Recently I wrote about a lifesaving cancer surgery that I could afford because of The Affordable Care Act, thanks Obamacare!
The recent announcement of a perspective 22 percent average rise of health insurance premiums sent the Republican Party and its ardent followers into collective glee yesterday. Finally, those moochers will die and save me enough money for that extra weekly six pack. The insurance cost in this country were on a path to a 25 percent premium rate hike without Obamacare, per statistics from The Commonwealth Fund. With rates increases hovering at 9.9 percent in 2008 and rising at approximately 2 percent per year by 2017 they would be at or above 25 percent. My math may be a little challenged but 25 is higher than 22. The Republican nanny reaction, of once again caring for the poor downtrodden insurance companies, is a political farce.
Eighty percent of ACA recipients will not be affected because of subsidies. The increases by insurance companies are purely arbitrary, based on profit, because they set what is called the UCR (Usual Customary and Reasonable) cost. Donald Trump, who just yesterday displayed his ignorance on the subject once again, is bemoaning the hardship on his employees, most of whom are not even eligible for Obamacare. He has touted his repeal and replace plan, without accounting for the fact that no plan that includes, preexisting conditions, coverage extending benefits for children until 26 years of age or prepaid annual checkups, will work without a mandate or penalties.
We have heard and seen this hyperbole of repeal and replace for 6 years without a coherent plan other than selling across state lines (which invites collusion) and Paul Ryan’s Health Saving Account program. So, grandma is going to take her 15 thousand dollars from the Ryan savings plan, sort through the insurance jargon and get the adequate care she needs to survive. Good luck. Remember insurance companies set cost so that fifteen thousand dollars is a CEO’s spending change on his next family vacation to the Grand Cayman Islands. Cost, premiums and resistance truthfully has always been about political gamesmanship and greed.
With all the bogeyman fears of government run health services the public option is truly the answer. The only assurances you have of cost certainty is through Medicare and the Veterans Administration. Problems exist with both but no one complains about the care or cost they complain about the implementation, those are fixable. Out of control insurance autonomy is not.
The purposeful misinformation about Obamacare has reached the point of propaganda. The opposition to the law has always been positioned as government run healthcare. Obamacare is not a thing. You cannot walk into an office and say I want to buy the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is a law of standards to regulate technology, cost and distribution of care. No one you know has or can buy “Obamacare.” It was a moniker devised as a scare tactic. Hillary and Bernie were right in 1993 and are right now, we need a public option.
Vote 2016!