It is perfect, god no, does healthcare need fixing, fuck yes, did it take an insanely unprecedented effort to make sure you could get health care after you were diagnosed with literally anything including acne, yes, would you be so fucked if we didn’t have it, also yes
I had ACA insurance when I was working three gig jobs in my 30s. I was diagnosed with several mental illnesses, and was put on medication that cost me $2500 a month. With the ACA, I paid NOTHING. And that is why I'm still alive. Thank you for being a necessary first step, ACA.
It has ruined millions of lives. It is the worse system—by far, by every measure—in the developed world
Just because insane extremists want to rip it apart should not mean we lie about how truly awful, predatory and life destroying our system is. Designed to be that
no one here said it was perfect, it was a very flawed system (which depending on what state you're in, that could mean much more), but it was better than what was before. I have a pre-existing condition and I'd be much much worse off without the ACA, despite its many issues.
the fact that it was so difficult to implement despite everything wrong with it is very telling about how bad it was before. and yeah, I'd rather not experience how much I'd be suffering now if not for the ACA, thanks.
Do you guys know that the aca was based on a design by the heritage foundation? You know, the 2025 people? Do you think they were a good organization back then?
Mary, I'm glad you got covered and can afford it. I've been stupidly arguing with people about this. Does it really not register that a story like yours is a matter of luck in our system? And the "ACA or nothing" is some democratic party framing because the ENTIRE WORLD does it better than us.
I never said it was even a good system, it was stupid to have each state bend their versions until it was useless in many cases, then point a finger at the plan itself. I feel like your sentiment was the desired outcome of that. the world does do better and we should too.
it's not 'not perfect'. It's the most expensive, by far, with the worst outcomes, by far in the developed world. Fully half of people WITH coverage cannot afford care. A coin flip. Bankruptcy is nearly built in for serious illness, if you can even declare it.
our dem leaders have taken tens of millions from healthcare companies to keep it this way and for some reason I will never understand, you argue with people who are against that level of rot and human suffering.
And yet, it was a huge improvement. We can acknowledge both that we need something MUCH better (and it would be cheaper than what we do now), and that it was a huge improvement.
This take screams “suburbanite online addiction to messages that radically oversimplifies politics, and so everything is just like capitalist UberEats ordering.”
People like you aren’t interested in improvement. You’re not interested in coalition holding to those ends. You crap on the ACA because it’s cool and its protections allow you to be petulant and throw it all away like a degenerate gambler for a jackpot or a karen for an internet pizza order.
Here, go help some of the people who are thriving under our amazing system that I’m so awful to talk about. You won’t, of course. You’re just a snark thrower
That’s for you. You people who hate progress Ii means workman’s iterative gains, who push for authoritarian ideals, disguised as a false outrage over healthcare. You’re a fraud and the ultimate cynic.
You have no idea about the facts of our system. None. We have the worst system by far in the developed world & you think the thing to do is hector & mock someone who states that as a fact. And it is a fact
Use your energy & go donate to one of the tens of thousands of desperate medical gofundmes
Ride the misery? Yeah , I lost my home, lifetime of savings, retirement—under the ACA, dropped despite the ‘protections’, which have massive loopholes. And I’m just one of millions and you’re just an asshole
They don't understand that prior to the ACA, if you didn't have insurance through a very large employer, and you were not independently wealthy, you basically had no access to health care. Even employer-based insurance through smallish companies sucked, and individual plans were useless.
That’s not correct. Under HIPAA, something couldn’t be a pre-existing condition if you had continuously maintained coverage under a large enough group plan. That continuity did not break when you switched insurers/plans (whether that was because your employer switched insurers, you moved jobs,
I have no trouble believing that it happened, though. If your employer’s HR dept messed up the continuity, it was nearly impossible to sort out & you had very little recourse. 😠
Ask me how I know. 🫤 (My family lost our insurance when I was about halfway through inpatient oncology treatment).
Related trivia fact: the P in HIPAA stands for “portability,” specifically because it established standards to smooth people’s transitions between insurance plans when they had a chance in life circumstance.
That was true until HIPAA. If you didn’t have a significant gap between your jobs/group coverage then there wasn’t a waiting period for pre-existing conditions. I was treated for cancer pre-ACA so I had looked into this.
Shortly before the ACA, I took a job with a well-meaning but often clueless company that promised health insurance for their employees. What they meant? They'd reimburse premiums purchased privately. I had to calmly explain to them that meant nothing, because no one would offer me insurance.
They genuinely had no idea. I was able to find coverage through my state's high risk pool, but a lot of states that employer operated in didn't have that.
Pre ACA: My first employer, full-time in a lab working with dangerous chemicals, they had a rule that employees didn't get health insurance until they were there six months. So I was on public health insurance. $350/month, $10k deductible, directly took money out of my checking account.
Yup, I worked for a small biz that gave $200 to buy a plan on the individual market. I was very young, the plan covered almost nothing and everything was over the allowed amount, even for most basic PCP appointment. Lots of exclusions and yet paid hundreds a month for it. It was gross.
We had to get catastrophic coverage because I was out of college and freelance. It basically only covered you if you died. 😂😂 I was so happy for young people when they were allowed to stay on their parents insurance until 26. That was groundbreaking!!
I used to joke all through my 20s that I had a plan with a $10K deductible so I couldn’t ever get sick, it was just to helicopter me to a hospital if I got hit by a train so they could put me back together like Humpty Dumpty. And we’d all laugh at how useless health insurance was & I’d buy my …
People don’t realize that even relatively basic conditions could exclude you from healthcare. I knew someone who struggled to get insured because they had asthma.
Totally correct. I don’t know your line of work. Mine is in healthcare, and there are tons of little things the ACA does that patients don’t even notice. It’s definitely a flawed law, but it replaced a catastrophic “system” where people died needlessly every single day. It is still a godsend.
Finished law school in 2009 and went off UC insurance. Tried to buy coverage on the individual market (Kaiser NorCal): denied for a preexisting condition.
That condition? Breaking my leg skiing six months before. Former college XC runner. No other risk factors or claims. Ridiculous system.
The pre-existing conditions thing was what drove COBRA because you simply could not be uninsured for any length of time, bc the insurance cos would call everything a pre existing condition if you had a “gap in coverage”
I mean I terminated an accidental pregnancy in my 40s because my insurance policy, for me, a lady person, did not cover PREGNANCY.
Also, my therapist played a lot of coding bingo to make sure I didn't have anything in my record they could call "pre-existing".
I had a bad car accident in my early-20s & they wrote “future medical” into my settlement b/c all those injuries were then pre-existing & precluded from coverage. It was exhausting. :(
I want better but am scared it’s going backward now, like we could wake up to 1980s-90s ins. I’m disappointed in Lieberman too. I also hate debating “i do this test/procedure or wait b/c it might be pre-existing?” when it all falls apart. It’s still so complicated.
Oh yea, all the fun and games with coding like my therapist being like "I'm gonna wait to put this new DX down until the next quarter so we can keep having sessions, but you DO have this condition"
ACA
-removed free clinics (sadly)
-left tens of thousands uninsured
-added urgent care to coverage
-increased number insured
-banned "preexisting conditions"
-raised all premiums and deductibles
-added some tax credits
-created archaic system for who qualifies that leaves middle class families out
We can talk about how it's not Medicare for all and it's faults are that it didn't go far enough but I'm grateful that a few problems aren't as big as they used to.
They don't remember what it was like before. When many had no care and when you could die waiting in an ER, or when there simply wasn't any hospital or clinic nearby.
In my hometown a guy went to the church basement and blew his brains out because he had cancer, couldn't afford it, and figured his family was better off if he died sooner rather than later. Pre-ACA obviously.
My MIL was talking to me about how pre-ACA when my partner was diagnosed type 1 diabetic at 5 years old she had to argue and argue and argue with health insurance companies that would try to fuck her over and deny him any care at all. Hours of her time to get coverage she paid for for him as a kid.
You can imagine the hell we're facing now. Trump lifted the cap on insulin for some fucking reason, if they eliminate medicaid and allow insurers to deny based on pre-existing conditions I have no idea what the fuck we're going to do. He'll die.
to add insult to injury people are fucking stupid and don't know what type 1 diabetes is (or how any type of diabetes works for that matter). They assume he or his mother gave him diabetes by eating junk food and not exercising and therefore think he deserves to pay extortionate prices for insulin
Type 1 is an autoimmune disorder, his body attacked his pancreas, now his pancreas doesn't create insulin and he has to regulate his own blood sugar all day every day for his entire life. That's hard enough on its own. Now add stress of insurance, insulin, and supply coverages.
Other people's stupidity makes them more malicious for some reason. They genuinely think that he should be denied care and extorted because he lost the genetic lottery and inherited type 1 diabetes from his mom's side of their family. Cruel people want to punish him for this.
Been type 1 since I was 7. Never overweight. Pancreas just stopped after getting attacked by my own body, due to know fault of my own. Pre ACA I survived cause my PCP was able to slip me vials of insulin that were provided for samples. It was hell, and I was not healthy.
New rule: if you didn't age off your parents' plan, with no other plan in sight, prior to the ACA? No right to talk.
Me, I was uninsured and hating it (and too ill to work). And my scumbag of an ex, the "polyamorist", chose not to divorce his wife in order to help me out. So much for equal ptrs.
Even with insurance, dental stuff was kind of a luxury. Even *now* it is; I have two cracked teeth that I'm eating around. Cracked in the last two months due to stress, might I add.
The younger folks at my office go to the doctor, like for everything. The older millennials/Xennials don’t unless we really have to. Because during our formative young adult years, we couldn’t afford to.
I was uninsured from ages 18-29 except for very limited urgent care at my university. No dental care either. I have health problems dating from those times still.
Ok. I was born before then so I’ll say the plans on there are pay a lot and go less bankrupt or pay a little and go more bankrupt. Regardless I’m glad it exists. Now time for Medicare for all.
People who are still on their parents' insurance, because of the ACA, but don't know that. Or people older than 26 who have always had employer-based healthcare, but don't like the ACA in the abstract, because it "didn't go far enough."
I've had ACA plans, they worked!
Definitely. But fuck, our premiums now are as bad as they were before, having crept up yearly. Yes, we’re still better off because of the pre-existing conditions thing, but we also learned the hard way that “pre-approval isn’t a guarantee of payment” and were billed $85k for a pre-approved surgery 🙃
I literally would not get diagnosed to prevent harm. For example—could have been diagnosed with MS at 18, but the doctor literally told me he wasn’t going to because I would never be able to get coverage when I needed it so wait until I was insured then come back to get diagnosed.
I am glad they grew up in a world where they did not have to know that pregnancy, cancer, depression, or any number of issues could be grounds for you losing all your access to healthcare, and I am mad as hell that they do not understand that that was our reality (and will be again at this rate).
“There were many pernicious aspects of pre-ACA healthcare. Many of them persist, a situation I also find unacceptable. But it really was a landmark achievement to pass a law that got rid of very possibly the one that was so fucked you can’t even conceive of it”
I had a friend who got cancer and was immediately dumped by her insurance, lost her job ended up in hundreds of thousands in debt working at Starbucks. It wasn't that uncommon!
It still is. ACA is a terrible not even quarter measure of a bill, but it still saved a lot of lives in spite of its crafters attempting to undermine it as much as they could.
I figured. The Medicaid expansion is the only reason I'm still alive today, but HMOs being out to maximize capital is why I have a limb that will never work right again, so I can appreciate both the strengths and weaknesses of the ACA.
Young people REALLY don’t believe you when you tell them about how insurance companies used to investigate newly diagnosed cancer patients and cancel their insurance. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna36711197
I’m deaf and *still* do not get any kind of coverage for hearing aids. I get one test every year and that is fucking ALL.
Nothing changed for most people with disabilities, especially in regards to Durable Medical Equipment: hearing aids, glasses, wheelchairs, etc. DME is paid for by the *patient*.
Final thing: We supported socialized healthcare but the most common reaction of people who had no insurance because they sought treatment and now had a pre-existing condition was *shame*.
We'd been stupid. We had let the system get the better of us.
I was terrified I'd get sick and have to confess.
If you think you could conceal conditions one company made headlines for taking people's money for YEARS and, when those people were diagnosed with cancer, combing back through their records and canceling their coverage over things like miss-dating vaccinations.
I use the ACA, and it ain’t working. The pre-existing conditions clause is hugely important, yes, but the rest is an economic bandaid that does nothing to reign in medical costs. It subsidizes overpriced premiums and unaffordable deductibles. Better than nothing, but we need Bernie's single payer.
Exactly. We had our first kid before the ACA. My insurance didn't cover maternity, because it was an add-on costing at minimum $5,000 for 12 months of UNcovered term BEFORE pregnancy, plus 9 months pregnant. Max benefit: $4,000
My first 6 weeks of office visits was $3,000 before medicaid kicked in.
The ACA ain't perfect, but we can afford healthcare now, that covers everything, for four of us. Two of us with chronic disabilities, medications, periodic surgeries. At less than it cost for 2 of us 20 years ago.
We still have medical debt, but it's 7k instead of 50k and that's A Difference.
My partner and I moved to Canada a few years before Obama was elected, and the brutal insurance situation in the US was a major reason why.
The ACA is far from perfect, but anyone who thinks it should be repealed wholesale either has no idea what it was like before the ACA, or is just plain evil.
I'm betting most of them are still covered on their parent's plan (thank the ACA). Or just discovering now they may have to pay for health insurance. At least they have some options due to the ACA rather than zilch (outside of employers and Medicaid), like 20 years ago
hello I was born 4 years before the millennium and while I do agree that the pre-existing conditions part is good, that does not change the fact that the aca was a right wing compromise which is incapable of meeting the public need and should be replaced by socialized healthcare.
I agree with you! That’s a reasonable viewpoint and is not the same as saying “yeah fuck Barack Obama for his ACA” when I was there, I was part of the fight, and I know exactly how almost impossible it was to get it done, and how it cost Obama the rest of his presidency basically
also just for the record, fuck Barack Obama. like all us presidents, he has an ocean of blood on his hands and the inadequacies of the aca are hardly his gravest sins.
Hello, the ACA could be improved in so many ways, and yet Republicans are dedicated to destroying it and all of the talks of M4A are actually laughable when people barely show up to vote
people are demoralized. partially because democrats don't give them anything to work with, and partially because the society we live in is hell, largely because of politicians.
People died bc they hit lifetime or annual caps and couldn’t afford treatment. This was a conversation my friend had with her late husband. He didn’t want to bankrupt the family and still die.
I had friends growing up and their dad constantly had to change jobs bc one of the kids had cystic fibrosis and they’d hit their annual cap by spring so he’d need new insurance. Completely absurd.
I went to the ER in 2005 for a high fever, stiff neck and headache. Got a lumbar puncture, ruled out meningitis, and they sent me home to sleep it off. An hour total, tops, in the ER.
That bill, alone, ended up being $15k. $12k is like... 3 stitches. Lifetime.
In 2010 I was in a car accident, had to go to the ER to get a head CT, then had to have physical therapy for months. My bill was close to $25k and I was unemployed at the time. The hospital found out the auto insurance was paying and negotiated the bill down bc insurers got discounts 🤯
I turned down a very good job offer once pre-ACA because it was contract-to-hire, so I would have had to buy private insurance and pre-existing condition limitations would have kicked in. They were even willing to pay the premiums till I converted but it just wasn't workable.
I worked at a bookstore in the 90s and had to pay $49 as my copay for every doctor's visit. It took me a full day's work to earn $49. But at least I was one of the lucky people who had insurance in case something truly catastrophic happened. I think about that $49 copay a lot now.
Do you (rhetorical you) know many working class persons born after the millennium who can "afford" healthcare, even with two jobs? On the ACA the same lame insurance companies deny coverage when it's really needed.
They’ve had access to coverage during their adult years even tho expensive.
Pre-ACÁ: I was perfectly healthy, but uninsured because of mistaken diagnosis of diabetes on an unidentified record. I finally got insured by taking job at large employer. The insurance industry excluded millions of people.
The key to survival in America is to not get sick and land in the hospital because that bill will finish you right off. Either that or the insurance company overruling a doctor on your medical care to potentially save your life.
The ACA is not very good.
It started out as the Republican plan bc Obama couldn't help himself from negotiating down to their level before negotiations even began.
Just a cowardly approach to legislation and it didn't even get a single Republican on side.
Gen X here. The ACA is basically Mitt Romney’s plan and is straight from the Heritage Foundation. Obama basically agreed that it sucked but claimed it would be made stronger over the years. The left hated it and said it would get watered down. And we were right.
The whole process was one of the things that radicalized me.
Like, "oh, this kind of technocratic neoliberal solution doesn't work and people hate it."
it can be true that the ACA was a shitty attempt at healthcare reform and that it was much worse before the ACA. These things are not mutually exclusive. the frustration is that democrats banged on and on about healthcare reform and with a supermajority in the senate we got Romneycare 2.0
What exactly is surprising about how Democrats “banged on” and the results of the ACA? The only major thing missing that was floated was the public option - you can thank the voters of Connecticut for that.
Doing regulations modeled after the state regulations of one of the most liberal states in the entire country -which Romney literally tried to veto most of- sounds exactly like what a mid aughts Dem supermajority would do
Do you really think the ACA is good policy? Do you think it would be with a public option? Do you think the best we can do is this half-assed system? I’m pretty tired of the excuses since republicans seem to find ways to do whatever they want to do.
Good policy compared to what? Is it exactly what I would do if I was supreme dictator? Certainly not.
But it’s pretty obviously the best policy that could have been passed with the Congress we had in 2008 and it’s the best healthcare policy EVER passed in America. So, yes, it’s “good” policy.
I understand what you’re saying but Dems have been hanging their hat on this for the last 15 years as if there’s nothing left to do on healthcare. It’s extremely frustrating to watch as insurance companies continue to screw people over but elected Dems squelch support for M4A.
Who says there’s nothing left to do on healthcare? Biden ran on the public option in 2020 and got the slimmest senate majority mathematically possible. He did succeed on negotiating and capping drug prices and further expansions for Medicaid.
Like Social Security, it could be rather painlessly improved & made better, but the Republicans & insurance companies do everything they can to sabotage it.
"We need the nationalized health insurance that Obama wants us to have" is the first coherent political opinion I remember having. We're talking like 7th-8th grade social studies tangent. I was a KID and I was profoundly aware of how bad the health insurance system was.
I didn’t have any healthcare for over a decade. The ACA was really a major step forward for so many, including those denied insurance due to pre existing conditions. People who hate it have no concept of just how bad things were prior to the ACA. Do we need to do more? Of course.
Kids went to college so they could stay on their parents insurance until they were 21 and became uninsured. A whole lot of them didn’t want to be there.
So many who’ve known modern advances their whole lives just don’t understand why they were implemented and how bad it was before. It’s an incredibly frustrating ignorance.
They have no concept of pre-existing conditions. I lost insurance when I was laid off and nobody would cover my spine. Not from continuing issues, but because once I had a surgery. Now my entire spine was a pre-existing condition. I was like wtf. Anything they can do not to insure you
Well, due to a windfall last year I am having to pay all of the tax credits back for ACA right now so I'm a little salty about it. It's fairly decent insurance though. It just shouldn't cost what insurance companies want to charge for it.
My mom fell into a donut hole of health insurance one year before qualifying for Medicare. She needed emergency surgery. It took the family 10 years to pay off the cost. Anyone dumping on Obama and ACA can kiss my ass.
The ACA is absolute crap -- and still miles above what we used to have, which was crap that was purposefully designed to take your money and give nothing in return.
I was born in the late 1960's. I can see both the positive aspects, and the negative aspects of The Affordable Care Act/ACA/Obama Care. What we really need in The USA however is Universal Healthcare.
I explain to my Gen Z kids what preexisting cause was & spending my 20s & 30s making sure I had no employment/ins gaps. Being self-employed then would’ve been untenable. They don’t understand why I grin w/$5 urgent care visits or prescriptions. I’m dreading the impending ACA destruction so so much.
Anyone around Luigi’s age needs to see the Michael Moore movie Sicko to even begin to get a concept of what it was like to be sick or have an accident in the US pre ACA. That scene where the health insurance salesperson tells the story of a woman happy crying bec she thinks she’s finally going to …
get health insurance for her husband who has some condition but the insurance employee knows she’s not going to qualify since she just admitted he had an existing condition which is why she needed to get it, and so they’d never be approved for health insurance coverage and they were going to die
They’ll learn - once the gop gets rid of it we’ll all be uninsurable due to everything we’ve gotten treated because it exists becoming a preexisting condition.
I was 40 in 2010 and I hated the ACA because it wasn't socialized medicine. Easy for me to say, since I'd been uninsured for like 1 year in my life. I gradually came to accept that the ACA did a lot of good and it was most likely the best bill they could have got past Joe Lieberman.
People who don't remember that period may not realize that the ACA that passed was not the original proposal, and that it passed after months of excruciating negotiations, Ted Kennedy's death, the Dems losing his seat, people going ballistic over death panels. An extraordinary accomplishment.
i worked in mental health care AND healthcare prior to the ACA being passed and we (me and my colleagues) were thrilled about the prospect of having more people have coverage for things because they'd had a hospital visit.
did pro-bono counseling DUE TO the fact that the ACA didn't exist.
for me? personally? i was diagnosed with something in 1997 that required i needed meds for the rest of my life. when that thing made me too sick to work, but too independent for SSDI? the ACA saved my life.
Totally agree! Does it have issues? Yes, why is healthcare a for profit endeavour? However, doing away with the preexisting condition issue alone is a vast improvement on what it was before.
Can you listen to someone born in the 1970’s? The Affordable Healthcare Act did not make healthcare affordable. I understand that it improved a depraved system somewhat, but we still have the world’s shittiest healthcare. Stop settling for scraps and stop chiding those who demand better
They don’t know that there were people employed by health insurance companies whose entire job consisted of combing through medical records to find a “preexisting condition” that would allow them to deny coverage for breast cancer.
As a child of the 60's and 70's we had local city owned hospitals and no problem seeing a doctor,people didn't go into bankruptcy over medical bills, it all changed with Reagan.
Can’t listen to them talk about… anything. Dude the other day didn’t know who Cher is. You think I’m gonna respect the opinion of somebody who has never heard of Cher? Fuck no.
The ACA is not healthcare. Insurance is not healthcare.
Universal healthcare is the only just and viable solution -- and is practiced by every other wealthy and many non-wealthy nations on Earth with the notable exception of the U.S.
Accepting the framing of the industry and touting a mammoth gift of public funds to their coffers as a step in the right direction is to not only whistle through a graveyard but to help dig your own.
I was excised from individual health coverage from the time I turned 18, because I was hospitalized for suicidal depression at 16. Agents stopped calling me back entirely after I told my doctor I'm an alcoholic and asked for help.
I went without insurance when I went back to school because they jacked up the premium on an individual policy because I had been treated for temporary postpartum depression.
Comments
Just because insane extremists want to rip it apart should not mean we lie about how truly awful, predatory and life destroying our system is. Designed to be that
Chapter 1,
"Health Insurance, Second Edition"
Michael A. Morrissey
https://account.ache.org/iweb/upload/Morrisey2253_Chapter_1-3b5f4e08.pdf
1/
That is neither something to celebrate nor accept
https://www.gofundme.com/discover/medical-fundraiser
Use your energy & go donate to one of the tens of thousands of desperate medical gofundmes
1/2
Ask me how I know. 🫤 (My family lost our insurance when I was about halfway through inpatient oncology treatment).
https://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/certificates-of-credible-coverage-under-the-health-insurance.html
Related trivia fact: the P in HIPAA stands for “portability,” specifically because it established standards to smooth people’s transitions between insurance plans when they had a chance in life circumstance.
2/2
That condition? Breaking my leg skiing six months before. Former college XC runner. No other risk factors or claims. Ridiculous system.
And COBRA is un-fucking-affordable
If your gap in coverage was no more than 63 days then the new policy could not restart the exclusion lookback clock.
But a longer gap than that and they could restart it.
Also, my therapist played a lot of coding bingo to make sure I didn't have anything in my record they could call "pre-existing".
I mean, things aren't good now, but they're so much better.
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't insist on better.
And curse Joe Lieberman until the end of days.
These kids need to be quiet
-removed free clinics (sadly)
-left tens of thousands uninsured
-added urgent care to coverage
-increased number insured
-banned "preexisting conditions"
-raised all premiums and deductibles
-added some tax credits
-created archaic system for who qualifies that leaves middle class families out
I'd have maxed out as a child.
https://bsky.app/profile/jaconthebrazos.bsky.social/post/3ll3h3wu5fc2k
Me, I was uninsured and hating it (and too ill to work). And my scumbag of an ex, the "polyamorist", chose not to divorce his wife in order to help me out. So much for equal ptrs.
I've had ACA plans, they worked!
(Still incurring debts too because of course health care is still problematic af but it's not As bad now)
Nothing changed for most people with disabilities, especially in regards to Durable Medical Equipment: hearing aids, glasses, wheelchairs, etc. DME is paid for by the *patient*.
We'd been stupid. We had let the system get the better of us.
I was terrified I'd get sick and have to confess.
Eighteen months later I was turned down for ANY insurance because I told my doctor about a condition that required no treatment.
My first 6 weeks of office visits was $3,000 before medicaid kicked in.
And it didn't cover pregnancy. Miscarriage, yes. The baby that lived? Nope!
Then they increased to $800/mo due to "rising costs" after record profits of billions.
We still have medical debt, but it's 7k instead of 50k and that's A Difference.
Jesus. We can make things better but it was a fight to the last vote to get that shit even passed
The ACA is far from perfect, but anyone who thinks it should be repealed wholesale either has no idea what it was like before the ACA, or is just plain evil.
I think he said $12,000 was his limit.
For his life.
That bill, alone, ended up being $15k. $12k is like... 3 stitches. Lifetime.
Pre-ACÁ: I was perfectly healthy, but uninsured because of mistaken diagnosis of diabetes on an unidentified record. I finally got insured by taking job at large employer. The insurance industry excluded millions of people.
It’s a trash bill that hurts people.
Life expectancy has dropped on under the bill.
Even if it maintained the previous rates it would be a failure. But it is worse.
It started out as the Republican plan bc Obama couldn't help himself from negotiating down to their level before negotiations even began.
Just a cowardly approach to legislation and it didn't even get a single Republican on side.
Like, "oh, this kind of technocratic neoliberal solution doesn't work and people hate it."
But it’s pretty obviously the best policy that could have been passed with the Congress we had in 2008 and it’s the best healthcare policy EVER passed in America. So, yes, it’s “good” policy.
Get real, youngin
"I cannot listen to people who were born after the millennium talk shit..."
I also know for a fact that a lot of people were able to get into drug treatment programs solely because of the Medicaid expansion.
You said you don't smoke? Your friend from college tagged you in a photo holding a cigarette.
Now SM has everything and they can get the deleted posts.
did pro-bono counseling DUE TO the fact that the ACA didn't exist.
like wow. prior to? no insurance for meeeeee.
I am glad you have ACA and I am gonna fight like hell to keep them from killing it.
The ACA is not healthcare. Insurance is not healthcare.
Universal healthcare is the only just and viable solution -- and is practiced by every other wealthy and many non-wealthy nations on Earth with the notable exception of the U.S.
The only reason: insurance industry lobby.
Universal healthcare is a step forward.
The ACA is a vampire dressed as a nurse.