GOP challenge to Obamacare.

[groundloop]

The pending Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act has been keeping a low profile lately. Does anyone have insight as to its chances of succeding?

I have a personal interest in the outcome of this since I lost my job at the end of January, and have decided to retire because it will be impossible for me to be hired into another position at anywhere near the salary I had been making (even though it's against the law, age discrimination is alive and well). I've had a lot of time to look at numbers, do projections, and evaluate various options and it looks like, between Social Security and my 401K that my wife and I will survive reasonably well IF AND ONLY IF I am able to purchase health insurance on the ACA exchange with subsidies. If that goes away we're pretty much screwed for three years until I can get on Medicare.

I'm using some of my free time in the next day or two to contact my Senators and Representative and let them know what I think of their parties' efforts to take away my health insurance.

SO...... does the GOPer Supreme Court case have a chance in hell?

[exboyfil]

1. I feel you pain

I am on the edge right now of losing my job. I made a mistake over the years and funded a regular IRA and 401k. That counts against you when the funds are withdrawn because it is treated as income for subsidies. I wish I had paid the taxes then.

I am kicking around my wife and me returning to college. You have to be in a degree program and take at least five hours a semester during the Fall and Spring (effectively six since few two hour classes are available). Insurance is $150/mo/per person. My wife may not be able to mentally handle it. I am actually looking forward to taking history and literature classes after nearly 40 years of engineering.

[wcmagumba]

2. This greatly interests me too...

I took early retirement last year for similar reasons...excepting that due to health/age issues I can't find employment.
I have insurance through the ACA but won't hit 65 for a couple of years and am basically surviving on SS alone. If the thugs succeed in cancelling this great program I too will be screwed for a couple of years. I need good health insurance to survive along with yourself and millions of others in similar positions...drumph and thugs just don't care, the sooner we can die the better off they think they will be....

[Eyeball_Kid]

3. Remember "the deconstruction of the Administrative state"?

Steve Bannon encapsulated the theme of the entire Trump presidency by that short phrase. That deconstruction includes the ACA. They want it gone. They want dystopia. The Supreme Court, not so much. Their presumption is the stability of the Constitution and of the laws of the nation. But you can appreciate the GOP and Trump for trying their damnedest to impoverish the multitudes, to punish them for needing healthcare. Yeah, it's irrational and it's destructive and it's stupid, but that's where the GOP wants to take all of us.

[genxlib]

4. The whole thing is so wrong

We should be facilitating early retirement by providing the simple, cost-effective health care solution of Medicare Buy-in.

Just set a price and let people approaching retirement age have some stability. If priced correctly, it won't cost the government anything. It would help people like you immensely.

It would also help people who just wanted to retire by choice but are constrained by health insurance issues. Especially true of mixed age couples where one hits retirement age before the other does.

It also becomes a jobs program for people rising in the ranks behind anyone who is able to retire.

Of course this is true of universal health care as a whole but it strikes me that this ought to be obvious low-hanging fruit as a move in the right direction.

[Ms. Toad]

5. ACA aside -

We've got $200,000/year in billed medical expenses on the line, too -

Don't give up on working unless you want to. I'd suggest three things:

1. I have a friend who felt she was too old (in her 50s) to find a new job (and could not transition M->F in her then current job). She was quite despondent, believing she had no options. With the strong encouragements from friends, she put out feelers and easily obtained another job. Since then she has held three very lucrative jobs and, at 63, has just interviewed for a 4th. She's probably earned more in the last decade than she has during her entire career prior to that as (largely) a teacher at a private school. (I also switched careers at age 57 - I'm hoping to retire in 8 years from my current position at 72, but I may not make it that long. If I don't, I'll almost certainly move to another, even less lucrative - but less taxing - career.)

2. If you've decided to retire (and shift to having little to no income) - what's the artificial barrier to taking a job that doesn't make "anywhere near the salary I had been making"?

3. This may sound a little crazy - but Starbucks has excellent health insurance (better than the ACA plans for older individuals) and you only have to work 25 hours a week to be eligible. My daughter's plan costs $40/month. Her max out-of-pocket expenses are around $3400 (and since her billed care is $200,000/year, that's a bargain). Pay is crap, the work is physically challenging (much more so since COVID hit), but worth it for the access to health insurance.

As to your question - my former Con Law professor (who also has a lot of experience in administrative law) opined last week that the case was a joke, with no chance of succeeding. I'm too exhausted from fighting for my daughter's life to dive into one more attempt to kill her. So I have no personal opinion.

[groundloop]

6. I'm enjoying being retired.... just wish I could quit worrying about healthcare.

Don't give up on working unless you want to.

I was planning on working a couple of more years before retiring. I was very uncertain what things would look like with tRump in office (and as it turns out very justifiably so because things are far worse than in my wildest nightmares), and I wasn't yet comfortable with what I had in my 401K. I was laid off because my employer (not to mention any names, but they're a tire manufacturer that sponsors a lot of races) was closing the plant I worked at and moving jobs to Mexico.

What I've learned in the months since I was laid off is that we are getting by quite nicely on a hell of a lot less money that I thought possible. I've eliminated a bunch of unnecessary expenses and am amazed at what we can live on if we're somewhat careful.

I've learned that I quite enjoy being retired. No more getting called in to work in the middle of the night to troubleshoot broken equipment that's been neglected for years, and I now have plenty of time to dedicate to my hobbies. I'm very lucky in that I live on a lake and have a boat, so I'm able to go fishing 2 or 3 times a week as well.

The point was made that if healthcare was available to workers who might be thinking about retirement that it would make more jobs available to younger workers moving up in the workforce. EXACTLY. Politicians always talk about creating jobs, making this one little change would create many thousands, if not millions of jobs.

my former Con Law professor (who also has a lot of experience in administrative law) opined last week that the case was a joke, with no chance of succeeding

I sure hope that's the case. Finding out that the Affordable Care Act will survive will be a huge relief for us.

[Ms. Toad]

7. It should be far easier for you than it was for us

You'll be going straight to the ACA, and not juggling multiple switches. My daughter had 3 out-of-pocket maximums in 6 months (4 in 16 months). And no one, including Sherrod Brown's office, could correctly interpret the law in advance so we had to make decisions that cost thousands of dollars with incomplete and incorrect information.