Are there people who still don't understand what "Obamacare" is?

I have health insurance, it is not obamacare.

Are you in the U.S.? If so, then your health insurance is governed by the “Obamacare” health insurance laws that were enacted in 2010. You do “have” Obamacare, to the degree you “have” any law.
Obamacare is not a type of health insurance.

My health care plan did not change. I did not sign up on the health care marketplace. The laws that changed did not affect my healthcare.

It didn’t affect mine either, as far as price or anything. I still have the same insurance I had, through my husband’s work. But you can bet it affected the insurance provider internally. If I had a kid under the age of 26, they would have to allow me to carry him or her on my insurance now. They didn’t have to do that before, and I’m sure they didn’t.

Signing up through the market has nothing to do with it. If we were looking for insurance through the market, your provider, and mine, would be on the list.

I do not care to know all the inner workings of it, all I know is IT WORKED WONDERS FOR ME! 

Tell me how @Hypocrisy_Central!

Yes dutch, pretty much all of us know this. To say that those of us who had the same insurance before is kind of a play on words. One thing that did change was my wife worked in a medical office when it went through. She went from being a die hard supporter to a harsh critic very quickly. It creates a lot of needless and expensive paperwork. I don’t like it because it still feeds the health insurance monsters. I don’t really support it in its current form but I would like to see some reasonable state funded catastrophic care implemented.

^^ I had a minor surgery, but before that, had 3 ER visits and the combo of those would have sunk me deeper than Davey Jone’s locker had it not been for Obamacare. Where was “Bushcare” huh? That is what I am talking about.

It did do that, @ARE_you_kidding_me. I agree. But your insurance provider still has to comply with “Obamacare.”

What kind of insurance were you able to get that you couldn’t get before @Hypocrisy_Central? Who is your provider now?

I was able to get Medical, it kicks in to cover what my primary insurance won’t or can’t, so I am not left holding a bill for something that could be life threatening or cause chronic discomfort. GO OBAMACARE!

Medical through the state? Who provides it?

^ The state of California I guess, elsewhere I think they call it Medicaid. To tell you the truth, I do not care who made it possible, I was able to get treated where i otherwise would not, treated on the cheap with something less than the best or even better, or have to be up to my ears in debt.

^^^ Within the state of California, Medicaid is called MediCal.

Even if you don’t care for President Obama, is that really an excuse for being stuck with a Buck Rodgers medical bill when you don’t have to?

In Kansas it’s called Health Waves. Well, it used to be.

California is a dem state and all the democratic states accepted the offer to expand medicaid. That helped a BUNCH of people a BUNCH. Not so much in the Republican states.

No, I’m glad for you @Hypocrisy_Central! I might be dead now if it wasn’t for the state insurance I had when I had emergency surgery in the early 90’s.

I actually know several die hard right wingers and Obama haters that were pleasantly surprised by it. I still think we could have a much, much better healthcare system if we throw out the insurance and pharm companies that just bloat the red tape and raise cost to astronomical levels

I would like to see a single payer system too. That’s what Obama really wanted, but he had to settle for the ACA, which has helped a lot of people.

^^^ The U.S. will never fix its broken “healthcare” system until it removes shareholders from the equation. Private health insurance companies exist to make money, not to provide medical care. Most rehab hospitals (acute long-term health) and skilled nursing facilities (nursing homes) are privately-owned and have profit motives.

ACA was a steep compromise. Given the hostile Congress and a public in deep denial, Mr. Obama was unable to decouple profits and healthcare; he had to settle for best he could get. For anyone who’s never read the original proposals for Obamacare, let’s just say that they had a vision for a very different world. ACA helped me – I’m self-employed, and I’d be denied coverage under the old rules – but it’s weak law, not reform.

Agreed.

You rock, @Dutchess_III.

Agreed. ;)

For those below the poverty level who are eligible and receive some of many forms of entitlement subsidies from the Government are now able to receive totally free heath care thanks to Obama Care aka the Affordable Care Act which IMHO qualifies Obama Care to be lumped in with all the other entitlements that poor people, disabled people, unemployed people are able to receive to help them get the basic necessities to survive.

I’m pretty sure a whole bunch of people don’t understand what Obamacare really is. I tried going through “Obamacare” and it was not a good experience. Imperfect system to say the least, and the private companies working through leads from Obamacare are like vultures, and some straight up liars.

@Cruiser The poor already had Medicaid and still do.

@Cruiser only in those states that took the offer to expand state medicare were the poor oeople helped. However, with the exception of only one state, all states with republican governors declined. The poor are no better off now than they were before. Millions of poor people in republican states still don’t have health insurance.

@Dutchess_III I am pretty sure you read an earlier post of mine what I made mention of my brother who lives below the poverty line (one of the poor) who last year qualified for and is receiving full heath care coverage for FREE entirely thanks to Obama care and I know he is not the only one. I would also say that his free health care has made him much better off than he was before….still poor but one less big bill he doesnt have to pay.

Can I ask what is your point of throwing out this straw man argument time after time? I must be missing something here

Some states did opt to expand medicaid, and those people were helped a lot. Republican led states didn’t. That left their poor citizens high and dry.
What state does your brother live in? That makes all the difference in the world.

“a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, based on last year’s data, found that 19 percent of the population of those states that haven’t expanded Medicaid—close to 3 million people—fell in the coverage gap and would be eligible if Medicaid were expanded.” From this link

@Dutchess_III That was the whole fallacy of Obama care that frosted my cookies was when they knew damn well that a large portion of people applying for Obama care would be shooting for the medicaid portion of it. Many states knew the net end result of this would be an over burden and why the huge push back from 19 states but 32 states did expand Medicaid and my brother lives in one of them and did qualify there. 32 states is more than a few states….its a LOT of states to expand Medicaid….we’ll see how long this free ride will last.

The truth is, there really is no such thing as “Obamacare”. Obamacare is the name given by Republicans to the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act in an attempt to confuse ignorant people into believing that it was some kind of government provided health care.

This act, among other things, makes it illegal for insurance companies to drop you as soon as you become terminally ill like they were allowed to do until this act was passed, even if you had been paying your premiums for decades and were in good standing.

It ended waiting periods for coverage for pre-existing conditions, prevents insurance companies from denying you for pre-existing conditions, and prevents them from price gouging due to pre-existing conditions, and allows children under the age of 25 to stay on your insurance.

It also provides subsidies to low income individuals and families to help pay for the cost of insurance if they make below the poverty income level.

In most states, it also provides those with no income or income too low to qualify for subsidies for health insurance to receive Medicaid coverage.

Sadly, most people do not understand that it is far less expensive to provide the subsidies and Medicaid coverage than it is to provide mandatory indigent care at hospitals to those patients when they go to the ER because they cannot get healthcare any other way, since those fees cannot be negotiated the way Medicaid is able to negotiate them.

In states that refused Medicaid expansion money from the federal government provided by taxpayers in an attempt to sabotage the affordable care act, (ACA), Insurance rates went up for almost everyone in those states, and ignorant people blame that on the affordable care act rather than on the Republicans who refused Medicaid expansion money in their state, because they do not understand what actually caused their insurance rates to go up.

Because Medicaid expansion funds were refused in those states, hospitals that are still required to provide mandatory care to indigents have gone bankrupt and closed down, which means even people with excellent insurance die because they cannot get to a hospital in time because there are no hospitals near them in rural areas, since they have gone broke and closed.

Meanwhile, the taxes we all paid into the federal system to cover the Medicaid expansion money available to all states sits unused in those states that refused Medicaid expansion funds, and you now have to pay additional taxes in those GOP states that refused Medicaid expansion because you have to cover the indigent care that Medicaid would have covered for far less tax money.

There were no states that refused Medicaid expansion that were not GOP states.

Many thousands of people have died to do the GOP refusing Medicaid expansion in their state, including Tennessee, where I live, as an example, and it isn’t just poor who have died because of it, there are wealthy people who died because even ambulances could not get them to the nearest hospital in time in medical emergencies because that hospital was no longer in operation due to GOP policies bankrupting them. For some, the nearest hospital is more than one hour away now because of these hospitals having to close. True story.

I should also add that the reason why your insurance rates likely went up if you live in a GOP state where Medicaid expansion money was refused, is because your insurance company has to pay higher fees for medical care for its patients in those states, because the cost of providing indigent care to the poor in emergency rooms and hospitals is much higher than it would have been if we had expanded Medicaid in those states, since Medicaid negotiates those prices with the hospitals but cannot do so if it is not under Medicaid. This means your insurance company has to pay for it in the form of higher fees for your care. That is what happens when prices go up because the poor have no coverage but we cannot legally refuse to provide care to the poor and let them die. We all pay the price for these ridiculous policies of the GOP and their childish attempt to sabotage the ACA, in effect punishing everyone, and hoping those people remain ignorant of the fact that the GOP is the true cause of their insurance rates going up.

Meanwhile, the money we all paid in to the federal system sits unused, when it could be helping to keep all of us healthier and alive, and we are all getting double taxed because of that because we have to pay more taxes to cover the more expensive indigent care since Medicaid isn’t available in those states. This should make everyone very angry.

We paid into the federal government to fund medicade expansion in all 50 states @angiemax?

@angiemax There are many holes in your explanation chiefly “There were no states that refused Medicaid expansion that were not GOP states.” when in fact there are 3 blue states that did refuse medicaid expansion. Your whole answer smacks of a cut and paste of a liberal op ed that does everything to hide and dodge the failures of Obama care and is merely another liberal mash up to demonize the Republicans who opposed Obama care for many of the reasons that we now see materializing…the main ones are premiums did go up significantly, many did not get to keep their doctors and I would wager that 4 years later Pilosi still has not read the ACA bill. BTW welcome to Fluther.

From what I ever heard on the subject, many who opposed it didn’t understand it.
Right wing fear flame fanning.
“You won’t get to see your doctor anymore, prices will skyrocket, there won’t be any doctors anymore, all the doctors will move away, the government will know your medical history etc. Blah blah blah blah…..

Dutchess, it’s easier to form an opinion on something with little knowledge. That’s why so many sheep are ignorant, and upset by it.

I personally hadn’t had insurance for almost 17 years. Now I pay $14 a month for health insurance.

The other day I was buying a prescription at the pharmacy. It was a new pill for me, that would need to be taken daily. It cost $170 for a months worth. When I applied my insurance, it was $12….Another reason poor people stay poor and less healthy is the staggering cost of anything medical. Obama care levels the playing field just enough for poor people to keep our heads above water. But don’t worry rich people, we’re still drowning, like you like us.

@Cruiser . Don’t you see. Premiums and expenses will go up temporarily. Eventually the fight will now come to insurance companies vs pharmaceutical companies. Two greedy companies that will have to figure it out. Pharmaceutical care is way over priced, but if insurance companies have to pay these costs, something will have to give. Insurance companies won’t pay these inflated costs, so medical care should become cheaper, then premiums should go down.

It should do nothing but make health care more affordable for people, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies. All costs should eventually reduce. But unlike before Obama care, it won’t be the public vs big pharma, or the public vs insurance companies. It puts them on each other. And the public , in theory, should benefit for once….

Once people can now maintain their health,rather than go to the doctor when sick, it should cut costs from reactionary medicine and have a trickle down effect on the entire system.

Most importantly, our citizens should be more healthy.

The financial effects,in positive form, will take time, but should appear. In the mean time someone just now,didn’t go bankrupt because the had a appendectomy, or a blood clot. They have a chance now.

Obama himself can’t explain Obamacare. It has the complexity of the tax code and for exactly the same reasons. The reality of the scheme is mirrored in its patently misleading name, the affordable care act. The actual truth on the matter is that it is a plan devised by insurance companies to ward off the inevitability of single payer universal healthcare. Realizing that the time was drawing nigh when the economics of healthcare would force the recognition that insurers were superfluous to the equation, the corporations pimped their own “solution”, thereby “insuring” their own continued costly participation. This becomes instantly clear once the actuality of the situation is examined. The actual function of the insurance corporations (how they make money) is simply to sit between those requiring health care and those providing it. THAT’S IT! The ACA made the rules uniform
for all insurance companies by requiring them to accept people with preexisting conditions, kids to age 26 etc. While these are definitely improvements, the fact remains that insurance companies exist to take money from customers, rake off a healthy cut, then pass what remains to providers. On the other end, providers are hamstrung in their decisions on patient care as insurance companies arbitrarily decide on what they will or not allow regarding treatment to the detriment of all but their own bottom lines. In other words, insurers are in the business of witholding fees collected from the insured in order to bludgeon providers into falling in line. The result is that the ACA guarantees the parasites in the middle unmitigated control of the healtcare of all of us.

@MrGrimm888 I don’t know you or your back story on your healthcare needs etc. but I will tell you my rates went up 30% the first year of Obama care and another 17% the next this next renewal will be another 11% increase. I will be looking into higher deductibles for my employees and offer an HSA program with some of the savings from the anticipated lower premiums shared in each employees HSA account. So from my experience the premiums are far from level and even farther from the promised lower premium promise Obama used to sell this boondoggle.

Education and health care are shared benefits. People who are sick or uneducated are unproductive and bring down the economy. Most companies recognize this and provide educational reimbursements and health care benefits for their employees. Public education and health care are extensions of these practices to the whole population. Obamcare stands in between private insurance and socialized medicine, and is a bit of quagmire. Maybe in the future it will be replaced by the kind of socialized medicine most to the rest of developed countries have.

@Cruiser which three democratic states refused the expansion? I have been earnestly googling, but I can’t find it, short of looking up each state individually. If you could give me the three off the top of your head, I can take it from there.

Sorry @Dutchess_III don’t have the time to compare now but if I recall it was VA, NC and FL. Source

Thanks.

Yes, Virginia was one. It currently has a democratic governor, who did push for it, but it is still the republican Virginia legislature who are “blocking it.. “irginia: Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has pushed for Medicaid expansion in Virginia, but the Virginia Legislature in June 2014 passed a budget that did not include expansion. _In December 2014, McAuliffe presented a budget proposal that included an expansion provision, but lawmakers are not expected to accept the provision. ”

North Carolina has a republican governor who refused to expand.

Florida is also a republican run state. (Might ask @Seek abou that.)

Source

@Dutchess_III I see I used a 2016 election “prediction” map instead of an actual representative map of states affiliation today.

Florida has been Republican run since I’ve been a voter. Our last non-Republican governor left office in 1999.

We’re only a swing state for the Presidential election. Local elections overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Hopefully that will change since the state Supreme Court basically forced districts to undo some of the most recent gerrymandering.

Not sure what you’re talking about @Cruiser. I didn’t use your source. I used one I found myself, that also listed political affiliation. It’s where the states were as of Jan 2016. The ones who blocked were Republican states, and have been for a long time. Except for Virginia. But it’s the republican legislation who is blocking it.

@Seek I forget….were you able to get insurance?

Yes and no.
We had insurance through the ACA for a year, because they give it based on the estimated income for the year. Apparently we guessed too high, because by the end of the year we hadn’t raised enough money to qualify the insurance we spent a year using. So now we’re blacklisted from the Marketplace.

Right now we actually qualify for real Medicaid because Hubby’s work has been so touch-and-go, so at least he’s getting his prescription. That’ll go away soon since work is picking up, and we’ll be back to him not being able to work because he can’t breathe.

Yay…

@Dutchess_III I used a presidential election map that predicted the outcome of the states after the election and apparently they are predicting FL, WV and NC will go blue.

Since the President doesn’t make State-level decisions, that’s kind of silly, @Cruiser… don’tcha think?

OK, @Cruiser, but the issue is what were they back when the ACA act passed in 2010, and the question of medicare expansion came up? Not what they might be in the future.

And yeah. The decision is made at the state level. If the state is predominantly republican, it doesn’t matter who the president is.

@Cruiser . I’m sorry it affects you that way.
Anyway I wasn’t talking about government promises. Those always fall through. I was saying that in theory, Obama care will lower insurance rates,and medical costs eventually. Over time. First comes the battle of insurance companies vs pharmaceutical companies. Raising rates and making the process hard was expected, as the two major powers attempt to reject the forced policy, and Republicans work hard to make getting and using Obama care difficult.

All this foot dragging was in hopes a republican will win in November, and disolve Obama care. Thus ending any need to be fair,and make slightly less profit.

I dunno @Dutchess_III I will tell it like I see it and the only reason Dems did not oppose the ACA despite their better judgement is they would have hell to pay if they did. Imagine a Dem Senator at mid term elections with zero DNC support same would go for any Governor who opposed the Medicare expansion. It was a real threat and why there was a lemming parade to the Obama Care cliff. The same thing happened in the DNC primaries as most Dems blindly followed mama Hillary. What is absolutely stunning to me is that today they announce that Bongo Bernie is being groomed to replace Hillary and even paraded his ancient carcass out on the morning shows this morning. This tells me Hillary is a ship that is sinking fast and the rats are abandoning ship in droves. Never expected to see this ever!

^What a mess. FTW…..

@Cruiser Where did you hear this. I only found a few sites that say this. One is anonew.co who probably has ties to Julian Assange who hates Hillary and the United States and or a russian run web site that sows disinformation and would love nothing more than for the US to implode. the other is Heavy.com who isn’t really an information based rag. It does more things on Pop culture and makes up or exaggerates things. I’m not sure they are political but they are pretty much like National Enquirer without the aliens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy.com The next one are conservative outfitters and breitbart which are both republican extreme right wing base sources. Now political insider also says the DNC plans to replace her with Biden. None of them have actual sources named. So all rumors and innuendo. This is the whole birther thing all over again. “She’s dying, so DNC must find a replacement”. But good thing is it may help her numbers if people think she may be replaced by Biden or Bernie. I would vote for a slug before I would vote for Trump.

“Thanks” both to its detractors demonizing it and its supporters inadequately explaining it, yes, there are undoubtedly many, many people who don’t understand it—including, most sadly, many who have it.

@Cruiser ” ...they would have hell to pay if they did. Imagine a Dem Senator at mid term elections with zero DNC support same would go for any Governor who opposed the Medicare expansion. ”

1) Isn’t that they way it’s supposed to work? Aren’t governments supposed to represent the people?

2) Apparently the Republicans weren’t the least bit concerned about the back lash from the public, because virtually every Republican state bowed out of their end of the deal (to expand Medicaid with Federal assistance,) which was really a mainstay of the ACA.

Also, Bernie dropped out a long time ago. He’d be a fool to try to get back in now, with only a few weeks ago. Me thinks you may be perusing satire sites.

@Pachy everyone who has health insurance of any kind “has” “Obamacare.”

@Cruiser ” I used a 2016 election “prediction” map instead of an actual representative map of states affiliation today.”

So, red states turning blue in the next election. That’s encouraging!

^^^ It is!

But it’s still out of context of the question as to which states refused to expand medicare coverage. That happened in 2010 >.

@Dutchess_III My point was that if they elect more Democrats at the state level, people in those states have a better chance of finally getting access to medicaid.

And I agreed. That’s why I said, ”^^^ It is! [encouraging.]”

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