Not a surprise. They lied.

But of course, it didn't help the public that nobody thought about the fact that no one would fail to make a claim. I never got the idea that the public actually thought about this at all.

You never had a chance if you thought government was going to improve things.

Maybe they'll have an independent Inspector General, and answer to the Congress, and transfer incompetent administrators to a different location, just like the real VA. Maybe you'll die waiting for them to help, just like the veterans.

Or you could win the lottery.

Buy tickets. It might just save your life. Obamacare won't.

You could cull together hundreds of these articles and TV commentators would still proclaim Obamacare a "success."

Commonly heard: Younger buyers are critical to the ability of insurance companies to drive premium charges lower as these ‘young immortals’ tend to be the healthiest participants in the insurance pool. The young and healthy need to be signed up to fund the old and sick.

That is not insurance. That is a tax hidden within a government defined "insurance" system. Competitive insurance charges people according to each individual risk. Young and healthy people should be charged according to their very low yearly costs, plus administrative expense. There shouldn't be any money left over to pay for the old and sick. The old and sick would be charged much more according to their higher average expenses and their higher risk of medical catastrophe. Insurance is not supposed to be a community tax (Community Rating) from the young to the old, except in the mind of the Progressive.

www forbes com/sites/rickungar/2013/03/26/
proof-that-obamacare-rate-shock-is-an-ugly-insurance-company-deception/

This article analyzes that there are large subsidies for lower-income people including most of the young. The subsidies include direct reductions in premiums, inclusion to age 26 on parent's job related insurance, and coverage by Medicaid.

www washingtonpost com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/23
/california-obamacare-premiums-no-rate-shock-here/
The Washington Post reports
=== ===
[edited] Tax subsidies play play a big role for Americans who earn less than four times the poverty line, $45,960 for an individual. An individual’s premiums are limited to a percent of their income. An individual earning 150% of the poverty line [$17.235] won’t spend more than 4% of his income on a health plan [$690 per year].
=== ===

This is a blizzard of mandates, exceptions, subsidies, and formulas. Supposedly, the old and sick will get care for lower premiums, and the young and poor will pay very little. Who is supposed to pay the bill?

The answer is from the above:
() Medicaid, funded by state and federal taxes.
() Tax rebates, funded by federal taxes.
() Inclusion up to age 26 on any available parent's employment health plan.
() Full, higher, premiums for those making more than $45,960 per year.

The young (20-30) aren't expected to fund ObamaCare. It is those aged 30-60, middle class and above with their jobs and salaries who will be paying. Some payments will be in higher employer insurance costs to include their children to age 26, and just higher employer insurance costs all around. Some payments will be extracted in higher taxes, to be announced.

ObamaCare is a giant social welfare tax hidden within the tax code and the new definition of insurance. It is the Progressive's definition of "community".

Socialism is a nicer form of communism. The ruling class doesn't have to own everything if they can arrange for the middle class to pay for everything. Tax people according to their ability and subsidize people according to their need. Work hard comrade, for you are supporting the utopia of the future.

Oh, stop ocmplaining, everybody. After all, Obamacare is "progressive." So, it has to be good, right? (I, for one, wouldn't want to be caught on the wrong side of history!)

Employer-paid insurance plans are not included right now in Obamacare. That means the people most necessary to O-care's success, employed people below the age of 65, are not included. As long as employed people can show that they have empower-provided health insurance they're exempt from participation.

The program is currently dependent upon voluntary participation, which right now is mostly people who need insurance (the sick). No wonder the program is going bankrupt. The young, healthy folks are opting to pay the penalty (cheaper than joining the program).

It was a very poorly thought out concept. People were not concerned about the care they were receiving when Obamacare was shoved down their throat. They were concerned about escalating premiums under their existing plans. Obamacare assumed the healthcare provided needed to be upgraded, that people weren't getting the care they wanted when they actually were.

Obamacare took everything that was right about American healthcare and threw it out the window, while retaining what was wrong with it. Obamacare was a solution in search of a problem.

The amount of butthurt in the internal mailing lists at work about our new coverage this year gives me so much shadenfruede. Especially since so many of the people were so happy that the gov't was "fixing" healthcare and were poo-pooing the logical conclusions that many of us were warning about, which are all coming true now.

I saw yet another version someone sent along the lines of:

They never got back to me and I didn’t follow-up because my claims were completely covered by the insurance.

I especially love the one change our company made about spouses: if your spouse works and their employer offers insurance, but you turned it down because ours was better.. you now have to pay for that spousal coverage. Oh the gnashing of teeth and wailing about that specific change. Hell, it makes perfect sense. 1. It's definitely in line of the "everyone should pay their fair share, including companies" bit they love to throw out. and 2. It was otherwise more compensation married people got on top of everything else.

All the ACA stuff hasn't even kicked in yet. I know 2017 was supposed to do a lot more for larger corps, but I'm sure if it hasn't been pushed off yet again, it will be.

I just priced the silver O-Care option for my family, and the premiums would be $4,000 per year more than what I pay through work, for an inferior plan with a significantly higher deductible per person. I priced it using only my husbands' income (since we'd only end up on the exchange if I quit my corporate job), and we'd qualify for the tiniest of subsidies. In what world is being forced to pay roughly 10% of a family's before-tax income JUST FOR PREMIUMS affordable? And if something bad were to happen to all of us- say we were all in a car crash, survived, but needed medical care- we'd still be on the hook for the first $12k, plus.

"It is those aged 30-60, middle class and above with their jobs and salaries who will be paying." Exactly.

You've only seen the tip of the ice berg Ahw. That plan you pay $4k/year more for probably doesn't include doctors. On the plus side it almost definitely includes hospitals. So $4k more per year and half the coverage.

Our fab new plan for this year: (employer-provided, mostly, but damn sure no longer Cadillac) means we pay nothing when we GO to get care. A month later, though, we get a bill for the entire charged amount. Apparently, our insurance (Obama-care approved!) does not pay for: mens yearly physicals, strep testing/Dr visit, ER visit, ER Dr, urgent-care visit (UTI), urgent-care Dr, Stand-Alone ER visit, Stand-Alone ER Dr, dermatologist appt, squamous-cell carcinoma removal, UTI follow-up with PCP, ....I forget what else we've gone for. I'm pretty sure I even got a bill for the damn well-child check up in March. Furk Obama. Fuck him, and every asshole that voted that piece of shit into office, with a 10-foot long, steel-tipped baseball bat covered in barbed wire. Till they die.

That "Cadillac" plan we used to have provided, for a nominal fee? That Was Part Of My Husbands Pay. It was none of the governments damn business. And no, they didn't just up his pay by what they had been paying for his healthcare plan, because The New Plan Costs Them Just As Much.

Health insurance: my proposal:

1. Make all medical expenses and insurance tax deductible. Kill some other deductions to compensate. I suggest putting caps on the mortgage tax deduction, so it is no longer an incentive for the very rich to buy ridiculously bloated mansions, nor for the upper middle class to buy more house than they can afford and call it an investment. That is, I would limit this deduction both in absolute amount and as a percentage of income.

2. As the main means of deducting medical expenses, make _everyone_ eligible for HSAs, whether or not they have insurance or an employer. Just like now, what you put into the HSA is non-taxable, as is any interest it earns. You can pay for your insurance through an HSA, as well as for all medical and dental treatments, devices, and drugs. Change the annual limit on contributions per individual to $5,000 plus all expenses paid through it - that is, encourage people to build up tax free savings in their HSA while they can afford more than they are spending.

3. Insurance should be separate from employment.

4. Insurance should actually be _insurance_. That is, it should pay off only on large expenses due to unexpected events. You use the HSA for routine stuff. You should never lose coverage because of illness, even when the expenses go on for years. (Unlike the current so-called insurance plans, which are sometimes comparable to a fire insurance policy that only paysfor rebuilding your house if you can get it done before they can cancel it at contract renewal time.) Get a serious condition that is only treatable, not curable, and your insurance company can neither get you off the books nor raise your rates.

5. Insurance must be portable between states. You change jobs and move to another state, and you have the option of taking your insurance with you. If they don't have "in network" providers in your new area, including any specialists you need, they'll have to treat all the providers as "in network". Insurance companies will have one out - they can negotiate with other insurers to transfer your policy to one with a better local presence, but coverage must be as good or better, and the premiums can go up only to the extent that the federal plan ("CrappyCare", see below) rates the new location as a higher cost area.

6. Finally, what happens when the uninsured get sick (and don't have enough in their HSA and bank accounts), and what happens to people that never make enough to cover their medical expenses? We'll provide for them, but not generously:

7. Emergency rooms are still required to provide care for anyone brought in with a medical emergency. Hey, if someone conks you over the head and steals your wallet, you want to be cared for until you wake up and can tell them how you're going to pay. But they are no longer providing free care for the indigent and irresponsible, and no longer allowed to inflate the paying customers' bills to make up for the deadbeats. Instead, unpaid charges can be sold to the IRS for collection, at a 10% discount. (Preferably this is tied to a tax code simplification, so the IRS can transfer staff rather than expand.) There are limits on the amount, and an appropriation to cover those debts that cannot be collected, but lets make it quite clear that misusing an emergency room for a "free" visit to the doctor's office is going to cost you.

8. The ultimate fallback: CrappyCare (the federal healthplan, like an expanded Medicaid). Politicians will make a nicer name for it, but let's be honest in these pages: government insurance either busts the budget by allowing providers to raise their rates and "do everything possible", or it is crappy. Everyone is eligible, but there is a means-tested premium; it's only free for the very poor. You can pay from an HSA or with a checkoff on your income tax return. Pre-existing conditions are covered, and you can even sign up in the emergency room and have that and other recent expenses covered, but if you were uninsured before, you owe premiums for the last three years. Once again, if you need treatment now, you get it (whatever CrappyCare will pay for), and can pay later, but you do have to pay it and the IRS is the debt collector.

"I suggest putting caps on the mortgage tax deduction, so it is no longer an incentive for the very rich to buy ridiculously bloated mansions, nor for the upper middle class to buy more house than they can afford and call it an investment. "

For most of the people you're talking about, I think it is already effectively capped by the rules that limit deduction use above a certain income cutoff.

markm: Covered at my link. Nice to see agreement!