Here's what happened to people without health insurance since Obamacare

That is the problem with obamacare it hurts middle income but helps lower income and upper income just either opts out or has enough income to pay for it. As per usual the middle class gets screwed.

I guess we were lucky, because all the jobs I had provided health insurance.
At one company where I worked in management, I enrolled all the workers at Kaiser Hospital. My membership number at Kaiser is a simple one that looks something like this: 00112233. All the providers at the hospital always mention how easy it is to remember and record it.

Well me too up to now. The costs for businesses gave increased so much they Ned to cut back so it ends up hurting the employees. So businesses are still providing health insurance but it isn't the same as it was for me say like 3 or more years ago

Now instead of paying a 25 co pay ..to have to pay out of pocket until I pay 5 thousand per family. I know some one mentioned once the kids are grown it will be less, but really not much less since an individual is 3 thousand so it would be more for a couple.

This is assuming you use in the network. Now I am not against helping others, but really there must be a better way than hurting working class families this way. With the changes it makes working class families forego care they might otherwise get because they can't afford a couple thousand to go to the hospital or doctor.

The insurance I have now has been great since my husband retired. I have Wellcare and it pretty much pays for anything and I get all the services I need. So I have no complaints.

I agree with Edgar though, we should have single payer universal health care so everyone can have health care for free. We need to work on bringing down the cost of health care rather than worry about how to pay for it. It is almost like the whole health care industry is some kind of racket we all held hostage to because they can.

I'll go for complexity, such as what Robert Gentel described is the way in Costa Rica - I'd rather quote him if I manage to find the link (where?) but in short, a general system where care is free combined with ability to get more services if you pay. That may be an incorrect summary, but I'm interested in variability.

I would rather they pay more in taxes so that everyone can get more services regardless of whether they can pay more for it. Like they do in Israel. I read recently people are going abroad to get health care services because the cost is less for same type of service it cost here. So something is wrong in the cost of our health care.

I'll agree cheerfully that something is wrong.

This may be an exaggeration but I don't think so - I remember reading the U.S. has spent something like a trillion dollars over a lot years developing an airplane that still doesn't work.. My point being that our allocation of tax money leaves questions about priorities.

Here's one thing that's wrong:

But our tax dollars didn't pay for these salaries.

If you want to prevent them from making these amounts, then you need to vote for candidates who will create and entirely socialized healthcare system.

You can vote for candidates who claim they will tax people like this at a higher rate, but the fact of the matter is that their compensation levels will rise to adjust to increased tax burdens.

Oh, and if you manage to elect a government that will eliminate private health insurance, these guys will be OK, and not just based on the money they've made. They will get executive positions in other industries.

The architects of Soviet Socialism also ardently believed they could organize society in a better way. They soon found out that human nature and human behavior were fundamentally opposed to the ant hill society they proposed. Their reaction was to reform the people themselve; to create a "new socialist man" (their phrase) - a process that involved the extermination of millions and the imprisionment of millions more in the Gulag, and sadly achieved nothing else. In the end the joke of an utterly cynical people weas "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." The most aggressive and adaptable among them created a criminal class, a national mafia, that later fed itself with the debris and assets of the failed state after its fall and which plagues Russia even today.

I find it truly remarkable (and sad) that this lesson - for which tens of millions paid with their lives - has been so widely forgotten today.

The path to prosperity lies more in incentives to increase the production and delivery of wanted goods and servicea than it does in government operated systems to control their distribution. The reason is the latter usually end up creating scarcity and an unstable cycle of more control and more scarcity.

Or, you know, we could look at:

Norway 1912 Single Payer
New Zealand 1938 Two Tier
Japan 1938 Single Payer
Germany 1941 Insurance Mandate
Belgium 1945 Insurance Mandate
United Kingdom 1948 Single Payer
Kuwait 1950 Single Payer
Sweden 1955 Single Payer
Bahrain 1957 Single Payer
Brunei 1958 Single Payer
Canada 1966 Single Payer
Netherlands 1966 Two-Tier
Austria 1967 Insurance Mandate
United Arab Emirates 1971 Single Payer
Finland 1972 Single Payer
Slovenia 1972 Single Payer
Denmark 1973 Two-Tier
Luxembourg 1973 Insurance Mandate
France 1974 Two-Tier
Australia 1975 Two Tier
Ireland 1977 Two-Tier
Italy 1978 Single Payer
Portugal 1979 Single Payer
Cyprus 1980 Single Payer
Greece 1983 Insurance Mandate
Spain 1986 Single Payer
South Korea 1988 Insurance Mandate
Iceland 1990 Single Payer
Hong Kong 1993 Two-Tier
Singapore 1993 Two-Tier
Switzerland 1994 Insurance Mandate
Israel 1995 Two-Tier

I know. I'm just pissed about the whole thing.

The premise that more lower income people have insurance now than before ObamaCare is hardly indicative of success. If that hadn't happened it would be an unmitigated disaster.

As it is the number of insured people has been 25% lower than what the CBO predicted at a cost that is 20% higher than it predicted.

For better or worse, ObamaCare was structured to include private health insurance companies. It's insane to think that those companies should just eat the losses they have experienced because it's Obama's signature legislation.

Some people want it both ways: They truly want socialized medicine but they also want to defend ObamaCare which was not, and of course the insurance companies have to be the fall guys because it's a dog.

6+ years ago I switched to a new job. I've always had employer provided insurance. That is one of the things I look for in an employer. I was promised great insurance during my interview, which did have a little bit of bearing on why I took the job, but wasn't a deal breaker. But, I started Jan 6 and on Jan 1 they switched from a great HMO like plan to a high deductible plan because that is what they could afford. now, not only do I have to pay a monthly fee for my family insurance, I also had to pay a $7200 deductible. I've never had a deductible before and I can say without hesitation that I absolutely hate it.

It's the stupidest plan I have ever heard of.

That's a bummer.

To be honest, the very reason why I support Obama Care is to help low income Hispanics.

This is disappointing.

Not sure if you have already but shop around for the MRI. My doctors office had a $1900 charge for an MRI on a sinus infection. I called an independent radiologist and got the same MRI for $330. I'm on high deductible and those were the cash prices. I had to make 3 total phone calls.

Maybe it's time for a new, better job?

Wow. I had no idea. Thanks for the tip!

I agree with maporsche; time for a new, better job. Don't quit your current job, and don't tell anyone you're looking for another job. I made that mistake once, and my boss heard about it, and called me into his office. When he asked me if I was looking, I said yes, because we wanted to move back to California where our family and friends lived. Also the weather.
After a couple of weeks, he called me in to his office again, and told me they were reorganizing management and was going to eliminate my position.
That was okay, because it forced our move back to California, and my job prospects improved. I also did consulting work that was very lucrative, and bought income property.
To make a long story short, I retired early.