Thank God for the Affordable Care Act

[sanantone]

The insurance rates for graduate students, adjuncts, and part-time employees of the State of Texas are outrageously high. While full-time employees have their premiums fully covered, others only have half covered, and that half is high. My premium will be so high, that it's more than 9.5% of the salary that I'll be making. Because it's over that 9.5% threshold, I will most likely qualify for a subsidy if I purchase on the marketplace. But, even without the subsidy, the insurance rates on the marketplace are much more affordable. Would you believe that? Insurance rates that aren't subsidized by an employer or anyone else are lower. That is how ridiculously high the insurance rates are for Texas government employees. I thought tort reform was supposed to bring Texans some relief. That was a load of bull crap. The huge growth in frivolous lawsuits is a myth; that's why we haven't seen any relief. It looks like I will be purchasing "Obamacare" even though I'm exempt from the insurance requirement due to my employer-provided insurance being above 9.5% of my income.

[Kintsukuroi]

I live in Texas but I don't make *enough* money to qualify for it. I have too much income to qualify for Medicaid and not enough for Obamacare. I would need to make about $5K more a year to qualify for the worst market place insurance in which I would have to pay appropriately a quarter of my below poverty level income in deductibles and premiums before any benefits would kick in. I'm sure glad Obamacare is helping someone because it doesn't seem to be helping the people it should be helping. I guess I'm really no worse off now anyway since I haven't had health insurance in more than a decade anyway.

[sanantone]

I live in Texas but I don't make *enough* money to qualify for it. I have too much income to qualify for Medicaid and not enough for Obamacare. I would need to make about $5K more a year to qualify for the worst market place insurance in which I would have to pay appropriately a quarter of my below poverty level income in deductibles and premiums before any benefits would kick in. I'm sure glad Obamacare is helping someone because it doesn't seem to be helping the people it should be helping. I guess I'm really no worse off now anyway since I haven't had health insurance in more than a decade anyway.

You can only blame Texas for that. The federal government offered to provide funding to expand Medicaid to low income adults. Since the federal government lost the lawsuit over requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage, states are now allowed to opt out. Texas chose to opt out; that is why you don't qualify for anything. Don't blame Obamacare for forgetting about low income adults; blame Texas for not caring about being the state with the highest percentage of uninsured individuals.

[soliloquy]

I live in Texas but I don't make *enough* money to qualify for it. I have too much income to qualify for Medicaid and not enough for Obamacare. I would need to make about $5K more a year to qualify for the worst market place insurance in which I would have to pay appropriately a quarter of my below poverty level income in deductibles and premiums before any benefits would kick in. I'm sure glad Obamacare is helping someone because it doesn't seem to be helping the people it should be helping. I guess I'm really no worse off now anyway since I haven't had health insurance in more than a decade anyway.

I literally do not know one person that this Act has benefited. Everyone I know has said that their rates went up and that they either did not qualify for the subsidy OR even with the subsidy their rate is still higher than it was for a lower level of insurance.

[sanantone]

7.5 million people have bought insurance on the exchanges. 3 million more people are now covered by Medicaid. That number would have been higher if some states weren't willing to throw their poorest residents under the bus over politics. So whether or not you personally know someone who has benefited from ACA, there are millions of people out there who have. I'm probably going to be one more person because I cannot afford the insurance that is being offered by my employer. If it weren't for ACA, I would have had to do without.

[Yanji]

I agree that the numbers speak for themselves... the ACA is far from perfect, but it is an overall improvement.

[sanantone]

Let's not forget the millions of young adults who get to stay on their parents' insurance plans until the age of 26. That is a very popular component of the law. Actually, when you present individual components of the law, most of them have widespread support. When you mention "Obamacare," that's when people become emotional and irrational. This is how dumb people can be when they hear "Obamacare."

[video=youtube;sx2scvIFGjE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE[/video]

The ACA could have used an adjustment after losing the case on Medicaid expansion, but that's not going to happen with Republicans controlling the House. It would have been nice if states could have taken care of this issue, but they haven't. Massachusetts was the only one that did something major. Rick Perry has been governor of Texas for almost 14 years and hasn't done one thing to combat the high rate of uninsured people in Texas. He even stepped in the way of low income adults receiving help. Now, Texans will not see $100 billion in taxes return to them. The urban counties in Texas were begging Perry to accept those federal dollars because they are overburdened with trying to provide healthcare to their poor residents. How come no one is pointing the finger at him or any of the other do nothing governors?

[soliloquy]

I wasn't arguing statistics of stating that it hasn't helped anyone. I was simply stating my experiences. There was no other point beyond that.

[sanantone]

For those who are interested, here is more information on Texas' situation.

It would be foolish to reject billions, especially if we’re paying for it anyway, Moriarty said. “Here you’ve got these very conservative individuals arguing that we shouldn’t accept this money because of the burden to the Texas taxpayer. But an important fact about what’s being proposed is, by not accepting these funds, we’d be taxed twice. First of all, we won’t get our state monies back from the federal government. And secondarily, as a property owner, I pay hospital district taxes, and so I’m paying and subsidizing these costs at a local level.”

The prospect of rejecting so many billions is giving county officials heartburn. Some of the state’s biggest metropolitan counties are looking for a way around Perry and other state leaders if they continue to block Medicaid expansion. In August, George Hernandez, president and CEO of University Health System in San Antonio, which runs the indigent program in Bexar County, made national headlines after he proposed that Texas’ six most populous counties band together to circumvent the state and apply for the federal Medicaid expansion money on their own.

Most counties are already tapped out, having formed local taxing districts to fund public hospitals and indigent programs. Hernandez’s University Health System has 55,000 uninsured county residents enrolled in its indigent program. Each person in the program costs county taxpayers $2,000 a year, he said.

At least 26,000 of those patients could be covered under the Medicaid expansion. “That’s a $53 million savings every year to Bexar County taxpayers.”

Rick Perry's Refusal to Expand Texas' Medicaid Program Could Result In Thousands of Deaths - The Texas Observer

[LaterBloomer]

It's funny. I'd see comments about "don't be a hater" and I had no clue what it meant. Then, a (conservative) friend and I were watching a morning news show where folks were talking about how the ACA would affect them. She says, "that's why I hate Obama." I didn't get into it with her. Why do you hate someone just because you disagree with them? (I thought former Pres. Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake before we even had boots on the ground. I disagreed with him [and Pres. Obama] about Guantanimo. Etc., etc., etc. I never said that I hated former Pres. Bush.) (I do have to say, and I don't scare easily, the then VP Cheney scared the boogers out of me. Silly me, I was happy that he was going to be VP 'cause I thought Gov. Bush lacked experience. Then, my opinion changed. September 11 seemed to either have made him a raging paranoid, or he'd just hid it really well before then.) Okay, back to haters and ACA. Now? Her 20-something is still covered with insurance while he hunts for a job. She sure doesn't hate that.