11-07-2016, 02:07 PM
(11-07-2016, 01:26 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: What my wife's company offers is irrelevant to the number of carriers that is supposed to be offered on the ACA, neither of us live in OK, so it doesn't affect us, but it does affect my friends. You said you wanted examples, I provided one.
The goals of the ACA was to find a way to cover middle to lower income people that don't qualify for Medicaid by:
decreasing the costs of healthcare
increasing coverage offered by healthcare
improve accessibility to people.
Competition is detrimental to reaching the stated goals, with no competition, we are right back where we started. 1 company dictating the prices it wishes to charge, and if you can't afford the new rates, then tough luck, you'll be fined by the IRS at the end of the year.
If you wife's employer only offers one plan then you have just as many choices as the people in OK searching for a policy via the health insurance exchange.
Obamacare was never about reducing the cost of healthcare. It was about reducing the cost of healthcare to the government. There is a difference. It was supposed to offer affordable, quality health insurance to increase access to healthcare to the poor so the government could stop picking up the tab for people misusing emergency departments.
As I understood it, Obamacare would basically act as a safety net against against major medical problems. It does that. However, it does a poor job of increasing access because many, if not most, healthcare facilities don't accept it. It also does a poor job of offering "quality, affordable" health insurance. If most places don't accept it, it really isn't providing quality health insurance or increasing access to care. In order to be affordable, people need to pick policies with high deductibles (which they probably won't meet unless they have a serious accident or illness) and copays.
I just listed three major pitfalls of Obamacare. But, the anti-Obamacare crowd constantly complains about standard practices of the insurance companies and private businesses, rather than issues that truly relate to Obamacare. The misinformation is irritating.
