Roughly 55 million Americans could lose insurance coverage if Obamacare is repealed, but that’s just a number. Those in jeopardy are making it personal.
In a burst of Twitter activism, scores of people have begun sharing details of their health complications online, as well as those of their loved ones, to draw attention to the issue.
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There is no way to get the medical help I need without the pre existing condition excemption. I have a lifetime limit to a private insurance co. that will run out in 1 year with the price of chemo drugs I need to take.
How about congress and the senate also give up their free health care plans until such a time as they come up with a viable replacement for a program that works? Or better still, rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater, why not address areas of the ACA they feel can be strengthened?
Obamacare can be easily cured
The best way to accomplish this is combining strands of the free market with personal responsibility and Medicare–all in one weave. I outline below how easily this can be accomplished.
For starters, let people keep more of the funds that they currently pay (and/or their employer pays) for health insurance. Currently, giant insurance corporations receive 100% of premiums (often $20,000-plus per employee annually, an exorbitant amount) while workers also have large co-pays and office visits payments, too. Basically, workers (or their employers) give 100% of monthly premiums to health insurance companies (Big Corp), which then decides which treatment they will pay for–with the patients’ funds, not a very participatory scheme in the all-important field of health and well-being. This is readily curable.
Instead of 100% of premiums going to Big Corp with little choice in return, a Healthcare Savings Account (HSA) will cut costs dramatically while improving health care dramatically. To easily accomplish this, employers deposit 50% of employees’ health care premiums into employees’ individual HSA accounts and 50% into a new version of Medicare (new in the sense that Medicare that would provide expanded coverage for everyone and not just elders as currently setup).
Using such a 50/50 health care plan, costs will be reduced and risks better managed (that is, people are still covered by Medicare even if an HSA is depleted). Therefore, universal coverage will be achieved with this plan and a newly styled Medicare even if an individual HSA is out of funds.
This setup can totally eliminate disagreement with insurance companies over services available and payments, too. The result, patients and doctors decide together any treatments necessary, and the patient pays for services and treatments through either an HSA, or, as mentioned, if an HSA is out of funds, then payment would go through Medicare.
Additionally, this proposal will make all preventative care available through Medicare–a great advancement for the health of the country as people will be encouraged not just by the prospect of better health but incentivized to save money in their HSAs by taking care of their health preventively through Medicare–‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ would hold true in this setup and thus costs massively reduced in the long run throughout the nation with tremendous knock-on effects of greater personal health which means an increased quality of life, more productivity and so on–in sum an increase in the USA’s ‘Gross National Health and Happiness’.
Perhaps the best result in the care setting is better patient-doctor relationships with more patient involvement, engagement and responsible behavior–all freely achievable with these modifications to a health care across the USA.
The nuts and bolts? When going for treatments, payment can be as easy as sliding an HSA personal card or using an HSA phone app at a card reader for services and treatments at hospitals, doctors’ and dentists’ offices and so on. Payment and receipts will be easy and instant with a resultant printout/text/email of the services, costs, and remaining balance in the individual HSA.
Furthermore, it would repair today’s convoluted system where a person who loses a job might encounter unwieldy sums under Obamacare for health care or such a person might become a part of the Medicaid system (depending on income status) or even Medicare (depending on age). With this new plan in effect, people who lose a job can have built-up funds in an HSA to draw upon in addition to expanded Medicare coverage and Medicaid, too.
For example, if health insurance premiums remained at current rates, say $20,000 annually and an employee works 30 years, then that employee, under this plan, potentially has $300,000 in an HSA (the quick math: 50% of $20,000 times * 30 years = $10,000*30years = $300,000) in a Health Savings Account.
These HSAs would be easily ‘portable’ from job to job and employer to employer and again, preventative care would be an essential component with preventative care provided by an expanded Medicare and Medicare partially funded through 50% of premiums in addition to current payroll taxes that go into Medicare. This would help shore-up the current, looming deficit that Medicare faces, too. Two problems solved in one!
Actually, it does more than this. It eliminates unnecessary middlemen. That is, the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare requires everyone to purchase health care coverage from the same health insurance monoliths who have gotten us into a titanic mess. Well, if nothing else, if no new plan takes effect including this one, then as the government requires everyone to buy health insurance, then the government can regulate the health insurance corporations too. The government can start by banning health insurance companies from being traded on Wall Street and mandating that health insurance executives have rational pay scales (no one person in the health insurance industry should earn more than $1 million annually). Otherwise, Obamacare is simply a windfall for insurance companies because they unfairly monopolize their markets.
Using a 50/50 health care plan can also benefit retired people. From 75 years of age, they can use individual HSAs to supplement their pensions or 401k/retirement funds. Such a setup would encourage everyone to take care of their own health and a reward would be waiting if they do–if a person takes care of himself/herself (keeping in mind, preventative care is paid through Medicare in this plan and therefore people have even more motivation towards maintaining their health), then he/she could have a large HSA to draw on when retired.
The above cure of Obamacare outlines a new direction in health care coverage…personal choice and engagement by the important participants, patients and their health care providers. It is a direction that does not include unnecessary middleman which in this case are insurance corporations. The plan eliminates huge costs eaten up by these unnecessary go-betweens and these reclaimed costs can go back directly to the patients and their caretakers. This 50/50 health care plan eliminates the insurance companies and allows health caretakers and patients to engage directly with each other for better healthcare at a lower cost. It is a new dawn in health care that allows a healthy pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness for all.
My daughter Sarah is one of the tweets you published and she needs the ACA to keep her insured. The world will be at a great loss if she can not keep her insurance, please help us!
This article is such bs, emotional-laden drivel.
Back when the ACA (Obamacare) was stuffed down the throats of the American public, taking over sixteen percent of the US economy.
The fact is that insurance choices are horrible if you’re not lucky enough to get it through your work or through the government… Oh, wait, the people that pushed that law don’t even get to “experience” it? True. Just like everything, elitist liberal, “Progressives” know what’s best for you.. but to hell of you think their going to do it!
The fact is that the Republican Congress was willing to work on a law to include all of “feel good”aspects of ACA, the only parts the denigrated spoke of including:
1- ending the preexisting condition exclusion
2- allowing “kids” to stay in mommy’s and daddies insurance
All I know is, all insurance choices in given totally suck, they are all hmo-type, I cannot keep my doctor! (Remember that one)
Your next article should be on the actual pile of dog sh*t that the ACA really is. The poor always had Medicaid. Nobody needed this Bullsh*t law, and I can’t wait until it’s thrown out…
My my, aren’t you the happy little troll. Not only are they planning to toss the insurance out, they may not do any thing about replacing it for a few years. Meanwhile, I can see you could care less that people will die. As far as Medicare goes, they are planning on making changes there too. Have a nice holiday, you selfish cretin.
the horror and misery of what’s going to happen after losing the ACA is well known by healthcare professionals who work every day very hard to save lives. this repeal…will not be replaced in a way that will save millions of people. let this be on your conscience enough to CALL YOUR REPUBLICAN SENATORS ….cause believe ME everyone…YOU will be next for complete “privatization” (give away to big pharma and health insurers)….first OBAMACARE, then MEDICARE, then the V.A. it’s all Paul Ryans “Better Way”…..a better way for those wealthy enough to pay ANY price for health care. shame on us if we do not fight to the death for this….RIGHT TO LIFE.
Fuzzy math? Help me understand the 55 million figure. If less than 20 million new insureds got coverage under the ACA, and most of them (estimated to be 74%) were/are covered under Medicaid (which will probably not change even if the ACA is totally repealed), then why would 55 million people with pre-existing conditions suddenly not be eligible for coverage? Why weren’t the 55 million enrolled under the ACA since it eliminated exclusion due to pre-existing conditions? How do the 55 million know that their condition or illness would eliminate them from consideration for coverage? Just wondering how the numbers reconcile with reality.
Unless you’re a family member of Republicans, they have no empathy, and so no sympathy for you. They have no use for “socialism” like the ACA. Tweets won’t affect them at all.
Try not to net all the gators in one pond please. I’m one of the #millions that can’t get healthcare still, and not because I have a preexisting condition. For the mere fact it is not affordable! Your flagrant use of name calling just goes to show how one sided you really are,.
And yet the political party (Democrats) who generally love two things: (both of which Catholics cannot support, I believe you consider yourself one)
1. abortion (ripping an unborn baby apart limb from limb in the womb, then disposing of the pieces of the baby in the medical waste)
2. “LGBT rights”. Not just respect and equal treatment, but the idea that sodomites are superior and everyone must worship their intrinsically disordered, depraved and violation of natural law (sodomites: ones who perform sodomy, an act so unnatural it was, until recently illegal in many states and often performed during violent rape. A sodomite-lead pressure group forced most states to remove the crime of sodomy so homosexual men could partake in beastiality if desired. Homosexually used to be considered a mental illness by the APA, and was present in the DSM (diagnostic manual of mental disorders) until a radical homosexual member forced the other members to to not allow it on the next DSM revision.
It was and still is the only mental disorder removed from the DSM without any research, scientific rationale… It was only removed for political reasons.
Remember, a Catholic cannot vote Democrat
We will see what the years ahead will bring under a Trump presidency. So far, I am not impressed. I think I’ll be closing my eyes and opening my mouth and writing much more. If I don’t have to see his face or those of his top advisors, I may make it through the years of his presidency. God help us all, and I’m an agnostic!