67%

[Zorra]

40. True about RW media, but...complacent? Um,

some of us are extremely unhappy with the current state of affairs. And many people are way far from having the available cash to pay the skyrocketing costs of health insurance.

In the past year, the organization that I work with had to completely eliminate our dental and vision plans due to an increase in the cost of insurance. Staff also had to start paying part of insurance costs.

And the insurance company has again just jacked their rates out of sight, forcing the organization to seek a different insurance provider. We don't know what we're going to do.

A major flaw in the ACA is the failure of the the ACA to incorporate premium price controls until the exchange portion of the ACA takes effect in 2014. Insurance companies are jacking their rates so high, (gouging us so hard it should be a criminal offense), many small companies are being forced to either stop providing healthcare coverage or cut benefits/take a serious financial hit/require employees to pay part of the premiums.

Insurance companies are ripping everyone off to the max degree while they still can and laughing all the way to the bank. And their profits are already immorally high. You cannot trust an unregulated market. Insurance companies have proven that profit is everything and it doesn't matter to them how many people suffer or die in order for them to consistently make obscene profits.

So, while there have been some benefits for all and more for some from the ACA so far, some of us have gone down the donut hole that will be closed in 2014. And not everyone understands the potential future benefit of the exchange program. They just know that insurance companies are holding them hostage and robbing them blind in the real time of the here and now, and there is no recourse.

I think Doc Dean got it right (as usual) in the passage below, but again, a lot of people, including myself, are justifiably not happy with this donut hole that has given insurance providers a free for all license to rob us at will.

Dean Urges Small Businesses to Drop Healthcare Coverage

Remember the concerns during the healthcare debate that firms might choose to pay a $2,000 per worker fine to dump employees into health insurance exchanges if it’s cheaper than offering coverage? Well, former Democratic Party boss Howard Dean is cheering them on. He reasons that coverage won’t change much and that this will free cash for businesses to be more competitive. “What I believe will happen, although it was not intended, and I think it’s going to be a good thing, although it’s going to create a large dislocation, is that the small business community will abandon the healthcare market and put all their employees into the exchanges,” Dean says. He calls the linkage between employment and health benefits a major disadvantage for American firms competing with foreign companies that don’t have to supply health insurance.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/01/19/dean-urges-small-businesses-to-drop-healthcare-coverage

This donut hole gives the RW media a huge issue to propagandize on. 2014 is long ways away for many struggling Americans that work for many small businesses/organizations.

(I'm not by any means an expert on this stuff, so my information may not be totally accurate regarding the ACA, but this is how looks from my position, and I believe that I am generally more politically informed than most Americans. So if I'm looking at it this way, think about what the people who can be influenced by RW media are absorbing and believing.)

IMO, single payer, publicly funded, universal health care is the only system that really makes any reasonable ethical and moral sense. I sincerely hope that the ACA eventually leads to such a system.