General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 321

What a surprise. I don't understand why she continues to go on TV and embarrass herself.

 

I don't know how Trump can have so little foresight as to keep her under his employ. Even he has to realize keeping that moron on air can do nothing but harm to his image.

I really have a hard time believing the Donald actually wants to win this.

 

For all of the leeway I've afford him given the good he's done and the difficulties he's faced, it wasn't until TPP that I lost hope for him being a decent public servant. There goes hoping he'd pivot left now that fundraising and reelection is in his rearview.

That's brutal. I worked for two years at a children's hospital here in St. Louis and saw a lot of parents go broke keeping their kid alive. And at least there the bills were considerably subsidized by donations, non-profit status, and the fact that employees knowingly took less to work there than other places for the cause. I don't know if you've checked this route, but I would look into regional (that's usually the best route) non-profits and endowments to apply to for reimbursement or, at the very least, scholarships for your kid. Most of the former require on-going treatment as opposed to reimbursement in retrospect, but it's worth a look.

 

Your best bet is to call health insureres in your state directly and get an "off-market" plan. Most of them sell them. They won't always be great plans because they won't come with a lot of the protections for consumers the ACA put into place, but they can still be decent. They just won't guarentee coverage for certain events like ACA plans do, and the may come with a yearly or lifetime cap on coverage (I'm not sure if the ACA banned the lifetime and yearly caps outright regardless of whether they're on the exchanges or not). But, because those protections aren't in place, the monthly premiums will be lower.

 

I have literally never heard of this. I need to read more.

 

Yea ok I'll look into that. This isn't the same as going to say Blue Cross' website and looking for a plan?

I have this argument, and it's my own little justification as to why I'm not eagerly trying to get covered.

I make 96k/year and have a family of 6, my wife doesn't work; if I were to get a reasonably affordable monthly plan (say $1,500), the annual family deductible would be roughly 10k before the plan actually kicks in (meaning the plan paying for services say at a 80/20 rate).

We don't go to the doctor unless we have to, we've just always been that way. So, there is a high likelihood that I would go the entire year paying this premium PLUS the fees stemming from visiting the doctor. So that's 18k/year just on the monthly plan, plus however many thousands out of pocket because I didn't reach the 10k deductible.

I have a hard time justifying that expense. I get that insurance is "just in case", but goddamn, that's a lot to spend just for the comfort of knowing I have coverage.

 

The law tries to dissuade their prevalence by not letting them count towards the individual mandate. In other words, since the plan isn't guaranteed to cover those 10 things the ACA says all health plans should cover, having the insurance doesn't mean you're exempt from paying the individual mandate penalty. But even ACA-supportive websites point out that these plans are options for people, and healthcare.gov even has a finder dedicated to those plans (finder.healthcare.gov).

That might be a good place to start, but I'd probably contact insurers directly and see what they say.

 

Blows my mind that someone making 96K a year with a family of six has this much issue getting medical coverage. What a fucked up system.

 

It's our expenses that screw us over.

I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like that. I should be hired directly into the engineering company I work for before the end of the year. When that happens, I'll have access to a typical partially paid, employer provided family plan which will probably be like $600/month. When that happens, I'll for sure be taking the plan, and hopefully be moved into a house with the rent around $1500, because what we pay now is just too high.

 

That first part I'm not sure. I don't know if the insurers will have off market plans listed on a website like that or not. Obviously family coverage will always be expensive too.

Yeah I get that for sure. I just can't imagine the amount of debt I'd be in right now if I didn't have Medicaid covering my heart ablation surgery. At least a plan with a high deductible would have meant I was only 6.2K in debt, instead of 40-50K in debt had I been insurance-less.

 

I know things happen, and it's best to be covered, so I'm just waiting for the employer plan to kick in.

I mean, I have arthritis in my back from an old injury, and it isn't getting any better. Plus having kids is just an accident waiting to happen.

 

Yeah I'm on the verge of getting a teaching job (hopefully), the insurance is so ridiculously good and expensive and the state covers pretty much 90% of the premium. Medicaid has been very good to me though. I've only had to pay a couple bucks out of pocket for medicines. I'm only 5 months out of surgery though, so I'm hoping I don't stuck with some unforeseen hospital bill that Medicaid decided not to cover.

 

That's good. My first engineering job has Kaiser as their medical provider; this was in California. Best insurance I've ever had. Member only hospitals (except for ER), multiple satellite medical buildings and hardly any wait time when making appointments.

 

There are good portions of it. But, the mechanisms by which it actually operates are as flawed as can be. To use examples, the ability to be on your parent's insurance until the age of 26 and the expansion of Medicaid is objectively good. The problem actually are deep-rooted in its actual mechanisms that, in my opinion, make it bad policy in terms of actually being capable of doing what some would say it is supposed to do, whilst leaving companies in a position of overwhelming strength. To use another example, it is good that they cannot discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, however, insurers have used their leverage to attempt to fend off those who are sick through other, more sophisticated means. The reason for this is precisely because one cannot actually achieve a profit if the sick outweigh the healthy. The individual mandate was intended to resolve this, but it clearly isn't working or a lot of people are opting out because of the cost. Again, the point is that the idea was good, but it isn't viable within a profit-driven framework. You tend towards a cost-benefit analysis of this sort of thing, eg, millions more are insured. That's fine and legitimate, but that doesn't actually make it the correct policy we need to address healthcare issues. What I mean by undermining efforts for single payer is, the effort becomes less about achieving that and more about reforming aspects of the current plan, which doesn't address the underlying antagonisms that breed bad outcomes and accessibility to healthcare. Further, if the argument is that we shouldn't do anything because of republicans or because there isn't anyone willing to sacrifice themselves for a public option, then the party is actually useless; they could have spent time building public support, funding local groups and building from the ground up. I know that the democrats have a significant number of conservatives that would be opposed to it, but then they should be purged from the part and rebuild the connections they previously had with local democratic bodies. If they cannot do that, then they're useless once again. I'm not saying this to get into the argument of whether or not electoral politics to work, I am actually trying to draw out what conclusion we are supposed to come to from your way of understanding the dynamics we are seeing at moment.

 

Honestly, I can't afford insurance. I've forgone it the past couple of years due to cost and I make pretty good money at my job. I haven't had to pay a penalty as of yet, but the specter looms over me.

 

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Once I turned 18 and while working part time and going to school, I got hit with the no insurance penalty. I'd been on my dads health insurance until he lost his job and because of the timing, finding different coverage wasn't an option. The penalty was less than $200 (I think about $180), and I was totally stoked because it was way cheaper than 6 months worth of health insurance (this was in Massachusetts). I graduated, picked up full time work and moved to Arizona, then months later, quit my job and lost my health insurance and this time I decided it'd be cheaper to forego health insurance since thankfully, I'm not sick. Even if the penalty is double what it was in Mass (which is unlikely because everything is cheaper here), it's still cheaper than the 200 a month I was quoted for health insurance. After health insurance companies hounded me for looking at but never buying insurance (we're talking 15 phone calls every morning from different phone numbers and area codes so I couldn't block them...every morning for like four months), I became really disgusted with the industry. I'm lucky I'm healthy enough to have the option to tell them to stick it, but I know if I get into an accident and get hurt somehow, I'm completely fucked, financially.

 

My older brother doesn't have a job yet (just passed the bar this spring) and is off our family plan. It's scary because that's gonna be me in two years, only I'll have way less job prospects. Not looking forward to that

 

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No one is saying it's the "correct policy"---I wanted and still want a public option. That is the "correct" policy, IMO, far ore so than a totally "single payer" type system similar to NHS. Also, the individual mandate is definitely "viable" within a profit-driven framework--the mandate simply has to be higher. I don't really like that idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't viable.

I will never say it's the "correct policy", I will just take issue with people that levy incorrect arguments about the law and it's effects. Too much misinformation out there.

I would say that one of the ways someone would argue to "reform the current plan" would be to put into place a public option that "competes" with private insurers and forces them to drop their prices. That would be the left wing reform, anyway. And I would say this law being in place makes that more likely, instead of trying to go from "free market" to "public option" in one fell swoop.

As for the politics of the situation, I wasn't talking specifically about the party of Democrats. I mentioned them because it's far more likely they will be the ones in Congress to do it, but even if you replace them with enough Indy's, Greens, or other elected candidates, you still have to make sure those people are prepared to lose their jobs for the cause. I just happen to think it's easier to use the party as a means to an end than it is to get elected independently, hence why I think it's more likely it would be majority Democrats than any other party or indy reps and senators. But then I think you start getting into the discussion on the types of people that run for office these days, the whole "politician vs. statesman" thing, etc. Even the non-scumbags that tend to run for office do so envisioning they'll have potentially years to fight for what they believe in on the state house or senate floor, in city hall, in Congress, etc. I wonder how many of them would believe enough in one cause (in this case, universal health coverage of some sort) to say to them "Okay, you'll get this passed and implemented...but you'll only be in office for one term".

 

Why does it feel like Trump is trying to pivot right post-primary instead of to the middle?

Didn't he learn anything from Clinton surrounding herself with an array of pro-TPP, anti-regulation, corporatist dicks immediately after burying Sanders?

 

Always deeply unsettling to see/hear.