Shared Sacrifice? 1 In 3 Americans Slash Staples Spending To 'Afford' Obamacare
Health insurers are in panic mode as the Obama administration, ever eager maximize coverage optics for Obamacare, has, as The NY Times reports, allowed large numbers of people to sign up for insurance after the deadlines in the last two years, destabilizing insurance markets and driving up premiums. This surge in costs, from unintended consequences, has left 1 in 5 Americans with health insurance is having problems paying medical bills; and, as a new poll finds, more than one in three Americans, or 35 percent, said they were unable to pay for basic necessities such as food, heat, and housing because of medical bill problems...
Among people with health insurance, one in five (20%) working-age Americans report having problems paying medical bills in the past year that often cause serious financial challenges and changes in employment and lifestyle, finds a comprehensive new Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times survey. As expected, the situation is even worse among people who are uninsured: half (53%) face problems with medical bills, bringing the overall total to 26 percent.
While insurance can protect people from problem medical bills, the survey suggests that those with employer coverage or other insurance suffer similar consequences as the uninsured once such problems occur. Among those facing problems with medical bills, almost identical shares of the insured (44%) and uninsured (45%) say the bills had a major impact on their families.
People with insurance who face problem medical bills also report a wide range of consequences and sacrifices during the past year as a result, including delaying vacations or major household purchases (77%), spending less on food, clothing and basic household items (75%), using up most or all their savings (63%), taking an extra job or working more hours (42%), increasing their credit card debt (38%), borrowing money from family or friends (37%), changing their living situation (14%), and seeking the aid of a charity (11%). These shares generally are as large as or larger than the shares among uninsured people with problem medical bills.
Overall, 62 percent of those who had medical bill problems say the bills were incurred by someone who had health coverage at the time (most often through an employer). Of those who were insured when the bills were incurred, three-quarters (75%) say that the amount they had to pay for their insurance copays, deductibles, or coinsurance was more than they could afford.
And it is not about to get better any time soon, as The NY Times reports, it appears the liberal-leaning establishment will never learn the real "unintended consequences" of tinkering central-planning...
The administration has created more than 30 “special enrollment” categories and sent emails to millions of Americans last year urging them to see if they might be able to sign up after the annual open enrollment deadline. But, insurers and state officials said, the federal government did little to verify whether late arrivals were eligible.
That has allowed people to wait until they become ill or need medical services to sign up, driving up costs broadly, insurers have told federal health officials.
“Individuals enrolled through special enrollment periods are utilizing up to 55 percent more services than their open enrollment counterparts” who sign up in the regular period, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, whose local member companies operate in every state, told the administration.
Of course, Enroll America, a nonprofit group with close ties to the Obama administration, said the government “should not tighten eligibility or verification standards in ways that could place an undue burden on consumers.”
Because - "it's fair..." - though The Iron Lady had it right...
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That's what my wife and I did. We are on year two with no health insurance. Lost our excellent plan from BCBS and said fine, you fuck us, we fuck you back. Voting with our wallets.
And think of it this way, we are now pocketing $9,600 a year since we don't pay the out-mother-fucking-rageous insurance premiums and comical deductible. In ten years we're up $96,000.
And try not to worry so much about being on the street. What do you think the gang bangers do when they get lit up in the hood? Think the ER ever sees a fucking penny from them?
Fuck 'em all, I'm keeping MY goddam money this time.
Bravo to you. If we can get 999,999 more to do ths we might get this turd sandwich tossed.
From my observations, I think there are many like you. How many, I am not sure.
The truth is that WITH Obamacare you were self insuring anyway with a guaranteed loss of premiums every year. The copays and cost are huge. I have a company who is keeping me out of this for now but if I find myself in your shoes I may do the same.
You are officially part of the criminal class now. In America we have always kind of liked the outlaws.
Doing the same here. Everyone should join us in protesting by withdrawing your premium $$.
Lost my good but overpriced coverage when Aetna cancelled it in October saying they were leaving the individual market in PA. Funny tho, they just happened to have a replacement policy all spun up that increased my already stupidly expensive premium by 83% AND raised my deductible by 430%.
I voted by snapping my wallet closed. I got accident insurance for $100,000 per incident at $67 a month, and upped my auto policy medical to $1 mil per incident for $200/year. I'm healthy, slim, eat right and stay away from all things fast food and sugar and otherwise unhealthy like soy oil and carageenan. I evercise for at least an hour every day by feeding, slinging hay bales, and exercising my horses.
AND I get an exemption from the mandate because the stupidly expensive premium is > 8% of my annual gross. So, fuck you IRS and Obama - piss off. I'm going to be $20,000 per year in the black by not buying insurance.
That's what you get for letting insurance companies write the law.
And Maggie was a cunt.
Death is preferable to life under Obummercare.
Well, with Obamacare, death is not a choice.
If you die, you won't be able to pay the fee.
They'll bill your family. They got the idea from Chinese Communists billing executed prisoners' families for the bullets.
Fuck Obamacare and the Trojan horse it rode in on.......
I can see it now.
They'll remove discharge thru bankruptcy like studen loans.
Yep, and change the word/meaning of deathbed to debtbed.
Only out is to die penniless ... and leave a treasure map to a certain lake bottom to your children...
and if you hate your kids, make it really inconvenient to get to and have nothing there for them to find
For goodness sake, how is it so many are suffering under medical insurance bills? Avoid processed foods, follow a healthy low-glycemic diet, get some exercise, stay away from quacks and their poisonous drugs and be healthy until your eighties. There are herbal remedies for almost all conditions as described in the University of Maryland's (recently voted best hospital in the U.S.) guide to alternative medicine. Get out from the rapacious, money-grubbing hands of Big Pharma before they kill you.
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed
Don't forget that they are jabbing our kids with needles that have gawd knows what in them and cornering us so that we can't refuse. I don't know about you but I don't trust the contents of the vaccines, the pesticides, the latest budget, the PPT or any of it. That doesn't even cover the experimentation that we periodically find out about after the fact.
Familiar with vaccines. Family member died 5 days after a flu shot with every symptom of anaphylaxis. I think vaccines cause disruptive disturbances in the endocrine system resulting in the increased abnormalities we see in people today. Countries withn less vaccines have far lower incidences of autism and other afflictions. Look up the rates in Scandinavia vs. US. Pharma can explain these of course.
Fuck it, let the whole damn system collapse and start over. I just hope someone is around to film it so I can see what happens in the hood.
Can someone tell me who the FUCK came up with the concept of "Open Enrollment"? What kind of a company refuses to sell me something unless it's during some arbitrary period?
Think of it as Open Season. And you are the game.
It wouldn't be a government "plan" if there were not arbitrary terms and conditions.
It comes straight from ivory tower academia, where there are things such as "enrollment periods".
All I want to know, are all those people who are dead broke, hungry, and struggling to pay their medical bills still willing to support Obama for a third term? Because stupid is as stupid does.
Yes. Indeed they are that stupid. Except it won't be called a third term. It will be called a temporary suspension of elections in response to a national emergency.
may the iron lady rot in hell....obamacare is a mess, but nationalized healthcare is a must
There are no words to describe my absolute loathing of that fucking hag.
I lived in an industrial city in the north of England - Sheffield, to be precise, while she was exporting people's livelyhoods and criticising them for complaining and trying to do something to stop it. I saw the miner's strike close in. Sheffield was a police state, as the miner's union headquarters were there.
It was as much about destroying communities who would help each other out in hard times as it was about corporate profit.
If hell exists, she should be in one of the hotter corners.
Rant Off.
I hope when that old bitch got dementia that she at least ate a couple of her diamond earings and took a crap on a closed toilet seat a few times.
I can imagine ANYONE rejecting socialism in a socialist Utopia like England would be hated. I can also imagine they have been exporting jobs much like America has been doing, by their citizens happily buying cheap imports and importing low wage foreigners. England, as with much of Europe, has been content with an increasingly more powerful government to make them into what they cannot become otherwise....a well oiled consuming machine backstopped by unending debt and wealth transfer, not from rich to poor, but from future to the present. We can see this with their current immigration policies which they openly admit are as much about economics as humanitarian issues. Their only path is through cheaper and cheaper labor to offset their entitled mental illness. They have long believed that work was beneath them, and as this disease has taken hold, the citizens of Europe have stopped working, stopped reproducing, and settled into complacent eating. The Muslim influx however, will be not the medicine they hoped for but a lethal dose, that once swallowed only then will reality be faced.
Ever live there?
I doubt it.
I think you are missing something important.
There are good people on every continent who are all being fucked over.
Some see it some don't.
The 'human condition' doesn't recognize the artificial lines called countries.
That, along with race and religion are the 'go to' divide and conquer techniques used by the psychopaths who think they have the right to impose their will on others.
Your artificial lines have been fought and died over for many centuries. Open borders and "free trade" always sound reasonable and in a perfect and fully transparent world would be. But it is not, and as always it is the change, the transition, that is the bitch. People cannot import cheap goods and hire cheap foreign labor and NOT see their jobs and lively hoods eventually destroyed. The desire for open and free trade is reasonable when it is pursued with people's lives first in mind, but it is not, and people's greed and ignorance is used against them. People are not told or reminded of the hazards of their actions. Far from it as instead we are encouraged to buy more without regard to its impact to our own long term economy, and when considering immigration, it now goes far beyond simple cultural adaptations but actual cultural cleansing, a deliberate elimination of domestic cultures in favor of a more virulent and destructive, backward one of Islam.
Here's a really effective and inexpensive health plan.
EAT DECENT FOOD, GET OFF YOUR FAT ARSE AND EXERCISE!
Good food is actually cheaper than crap, but it does require a little thought and effort.
...........apoloigies, i now see the flaw in my previous sentence.
In a way you are right. Little thought and effort goes into diet and exercise.
And the socialist nanny share-the-wealth Obamanation gov. Has criminalized that lifestyle because no gov. Or corporate benefit.
Sure, hunt deer. Good lean meat, you gotta walk to find it, then drag it back.
Deer - the perfect food.
Should use a bow, though.
Firearms seem so unfair.
Ah the greatest lie of socialism. That the rich prosper under Capitalism and the poor suffer when in reality it is the poor who suffer under socialism and the elite who truly prosper.
Socialism - Capitalism.....
The only way forward for humanity is Anarchism.
Government is the problem. No point looking to government for solutions.
Honest exchange and responsibility for your own actions.
We can argue over terminology or even principles of ideologies, but NONE are viable if not voluntary without manipulation or indoctrination. Like it or not we are being forced into this by the "majority" who have become convinced that it is their only means of survival. They may be right at this point.
So-called democracy....
The tyranny of the many over the few.
Problem is there are more people out there who follow without thinking.
The establishment relies heavily upon self reporting. They do not have the manpower to check up on everyone. Fear and intimidation are their primary tools of coercion......
The real problem is there are more people who want something for nothing than those willing to work for it. We don't even need to think of it as democracy, but as a simple mob, that if given the chance will TAKE what they will.
Those exceptional in the future will be those who can keep what is theirs.
many who are physcially unhealthy (fat) and will vote for anything that pays for their healthcare. That's why liberals needed to remove fat shaming from society. My answer, I removed myself from that society...to one which allows fat shaming.
Capitalism based upon natural law allows people to EARN an elite status, whereas socialism simply grants it.
exactly. one of the biggest problems with our society is the complete inability to discern EARNED wealth from UNEARNED wealth. Wealthy people who stole their wealth should go to jail, wealthy people who innovated and earned their wealth should be praised.
Health insurers sat down at the table with their cronies and basically revised Obamacare to their liking. So wah.
Wasn't Obamacare sold as a means to stop so many personal BK's due to medical bills?
Record personal BK's are on the horizon.
Since they won't repeal it, maybe congress can get involved and pass a law that doesn't allow personal BK for medical bills...just to really hammer than nail in the coffin.
Obamacare is about Obamacare.
Corporate takeover with the backing of the politicians they own.
Paint a pretty face on it for Obama's fucking legacy, whatever that means.
Health never came into the discussion.
Pamaceutical company X made how much?
And all it took was about 1% of that to buy off the regulators.
A few thousand deaths?
What the fuck? The stock went up.
Isn't that system modeled after Romney Care?
As a Canadian I find the US debate over healthy care interesting given it was a private insurance for profit program which excluded those who didn't have the means to pay, or perhaps better put a job or an employer who would pay the cost.
How is it the country which is continuosly marketing itself and it's population as the most exceptional anywhere, and everywhere, is still struggling with some sort of universal health care for it's population?
You know we Canucks up here in the frozen Nord has that Universal health care eh? It's not perfect by any means, but it is Universal.
Well, we WERE exceptional because we could actually take care of ourselves. Not so much anymore. Next we will be on bended knee kissing a king or QUEEN'S ring begging for our healthcare.....yes mum, may I please have another???
I read most Republican hopefuls made the pilgramage to Vegas to kiss Adelson's ring. That was before Donald .
We have a similar problem but it doesn't take as much money to buy an election here. It's a matter of scale
I will grant one thing, ya'll are allowed more freedom of speech than us. The great powers here are slamming the hatches on us now as quick as can be.
You can't really have control AND people speaking their mind. Political correctness is needed not just to avoid hurting people's delicate sensibilities, but to keep things docile and manageable, and not the least of which would be public demonstrations objecting to their very control.