Afraid of losing the ACA? It’s not a disaster.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry and help people with their insurance. As the ACA passed, I saw premiums go up, sometimes more than doubling, I saw copays go up, I saw prices go up in general. Yes, it’s true, women had free contraceptives and free preventives.
I’ll tell you a secret. Those contraceptives and preventives were usually the ones you could buy for less than $30 a month without ANY insurance. If you think about how much more the premiums cost, though, you are easily paying for more than the value of the “free” items you are getting.
There are a few who were helped by the ACA, whose premiums were subsidized by the government. That means they were subsidized by your higher premiums, by the way. Meanwhile, millions of working families saw their insurance costs double, saw their deductibles skyrocket, and could no longer afford care – or much of anything else, for that matter.
I could tell you story after story about people who were making a several thousand dollars a month, had a good plan with fair copays and coverage, and saw their premiums go up by hundreds every month. They didn’t get better coverage either. Their cost increase came with a corresponding loss of coverage! Many of the examples I have seen were low income people, who had either a self funded plan or one they had through an employer, and lost with the ACA.
Before the ACA, I could have chosen to buy insurance. Now I can longer afford good coverage. If I had an ACA plan, I could afford to learn what was wrong with me but couldn’t afford to fix it. The claim that millions now have insurance coverage who never did before, really means nothing if they aren’t substantively helped by it.
Free preventives? Most of them could be gotten for four dollars if you just use an in-house pharmacy discount plan. Without insurance, mind you. They’re available at several of the major pharmacies. The people who drafted the ACA knew what they were doing – most people seem to turn their brains off when they see the word “Free.”
I will not be sad if ACA goes away. A single payer health care system isn’t the answer. Countries who have it tend to have long wait times and substandard care. There’s a reason why Canadians used to come to America for their medical care – even though they had a single payer, universal coverage healthcare system.
Except for in a few isolated situations, you’re better off exercising, watching your diet, and avoiding high fructose corn syrup than shelling out money for an ACA health plan. Meditate, learn about the medicine of food, and stay centered.
On the bright side, there’s no reason to fear the ACA being repealed.
Mindflight 