Ran my mouth too long to post on someone else’s page, so I’m posting a collection of my thoughts here for present and future reference. Someone had re-posted some nonsense about the ACA and some crazy-false assumptions about the costs of same:
$12,700 is the out of pocket expense cap for families, NOT the deductible (half that for singles.) The moderately priced "Silver Plan" is expected to cover 70% of expenses and for example a Silver plan A may have a $2,000 deductible with a 15% coinsurance payment, or you may choose Silver plan B for a $250 deductible with a 30% coinsurance payment. Either way your insurance kicks in long before your $12,700 cap, but that is the maximum out of pocket not including your premium. (Source= Forbes) Using the Kaiser calculator for examples (Source=Kaiser):
1) a family of 4 living in Milwaukee earning income of $47,000 a year (X2 Poverty level) can have Silver policy valued at $10,988 for $2,952 ($246 per month) after subsidy.
2) Same family at poverty level of $23,500= No Premium at all.
3) Same family earning $35,250 (X1.5 Poverty level)=$1,404 ($117 per month)
4) Same family earning $58,750 (X2.5 Poverty level)=$4,718 ($393 per month)
5) Same family earning $70,500 (X3 Poverty level)=$6,684 ($557 per month)
6) Same family earning $82,250 (X3.5 Poverty level)= $7,814 ($651 per month)
7) Same family earning $94,000 (X4 Poverty level)= $8,930 ($744 per month)
8 )Same family earning $95,000 or more = $10,988 ($916 per month)
Take away Obamacare and All of these families would pay $10,988 ($916 per month) for this level of coverage. Obamacare doesn't set the price; it helps poorer people pay for it, while mandating that people who can afford to contribute to their own needs do so. There is a wealth of other benefits, including but not limited to capping out of pocket expenses at $12,700 in the event of catastrophic healthcare needs.
Now those with insurance already need not do anything, unless this would benefit them and they'd like that benefit. Those without insurance will obviously benefit greatly, and though they may not want to pay their share during the healthy years of their lives, a guy would be hard pressed to say he legitimately still can't afford to do so. For a legitimate comparison point; talk to anyone who's dealt with Cobra as an alternative, and you'll see this is wonderful legislation for anyone who's lost their job, or would like to quit it to try and start his own thing. How many people have been locked into jobs they hate, simply because they couldn't afford to lose their insurance? Even in this "no public option" form, this is good for America.
MORE: A quick search reveals $8,608 (roughly $2.5 Trillion total, or $717 per month, per head) is the per capita cost of healthcare in these United States. Like it or not, this has to be paid somehow, because this is what we ALREADY pay. As a whole, we are buying healthcare at mini-bar prices and are the only Country on Earth that does so. Life expectancy in these United States is about 79, so in today’s money, the lifetime cost of healthcare is about $680,000 per person, or $1,360,000 per married couple. That sounds extraordinary because it is. No other country even comes close, and all but 8 countries pay less than half that much, and all but 24 pay less than a quarter as much. Meanwhile, we are tied for 33rd place for average life expectancy, so as a whole, we are certainly NOT getting what we pay for. For some perspective, know that in 2010 Cubans paid less than $500 per capita, and had a life expectancy essentially equal to our own (78.) Given the choice, what percentage of Americans do you suppose would choose not to buy “the best healthcare money can buy”, if they had a Cuba-like alternative for 6 cents on the dollar? (All these numbers grabbed from wiki)
Young people obviously cost less than old people on the average, but left to their own devices, what percentage of Americans will sock enough money away while they’re young, to be able to cover those enormous costs when they’re older? Not too many, but since we’re not heartless barbarians, we will continue to take care of people as needed in the hospital emergency rooms if need be (at mini-bar prices, to which we all contribute anyway.)
The criticism that an Insurance mandate unfairly orders citizens to enrich insurance companies is a legitimate criticism. PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that the law’s state-based health care exchanges provide private insurers with a lucrative new market in which they stand to gain up to $200 billion in revenue by 2019. I don’t know how they arrived at that figure, but the ACA does require 80% of insurance dollars to be spent on actual care, so administrative costs+ profits using today’s numbers will be limited to a Half a Trillion dollars per year in today’s money, based on the 2.5 Trillion we collectively already spend.
Medicaid by contrast operates with an administrative cost of 7% and obviously doesn’t make a profit, so for comparison purposes: that’s 93% efficiency for 60 million Americans, compared to 80% efficiency from the private sector covering roughly 200 million (that 80% would need some adjustment, since the insurance parasites don’t get to squander 20% of co-pays or cash transactions.) It should be noted this 80% is itself an improvement brought to you by the ACA. The question begged is, why can’t Americans purchase a “Public Option” and take advantage of Medicaid’s more efficient public model for themselves? Without correcting for an even greater economy of scale, that option would save Americans per capita over $1,000 dollars per year. (Collectively, that could save of a couple hundred Billion dollars a year if everyone chose that option, by eliminating countless billions in parasitical profit.) Sadly, this option was part of President Obama’s original plan, but it was blocked by Republicans despite approval from the majority of the American people.
So why did Republicans block the Public Option? That’s simple. It would hurt their puppet-master campaign financiers (Billionaire insurance special interests), while allowing Democrats to take credit for improving Healthcare for the vast majority of Americans via “bigger government.” It is imminently predictable that the vast majority of Americans would eventually choose the more cost effective Public Option, and thereby drive a death nail into the canard that the “free market” is always more efficient than the government. This simply isn’t ‘always’ so.
Apart from Medicaid, see the United States Postal Service for another example of a publicly administered enterprise that dominates the private sector in a fair competition. While it’s true that Congress is holding the price of postage down artificially at current, causing the USPS to operate at a loss, the efficiency of the model remains obvious to anyone who bothers to look. The cost of postage has under-paced inflation over the last several decades at roughly the same rate the cost of Healthcare has outpaced it. While FedEx and UPS have carved out some niche markets for profitability; neither would dare try to capture the USPS’s primary function of delivering mail. It should be noted that not only does the USPS offer delivery of same for substantially less than any unfettered private enterprise, they are the only entity that delivers to every address in the United States… and in fact have partnered with FedEx and UPS to make the final deliveries to many addresses. Meanwhile, those carriers reciprocate (for a profit) in areas where they are in fact more efficient. What do you know; a cooperative effort in which the government insures service to every household in the United States, while private enterprise is allowed to compete in any way they wish, effectively insuring coverage for all, with no limitation on choice whatsoever. What could be wrong with that?
The simple truth is that Medicaid already demonstrates that government administers healthcare to 20% of Americans, 2 to 3 times more efficiently than private enterprise otherwise would, if they would at all, which they wouldn’t, as demonstrated by the fact they haven’t. And no private insurer is more efficient than Medicaid. Not a single one.
So, the most legitimate knock on “Obamacare” is that it doesn’t come with a “Public Option”, but this can’t be blamed on Obama. The mandate itself is something Conservative Republicans should jump for joy about, because it is designed to force people who can afford to pay their own way to do so. This hurts only the guy who would otherwise choose not to set aside the average of $717 per head, per month, that his own household will eventually need to cover their own costs on the average. Yes, I realize a sizeable portion of that is already confiscated by government to that end, whether he likes it or not, but do you? Arguments against all manner of government subsidized healthcare are always heavily laden in terms of “government takeover” and “increased taxes”, etc. But how many Americans stop to consider the actual costs of Healthcare in that assessment?
Now that Americans are becoming mandated to contribute to their own healthcare costs in a fashion roughly commiserate with their ability, how long will it be before they insist on a right to take advantage of their government’s already proven ability to administer it more efficiently via a Public Option? All else being equal, how many wouldn’t prefer to pay a $624 in tax, instead of $717 to a private insurer, if they received an identical benefit for doing so? Keep in mind, these numbers apply only to the “average” person, and the average income earner qualifies for very little subsidy under the ACA subsidies, if any.
This first step is as good as it’s ever going to get for the billionaires who finance the Republican Party for the sole benefit of the billionaires who finance the Republican Party. The public option will no doubt be the next step, because it is good for pretty much everyone except the parasitical for-profit insurance companies. Even the Republicans in the House will eventually abandon these campaign-finance rainmakers, when the American public realizes how utterly wasteful these private insurers really are. While we do need to pool our resources for things like education, police, putting out fires, and healthcare; there is no compelling need to buy yachts for millionaires and billionaires out of those pooled funds.
Unless Republicans adapt to this pending realization; they will continue to find themselves digging into battle against the vast majority of their own constituents’ best interests. That paradox cannot remain tenable for long, regardless of how much disinformation they put out. Their true nightmares will be realized when Americans, like the rest of the civilized world, begin thinking about healthcare as a Human Right that all should be entitled to access to at an affordable price. Once this happens, they will no doubt vote for a progressive rather than a regressive taxing scheme to provide it. And a majority of Americans taking advantage of a “Public Option” provides the vehicle to effectively having single payer healthcare. Though that may sound like “dirty words” to some, it is precisely what we SHOULD be evolving towards.
A for-profit healthcare system will forever profit more when people are sick, and maintaining ailments forever will forever be more profitable that curing them. This inherent conflict of interest is the plague of the American healthcare system. Unlike the free-market for-profit free-for-all we have now; a single payer type entity realizes economic gains when people are NOT sick. Cures become more valuable than maintenance treatments, and a single payer type entity can set rewards accordingly, thereby driving private interests to work on healthcare breakthroughs that reduce the need for healthcare expenditure, rather than continuing to make it ever more expensive (profitable.) This isn’t good for the Republican financiers’ bottom line, but it is indeed good for the American people.
I should qualify my criticisms of the Republican Representatives in that they are only somewhat more culpable, but, both sides have their hands out to these parasites, and both sides’ votes have been altered by them. I only single out the Republicans because they are more culpable; not because I entertain any fantasies that politicians in general don’t pander to the guy with the biggest wallet. On this particular issue, the majority of Democrats just happen be on the right side of right. Universal Healthcare is a cause worthy of support, and “Obamacare” is a step in the right direction.
Forbes Source and the
Kaiser calculator