When was the era of major health reform?
My thoughts exactly. Did I miss the start?
Do you remember when insurance companies could jack up your premiums if you got sick, or even drop your coverage in the middle of treatment? Or when they could surprise you with over $15K a year for individual out of pocket costs?
That was 2009. It was a big problem. They can’t do those things any more.
The Affordable Healthcare Act, or Obamacare, did this.
The Affordable Care Act also dictates that insurers charge men and women the same premium costs. As a young dude, I remember paying $23/paycheck for health insurance while a young woman my same age at the same company for the same coverage under the same plan was paying $147/paycheck. I had no idea that there was a difference in premium costs, nor how big that disparity is.
Yes I pay more for health insurance now, but I’m totally fine with that. We can’t burden 50% of the population that are women with absurdly higher healthcare costs in an equitable society simply because they are women.
What part of our society is equitable tho?
Well, as of 2009, payment for health insurance premiums with both genders.
Why, debt of course.
The point is that we should strive to have an equitable society.
That was, of course, 14 years ago.
The ACA was passed 14 years ago. But it took a while to completely come into effect, and it was subsequently modified. The last major change was the repeal of the individual mandate which took effect in 2019.
Damn, the Republicans didn’t even get to introduce their hallmark “The Poors Should Fuck Off and Die” bill. They only need a couple more weeks guys.
Insurance
The one purpose built industry that not only improves exponentially with but can only function by being at scale. That.is.it’s.whole.reason.to.exist.
Every argument against M4A is a known lie consciously being said to our faces. It’s parasites squirming in where they don’t belong, to steal whatever value they can connive, instead of producing anything of value and actually contributing to society
Just like landlords, it’s inherited generational bloatware. Like herpes, I think…um, kinda?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Landlords = herpes.
I’m rolling with it. I don’t need any clarification on that.
I’ve been working to change the word “Landlord” to “Landleech” in my lexicon for the last year or so. I’m doing pretty good at it too. Even added it to the dictionary for my keyboard. Now I just need to figure out how to define an autocorrect for it.
— at least for now.
At some point we’ll face the fact that we can save another 1/3 of health care costs by using a Medicare for all (fuck the insurance companies) and making the health industry government owned (yikes socialized medicine). But that will be a long time from now.
Lump ALL insurance together, make it government run, or legislate it non-profit, with pay rates the same, and tiered the same as social workers.
We need to shame these companies that profiteer off of their neighbors. It’s state sanctioned looting of someone’s estate while they’re down. If they want to profit, let them offer profit packages in other countries, we dont need anymore ambulance chasing opportunists. Beaurocrats…shudders
Oh… If only the government was not as bad and complicit in all of it. If you need proof, here is the Medicaid.gov page detailing how states are allowed to claim any money left in an estate of an enrollee who had the audacity to be poor without a spouse and adult offspring.
"Everybody who supports single-payer healthcare says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents 1 million, 2 million, 3 million jobs of people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?” - Obama, 2006
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mr-obama-goes-washington/
Congratulations to republicans and centrist democrats for their latest victory over sick people.
I’ve given up hope of any meaningful reform on meaningful issues, so this article isn’t that disheartening. However, I hate it when Democrats use phrases like this:
Americans would have access to affordable health coverage
I don’t want affordable coverage. I want affordable care. The concept of health insurance as a thing I need to buy should not exist.
For me, for-profit medical care ranks up there with cock/dog fighting and taking young minors as sex slaves as the most inhumane things possible. It is profiting off the suffering of human beings. Even if it was slightly more egalitarian and was profiting off the healing of human beings, it would only be marginally better.
Well, only if we let it be.
