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originally posted in:Secular Sevens
4/16/2014 6:20:22 AM
31

Obamacare is working

So roughly six months after the disastrous roll-out of the Obamacare exchanges that lost the Democrats all the public goodwill that the Republicans practically gave them after their government-shutdown temper-tantrum, it seems like the law's mostly picked up. After the issues with the site caused the sign-up projections to be revised down from 7 to 6 million, Obamacare went and [url=http://acasignups.net/graph]hit 7 million exchange sign-ups anyway[/url]. The policy pretty much met its exchange sign-up targets. Are all of those plans paid for? No, but you can see on that graph that even discounting all of the plans that [i]might[/i] not be paid for, exchange signups easily hit 7 million a few days into April, now totalling about 7.24 million. But, ok, maybe all of those people just had their insurance cancelled anyway, so this isn't actually reducing the number of uninsured people. Is that the case? [url=http://hrms.urban.org/quicktakes/changeInUninsurance.html]Um, no.[/url] While the Medicaid expansion that a number of petulant state Republicans rejected (Not even on ideological grounds, but purely out of tribalism) was one of the biggest sources of a reduction in uninsured Americans, levels of uninsured people has still markedly decreased, representing about 5.4 million Americans being moved onto insurance who previously had none. Those were just early estimates, though - the more recent and accurate [url=http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/survey-estimates-net-gain-of-9-3-million-american-adults.html]RAND survey[/url] has estimated that it's more like a gain of insurance for 9.3 million Americans to mid-March, which isn't even including the massive surge in exchange enrolments in the latter half of the month. And that's just in the first year - as Obamacare gets older, and the individual mandate ramps up to a more significant level, we should be expecting that figure to become bigger and bigger. Now let's look at the structure of Obamacare: all of the specific health industry reforms aside, the insurance side of Obamacare relies on [url=http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republicans-new-obamacare-reality-no-repeal-without-replace]three essential pieces of the policy[/url]: community-wide rating, subsidies for low-middle income households and the individual mandate. The community-wide rating is the only real way to make market-based health insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions, by absorbing them into a wider risk pool. The down-side to that is that it distorts the market, providing a disincentive to those -without- those pre-existing conditions to get health insurance, even though those are the people that the law relies on to keep premiums affordable by keeping the overall community health risk down. This is where the individual mandate comes in: by providing a financial incentive to have health insurance, you're essentially counteracting this disincentive. Without this, insurance costs would spiral and you'd be unable to make insuring those people who most need insurance actually practical. Of course, then you run into the issue of putting a financial burden on people who can barely afford the insurance in the first place, and that's why there are generous subsidies given to lower and middle income households to help compensate for the financial cost of insurance and make it more affordable. If you're paying significantly more for your insurance, now, chances are that you're either pretty well off, financially, or were on a plan so scant it barely provided a thing. But where does the money for these subsidies come from? Well, from things like the individual mandate. Overall, with all of the aspects of Obamacare that are involved, the Congressional Budget Office has always predicted that Obamacare wouldn't just be revenue neutral, but would, overall, create a modest decrease in the deficit. And in the latest [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/14/lower-premiums-yes-really-drive-down-obamacares-expected-costs-cbo-says/]from the CBO[/url] it seems as though the costs of those subsidies will actually be significantly less than originally expected, thanks to lower premiums. Of course, all of that isn't to say that Obamacare can't be criticised, of course it can, but if you want to extend insurance coverage and aim for universal health insurance (and that's something both the Democratic and the Republican party agree on, I should add) you can't do any [i]less[/i] than Obamacare does. A market based policy with an individual mandate is very much a conservative approach to universal health care (There's a reason Obama kept talking about 'Romneycare' back in 2012 and that people outside of America often identify Obama as a centre-right politician), and there's a lot more that can be done to provide health care more equitably and universally, but without moving to government-funded health care, there isn't a lot of room for improvement. Obamacare is, overall, a functional, positive move on health care reform which is essentially the result of left leaning Democrats deciding to compromise and take the policy Republicans had always said they'd supported and actually making something happen with it. For all of the talk about Washington being unproductive and constantly bickering, this is a really good example of one side of politics deciding to meet the other half-way, and the Republican side throwing a four year long hissy fit about it.

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  • these comments in a nutshell

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  • My premiums for healthcare went from 400 a month to 1200 a month. I make roughly 2400 a month. Don't qualify for the tax incentives so I have been effectively priced out of the ACA. So now I get the privilege of paying a penalty because I can't afford insurance. Oh and now the company I work for had been cutting everyone's hours from 40 to 31 a week. Why because at 32 you are considered full time. 31 or less, hey offer same shitty health insurance for same premium, don't have to give vacation hours or personal time, and no holiday pay. Tell me again how the ACA is a -blam!-ing success.

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    • You're not talking about the "Affordable Care Act", are you? Please tell me how a plan that was supposed to give "affordable healthcare to everyone", has instead caused people's premiums to go up hundreds of percent, putting severe financial hardship on them. Oh, and if they decide to forego healthcare because they can't afford it, they get fined. In the meantime, Obama has clearly lied, twice, about the law. First he said, "If you like your doctor and plan, you can keep it." All of a sudden, the nation finds out that's not true. And then he lies about lying, saying, "What we said, was, you can keep your plan if it hasn't changed since the law passed." Notice how he says "we" in an attempt to direct the blame away from himself, the person who said it in the first place, and many times over. I have never seen such a blatantly terrible tax on a nation. "Here's insanely expensive healthcare, and if you don't want or need it (which is a lot of young people, like me), or you can't afford it, too bad, you get fined." And don't even get me started on that black hole of a website.

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      • Health care insurance and timely health care access and quality care are two very different things.

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        • It's still not good enough. Better then nothing, but it's still not fit for a first world country. Any country that wants to claim it's a developed nation should have universal healthcare.

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          • You guys now have free medical for your citizens? About time you caught up with the rest if the civilised world. Freaking cavemen.

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            • Ha! Obamacare. You want healthcare? I'll give you some Michellecare. Brocolli, excercise and several kinds of welfare.

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            • if it's working why is my health insurance application stuck in purgatory ANSWER ME THAT COMMUNISTS

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              • Who gives a -blam!- about Obamacare, Marty just got fired!

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                • Edited by ch33zy burrito: 4/16/2014 9:03:41 PM
                  Way too much tl:dr in that thread

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                • 7 million isn't that many.

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                • lol damage control at its finest. It has disrupted lives of most people in my state, most you'll meet will say that Obama is the worst president in US history. Even those who voted for Obama says it was a big mistake letting him in office.

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                • If its goal was to destroy the medical industry and further collapse our dollar, then yes, it's working perfectly. It's a pathetic joke.

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                • I can see this working in the long run, but short term? It's not working at the moment because of the backlash. It'd be better to have universal or socialized healthcare as a whole rather than a watered down version that was only watered down to appease the other side. The Republican Side will always throw a hissy fit about something that doesn't line their wallets with cash. Obamacare/ACA is one of those things. The Republicans in Congress will also try to repeal this every single chance they get, wasting more money in the process. People will blame Obama for the debt, even though Congress is the one truly in charge of that, such is the game of politics.

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                  • I receive private term medical care from my fathers company. I give 0 f.ucks about this.

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                    • I was about to post seriously but then I saw you wrote the post.

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                      • Keep telling yourself that even democrats bash Obamacare

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                      • WE NEED MORE MARTY CARE. Change your avatar to support Marty. Change your name to support Marty. Sign this Marty petition. https://www.change.org/petitions/soundtrack-lovers-bungie-fans-halo-fans-destiny-fans-videogame-fans-sign-this-petition-so-that-bungie-will-bring-marty-back-after-firing-him-with-no-cause?just_created=true Add #Marty2014 and #MartyMovement to your hashtags. And most important, COPY PASTA THE SHIT OUT OF THIS TOPIC

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                      • Edited by Kalameet: 4/16/2014 6:12:17 PM
                        Look at all this butthurt... It's delicious.

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                      • Just wait, itll collapse sooner or later

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                        • Edited by M37h3w3: 4/16/2014 4:38:51 PM
                          And yet the other side of the aisle is still going to call the ACA a disaster that is going to destroy the USA until they get it repealed. Nothing will ever convince them, even it working or the fact that the status quo was worse, to do anything but hate it and work endlessly to get it repealed.

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                        • Oh it's working alright...

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                          • Edited by MoReCoWbELLx2x1: 4/16/2014 1:35:38 PM
                            Call me when 7 million are fully enrolled in it. Not just 7 million that have signed up. There is a BIG BIG difference than sign ups, and enrolled.

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                            • Anybody who thinks our politicians work to serve anyone but themselves is fooled.

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                              • Edited by HurtfulTurkey: 4/16/2014 2:45:05 PM
                                Not a huge fan of mandating full time employees as an average of 30 hours. I don't see a particularly compelling reason reason for that, and it resulted in both of my jobs cutting hours significantly. The only one I work for now is my university, and due to the typical age of its employees (students), they're generally covered by their parents and there's no need to offer healthcare for hundreds of kids earning a couple hundred bucks a week.

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                                • Just waiting till 2016 comes along so a Republican gets elected and terminates this shitty tax

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