Wow! This ranks at the top of lies. Not a lie you say, well, the below comes from Jim Geraghty of National Review online, today.
As Matthew Fleischer wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2013, “Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.” The chief architect later glibly joked about how gullible the public was when the administration was selling it: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
I am in agreement that we as a rich country should not deny medical attention to anyone. What I disagree with is how the ACA has done it.
My wife and I are int he category of “we’d be the ones paying for it.” Our insurance costs have risen 200%, we are a combination of medicare and private. Our costs are now 12% of our income. We are blessed to have a higher than average income in retirement, however, when our president said the average household would see a reduction in total costs, he didn’t say those of us in this income category would see the kind of increases we have seen.
My hope and prayer is our system is changed so that:
- All people pay to fund health insurance, a $600 penalty is nuts, nuts, nuts. The penalty should be what they would pay for a private plan.
- States don’t get to create the requirements of a plan, too much opportunity for collusion. Insurance companies offer plans with a cafeteria approach of what the person wants and all plans have catastrophic coverage.
- The legal costs are reduced through tort reform.
- Drug costs are subject to the market place.
- Competition across state lines.
- Medical information is in some sort of database so that each doctor doesn’t have to have the burden of creating and updating information on their own, huge unnecessary cost.
- Kids are off parents plan at 21. If the parents want to pay for a private plan, let them.
- Higher charges for lifestyle choices that increase total medical cost, smoking, obesity, etc. Especially if repeat care is required for refusing to change your lifestyle.
This has got to change.