Can The Republicans Use ACA to Focus Attention Away From the Shutdown?
By now, everybody knows that the roll out of ACA was indeed a mess. Should someone lose their job? yes. The Republican Party was able to use the messy roll out to focus attention away from the government shut down which cost the government 24 billions dollars. Will this strategy work for 2014 or 2016? I don’t think so because there are several problems inherent in this flawed strategy.
People With Individual Insurance Plans are being Cancelled
President Obama should have done a better job of explaining how many people will lose their individual coverage and why. The Administration had to admit that around 4 to 5 million people who have individual plans will eventually lose their coverage because they do not meet the minimum requirements for ACA., in Oregon, 150, 000, Florida 300,000, California 280,000 and 70,000 in DC, Maryland and Washington. What Blue Shield and other insurance companies are not telling their customers is that many of them will be able to get coverage cheaper or at a fraction of the cost if they meet certain income requirements. One lady who was a diabetic was paying 400 dollars a month for insurance. After she was cancelled, she contacted the ACA and signed up for a new policy. After rebates and taxes, she will be paying $1.11 per month for the first year of coverage.
According to Random House In sickness and in Health: "the primary reason for the debate over American health care is that the United States spends a higher percentage of its gross national product on health care than any other developed country. But despite the high spending, not only do tens of millions of uninsured Americans go without access to America’s high-quality health care, but the spending “has not produced comparably high measures of health status” (Institute of Medicine 2004).
Most Americans are generally satisfied with their healthcare if they can afford it. But the US has around 40 million uninsured Americans. The US is one of the few industrialized
economies which do not have nationalized healthcare. Developed countries such as United Kingdom, Scandinavian France, Italy, and Japan cover 100% of their total population".
Republicans pay lip service to repealing the ACA, but they offer no alternatives to replace it with. They think that people will be so upset by 2016, they will reject ACA and they will be able to capture the White House. In theory, there will be a certain percentage of people who will be upset if they are caring Cadillac Plans. People with Cadillac will have to pay an annual 40% excise tax on premiums exceeding $10, 200 for individual or 27,500 for a family (not including vision and dental starting in 2018 according to Wikipedia. The percentage of people with these kinds of plans is small, so I don’t think it will cause many headaches for the Obama Administration. What the administration need is a good pool of young people in order to keep rates low for everybody. If not enough young people sign-up, it will cause rates to increase and the Republicans will be able to use this in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
Sources:
Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21222195-obama-administration-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance
Obama: 'Shop around' if you lose your health insurance plans
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/31/obama-shop-around-if-lose-your-health-insurance-plans/
Yes, People Are Losing Their Insurance Under Obama care
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-29/yes-people-are-losing-their-insurance-under-obamacare
In sickness and in Health: The History of Health Insurance
http://www.randomhistory.com/2009/03/31_health-insurance.html
Cadillac insurance plan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan
No comments
Post a Comment