PPACA out-of-pocket limits suspended

[Just_A_Guy]

Story here.

So, to those of you who were willing to be forced to purchase health insurance because our wizened heads in Washington were going to make sure it wouldn't get too expensive: So long, and thanks for all the fish. Er, votes . . .

PPACA is looking more and more like a very elaborate recapture mechanism for the EIC and the Child Tax Credit: the Feds take away your tax refund and tell you it's your own darned fault because you didn't bother to (read: couldn't afford to) get health insurance.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Just_A_Guy

[Guest]

I could give you the long, boring details about how this is affecting the work choices DH and I are making for the next year, but I won't.

Suffice it to say that in this household, it's not looking good and not pointing us to choices that will positively affect the economy or the government's revenues.

[NeuroTypical]

My daughter's pediatric surgeon said "If this stuff passes, I'm quitting my practice here and moving to another country." The stuff passed. I called the following year to make an appointment, and he wasn't there any more, and his staff didn't know where he had gone.

We've come close, twice in recent years, to travelling to another country for medical care. We'll see what 2014 brings.

[Just_A_Guy]

Well, at least we're all equal in our misery . . .

[bytor2112]

Well, at least we're all equal in our misery . . .

well..unless you are a member of congress or a staffer.

[Gretchen]

well..unless you are a member of congress or a staffer.

In which case you get such good benefits that would make even Jesus jealous.

[MorningStar]

How nice that they can delay whatever part of the law they want to.

[Still_Small_Voice]

One law for the lords and another law for the peasants. Congress and their cronies get lavish and delicious health benefits while we need to wait in a long line and get our spoiled milk.

I want a list of who voted for this in Congress so they can be exposed for who they really are.

[MorningStar]

One law for the lords and another law for the peasants. Congress and their cronies get lavish and delicious health benefits while we need to wait in a long line and get our spoiled milk.

I want a list of who voted for this in Congress so they can be exposed for who they really are.

Me too!

[talisyn]

I can't wait til October, so I can see what is offered in my state. One of the goals of the affordable care act is that you won't have to pay more than 9% of your pay in premiums and I pay a lot more than that.

Yes, I read most of it

[Just_A_Guy]

Of course, Talisyn, that'll be cold comfort if you find your plan suddenly has a $15k annual deductible. In a free enterprise system, the consumer always pays. You can recognize that, and facilitate prosperity--or you can fight it, and ultimately break the whole system.

You, and a part of me, and millions of others like us (early thirties, with kids--that's my situation and, I presume, yours as well) look forward to cheap health insurance because we've been told that we'll get more out of the system than we pay into it.

It won't last. It can't. The mandate was supposed to make the system solvent by bringing the premiums of all these previously uncovered twenty- and thirty-somethings, into the system to offset the costs of caring for the elderly. But now we've realized that a great deal of those twenty- and thirty-somethings are going to need subsidies themselves. When you factor in the federal government's other obligations, there isn't mathematically enough money in the system to make PPACA sustainable in the long term. The kind of tax rates you need to keep it going are, at best, on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve.

A person's kids may get free dentist visits now; but when the whole works comes crashing down they'll find themselves right back to where they were in 2008: needing a medical procedure but with no cash to pay for it. Except that now, 1) there wont even be Medicaid to step in if needed (it'll have run out of money with the rest of Obamacare), 2) the few private-sector HMOs that remain will be even more expensive, and 3) the kids' situation will be even crueler because they were brought up to believe such a desperate situation would never happen to them.

Dreams are wonderful things. But the odd thing about them is, you always wake up. Always.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Just_A_Guy