Monday, May 6, 2013

Frenchy's Follies... Obama care???

So, just curious.... anyone real knowledgeable on the oh-so-fabulous Obama care? Seems like we don't know much about it, and they are rolling out the online exchanges in about 6 months. Do you even know what an exchange is?

I think it's a little odd that we don't know much about this. Why do we have to wait until 3 months before we are forced to get this health care to know how much it's going to be? Most people need to prepare for added expenses like this. Seems poorly planned in my opinion.

The exchange is going to be an online place for buying your health care. Yep I said "BUYING". You will have to pay for it or you will have an extra "tax" for not having health care. How that is legal I have no idea. It is penalizing you for not having health care. Isn't that your choice??? The only people that will get health insurance for free is anyone making under $15,000 that qualify for Medicaid. Everyone else has to pay something for it. In fact, from my research, Obama care may be just as expensive as health care now through an employer. Sooooo.... how is this so great again?

Anywho, I want to also get you thinking about some things that haven't even been addressed at all! How will the all the hospitals, doctors offices, drug and supply companies prepare for this influx of people that will now be going to the doctor when they sneeze a couple of times? I already have a month long wait to see a specialist and urgent care centers have extremely long wait times. Don't you think we could have prepared for that as well? See, if I were president, I would have rolled out some sort of incentive back in 2010 when this was introduced, to get people to go to medical school. Like, pay for a portion or all of tuition to medical school. Especially since new doctors will surely see a decrease in pay with the government reimbursing doctors offices and hospitals even less than private insurance companies have over the years. Give incentives to people that choose to still enter the medical field since they all be working harder for less money. Then this year there would have been a bunch of doctors graduating from basic medical school that could have worked while they went into a specialty program. I mean, think about it!!!

And what about the quality of health care? Supposedly drug companies and medical supply companies will be getting less money for their products. I'm pretty sure this will decrease the quality of the products, and with the doctors cramming more people in, I would think that will cause a drop in the quality of health care as well.

Will we still have co pays for doctors visits and surgeries? WHO KNOWS!!! Will there be a deductible you have to meet every year WHO KNOWS!!Isn't that strange?!

Since I own a small business, let me share with you what I know about that from Obama's own website. Any business with 50 or more employees is required to offer health insurance through an exchange of private health care companies. If they don't offer it, they are penalized $2000-3000 per person. So lets say you have 70 employees. How will you afford to pay for health insurance for all of them? You can't! But you can't afford to be penalized either! So you have to let 21 people go and make the other 49 work harder. Don't you think this will impact the economy drastically come January? Along with the blow of less money for the same things from the medical community? I mean, when we were given a "stimulus" of an extra $20 a paycheck that was supposed to help the economy sooooooo much. So won't these penalties, potential layoffs, and drastically low reimbursements hurt the economy sooooo much too?

My friend works for a company with about 650 people. They estimate that they will have to pay out an extra 1.5 million dollars a year to insure people that may not even WANT health insurance! Why couldn't we just regulate regular insurance companies? Holding the insurance companies accountable for not spending the premium money, and making them reimburse people that money like the Affordable Care Act is doing right now. Not allow for pre existing conditions and caps on benefits, like the Affordable Care Act is doing right now! Making female and male health insurance premiums the same like the Affordable Health Care Act is doing now. WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE STOPPED THERE?!?!

Don't you know there is a reason that people come to America for the best health care? Don't you think that changing the dynamic of it THAT MUCH is going to fuck it all up?!?! And what if it does? Can we pretend it never happened and go back? And will they change the name to the UNAFFORDABLE Care Act if it is as expensive as they are now thinking it may be?

The biggest question at all though, is this.... Are we willing to fuck up the entire medical industry, to then be paying almost the same money we would have for our individual or group insurance anyways?

1 comment:

  1. Hey Frenchy... funny how your blog popped up and I got a letter today from the State of CO run high-risk insurance pool regarding my insurance. I will have to switch to the federal high risk as of 7/1/2013 but have no idea of the cost yet. I've just recently hit all my deductibles thanks to a procedure on my heart, will I have to hit new deductibles for 7/13- through 12/13? No answers. I am between a rock and a hard place. I am the caregiver to my mom (dementia) so that my dad can keep working to pay the bills (he needs to keep working to afford their health insurance needs and is in a better career field than I am. Though I'm not sure how much longer he can keep working at age 68!) but because I live with them, I haven't been able to qualify for any assistance though I have no income. Now I'm going to get switched to the PCIP plan and today was the first I heard of it. I'm ready to scream. I don't know what this is going to cost, what the new Obamacare is going to cost me let alone how this is going to all work come Jan 2014. The website Healthcare.gov isn't as helpful as I had hoped. I still have no answers. Thanks for bringing this conversation up. I just wish I had more answers!

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