How? Provide actual details, otherwise I'm calling bullshit.
Do the Homeless Get Free Medical Treatment at American Hospitals?
- Thread starter Ro_Laren
- Start date
How? Provide actual details, otherwise I'm calling bullshit.
Let's see something that shows that definitively, rather than just your imagination.
A
Amaris
Guest
Post proof or retract, please.
No, it won't. You'll be eligible for insurance thru the exchanges.
As will I, when I retire at 60. And retirement at 60 means I can work the day job remotely from my farm, start my business on my farm, and produce a few jobs. Not a lot of jobs, but a few in an area that desperately needs every job it can produce.
I know quite a few people who plan to take the skills they've gained through a lifetime of working for someone else & start a business of their own. Few of us make it to 60 without a pre-existing condition that makes us uninsurable on the open market.
With a true universal healthcare system, we wouldn't be tied to those employers & would have been able to start our businesses earlier.
As for providers raising prices now... I've only heard anecdotal evidence on that. So I'll provide anecdotal evidence to the contrary: although 60 percent of our contracts are commercial & pay us on percentage of charges, we raised rates this year only on procedures where our charges were less than what Medicare pays or where the charge for a given procedure was inconsistent across the system. There's no reason a CT done in one location in a hospital system should be cheaper than the one done across the street. The patient doesn't get the choice of what scanner they're scheduled in, so charge discrepancies are unfair to the patient.
Here's my anecdata: I've had my employer-provided policy come up for renewal a couple times since Obamacare was passed. My employer doesn't cover very much of it, so any increases are felt by me pretty directly. Without giving exact amounts, here's how my insurance costs increased each year since 2009:
2010: 12.6% increase over 2009
2011: 15.5% increase over 2010 (a lot of that due to a switch to another insurance company)
2012: 7.8% increase over 2011
No word yet on what the 2013 rates will be like, though the rumblings I hear indicate it won't be a steep increase. Talking to my fellow employees, they were seeing at least 10%+ increases every year before Obamacare, too.
All that's happening now is insurers jacking up rates and blaming Obamacare for it, when in reality they'd have raised the rates regardless because that's the way the industry is going, for a whole host of reasons. I'm not saying the Affordable Care Act has had no impact on rates, but to singlehandedly blame them for all recent-year rate increases is just pure hogwash.
^You're right, Robert Maxwell. My health insurance premiums started going up almost every year long before Obama was President.
Just to be clear, I spoke about *providers* raising rates, as was alleged.
Insurers are continuing to raise rates as they have for my entire adult life.
Even on those of us with little healthcare usage & no pre-existing conditions.
I priced plans on the open market to get a ballpark figure in the event Obamacare got dumped.
I've been to the ER once in the last 15 years & go to the doctor only for the annual visit. I'm on no meds, have no pre-existing conditions.
Best price, for a minimal policy? $1250 per month.
At that rate, I'd die in my chair at the office.
That's such bullshit.
Every anecdote you've ever given over the years has the same through line: You getting by because of the contributions others have made (your family, church, doctors, community, wife's boss, other people at your insurance company) to your health care needs. You will never contribute enough to your own healthcare to pay for it. Never.
And ObamaCare is forcing healthy young people into the system, instead of having them wait until they're older and need more care? Well hot damn, who benefits in that system more than the people who do have serious needs?
Yeah, let's all act like health care costs weren't increasing *before* the Affordable Care Act passed!
Oh, wait. The truth is that rate increases have slowed since the ACA passed. Now, arguments can be made both for and against crediting the Affordable Care Act for that (I think I've got a handle on which side you'd take), but blaming the legislation for rate increases when they're actually at "historic lows" seems a bit off.
Link:
I would cheer at a mere 4% rate increase. That's much better than what I've seen my entire working life.
Oh, but Obamacare is teh evil.
Oh, but Obamacare is teh evil.
As well as public assistance....
This is a disconnect I just don't understand. My SO was also a high-consumer of health care dollars. In the last year of his life, he racked up over $2 million in health care expenditures. He had both Medicare & MediCal--and was supremely grateful for that.
As he became ill at 23, no, he never paid into the system what he got out of it. But what was the option? Let him die on the streets? Or take him out into a field & shoot him? Because insurance here in the US is tied to work, he was dumped from his insurance plan as soon as he was unable to work. Public assistance was the only option.
If we'd had a single-payer system, the costs for him--and other high-consumers--would have been spread across the entire population, not just across a system paying for other high-cost consumers of medical care (i.e. the elderly & disabled).
