re: Someone help me understand

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Excellent non-partisan organizations like the Kaiser Foundation produce great work that says as much.

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The Kaiser Foundation? As in Kaiser Permanente, the $60 billion insurance company?

Sounds very non-partisan.

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using a single example that contradicts the rest of the data is a bad way to shape public policy.

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yeah i'm not disagreeing

but 5% is basically the same, especially considering the stakes (taking over 1/6 of our economy) and cost (trillions)

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OPINION CONTRIBUTORS

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Seriously? You know better than that.

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Heartland Institute

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In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question or deny the health risks of secondhand smoke and to lobby against smoking bans.[2][3]:233–34[4] In the decade after 2000, the Heartland Institute became a leading supporter of climate change denial.[5][6] It rejects the scientific consensus on global warming,[7] and says that policies to fight it would be damaging to the economy

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According to the Heartland Institute, it advocates free market policies.[32] The policy orientation of Heartland has been described as conservative, libertarian, and right wing

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Not even going to touch that.

Some real gymnastics there.

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If "health care" goes back to the way it was before Obamacare, premiums will sky rocket. I thought Obamacare is what made the premiums sky rocket ??? for the record, my insurance is not as good as it was before Obamacare and it cost more also. I'll hang up a listen .

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Its easier to blame everything on one causation then to acknowledge the actual complexity and nuance of the problem. Especially when one line of attack has such fruitful political benefits.

In the ten years prior to the ACA, insurance inflation was +131%. Based on current trends, the average employer family that had the average total policy worth 13,375 was expected to see inflation of +166% over the next ten years. Which would of amounted to roughly $9000 more a year, or 750 a month. Concurrently with that trend was a trend of employers scaling back benefits, putting more of the burden on employees, and choosing higher deductible plans. Which to the average person means their per person costs would of been even higher. All while seeing less benefits and higher deductibles.

These were all trends prior to the ACA.

The problem of the ACA is not that they caused trends that were already happening, it is that they did not do enough to stop or reverse this trend. As you pointed out they did slow cost growth, but the catch in that is especially for employer insurance, it is likely most employees did not see that since those savings did not get passed on.

The larger point though, is that rolling back the ACA or any of the Republican plans(which at their core think higher deductibles are a feature, not a bug) is not going to address the problems people are complaining about here.

You haven't addressed my comments about the difference between healthcare costs and premium costs.

Even though I get my premium costs subsidized by my employer, they have realized that it would be difficult for them to pass on the premium increases that they are incurring, so they opted for more modest premium increases in favor of plans that require huge increases in out-of-pocket costs.

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And my insurer specifically said it was due to Obamacare... in writing.

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Well if they wrote it down, it MUST be true!

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if they wrote it down, it MUST be true!

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It is true, whether they wrote it down or not. It is not even debatable.

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i buy my own health insurance and i am the demographic the government decided would subsidize EVERYONE (male, economic producer, no health issues, and young-ish)

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I'm right there with you.

My premium has gone from $100 when Obamacare was enacted to $400 now. It was stable before Obamacare, barely rising.

I dread to see what it will be next year. I expect to pay $700 a month in a little more than a year.

The Affordable Care Act will make health care unaffordable for me.

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Wrong!

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my insurer told me that i could not keep my plan b/c the ACA ruled it was a bad plan and they weren't going to change it to fit the ACA and just bounced the frick out of LA altogether

so Obama lied with his "if you like your plan, you can keep it" bullshite

also, the ACA has limit choices in my area to TWO (and one totally sucks in terms of providers)