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It's not like even passing healthcare reform helps much. Obamacare got gutted to hell and back by the Republicans, to the point where it's more likely to give you a paper cut than help with healthcare care.
No, if you're low income and don't get healthcare through your employer it's pretty fucking awesome compared to what came before it, which was "oh, well you see the hospital exit there? Keep going until you hit the gutter and die there kthnx bye. Oh, you have insurance? Well your provider says this is a pre-existing condition, so refer to my original statement."
The subsidies on the ACA marketplace make insurance feasible, and the restrictions on pre-existing conditions make it actually useful. Even after being gutted.
You're spreading misinformation that could legitimately cause people harm by not seeking out coverage through Obamacare. Could it be better? Of course.
Can confirm. When I signed up through the marketplace though I didn't get a very good plan. The real trick was calling one of the approve agents they had listed. Now with the subsidy it doesn't cost me anything for the premium, I pay 10 bucks for a doctors visit, and, while I haven't needed much, the prescriptions have all been covered. It's the best insurance I've ever had honestly. I highly recommend speaking with an agent.
The ACA was good the first year it existed, but deductibles and premiums have both since increased beyond the point of usefulness.
Only for not-poor people. It's still saving thousands of lives. I mean this sincerely: if you make enough money that the ACA is useless to you, check your privilege.
That's factually inaccurate.
The cheapest plans cost hundreds of dollars per month and have deductibles that make you pay thousands of dollars out of pocket before the insurance company will pay out a cent. Its worse than just not having any insurance - not only are you still paying full price for healthcare, but you're also out hundreds of dollars a month paying the premiums for an insurance policy that doesn't actually cover anything unless you happen to have thousands of dollars in the bank to pay the deductibles.
If you make enough money that you can afford to pay the premiums and deductibles for even the cheapest of ACA plans, or if you're so out of touch and far removed from shopping for ACA plans as a poor person that you're not aware of just how expensive they are and how little they cover, perhaps it is you who needs to re-evaluate how privileged you are.
The cheapest plans cost hundreds of dollars per month
That's just a fucking blatant lie. Obamacare is free if your income is low enough. That's bad enough I'm actually going to report your post for misinformation, and I almost never do that.
If your income is low enough. I make $3/hr above minimum wage in my state. I make too much to qualify for Medicaid, so I was redirected to the marketplace.
Cheapest plan when I checked less than a month ago was $275/month with a $10,000 deductible that had to be met, prescriptions were only covered like 50% until you hit the deductible, doctor's visits and tests were 60% on me until I hit the deductible, none of my doctors were in their network, and it was a shit plan.
The best "budget" plan I could find was about $400/month, doctor's visits were $50, tests were split 50/50, prescriptions were 60% covered but only until the deductible of $7,000 was reached, then it was 100%, oh, and still none of my doctors were in their network.
So I make $37,000/year before taxes, and I'm expected to spend $3,300 to $4,800 annually on insurance that's going to make me spend another $7-$10k before they'll even cover everything. So I have to spend $10,300-$14,800 of my salary that, again, is too high to qualify for Medicaid, for health insurance.
What part of that is easy or so simple that you just get on the marketplace and have free health insurance, yay!! My state caps the Medicaid qualifying salary for a single person with no dependents at like $19,000/year. So should I just go knock up a few women and pump out a couple kids? Cause then I'd fucking qualify for Medicaid on my current salary, and maybe I could visit a fucking dentist for the first time in 6 fucking years.
Edit: Oh, and those monthly insurance costs were after the reductions you mentioned, that's what I'd have paid with help from the government. If Obamacare works for some people, I'm glad, but it leaves a lot of us out in the fucking cold and I'm tired of hearing that it's just so goddamn easy to get free health insurance in this fucking Third World country we call America.
What state?
A blue one, not that that makes any fucking difference.
It makes a difference because if you tell me the state you're in, I can look up the specific data to prove you a liar.
You're right, I made up all the numbers and stats, and wrote a long ass comment because I'm clearly just full of shit and a liar, my lived experience doesn't matter because you can sit behind your computer and pretend numbers on a screen translate to the real world.
I definitely didn't research after meeting with my therapist recently who urged me to look into my state's health insurance marketplace, I totally just made up all of the numbers, including my salary and my state's maximum income level for their Medicaid plan which I haven't totally been tracking since it was $17,583 back in like 2020.
Yep, you got me, it was all a prank. And I'm not giving location info to some rando on the internet who can't accept the reality he lives may not be the reality for everyone. For fuck's sake, John Oliver did a segment on the Medicaid gap several years ago, and nothing significant has changed for a lot of people. Guess we're all just wrong then, stupid us.
That’s just a fucking blatant lie. Obamacare is free if your income is low enough.
This is also factually inaccurate. If your income is low enough, then I know from experience that the sign up process for the ACA will redirect you to Medicaid.
I believe that you believe that you're telling the truth, but it seems like you've been misinformed. In reality, you've asked me to disregard my own lived experience and to ignore the evidence provided by my own lying eyes.
I'm in it. Right now. Trying to get healthcare as a poor person in USA.
Your replies make it seem like you are not - like you're out of touch and apparently believe its easier to be poor in USA than it actually is. A poor person in USA can get free healthcare, but you have to stay poor to keep it. If your income grows to about 1 standard deviation below the median, which is still less than a living wage, then you'll lose access to Medicaid and have to shop for an ACA plan in the marketplace. Those marketplace plans became garbage after the Republicans repealed the important parts of 'obamacare'.
Medicaid IS Obamacare. Remember the whole "medicaid expansion" debacle where some states decided not to accept free federal money to stop their own residents from dying, because a Black Democrat was offering it?
Medicaid is from 1965.
Yeah no shit sherlock, and it's been updated and amended by many laws since.
The ACA was always a health insurance industry handout. It was the opposite of a healthcare reform from the moment Obama dumped Dean over the public option. Deans whole thing was it HAS to have at least a public option or it would just be what the ACA is today: repackaged RomneyCare bullshit that functions as labor control.
The ACA has saved thousands of lives, but cool, it's nice to know you're too privileged to care
It's better than nothing but it could've been sooo much more comprehensive.
"It could have been better" is a HUGELY FUCKING DIFFERENT THING than "it is useless"
It is a system for providing health insurance, so one would hope it would have a measurable effect, yes.
The ACA turned my insurance from affordable to "yeah, you're not going to be able to afford health care now, and no, you don't qualify for cheap health care because of your situation." Fuck the ACA and fuck the appeasement bullshit. Every single fucking citizen of this rich as goddamn fuck country should have free/very affordable health care like the rest of the goddamn civilized world. There's no goddamn excuse any more and anyone praising the fucking ACA can go to hell.
During the Obamacare debates, we were sooooo close to getting a public option....you could taste it. But powers that be didn't want to introduce Medicare as an option because it would upset the status quo and for profit health care aystem
You think Obamacare didn't upset the status quo?
You're imagining there's some Deep State cabal preventing you from getting a public option, but it's just conservatives.
Yes, it was exactly that.