nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

You can go out and get a good health insurance plan with essentially zero deductible for a very low cost. However, if it doesn't cover birth control, pregnancy, drug rehab and transgender procedures, it isn't considered health insurance and yo will be subject to the "tax" for not having health insurance under the mandate

vernon

just where did you come up with that?

GmanTerry

When I was young, people bought 'Major Medical' insurance and paid for trips to the doctor 'out of pocket'. It worked well. When I broke my arm, my parents handed the hospital the Blue Cross, Blue Shield Card and it was covered. Get the flu, pay the doctors yourself. The covering of everything is what has ruined healthcare insurance. When I lived in Florida, they passed a no fault auto insurance plan. It was supposed to drastically reduce insurance rates. Reality turned out to be that everyone filed for every door ding and scratch and rates went up. People need to realize the cost of things by participating in the payment. The most underused word in these times is responsibility. We need to be responsible for ourselves and our families. There are way too many freeloaders and people who abuse the system and that's what drives the costs up.

Semper Fi

E

Sure made the nuns mad.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

It is my own experience. I needed a short term catastrophic plan for just a few months. It's great plan. My docs are on it. But, I was given the caution that I might be subject to the Obama tax since it doesn't cover the things I mentioned. It also has Rx and preventive testing/imaging at no out of pocket expense.

I was pretty surprised.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

That's pretty much right. There was no assignment of benefits either. Sometimes patients had to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed by the insurance co. Sort of slows the trips for the little dings and minor issues.

boofhead

The cost is too high as well, plus the doctors and health care providers can opt out of Medicare. How do they have the right to do that? I don't like Big Brother control but surely all doctors and hospitals should be forced to accept Medicare? They say it is because Medicare is slow to pay and does not pay enough but I know that the insurance companies pay a lot less than I would if I didn't have insurance; they can bargain down the amount and I am pretty sure that they don't pay much more than Medicare does. I had to see a doctor for a brief check of my eye when I got a small chip of stone in it from the mower and they charged me $210. Because I complained I saw the amount and the difference in what they got from my private insurance and from me was $40. Surely they could accept that?

But I believe the real reason for the high cost of everything medical is because of the interference by the government. Mandating insurance for example and mandating the coverage and payouts. How, for example, can an insurance company cover people who are sick when they apply for coverage? As a driver could do the same by buying insurance after having an accident? How does that work? Answer of course is to pass on the costs to all of us who are not so irresponsible as to not have insurance in the first place. Before this mandate came in you were covered if you had some sort of insurance but you could buy a better policy if you needed it. So everyone had a cheap policy for the basics and if needed, they could upgrade. If you took a chance of not getting sick and had nothing, then there was a waiting period, maybe a year or six months. That meant that if you got really sick without warning you could not expect the insurance companies to cover you. That seemed fair to me and still seems that way because the cost of insurance has gone way up to everybody because there are too many people who will not take responsibility for themselves or their own families and expect me to pay their bills. I have a word for those people but would be banned if I used it here.

When a hospital comes up with a cost for a procedure, then the government mandates coverage, the providers will always increase their charges to take advantage of the free money. For example if a tonsil removal costs $2000 but the insurance will pay $500 toward that cost, before you know it the cost for the procedure becomes $2500. The healthcare industry might not be caring, but they are smart and they are greedy.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

I blame docs and insurance companies for the excessive costs but this definition of health insurance is a liberal notion to get people to pay for others stuff. Why should a single guy have to pay for pregnancy??

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

I went through the same thing in Florida. If the health plan I wanted wasn’t approved under the ACA I had to pay the IRS fine. I’m screwed no matter which way I go.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Welcome to the world of socialized medicine. You get to pay for things you neither want nor need so someone else who does want and need it can pay less.

cbpat1

Five years ago, my wife and I paid $625 for an upgraded health plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, and this coming year (2018) we will be paying a little over $2000 per month. 2018 will bring us a $700 per month increase. That’s a bigger increase than we payed per month for a better plan than what we currently have, and it had a zero deductible. We have a huge deductible now. This is certainly not the $2500 average savings per year that Obama promised us. The problem I have is these democratic politicians knew at the time they enacted this legislation that the rates were going to skyrocket, how could they not, with all the politically correct things like pregnancy coverage and transgender issues that need to be covered. My old policy covered none of these things, but, neither my wife nor I needed any of those crazy rate raising options and guess what, we had better insurance, for one third the cost and it fit our needs better than what we currently have. We need to overhaul the current insurance industry and do it now before it’s too late. We also need to stop listening to the democrats, who are the lying jerks who gave us this horrible healthcare in the first place and let the republicans do whatever they can to fix it. I don’t know why the democrats are so staunchly defending this legislation they shoved down our throats in the first place, one would think they would be so embarrassed by it, they wouldn’t want their names associated with it. Please Republicans, keep your promise and repeal and replace!

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Exactly what has happened to me. It’s insane. Looking into Medishare.

GmanTerry

All the Liberals who want socialism should look at the three socialist programs the government now runs, Social Security, Medicare and Obama Care. All are almost bankrupt. They are all Ponzi schemes and they are all expensive. This is not what the founders envisioned.


Semper Fi

SilentGeneration Loc: Michigan

I began working at age 16 and finally retired for good at age 72. I paid Social Security and Medicare taxes for decades. I now pay a monthly premium along with a deductible and co pays for Medicare coverage. My explanation of benefits statements show that Medicare payments are reduced due to sequestration. Therefore my co-pays are higher.

If Social Security or Medicare are in financial trouble, a large part of that is due to borrowing money from these programs for other government expenditures. These political decisions have jeopardized the financial future of these programs.

I've been lucky enough to avoid having to get insurance through the ACA; therefore I'm not qualified to speak about this program.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Are you kidding? They're proud of it! Gaining socialized medicine was a huge step on the way to their socialist utopia. They made it so vague and complex that it is all but impossible to repeal without spending years going through its stipulations and mandates line by line and writing a bill that is equally vague and complex to compensate for the myriad unrelated power grabs, overreaches, taxes, mandates, it even redefines what a 'full-time' job is! Even now, years later, there are still things in that barnacle on the face of America that we don't know about. Nancy 'we have to pass it to see what's in it' Pelosi and her co-conspirators did a bang-up job of making it as difficult as humanly possible to repeal and they're very proud of themselves.