Obamacare Fallout, Part II
Remember all those claims that the Affordable Health Care Act (ACHA) – AKA “Obamacare” – was going to make your life easier by reducing the cost of your health care? I certainly do.
Did you believe them? Well now – aren’t ye a wee bit auld to be a’ believin’ in Leprechauns, laddie?
Early figures are out. Next year, health insurance costs aren’t going down. Rather, they’re going up in 2013 – by an average of 9%.
Even Wal-Mart is raising their employees’ health coverage costs. But like Wal-Mart’s prices, their announced cost increases are substantially lower than average – around 4.4%.
Another thing to remember: under the ACHA, employers are only required to offer healthcare coverage for those working 30+ hours weekly. Given that fact – and the huge costs businesses already pay to subsidize employee healthcare – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what businesses will do when they need more staffing.
If and when the economy ever recovers, that is. Until that happens most businesses probably won’t need to add much staffing.
And if you think the government-run solution – AKA, that touted “single payer” healthcare system you keep hearing about – will be better, you might want to read this. England’s got a long history with nationalized healthcare – one of the longest in the world, if not the longest. Their healthcare system has serious issues. The second linked article only highlights one such problem out of many.
Category: Health Care debate
Hondo–
I have said it over and over. I paid under 500. a month for my family of 6 from 2008-2011. We are self-employed. No RX coverage and a 10K deductible…four visits a year per person with 45 copay. Nothing extra. Then, O’care passed. My premium went up 32%. The only difference is I got a “free mammogram”, free pap” preventive. Nothing else changed. Now, as of 01/2013 that premium is going up another 13%. I cannot afford it, so I am trying to work with docs to say can I pay you X per month, so we have somewhere to go without the cost. I can already get and pay for my own labs online without paying for an office visit, thank God. It’s just killing us as a small business owners.
Weeeelll, before Obamacare came along, lots of people’s health insurance costs went up merely for the fact of health history and claims history. Note that this statement is not my admission of thinking Obamacare is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
My issue with Obamacare that all the zombies that are rahrahing about it can’t seem to understand is that the only people that will be affected by this are the middle class who couldn’t afford insurance in the first place, but were able to live comfortably and pay their bills with their take home pay. The rich’s standards of living will not change because they were able to afford insurance in the first place. The moochers will still mooch. It’s that middle class who will now be forced to pay for something they couldn’t afford before or be taxed for not having it.
Who is going to step up and make up the difference in their take home pay now that these families have the extra burden of another bill? “Not I.” said the liberal. Just as long as they get their “free” healthcare.
Kind of like the owner of some Denny’s franchises who is contemplating adding a 5% surcharge to each of it’s customers’ bills to cover Obamacare. What a concept! Call the price increase of eating at the restaurant just what it is.
Hmm. Like it more the longer I think about it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2233221/Dennys-charge-5-Obamacare-surcharge-cut-employee-hours-deal-cost-legislation.html
Over the last 4 years or so, my health care costs went up more than 30%. So this will be on TOP of that rather stiff increase.
This health care act is so ill-conceived and flawed that at times I find myself reaching for the tin foil and wondering if it was designed to fail so that the left can say “look, we tried working with the insurance industry and the employers and they just would not cooperate. We are now going to have to go full out with a National Health Service.”
There were so many things that could have done that would have lowered costs that to not do any of them seems deliberate.
At work, I design software. I’m given a business need and find a way to fill it. Now bear with me, this has relevance.
So, they come to me with a need or problem and I tell them how we should fix it or create a solution to address it. I’ve been working at the same place, doing the same thing for almost 14 years.
Here’s the relevant part. Half the time they don’t believe me. We’re directed to do it a different way. I don’t even argue it anymore, because without fail, their way is fouled up and has unpleasant consequences. Then I have to expend resources to do it the way I said to the first time. For years this has gone on.
The relevant point is this; Sometimes, no matter what you say, you cannot educate the unwilling. They believe in leprechaun farts and faerie dust so much, and think they know more than you that they cannot accept that what looks SO nice is anything but.
Sometimes you have to let them fail. Being there to pick up the pieces is optional.
Many small fast food franchises in our little area of the USA have already cut all employee hours below 30 per week and hired on more P/T workers to cover it… go figure.
Wait a minute you mean to tell me that businesses that specialize in making money have figured out ways around the law that would have crippled them and somehow people are still getting stuck with it in the end…wow say it aint so!
While Obamacare has its pros and cons, at the end of the day it no longer allows a friend and a family member to be denied health insurance because of their cancer. The friend had been paying in for a long time and was dropped from her coverage for some bullshit when diagnosed. That fucking sucks, and is no longer allowed.
So, at least for me and these people I care about, Obamacare is a positive change. Not perfect, clearly with some flaws, but I’m not an uneducated sort looking for government hand-outs, I’m someone looking out for the health of friends and family.
Insurance was invented to pay for losses. The entire business of insurance is based on fear of loss. Every insurance carrier in casualty and property coverage operates on a for-profit basis and nothing else. And yes, health care insurance can be considered casualty insurance, with a higher risk pool than real property casulty insurance, because good health is an intangible and does not have a marketable value. The possibility of loss in health care coverage is higher than it is for your house or your car, ergo higher premiums and coverage being increased with your age and occurrences, and/or disccontinued for a so-called catastrophic occurrence. If a homeowner’s policy was cancelled because his house was hit by a tornado, no one would ever buy homeowners’ insurance again. They’d just stuff money into a savings account at a credit union, because credit unions in general pay a nice rate of interest. Note that there is no law that requires you to buy homeowners’ coverage, nor can you buy flood insurance through a commercial carrier like Allstate. You have to buy it the the National Flood Insurance program, which is a government program. There is, in most states, a requirement that you carry a minimum comprehensive, uninsured and underinsured drivers level of coverage if you want to keep your license. This is specifically due to the number of uninsured and underinsured drivers on the road in many states. When you get your license or renew it, you are required to include your insurance information on the application, and yes, they do check it. However, returning to health care coverage, if you eschew commercial health insurance now, and instead opt for a self-insured health care account, which is completely legal, under the Obamacare program you can be fined for not buying commercial insurance, even if you can show that you are completely covered by your own cash backup. This trend in cutting full-time people down to part-time hours in industries like food service, where the wage earners can least afford the loss, is not going to do anything except financial damage to people… Read more »
This hit home for me big time. I was sick most of this year, losing about 6 months worth of work time. When I finally did get back to work, my company said sorry no full time available for you, only part time. So know I work roughly 20 hours a week, I have lost my full time benefits, and the part time health insurance is a joke. I would have to pay $2500 a year for $5000 worth of coverage. Company pays zero. Health insurance provider got a waiver from ObamaCare saying it would cost way too much to provide better coverage. So yeah, ObamaCare is really getting me the healthcare coverage I need.
Sometimes you have to let them fail. Being there to pick up the pieces is optional.
We use the term “malicious compliance”. We also document the piss out of our recommendations and make them sign off on a risk statement if they reject our findings and make us do it their way. I daresay you won’t see anything of that flavor related to this fuster cluck.
It almost appears that Obamacare was specifically designed to milk as much money out of people who can least afford it, as well as leave them with no choices at all, but that’s just my personal viewpoint.
An effort to perhaps crash the economy from the bottom up? Maybe like Cloward and Piven suggested? Hmm.
13….BOOM!!
30% Jump in premiums puts me paying more for a family of 3 than a mortgage and a car payment combined.
But as long as the potheads of Medicaid get theirs because mommy didn’t hug them, then I guess all is right with the liberal world.
@5 Bingo! We have a winner-Obamacare is designed to do exactly that. The current set-up is merely an excuse to allow the government to get it’s foot in the door.
It’s not just health insurance, it’s out of pocket expenses. I think I’ve spent several hundred dollars more this year than last for my sleep apnea equipment rental.
@12
Yup. That’s the game. Sounds like you’ve danced that dance a time or two.
@15
Wonder how long it’s going to be before medical marijuana is covered by gov’t money.
Whatever. We lost. They won and we’re done.
Things are not going quite so well in the Kingdom of the Big Cheese. Unemployment claims are up again.
“The government said initial weekly jobless claims surged by 78,000 last week to 439,000, compared with expectations for a more modest rise to 375,000. That marked the highest level since April 2011.
The four-week moving average of claims, which aims to even out increasingly frequent volatility, climbed by 11,750 to 383,750.
The Labor Department also upwardly revised the prior week’s claims to 361,000 from 355,000.”
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/2012/11/15/jobless-claims-rise-to-highest-level-since-april-2011/#ixzz2CM8e6xm2
Don’t try to blame it all on bad weather, either.