Should ObamaCare Be Overturned?

Frankly, I do think ObamaCare should be overturned. And I think it should be replaced by “Medicare For All” as suggested by Bernie Sanders.

In this blog post, I will explain why my own experience leads me to that conclusion. I would welcome hearing your views on this subject (particularly those of you who are on Medicare, but anyone is welcome to comment).

From everything I hear, getting insurance under Obama Care (The Affordable Care Act,ACA) is very complicated. Larry and I signed up for Medicare in a simple, quick process. It took us about 20 minutes each.

I should note, as with the ACA, under Medicare the doctor’s and other medical bills are still paid by private insurance companies and health care services plans. You would still need to find a company that has the most complete coverage for doctors, medicine, lab work, ex-rays and preventive medicine care. But the price would be the same wherever you go.

You also would want to explore the co-pays each company requires for any of these services. I get my Medicare through the Kaiser Health Plan. I have no co-pay for lab work, ex-rays or preventive care. I pay just $10 per doctors visit. My highest medicine co-pay was $75, but most of the medicine co-pays range from $15 to $30.

And then there are the premium charges for health insurance under ObamaCare.

Federal officials have announced that premiums for ObamaCare will rise an average of 22%, just in 2017. My Medicare premium increase in 2017 will be just 0.3% according to the Social Security Administration (Which administers Medicare). According to my records, my Medicare premiums have been rising by an average of just 1.31% per year over the past 11 years.

I’ve been unable to find any specific information on average ObamaCare premiums, but I gather $400 to $500 premiums are common. In 2017, my husband, Larry and I will pay just $108 per month, each, for Medicare.

One thing causing high premiums for ObamaCare has been that relatively few young people have been signing up for it. In the traditional health insurance model, health insurance programs depend on young people to help reduce the premiums for older people. Young people are much less likely to need health care. As a result it costs less to provide health care to young people than the premiums paid by those young people. Older people need more care. The cost of caring for them is often more than they pay in premiums. The losses on older people are made up from the profits from insuring young people. With so few young people enrolling in ObamaCare insurers have had no choice but to greatly increase the premiums on everyone who does enroll.

By contrast, if everyone, of all ages, were covered by Medicare, and everyone paid premiums for it, the premium per person for Medicare could be even lower than it is now.

There is one more thing that could lower Medicare premiums. Current federal law prohibits Medicare from bargaining with drug companies over the price of drugs. Medicare must pay whatever the drug companies demand for their products. If Medicare was permitted to bargain over drug prices it probably could lower its overall costs for drugs. That, in turn would allow them to lower Medicare premiums.

I think ObamaCare should be scrapped and replaced with Medicare for all.

Obama Care Has A Fatal Flaw

The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) has a fatal flaw that is becoming more and more clear as the months go by. That flaw is that it does not EFFECTIVELY require everyone, of all ages, to buy health insurance.

Under Obama Care, except for the poorest Americans, all people are expected to buy health insurance. They should buy it from private health insurance companies that offer their policies through health insurance exchanges that have been set up by many states, or by the US Government.

People who don’t buy health insurance must pay a penalty when they submit their yearly federal tax return. The problem is that the penalties are too low to drive everyone to buy health insurance.

Many, many young people, have chosen not to buy the insurance. Young people generally need very little medical care, and the penalty for not buying I insurance is lower than the cost of the health insurance being offered. So young people take the chance of not getting insurance and paying the modest penalty at tax time.

As a result, the insurance companies offering policies in the exchanges are finding that mostly older people, and relatively few young people, are signing up,

And that flies in the face of the model that most health insurance companies use to make a decent profit. The companies make a pretty good profit from young people who pay premiums, but .rarely need medical care, It’s quite the opposite with older customers. But premium profits from the young help cover the losses companies take on when insuring older customers. This allows health insurance companies to make a reasonable profit at the end of the day.

With so few young customers, many health insurance companies are taking big losses. As a result, many of them are demanding huge premium increases. For example, Cigna Insurance Company recently proposed an average 46 percent premium increase, on policies it offers in Tennessee. Other companies say they will drop out of the health exchanges entirely.

Medicare for all solves this problem. All working people, young and old, are already paying FICA taxes on their earned income. These taxes are used to pay for Medicare and Social Security. The government could simply allow Medicare to pay the medical bills of young people as well as the elderly.

Probably FICA taxes would have to be increased to cover the additional cost of offering medical care for young people. But, as noted above, most young people need very little care.

People would no longer need to pay premiums to private insurance companies and the FICA tax.
We could probably live with the tax increase needed. And getting help paying our medical bills would be much less chaotic.

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