The ACA/ Obamacare Website Fiasco Thread

So here's something that wasn't thought through at all... Look at the combination of these two:

No preexisting conditions, the insurers have to take you.
If you don't pay your premiums, the insurer is on the hook for the first month of care after the lapse, but there are 90 days of care "to give you a chance to catch up on premiums"

So, if someone gets sick or hurt and stops paying their premium, the doctors are on the hook for the second 60 days of treatment. If it's a serious injury or sickness, it's cheaper for the DOCTOR TO PAY FOR YOUR PREMIUMS than it is for them to pay for the treatment and hope you catch up on premiums. Sooo...if someone wanted to game the system, they could skip buying health insurance, wait to get sick or injured (paying the penalty, which is way less than the premiums unless they make a serious salary) get on the exchange as soon as they are diagnosed, pay the first month's premium and then stop paying, leaving the doctor to continue paying their premium for the duration of treatment. Once they were treated, they would just let the insurance lapse and go back to paying penalties until they needed treatment again, which can't be denied thanks to the way the law is built.

This will raise the costs for doctors to see patients, which will in turn force the insurance companies to pay more and raise rates to cover it...OR... put the doctors out of business due to higher average costs for treatment without a corresponding increase in insurance reimbursements.

The whole thing (ACA) is a travesty that is not intended to work. The ACA was built to fail to set up a necessary conversion to a single payer (socialized medicine) system. We won't have a choice as a country because there isn't a good road back to the way things were. If the law gets fully implemented before it's repealed, we're screwed.

If you think people are gaming the welfare system, just wait til you see the games they play with the healthcare system under ACA.
 
Ranger Psych said:
I'm going to disagree. The whole point of getting insurance is so you are covered WHEN YOU GET SICK, and if you just get your money taken and sent on your way then dropped like a hot rock when you get sick, there's no fucking point to the entire program at all.
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We don't disagree. Although I could have worded it better, I'm saying the same thing you are. I think the idea of someone getting dropped when they get sick is borderline criminal.
 
It's the law of the land! You MUST accept it...but POTUS will change it as needed "for the children".

I seriously do not understand how anyone can support the ACA and the administration of it. Baffles the mind.
 
lindy said:
I seriously do not understand how anyone can support the ACA and the administration of it. Baffles the mind.
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Really? Do you really not understand?

IMO, the problem for many liberals now is they're in too deep. They HAVE to buy off on the ACA. If they start questioning the way the ACA works and whether or not it is good for the country, then they will have to start questioning their belief in everything else that has been done under the liberal agenda in the past few years. Like the old saying goes, "In for a penny, in for a pound".
 
Deathy McDeath said:
I support the ACA because I was previously underinsured (the 5-year VA insurance sucks) and now I am fully insured. It didn't cost me very much.
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Don't take this the wrong way. I get where you are coming from, and am glad you were able to get decent insurance. The however to this statement is that even though Obamacare works for you, it is not working for the country and the tax paying citizens with the way this was rolled out (poorly written law, extremely poor implementation, overpriced venture with not near enough bang for the buck). Rather than piecemeal a fix, scrap it completely and start over. Patching and plugging holes will cost even more money and will not work in the long term. Start over and use the minuscule parts that might have worked. Let the people and businesses actually keep the plans they had and be grandfathered in and work with those not insured by anything. Test the new system and work out the bugs before it is rolled out to the masses.

As it is, this is adding to the entitlements we already fund to an extreme degree, limiting our ability to service our outstanding debt and reduce our deficit. This administration is leaving a huge albatross to manage and eliminate once Obama is out of office.
 
Deathy McDeath said:
I support the ACA because I was previously underinsured (the 5-year VA insurance sucks) and now I am fully insured. It didn't cost me very much.
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Why were you previously 'underinsured'? Was the 'underinsurance' a result of the insurance companies actions or had you just not contacted any companies about increasing your coverage?
 
0699 said:
Why were you previously 'underinsured'? Was the 'underinsurance' a result of the insurance companies actions or had you just not contacted any companies about increasing your coverage?
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He was referring to his coverage at the VA which, according to the infomailer I got from the VA last November, satisfied the legal requirements of the ACA. However, as a newly separated vet, he's only covered for free the first five years after ETSing. After that, it's means tested.
 
racing_kitty said:
He was referring to his coverage at the VA which, according to the infomailer I got from the VA last November, satisfied the legal requirements of the ACA. However, as a newly separated vet, he's only covered for free the first five years after ETSing. After that, it's means tested.
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So you're saying he was 'underinsured' by choice? Couldn't he have gone to Aetna or BC/BS and bought more insurance? Did the ACA somehow change that?

I hear him saying he supports the ACA; I'm just looking for more information. Maybe I should support it too.
 
0699 said:
So you're saying he was 'underinsured' by choice? Couldn't he have gone to Aetna or BC/BS and bought more insurance? Did the ACA somehow change that?

I hear him saying he supports the ACA; I'm just looking for more information. Maybe I should support it too.
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Imagine you are a fresh out if the military guy with no service connected disability who needs insurance. Say you get into your wife's plan. 400 dollars a month. The GI bill pays 1700 dollars a month, or just pays BAH, which is only 875 here. Now half of your monthly income is going to insurance. Well why not just go to the VA? Well there are not Va hospitals everywhere and the VA insurance isn't that great. Under the ACA there are subsidies for a guy like above. Getting the rates way down, to under 60 dollars a month. That is affordable insurance.
 
TLDR20 said:
Imagine you are a fresh out if the military guy with no service connected disability who needs insurance. Say you get into your wife's plan. 400 dollars a month. The GI bill pays 1700 dollars a month, or just pays BAH, which is only 875 here. Now half of your monthly income is going to insurance. Well why not just go to the VA? Well there are not Va hospitals everywhere and the VA insurance isn't that great. Under the ACA there are subsidies for a guy like above. Getting the rates way down, to under 60 dollars a month. That is affordable insurance.
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So there weren't any top-up plans for VA coverage before the ACA?

I'm not trying to be an asshole (this time), I'm just trying to understand what he's saying.
 
It won't matter if you have insurance or not, all of the mid range and higher doctors are bailing out on the exchanges. The payments to the provider are too low to cover the cost of doing business. It won't be very long and we'll only have third world medicine here. We really need a landslide election in 2014 to have any hope of unwinding ACA, 2016 will be too late.
 
0699 said:
So there weren't any top-up plans for VA coverage before the ACA?

I'm not trying to be an asshole (this time), I'm just trying to understand what he's saying.
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Top up the VA????? You've got a future doing political comedy.

Here where I'm at, Medicaid is better than the VA, and Medicaid here is shit, but it's all my college student self plus dependent is eligible for, especially since the school offered insurance plan got unaffordable for me under the ACA. Which, BTW, if that's what you're eligible for, that's what you get. Not the subsidy, otherwise my daughter would've been on the highly superior AllKids program (subsidized low-income insurance offered by BCBS-AL). I stayed on the VA roll just so I don't have to drive into the Roger Williams housing project to get my medical care.
 
I should clarify: "underinsured" was the wrong word to use. I had "sufficient" coverage through the VA's 5-year post service coverage, but it was next to worthless. 2-3 days to get a doctor appointment to get a staph infection looked at, and that was only AFTER I spent three hours navigating the phone system to get someone on the phone. I ended up going to my school's health office instead. Under my current, ACA-subsidized plan, I just have to walk down the street, pay about 25$ for an office visit and 5$ for antibiotics. And it only costs about 70$ a month, so it's perfect for me.

EDIT: Also, wherever I end up going for school may not have a convenient VA hospital nearby, so having private insurance, for me, just makes sense.
 
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I don't think ANYBODY is seriously going to argue that there aren't some - a few- people who will benefit from Obamacare. There are beneficiaries to almost every new government program.

It's just terrible for the country on every other level: coverage, debt, an unprecedented new wave of opportunity for mismanagement and corruption and the new notion that the government can require every citizen to buy a product just to be considered law abiding. Besides the disaster it has already become, there are new problems we won't find out about for a few years because "we need to pass it so we can see what's in it".

I have a close friend who's 51 and has 1.35 million cash in the bank and drives a brand new Porsche. He's single, no kids, has 3 properties, one of which is in Manhattan. He switched his private health insurance over to Obamacare. Guess what? He loves it. At 51 years old he pays like $200 or 250 per month,. It's working for some people. How that mathematically works out for the rest of the citizenry- to cover a 51 year old man with medical history- for $200 per month, I don't know. I suspect it doesn't.
 
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Well, a poster asserted earlier that he could not understand how anyone could support the ACA. There are some people that support it because it benefits them.
 
The ACA is not sustainable, and don't forget surrounding privacy issues concerning that data base with the potential Swiss cheese holes protecting your info.
 
JHD said:
The ACA is not sustainable, and don't forget surrounding privacy issues concerning that data base with the potential Swiss cheese holes protecting your info.
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The part of privacy is actually of less concern to me than the sustainability part. We needed governmental involvement in health care like we need toll booths on every street corner. Wait until the costs start adding up.

Do you know what's going to happen? Nothing. Just like the national debt. When the national debt calculators first starting becoming popularized, everyone would look at it and "oohhhh, ahhhhh", as the last few digits flipped over at blinding speed. "Look, we're going deeper in debt a million dollars a minute", people would say. Now people don't even pay attention to it anymore. It was a big deal at $5 trillion, and $10 trillion and now headed toward $20 trillion. It's not even discussed anymore. That's what the costs associated with healthcare are going to do. They're going to rack up to unimagineable levels, and as always not two fucks will be given.
 
compforce said:
It won't matter if you have insurance or not, all of the mid range and higher doctors are bailing out on the exchanges. The payments to the provider are too low to cover the cost of doing business. It won't be very long and we'll only have third world medicine here. We really need a landslide election in 2014 to have any hope of unwinding ACA, 2016 will be too late.
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What statistic or study are you using to validate what you said above?
 

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