Without Obamacare, I would have died.

[werepossum]

Medicaid requires you to meet the federal definition of poverty. For a family of 4, Its just a little less than a total income of $24,000. To be honest, I'm not even sure if in this country a single person can actually live a proper life on an income of $24,000 let alone a family of 4. BTW, obamacare pushed this requirement up to $30,000 for a family of four, and there was a lot of pushback from red states regarding this expansion of medicaid.

That more or less is the issue with healthcare in this country. You have to either wait until 65 (for medicare), or be dirt poor. For pretty much everyone else, private insurance is too affordable and if you get sick you'll lose your job and your current insurance eventually.

Yep, there's a big gap between being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and being rich enough to afford high risk/high expense pre-existing condition private individual policy health insurance.

Most of us who were on the losing side of Obamacare lose comparatively little, whereas many who were on the winning side of Obamacare gained hugely. Transplants are one such area; they are incredibly expensive and because they rely on a donor list, doctors and hospitals aren't easily forced to provide one for free.

As a personal side note, I lost one hospital when our canceled non-compliant health insurance policy was replaced with an Obamacare-compliant health insurance policy which pays less (thereby funding all the freebies as well as health insurance for others who are subsidized) and it now looks like that hospital will be closing its doors forever.

 

[OverVolt]

Yep, there's a big gap between being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and being rich enough to afford high risk/high expense pre-existing condition private individual policy health insurance.

Most of us who were on the losing side of Obamacare lose comparatively little, whereas many who were on the winning side of Obamacare gained hugely. Transplants are one such area; they are incredibly expensive and because they rely on a donor list, doctors and hospitals aren't easily forced to provide one for free.

As a personal side note, I lost one hospital when our canceled non-compliant health insurance policy was replaced with an Obamacare-compliant health insurance policy which pays less (thereby funding all the freebies as well as health insurance for others who are subsidized) and it now looks like that hospital will be closing its doors forever.

Clearly closing hospitals will increase access to healthcare. :/

 

[Jhhnn]

and it now looks like that hospital will be closing its doors forever.

If Obamacare & the closing are related, that means the hospital was an inefficient provider, no?

What sort of pampered existence does one lead when they see choice of hospital as an important feature, anyway?

 

[werepossum]

Federal government subsidy = people like me who's rate went up when Obamercare took over.

So lets get this straight. This guy's premium goes down and he gets better healthcare than what he had before he was canceled?!?

Look, I get it. People should't be left out in the cold. But other people shouldn't have to pay for them either.

Well, until we can get those darn free-loading animals to pay their fair share those are our only two choices.

Clearly closing hospitals will increase access to healthcare. :/

I don't think this one could have been saved. Our biggest (and not-for-profit) chain bailed them out and took them over, then essentially threw up their hands and said pay us back 'cause we can't fix your kind of broke.

If Obamacare & the closing are related, that means the hospital was an inefficient provider, no?

What sort of pampered existence does one lead when they see choice of hospital as an important feature, anyway?

For the first part, yes, this hospital was an inefficient provider. It's been going down hill for over a decade, probably more. This was merely the final blow.

I can't really address the second part as that "do as you will with me as long as somebody else pays" attitude is beyond my ken.

 

[werepossum]

You have to be insanely flexible after all these gymnastics!

The ACA has allowed my family and I to receive insurance while I was unemployed that wouldn't bankrupt my family. And I still rely on it now that I'm working, as my employer generally hires workers as temps for the first year.

You're welcome.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that you are thanking us for subsidizing your health insurance, rather than simply bragging about having a big Uncle Sugar who can turn our money into your money.

Now go do something wondrous so that we're glad we paid your health insurance.

 

[Sunburn74]

How does a liver transplant costing hundreds of thousands represent "basic levels of affordable care"? If you've read my posts before I've continually advocated for government run health-care with 3 components: federally paid catastrophic care for all, ending the employer subsidy in favor of incenting HSAs, and increasing primary care for the very poor and indigent in locally based clinics.

How does giving senior citizens more spending money at the expense of their offspring who are raising children of their own address any social problem?

Liver transplantation is on the extremes of medicine. That's really more a discussion of "to what extreme should we go as a society to save a person's life". You may not know but something like 70% of the average american's lifetime healthcare expenditures are spent in the last 6 months of life. Essentially, you grow old or have a bad disease that doesn't have great treatment and requires increasingly futile treatment until you die. For example, if you have metastatic cancer you may be hospitalized 10x in the last 6 months of your life, for various complications of the cancer you are dealing with (a pneumonia here, biliary obstruction there, fall here, back pain there, etc). Each hospitalization is not curing your cancer. If you ask people who know about these things, they'll tell you that our healthcare system here prioritizes rescue care with an overarching damage control philosophy. Cuba for example, has a completely free healthcare system for all, but that healthcare system chooses to prioritize prevention rather than end of life care. In cuba, everyone gets the chance to see physicians and stay as healthy as possible, but if you're seriously sick they won't go to extremes to save your life.

Like I said, the reason for social services is purely ethical. There is no practical reason for any social service. If nietschze ran the world, it'd be everyone for themselves and for much of history most societies functioned this way; however the world was a pretty lousy place to be in for most people. There would be no social security in a perfectly utilitarian world. However, people who are interested in protecting those who can't protect themselves, believe in social services such as social security, welfare, etc The interest in helping those who can't themselves comes from compassion and empathy, not from reason. If you can't empathize and don't feel compassionate for those people, then we've reached an ideological gulf that words and argument likely will not be able to bridge.