 3 times the rate because insurance negotiates them down from that billed price. i work with a surgeon. we gets thousands less than what is billed because of buerocracy and red tape and resistance from insurance companies.

united health care takes everyone's premiums, denies payment to doctors, sticks their customers with high out of pocket costs, and their executives get billion dollar bonuses each year. that to me is the definition of criminal.

I understand they present a high bill because it's negotiated down. But if they would just present a $200 bill to begin with, instead of $2,000 that's negotiated down to $200, I could actually afford that and wouldn't need insurance, and would be saving $1500 a month

jeffbr · October 2016

Looks like Bill Clinton is now speaking the truth about the ACA. Hopefully he's had a little Obamacare pillow talk with the presidential front runner.

Even Bill Clinton Thinks Obamacare Is a “Crazy System” That “Doesn’t Make Sense”

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world," the former president said, according to CNN.

"The current system works fine if you're eligible for Medicaid, if you're a lower-income working person, if you're already on Medicare, or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care," he said. "But the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies."

Go Beavers · October 2016

A subtle nod to a single payer system.

jeffbr · October 2016

Go Beavers said:
A subtle nod to a single payer system.

Probably, and that's ok with me. I'm just glad that we finally have a respected Dem admitting the failings of the ACA, instead of the obfuscation and hand waving we usually get, where Obama disciples attempt to downplay the negative effects that we are actually experiencing. The good news is that it seems certain that no matter who wins next month, the ACA will be a target for some major reform. Obama couldn't touch it, since he hangs his hat on this "accomplishment." I applaud his efforts to try to do something, but have been disappointed by his unwillingness to admit that it didn't work. So now let's try something different.

Go Beavers · October 2016

I've never really seen anyone who declares that ACA didn't objectively define how it didn't work. They usually reference anecdotal stories, or their own insurance story, which isn't a broad enough sample size. I would say it hasn't really kept costs down, which I didn't think it would do in the first place. I like that it's a step toward a single-payer system. Some day we'll get there.

pjalive21 · October 2016

Dr. Ezekial Emmanuel is an idiot and lied deceiving thousands of people...this guy had no clue what was going to happen...Megyn Kelly thrashes this tool

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/10/05/megyn-kelly-confronts-obamacare-architect-about-rising-premiums-fiery-exchange

lukin2006 · October 2016

It's outrageous that the world’s richest country doesn't provide healthcare as a right, like virtually all other developed nations.-Jill Stein

lukin2006 · October 2016

Since obamacare was passed around eight years ago...

Has the law been adjusted, reviewed for any short coming, are they fixed? Are their annual reviews?

jeffbr · October 2016

It's been tweaked but mostly we're just sitting back and watching it go into a death spiral .

lukin2006 · October 2016

Like Romneycare that preceded it in Massachusetts, Obamacare was designed to enrich the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. - Jill Stein

(UPDATED) Trying to stay out of the Obamacare debate...

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