Yes, I had the same 2 kids then than I do now. And no I’ve really only encountered middle class working people who were doing fine before the ACA but now really struggle to pay for their medical expenses (count me amongst them)
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HIPPA was already in place. That seems to be overlooked in many discussions.
Agreed… and cobra as a function of it, and even private individual health plans couldn’t exclude a preexisting condition that had been continuously covered without lapse, and between cobra, CHIP, medicaid, etc there was no reason for anyone who actually wanted insurance to not have it and certainly no reason ever for a person with a significant health issue to ever let their coverage lapse. The millions of uninsured were people who didn’t want insurance and are generally pretty pissed off that now hey have to buy it… (which btw are why the same people voted republican this cycle instead of democrat… connect the dots) the entire thing is sold on such a massive tangled web of misunderstanding by average Joe American. As jonathon gruber stated, “we’re really counting on the stupidity of the American voter to pass this”
People with diabetes survived just fine before Obamacare. In my opinion, most were better off.
That said, I don’t think the mess the republicans are pursuing at this point is full of much better ideas. I’d personally like to see a clean repeal of Obamacare and some basic common sense consumer protections (most importantly protections from price gouging) implemented. Never forget that the underlying problem is that healthcare is unaffordable to most people— if that wasn’t the case we wouldn’t even need health insurance for routine medical care— and only a low cost catastrophic policy that’d cost about $10/ month per family would be all we’d need for health insurance.
HIPAA even allowed an insurance “gap” of 2 months (62 days) which could not be held against you.
Maternity was specifically excluded as a “pre-existing condition” under HIPAA. Meaning you get a plan after pregnant - you are covered (assuming the plan you pick covers maternity) regardless of prior coverage or not.
If you did not have credible coverage within the 2 months and so DID fall into the “pre-condition” situation, then only the particular “pre-existing” condition would not be covered but you would be covered for everything else. And once on the plan for 12 months (18 months depending on when enrolled) then even your “pre-existing” condition was covered.
So I am not saying whether the ObamaCare is good or bad or whether the proposed new legislation is good or bad. Only that HIPAA has a whole lot that seems to get ignored. HIPAA was a really big deal and unless it is overturned then it is still with us.
I think individual plans could exclude PECs indefinitely if there was no prior qualified coverage couldn’t they? And the 12-18 months was for group plans when a member didn’t have previous qualified coverage…
Who knows wouldn’t be surprised if that’s been misrepresented to me too…
I agree with you, most of the important protections were already in place, but the left controls the media and conveniently painted the picture otherwise. Millions of people dying because they couldn’t get insurance lol wth… no coverage of any sort for any human being whose ever had a health problem. Ever. That’s what they’d have us think…
@Sam I think this is a massive simplification and a little bit of revisionist history. Sure, there was COBRA – but it was HUGELY, HUGELY expensive. My mom was on it for a while when she got laid off and I think she paid 6K per month. The people who were not on insurance were sometimes people making reasonable cost-benefits calculations but they were also people who just slipped through the cracks – life was chaotic enough for them, they were making just enough money to get by but not enough to buy insurance easily, or they had no time to have the mental bandwidth to navigate the insurance market, etc. I know my friends who went without insurance back then were basically holding on by a thread in other areas of their lives too. One was a bike messenger in NYC getting out of an abusive relationship. Another was suffering from mental health issues. I briefly went w/out full insurance because I was moving between states and found it really confusing to juggle that, figuring out my transcripts, signing up for all these other “adulting” things at the same time…I actually HAD insurance during this time but I didn’t realize that by getting a bare-bones catastrophic care plan it didn’t actually remove the preexisting coverage exclusion for prior conditions. This gap was just barely long enough that I fell through that HIPAA gap (or maybe because I was on school insurance prior I didnt qualify?). All I’m saying is that, for people who have their lives totally together – sure maybe some of these people are making a conscious decision to go without insurance. But for a lot of us, we have periods of chaos in our lives that are very transient and I personally don’t think it’s fair to hit people when they’re down or in transition, etc. Being without insurance for 2 months is really not a long time in the scheme of major life upheavals.
And, by the way, the AHCA (or whatever the Senate version is called) will be dismantling Medicaid even beyond what it was prior to ACA. So those people who were previously protected will be SOL. CHIP is also on the chopping block in Donald Trump’s budget (although my sense is that this budget is seen as a kind of fantasyland exercise for most in congress). So lots of safety nets are coming down if the Republican bill passes.
I think you are correct. HIPPA was (mostly??) focused on Employer Group Health Plans.
I would find the coverage of the new legislation more credible if there was not so much obvious spin and misinformation.
Again - Doesn’t mean that I either support or don’t support the current legislation being discussed. But it does mean that I don’t trust the vast majority of the analysis of that legislation.
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Not to cast doubt - but highly unlikely. That would equate to a plan which was costing the employer $72K per year.
COBRA allowed you to purchase the same plan from the same employer as you had before. You could be charged a MAXIMUM of what the employer was paying.
I agree tia, it’s easy for young people who don’t have major health problems and have hectic lives to have let their insurance lapse. But it was also relatively easy for someone to whom it was a priority to maintain it. My cobra coverage wouldn’t cost anywhere near 6k/ month. Maybe 25% of that for the entire family… although I haven’t looked at it in a few years, maybe it’s affordability has fallen victim to the obama care debacle too
I remember it being a huge amount of money. Maybe 6k was too much but she also worked for an employer with a lot of older employees who were nearing retirement but not eligible for Medicare and so I remember that her actual plan was much more expensive than you would normally expect.
i appreciate your perspective…
Yes - $1500 per month for a family is in the range for a quality health plan at that time.
I was in that situation and I do remember. My “next job” came through in time so I didn’t have to follow through on the COBRA but I had looked into and had all the paperwork submitted. I just cancelled last minute and went with the insurance from the new job.
It was definitely more than that for my mom, my dad and me. I think it was at least $3k. But she was about 60 at the time, my dad was 68 and had heart bypass and diabetes, so maybe that factored into it.
My bare-bones policy I remember cost something like $93 a month. But it basically only covered 100k of medical expenses IF I got shot in the face or something. And wound up not counting for that preexisting coverage thing somehow, so it wound up really messing up things for a while.
No… that wouldn’t have factored into it. That’s not how cobra works. They’d have been paying the same group plan rate that the 20 year old vegan marathon runners on the same plan would have.
well then it’s likely because she worked for a company whose overall healthcare needs were very high, full of people on the brink of retiring.
Not sure if that may or may not have played a role, that seems unreasonably high… although premiums have certainly skyrocketed since I’ve used it…