This one’s from 12/3, but it’s a hoot
“Decent”. Millions have seen their health insurance dropped, Team Obama’s mid-range estimate is that 93 million will ultimately lose their plans, health care networks are being restricted, premiums and deductibles have gone through the roof, fewer people are actually eligible for subsidies, and many of those subsidies are tiny, etc and so on, and we haven’t even gotten to the point where people are going to attempt to use the insurance.
As the problems with HealthCare.gov, the website marketplace for individual health insurance for people in states which opted not to run their own health care exchanges, begin to fade, we will have more of an opportunity to examine the deeper flaws in the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. (snip)
The best feature of Obamacare with respect to affordability is its expansion of Medicaid, at least for states which have decided to accept the additional federal funding for the program. Individuals with incomes of up to 133% of the federal poverty level will be able to sign up for Medicaid, and will be notified of this option if they attempt to shop for insurance plans through the federal or eligible state health insurance exchanges.
If that’s the best feature, then we are in much worse trouble than we thought. More people moved directly under the government banner.
And the cheapest plans are cheaper for a reason. Their coverage is not nearly generous enough, with higher copays and deductibles. Those who have these plans and who experience an adverse health event due sudden illness or accident will likely still find themselves faced with an unaffordable bill.
Yeah, but it’s “decent”!
But all of these problems with Obamacare are really just problems with our current system of private health insurance. Before Obamacare, it was expensive. There were junk policies that offered little real coverage to people, and even supposedly “good” insurance policies had holes in them. Those fortunate enough to have high quality employer-provided health insurance have had decent enough affordable coverage, but very few on the individual market — basically just high income people without pre-existing conditions — did.
So Obamacare increases costs for negligible benefits while reducing networks, and let’s not forget the “death panels”, ie, Independent Payment Advisory Board. Can’t wait to see what the holes in O-care plans are.
Duncan Black writes the blog Eschaton under the pseudonym of Atrios and is a fellow at Media Matters for America.
If Black, a big time far left liberal writer, who writes for the aforementioned unhinged Media Matters, can’t provide much in the way of positive support for O-care, then it must be pretty darned bad. This is a law that affects 1/6th of our economy and will touch the lives of every single American, few in a good way. If we’re lucky, the law ends up affecting most of us neutrally. I think it needs to be a bit more than “decent”.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: USA Today: Obamacare Isn’t Perfect, But It’s A “Decent” Fix »
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