More Obamacare fuckups

[Latrinsorm]

Terrence, you ignorant slut. It's called the Invisible Hand. You might as well say "Hey! Any gas station can raise their prices to $7 a gallon!" The market will simply go to another gas station and get their health insurance.

[subzero]

Terrence, you ignorant slut. It's called the Invisible Hand. You might as well say "Hey! Any gas station can raise their prices to $7 a gallon!" The market will simply go to another gas station and get their health insurance.

Yeah, that sounds great. People who can't afford 'decent' health care can just go down the road to the guys looking to take advantage of their situation like a cash advance spot. They know they've got you over a barrel, so they can rape you and you'll thank them for it.

[Tgo01]

subzero > Latrin

Any questions?

[Wrathbringer]

subzero > Latrin

Any questions?

Yes. Didn't you quit?

[Atlanteax]

Yes. Didn't you quit?

He has not quit on despising Obama

[Kembal]

I called this back like 100 or 200 pages ago. I noted that there was nothing in the "Affordable" care act that would prevent insurance companies from raising their premiums as much as they want, the only catch is they can only keep like 20% or whatever the number is for overhead, the rest has to either be paid out in services or refunded to customers.

Well that's all fine and dandy but even a simpleton such as myself can see that if Health Provider A makes 1,000,000 dollars a year in premiums that means they can keep 200,000 dollars for overhead, then gee, that means if they raise their premiums so they are making 2,000,000 dollars a year then they get to keep 400,000 dollars in overhead, doesn't matter if they have to issue rebates or not, they're still ahead.

Now imagine what the people who are paid to think of ways to make money are coming up with.

Rate hikes have to be approved by the state insurance commissioner in most states. (this was even before ACA) Usually, when they file double-digit increases like this, they get smacked down extremely hard.

Here's what happened in 2014: http://acasignups.net/15/03/18/retur...emium-increase

[Tgo01]

Rate hikes have to be approved by the state insurance commissioner in most states. (this was even before ACA) Usually, when they file double-digit increases like this, they get smacked down extremely hard.

Here's what happened in 2014: http://acasignups.net/15/03/18/retur...emium-increase

I'll never get tired of hearing people say "Sure premiums went up but not by that much. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to make health care "affordable"?

Someone help me out here. Okay, before Obamacare health insurance supposedly wasn't affordable. Now we take those unaffordable healthcare plans and make them even more expensive. How has healthcare gotten "affordable"?

[Thondalar]

I'll never get tired of hearing people say "Sure premiums went up but not by that much. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to make health care "affordable"?

Someone help me out here. Okay, before Obamacare health insurance supposedly wasn't affordable. Now we take those unaffordable healthcare plans and make them even more expensive. How has healthcare gotten "affordable"?

First of all, it isn't "Obamacare", it's the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", signed in to law over 5 years ago. Is your health insurance better or worse than it was 5 years ago? Should be a pretty easy test for all of us. 0 or 1, pass or fail...is it better now than it was?

edit: for what it's worth, my company-benefit Health Insurance is relatively unchanged, so I can't really say for sure...my company already offered better-than-minimum coverage since well before ACA...I will say though that, from what I know of every entity that isn't either Federal or State government, or a huge corporation like Darden Restaurants that already pretty much had top-tier benefits for salaried positions...I've heard a lot of horror stories. I've tried to reserve judgement since it hasn't really affected me much directly, but...I guess we'll see.

[Gelston]

First of all, it isn't "Obamacare", it's the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", signed in to law over 5 years ago.

Which is popularly called Obamacare, and you know that. Stop being a dipshit.

[Thondalar]

Which is popularly called Obamacare, and you know that. Stop being a dipshit.

How about you stop being pedantic and offer something quantitative to this discussion other than pointing out something that was, in itself, pedantic to begin with, and obviously stated tongue-in-cheek as an opener?