OBAMACARE EQUALS NO HEALTH INSURANCE (unless it’s subsidized)

A very useful guide though a little outdated

When Joe Biden became our next president on November 3, 2020, Obamacare continued to be America’s healthcare system.  In June of 2023 it remains in effect.  As of 2022, approximately 35 million Americans were coved by Obamacare-supported medical insurance coverage.  Therefore, Americans need to know something about it.

Without subsidies, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unaffordable for most people.  Because it is so bad, many looked to President Trump to repeal and replace it with something much better and much less expensive.  Because employers were not required to provide heath insurance for part-time workers, most new jobs employers created  in the U.S. under Obamacare were part-time.

I’ve been a supporter of universal healthcare since the year 2000 and, although I did not vote for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, I was hopeful that he would make good-healthcare-for-all a reality.  It did not cross my mind that Obama would promulgate legislation that would destroy healthcare for many more Americans than it might help.  It also did not occur to me that healthcare premiums for the unsubsidized would double, triple, or even quadruple because of Obamacare…and that deductibles would be as expensive as four to twelve thousand dollars/year and co-pays double for the unsubsidized what they had been pre-Obamacare…and that all of these consequences combined would have the cumulative effect of destroying healthcare for tens of millions Americans.

Let’s give the creators of Obamacare the benefit of the doubt and assume that their hearts were in the right place, and that the passage of the ACA was not simply an attempt of government takeover of 1/6 of the U.S. economy (with healthcare).  The Affordable Care Act demonstrated that it was not affordable and was pitiful health insurance…it was poorly and incompetently designed and executed.  It reminds me of  the homily that “an elephant is a mouse designed by committee,” but in the case of the ACA, it was designed by one political party in Congress.

But wasn’t Obamacare  designed to be like Romney-care, which was passed by Mitt Romney when he was a Republican governor of Massachusetts?  That’s what politicians said to justify Obamacare, but that’s not true.  Romney-care only affected about  8% of the Massachusetts population.  Obamacare affected everyone except those exempted by the President. Romney-care did not have penalties or mandates that Obamacare did until it was repealed by President Trump in his tax-rate-cuts law. The very few good aspects of Obamacare, pre-existing conditions and coverage by parents’ insurance until age 26, could  have been simply added in new health insurance Federal legislation.

Although Obamacare  is clearly very bad and expensive health insurance, except for those receiving significant subsidies or exemptions,  the U.S. may be stuck with it. The reason is totally political.  One sixth of the economy is healthcare.  The ACA or “Obamacare” is a politician’s dream come true but the average American’s nightmare.  With thousands of dollars required for deductibles before reimbursement by insurance companies kicks in, Obamacare for most ends up basically being only catastrophic health-care insurance, which is important and necessary, but not something one should pay a lot of money for.

An opportunity for Obamacare to be either repealed and replaced came with the 2016 Presidential election.  Only if Republicans controlled the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives could Obamacare be replaced with healthcare that was affordable and truly cared about people.  Legislation failed in 2017 because of Senator John McCain, who promised to vote for a Bill in the Senate to overturn it and then, last minute without informing anyone in advance, did not vote to overturn it.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *