re: Who wants to point out the flaws of this healthcare bill?

quote:

---

Obamacare is crushing a lot of people. Everybody buying policies on the individual market and not getting a subsidy is getting hammered. I have a reason to be the way I am.

Previous to 2014 I could buy a high deductible catastrophic policy for $120 a month. The ACA mandates kicked in at the beginning of 2014. Aetna informed me my current policy did not comply with ACA. My new bronze level compliant policy would be $325 month. That told me everything I needed to know. It told me that my huge increase was mandate driven. It also told me my increase was there to help pay for someone else(what you socialists like to call it "cost sharing"). Fast forward to 2017 my payment would have been $454 a month. I didn't buy. I went without insurance.

---

I take it you are over 30 and did not qualify for a hardship exemption at that time?

Either way, nothing magical about Cassidy's bill is going to give you another $120 a month plan, not even if we rolled back everything to how it was that day. Because inflationary pressures and all the things that go into driving up premiums year over year. A phenomenon that was already spiraling out of control well before the ACA. Not to mention an environment where lifetime caps and rescission was a widespread occurrence. Making that high-risk plan a bit of gamble in and of itself if you got cancer and forget to list one drug you took ten years ago on page 24 of some doctors form and the insurer then used it to try and cancel your reimbursements.

Cassidy would open the path for a way for you to get a high deductible plan again, yes, but a lot of that is dependent on the state you live in and whether they will seek exemptions. Cassidy would also open the door to invite back in a lot of the above nonsense as well.

The question I have is why that path is so desirable? 18% of GDP is spent on healthcare in this country, 750 billion dollars lost in waste that doesn't improve patients outcomes, we spend more for almost every unit of healthcare then any other country, and all you want to get out of that investment is a high deductible plan built on that foundation, that may end up having out of pocket caps that still end you up bankrupt? And I wouldn't take pride in not taking a subsidy if you qualify. The thing is, the moment you get large employer coverage, you will have a tax subsidy baked into it. Because one of the glossed over aspects of our system(including a reason why individual market coverage is so much more expensive) is that employers and employees that receive health benefits get a tax subsidy to pay for it. Which economic studies have shown has helped inflate healthcare insurance prices at large.

Though I am still waiting for what better ways there are to fix these problems you hint at, and why Republicans had 6 years and haven't been able to put them forth?

I'm solutions orientated, and I don't see many solutions to the problems I identify in the system coming out of Cassidy's plan, and have yet to hear a convincing argument for it.