[whell]

Originally Posted by icenine

That is the price you have to pay for the ACA. So wealthier Americans like you had to change your insurance plans. Seems like you are doing ok anyway.

My Lord, you sound like a pre-programmed, lefty sloganeering wind up toy. First of all, our single income 5 person family is far from wealthy. Our income is nowhere near 6 digits annually and we make lots of sacrifices and hard choices about our family budget every month. But we're together and we have a decent roof over our heads, so we're OK.

And you apparently missed the point that with rising costs we did change plans to a high deductible / HSA plan. It made sense, and it still does, even though our kids are frequent - flyers in the health system.

Originally Posted by icenine

By the way your real security is provided by your employee insurance coverage not your HSA. I hope you never have to use your high deductible but if you really need it you are going to pay it, even if you have to use a credit card.

Wrong again. Its both along with our credit card. We make decisions regularly about when or how we might use our HSA funds.

Originally Posted by icenine

And once again the real problems in ACA are exacerbated by a right-wing GOP more interested in using the ACA like a bloody shirt to rally votes than to help real Americans with health care by fixing and improving it.

There's no improvement possible when the underlying premise of the ACA was faulty to begin with. You can add a screen door to a submarine, but it doesn't improve the submarine. I mean, for crying out loud, look at all of the BS we were told about the ACA, and look at the results. For example:

• Multiple carriers on the exchanges would create a competitive marketplace. What actually happened is that the ACA required new underwriting guidelines in the individual market and the influx of unhealthy individuals and lack of enrollment of healthy individuals cause carriers to exit the exchanges.
• Obama said the cost of family coverage would FALL $2500 per year. The premiums have increased more than doubled that amount.
• If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her. If you like your plan, you can keep it. We now know the truth behind those whoppers.
• More than 20 million people would be enrolled in ObamaCare. Enrollment in 2017 didn't hit 10 million, despite media hype about "record enrollments" for 2017 open enrollment. (of course, post enrollment, the media blamed the "low enrollment" on Trump )
• Co-ops were going to be the best thing since HMO's to expand access to lower cost case. I don't think there are any co-ops left operating, due to lack of financial sustainability.

Then you look at the other idiocy:

• the web site that cost over $1 billion that didn't work, yet a couple of high school kids built a working site on their home computers and it might have cost them a bit of their allowance money to do it.
• the outright buying of votes in the Senate to get the bill passed
• the untold billions spent by employers for ACA compliance that could have been spent on, for example, premium contributions.
• the dramatic inflation of health premiums and the turbulence caused in the individual and small group markets as a direct result of ACA changes to underwriting those policies

All of this was SOOO unnecessary, but we got here because Dems saw a grand opportunity to get something they always wanted once they had the White House and majorities in the Senate and House starting in 2009. And the Dems followed their playbook of crafting a law based on a top - down, one size fits all approach which was full of political compromises not to the Repubs but to Dems who didn't want universal health care.

So here were are. Dems own it, and broke it. Now it needs to get fixed.