Obama: Keep your hands off my healthcare!!

Speaking as someone who has used the current healthcare system quite a bit lately, I am more adament than ever to resist falling into the clutches of Obamacare! I have dealt with doctors, nurse practioners, insurance...you name it...and I am more convinced than ever that we DO NOT need the gov't red tape interferring with our medical care.

 

Been there, done that, got lots of T-shirts. From the sounds I things. I have been through an order of magnitude more than you, but I agree with you conclusions. It is funny, the Canadians who have not been ill, think their medical system is fantastic. But nearly every one who has had problems thinks it is a piece of crap. The last one I heard, the waiting time for a colonoscopy was 3 years. My wife waited 3 weeks and was lucky to have survived. BTW, the only reason it was even 3 weeks was her choice because she knew of no problems.

 

Oh! I'm so sorry to hear that you are unhappy. So which one of these provisions are you most upset about? Which one has impacted your life in such an adverse way? I mean specifically. Please enlighten us.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will:
· Eliminate lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits
· Prohibit rescissions of health insurance policies
· Provide assistance for those who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition
· Require coverage of preventive services and immunizations
· Extend dependant coverage up to age 26
· Develop uniform coverage documents so consumers can make apples-to-apples comparisons when shopping for health insurance
· Cap insurance company non-medical, administrative expenditures
· Ensure consumers have access to an effective appeals process and provide consumer a place to turn for assistance navigating the appeals process and accessing their coverage
· Create a temporary re-insurance program to support coverage for early retirees
· Establish an internet portal to assist Americans in identifying coverage options
· Facilitate administrative simplification to lower health system costs
But you did have a nice rant with exactly no substance whatsoever anyway.

 

Let me see. The government has managed to improve exactly nothing by trying to make it better. What on earth makes you think this will be any different. And that is before you even pay them to mess it up while they bankrupt the government - and that is according to the CBO.

 

Eh, let's not rush to judgement ... considering the Supreme Court hasn't made a ruling yet..

 

Like I said, nothing specific, just unsupported, vague, nondescript complaints. I think the "red tape" was my favorite and the "didn't make the system better" complaint is a close second. I like the way Rachel Maddow puts it:

Maddow: People hate Obamacare, but love its provisions

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Wednesday night that although polls have found that most Americans have an unfavorable view of Obama’s health care reform, they overwhelming approve of the actual provisions of the law.
“So, you ask people if they want the health care law and they say, ‘no, it’s unconstitutional, it’s tyranny,’” she explained. “But if you ask people if insurance companies should be able to deny coverage to somebody because they have cancer, they say, ‘of course not.’”
Maddow said it was like someone not wanting a pepperoni pizza, but wanting dough with tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni on it.

If you want to see government tyranny in action, move to Michigan where Republicans have suspended democracy, ignored the states constitution, and have come as close to a dictatorship as this country as ever seen. And these are the people that are afraid of Obama supposedly. What a joke.

 

Well, um, maybe spewing the ideology of Rachel Maddow is your main problem?
All I know is that my treatment wouldn't have gone as smooth, as quickly or allowed me to be a decision maker had BO's bureaucracy been in the drivers seat. I questioned the healthcare professionals & the insurance company every step of the way. Each one left no question whatsoever, had my issues surfaced under Obamacare, that treatments would have been delayed and my choice of providers would not have been my own. Instead of being on the road to recovery, under Obamacare, I would still be waiting to see a doctor &/or awaiting a gov't officials approval on my course of treatment.
Additionally, given the expense involved in my treatments & medication, I asked my nurse & the pharmacist how the poor afforded to pay for those things. Both said they were provided free of cost to anyone who did not have insurance (these meds are also covered by every single pharmacy plan offered- even those cut-rate deals advertised on daytime tv).

 

Well David, I know that you probably won't take this with the good intention it was offered, but I sincerely hope that your medical situation resolves itself and you make a full recovery. I would hate to think of a young family without it's dad. And I mean that.
Now, a few points I'd like to make. You have yet to offer one substantive example of an impact that the new health care law has had on you. "Treatment wouldn't have gone as smooth, as quickly or allowed me to be a decision maker had BO's bureaucracy[sic] been in the driver's seat" is completely subjective since you couldn't possible know that. You are just allowing your personal biases to dictate the supposed outcome without the slightest basis in reality. You then go on to take the same approach, (and you have used this tactic of telling us what other people said when you happen to be having a casual conversation with them) many times and once again, you and "they" have nothing to offer such as a concrete example of a specific problem with the health care law but instead simply offer more conjecture of what might have been.
Also, in post #3 I asked which specific provisions of the new health care law had affected you so adversely. You simply ignored the question and went on to insert more subjective baseless complaints. I have seen nothing that would indicate that there is a problem with the new health care law at least not one you can point to from your experience but plenty of complaining that the health care law is bad for no apparent definable reason.
Finally, if you have a problem with Rachel Maddow's analogy, specifically where does it fall apart? It is absolutely true that the Right has done a great job vilifying the new health care law and scaring seniors but when you break the law down, an overwhelming number of the people like what's in the new law. That is not ideology, that is simply the truth. Ideology is what the Right is pushing. Facts are what Maddow is "spewing".

 

It's all in how the questions are posed in order to get the answers you want. I don't trust MSNBC to take out the garbage much less conduct or interpret any survey or questionnaire.

 

My medical insurance cost went up to pay tor;
· Eliminate lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits
· Prohibit rescissions of health insurance policies
· Provide assistance for those who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition
· Require coverage of preventive services and immunizations
· Extend dependant coverage up to age 26
Yes. it really did - despite your belief that money grows on trees.

 

moen- your post lists several nice "selling points" but how necessary are they in reality?
You want substance? After I injured myself I went to the ER. I asked the folks there what an ER would look like under Obamacare. To a person, they said it would be a circus because the ER would be the only primary care facility someone could go to without pre-approval by a gov't official (now you can make an appt with the doctor of your choice). Once I was seen in the ER, the dr gave me the choice of having a referral set up to see a surgeon or consulting with my personal physician for the referral. Under Obamacare that choice wouldn't exist. Obviously I chose to see the doctor I knew & trusted. I was in the ER on Sunday & in my drs office Monday at 9:00am. Under Obamacare it won't happen that quickly. He immediately began treatment for the diabetes & scheduled me with a surgeon for that Thursday.
Again, I asked everyone along the way how the process would be different under Obamacare and the unanimous opinion is that I would still be waiting for care.

 

Medical costs have been rising for the last couple of decades and in the last 10 years at an accelerated rate. But now you have the new heath care law to blame and you can ignore the past few decades of steadily rising cost so that you can blame everything on the new health care law. Again, no concrete example of specifically how the law has impacted YOU. All you have is that health care costs are increasing as they have been for decades.

 

That is just it. My wallet is made of concrete. The government's is made of "spend mes". But right now, my finances put the government's to shame

 

It's true. I doubt any of us on this forum are as in debt as the U.S. Government. Yet, the spending continues and the debt continues to mount.

 

Think of the position we'll be in in 4 years if BO is allowed to continue his spending!

 

Here's a concrete example: In the late 90s I bought insurance (for the first time in my life) through my employer's plan. It cost about $650 a year. The previous year (without insurance) my doc charge me about $45 to $65 for an exam and the lab costs were about $150. The year I had insurance, and since I had insurance, the doc jacked up the costs to about $125 for the exam, while the lab cost remained the same. Why? because I had insurance so he could charge me more.

Now to total the costs for each year: Without insurance I paid about $200 (roughly) for my health care. The next year I paid about $925. I paid about $725 more with insurane than without since the deductible was higher than what the hospital charged. $725 may not seem like much to a rich person, but that got me steamed.

I had that insurance for a year or so, then... in an instant... the price for the coverage more than doubled to about $1500 and that was far too high a price for me to pay. That was around 1999 or 2000 I think, I forget exactly.

The point is: Obama had nothing to do with the immense rise in the costs of health insurance during that period, so why did prices more than double in an instant? I'll tell you why: because the insurance industry could get away with it.

 

Here's what has happened:
There is a provision in Obamacare that allows you to keep your current coverage provided certain criteria is met. The main criteria is that your premiums do not increase. Once your premiums increase you are forced into the program. Therefore, insurance companies are pre-emptively raising rates in order to avoid rate increases in the near future...this is why so many are experiencing rate hikes today.

 

Damn! I knew we should have read the law before passing it! That idiot Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her ilk led us into this. What's next? Something like the NDAA?

 

The devil is always in the details.

 

That's an interesting speculation. Wanna speculate as to why the rates more than doubled about 12 or 13 years ago? Obama, and PPACA wasn't around back then, so what caused that immense hike in the rates?

My speculation is corporate greed, the American ideal of making as much money as you can, no matter the effect it has on anything or anyone else. But that too is speculation.