just sent to Cassidy, Kennedy, and Higgins
 

Seems to me, you folks got hired to repeal the ACA, not revise, edit, or tweak it, so...

Repeal the ACA.

Then, once the damned thing is gone, sit down and do the hard word of figuring out a sensible, minimalistic replacement.

But: first things, first...

Repeal the ACA.

I promise you: if you folks do anything other than repeal the ACA, most of you will not have jobs come next election.

So: put some steel in your spines, some brass in your testes, abandon 'repeal and replace' and repeal THEN replace (if necessary).

Now, me, as a self-employed guy livin' close to the bone, what I want from you folks is: If I, in Louisiana, find a provider in Alaska who offers what I want, at the right price, make it so I can get my insurance from that provider.

That's it, that's all...stop tryin' to give me the moon...just get outta my way so I can shoot for it myself. H. Quirk

But Henry, the majority of Americans are saying if they repeal it they won't get reelected. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but seem to be out of step with most Americans. I'd bet a lot of money the politicians are scared of repercussions if they vote against their constituents on this.

That would be terrible for consumers. There's nothing preventing the Alaska provider from selling insurance in Louisiana (most insurance providers are multi-state), unless they don't want to comply with Louisiana's laws.

If the Federal Government made a law that insurance companies could ignore local laws except the ones for the state they were incorporated in, the insurance companies would start a bidding war for the state with the laws that were most slanted toward the insurance companies, and the least slanted for the customers, and reincorporate there. You're back to getting insurance from one state, but it's probably not your state, it's the state that is explicitly the most anti-consumer, and you can't even vote for more pro-consumer regulators, because you're not a resident.

Why wouldn't ya put this in 'Politics'?

Seems...political.

"the majority of Americans are saying if they repeal it they won't get reelected."

Sez who? Cuz that's not how it plays out in LA.

"a bidding war"

Why?

"Why wouldn't ya put this in 'Politics'?"

Cuz my health (and how I attend to it) is personal, not political.

Nothing personal but I've moved the thread...! How you deal with it is personal but how *we* attend to it is as a community.

the root of the problem
 

"how *we* attend to it is as a community."

On Thursday, July 13, 2017, Congressman Clay Higgins <LA03CHima@mail.house.gov> wrote:

Dear Mr. Quirk,

Thank you for contacting me to share your comments regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; P.L. 111-148). Like you, I have serious concerns with government intrusion into our health care system, and I recently voted to repeal this dysfunctional law.

As you may know, Representative Diane Black (R-TN-06) introduced H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act of 2017, on March 20, 2017. This health care plan is a critical step towards increasing choice and expanding access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans. H.R. 1628 would repeal the existing individual and employer mandates, slash Obamacare-era taxes, and return flexibility and choice back to the states. I am pleased to inform you that H.R. 1628 was passed by the passed the U.S. House of Representatives with my support on May 4, 2017, and was sent to the U.S. Senate for further consideration.

The 115th Congress presents a new opportunity to improve both our nation’s healthcare system and access to quality, affordable healthcare. Louisianans deserve the very best, and I will continue to fight for true patient-centered reforms, rather than massive federal regulation of the industry. For more information about this legislation, please visit my website at https://clayhiggins.house.gov/media/. Please be assured that I will keep your comments in mind as the U.S. House of Representatives moves forward.

Again, I appreciate your thoughts and it is an honor to serve you in Congress. Your suggestions are always welcome, and if ever I may be of assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me at https://clayhiggins.house.gov/.*

Sincerely,

Clay Higgins
Member of Congress

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook as Congressman Clay Higgins and sign up for my e-newsletter at clayhiggins.house.gov for the latest updates on my work.

#

On Friday, July 14, 2017, Henry Quirk <hquirk@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, it's grand you -- and the House -- have your ducks in a row...the Senate is another matter.

I predict nuthin' will change...the ACA won't be repealed...the tweaks/revisions of the ACA won't amount to diddly squat...The GOP will lose the Senate (and mebbe the House).

Might as well change the name now, swap out 'United States of America' for 'Communitarian State of America'.

*shrug*

Anyway, thanks for the response. H. Quirk

Henry, you do understand that's a form letter that some underpaid assistant copies and pastes, and the exact same content would have gone to you regardless of whether you emailed in support or opposition of AHCA, right?

Also, you're now on their mailing list, and will get political ads from them on a regular basis.

Yeah, it's boiler plate...I get that...so what?

All ads go directly to the spam box.

While I believe the majority in your social circle feel the way you do, I doubt you can speak for LA.

My evidence, here.

and here.

and here

and here

should I go on?

"I doubt you can speak for LA."
 

I don't have to...

http://dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/medi...Survey2017.pdf

As for polls (I figured that's what you'd foist up): woulda thought recent history was enough to make any soul take any poll with more than a grain of salt.

Guess I was wrong.

Now, me, I don't even take the LSU poll seriously, but you wanna play with polls, so we'll play with polls.

"your social circle"
 

My 'circle' includes a lot of folks 'across the spectrum' in eight different parishes, most met and dealt with as a researcher (not friend or family)...most of these folks disapprove of the ACA.

Anecdotal, sure, which to my mind makes 'my' poll no better or worse than any cited, or pointed to, by you or me.

Incidentally: I've never been polled by anyone on anything. Gotta imagine mebbe there's a few more folks like me out there: mean-spirited bastids who haven't been 'counted and tabulated'.

So, you go on layin' your money on polls, polling, pollsters (those paragons!)...me, I'll stick with what I know, not what someone tells me I'm supposed to know.

Not even in jail, or that one time at bandcamp?:eyebrow:

*snort*

Grave,

Not kosher to project your childhood woes onto others.


Dana,

Coke is bad for the sinuses.

On Monday, July 17, 2017, Senator John Kennedy <Senator_Kennedy@kennedy.senate.gov> wrote:

Dear Mr. Quirk:

Thank you for contacting me in support of repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare.”**I am pleased to let you know that I share your view.

Obamacare was sold as something that would provide millions of uninsured Americans with access to affordable healthcare.**Unfortunately, Obamacare failed on those promises.**Americans were promised lower health insurance premiums.**In reality, premiums will increase by an average of 25 percent this year for the millions of Americans in the exchanges.**Americans were promised “if you like your plan you can keep it.”**What really happened is that 4.7 million Americans were kicked off their health care plans by Obamacare.**Americans were also promised more choice when purchasing health insurance,*but a large part of the country has only one insurer offering plans on the Obamacare exchanges.**That’s not choice.*

Americans deserve better.**I am focused on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with personalized, patient-centered health care that will be affordable.**Americans should not be forced to buy insurance they don’t like, don’t need, and cannot afford.**I’m working to make sure they won’t have to for much longer.

As you know, the House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act on May 4.**Also, a draft Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation*Act, was released on June 22.**I am carefully studying it in its entirety to see how it would impact Louisianans.**As I am reviewing, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.**Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely,

John Kennedy
United States Senator

#


On Tuesday, July 18, 2017, Henry Quirk <hquirk@gmail.com> wrote:

"I am pleased to let you know that I share your view."

If so, you'll work to repeal THEN replace and leave all this repeal and replace manure alone, yes?

That's the problem with you right wingers, you think coke is the only snortable, when there's actually a wide array.
Why you can even snort chocolate now, and Ozzie snorted ants. http://cellar.org/2012/bwekk.gif

And that's the problem with you left-wingers: you think any one who disagrees with you is a right-winger... :)

And that's the problem with you right-wingers: you think anyone who disagrees with you is a left-winger. :lol:

pffftt!
 

:neutral:

Childhood? I was talking 'bout last week!

Republicans have spent the last 8 +/- years hating ACA but never came up with an "alternative" until that moron Trump took office. And what they came up with is so bad, their own party can't get it passed. Most admit they don't even know what's IN it.

Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to repeal the ACA when there's NOTHING to take it's place is just as stupid as that moron in the WH.

Just curious, does anyone here but me know anybody who is insured through an O-care insurance marketplace?

I had it when I was under-employed for a years or so. Never had a problem with it.

Not sure. Maybe my brother in law. Either that or he's paying the penalty. I don't know though.

Obamacare doesn't just touch those marketplaces though. It has lots of rules that impact employer plans. Maximum overhead charged by insurance companies is regulated, kids can stay on family plans up to age 26, pre-existing conditions are covered, free annual physicals. That's just off the top of my head.

I know, I'm just wondering because my friend Marcus is pretty unhappy. For him it's the lowest tier Aetna, and he claims he pays $325/month, POST-subsidy and still has like a $1000 deductible which he has to hit every year. This was not what I expected, but I'm suspicious of his numbers.

He makes like $15/hour at light construction, but he sells weed on the side so he can afford it.

Pre O-care, he had a heart attack on Medicaid and says it went great and he paid about nothing. This year his hip replacement put him in the poor house.

Medicaid expanded under the ACA, so I doubt it was the ACA (as opposed to income or recovery from disablility) that pushed him off of it (though Pennsylvania did try their own thing in 2014-2015 before switching to regular Medicaid expansion).

According to this page, assuming he's single and works exactly 40 hrs/week at $15 ($31200/yr income), and assuming I did my calculations right, post-subsidy caps should be $221/month, but I'm guessing those assumptions aren't completely accurate.

I have a similarly crappy plan. And I think it costs more.

For family coverage (two adults and two kids in my case) my employer pays $1,438 per month, and I pay $406 per month. There is a huge deductible for each patient, so the plan includes a pre-tax health savings account. I contribute $300 per month to that account and wind up spending about all of it.

So that's a total of $2,144 for four people or $536 per person per month. We are all basically healthy, and insurance has paid for almost nothing. My wife had the OK kind of skin cancer on her forehead and had to get surgery in each of the last two years. Insurance didn't do anything for us except negotiate a lower cost of that surgery, and then we paid the bills out of the HSA since the deductible hadn't been met.

It would be cool if Trump's $12 health insurance for a 21 year old was a real thing. His fantasy world sounds like a nice place.

Bottom line is I think our family has received about $3,000 in health care in the last year but between my employer and me we have paid $25,728 for it.

The republicans and the insurance industry lobbyists made it impossible to get the Obamacare plan as initially conceived through - there is every possibility that the unwatered down plan might actually have delivered a good result. But they chiseled away much of what was truly novel because they were ideologically opposed to anything that smacked of socialism or in any way curbed the freemarket elements of healthcare and the end result was a deeply flawed system - republicans were then the loudest voices against the system for being flawed.

The same thing happens with conservatives here. They defund a public service to the point that it is operationally crippled and then say: look at that mess, it is operationally crippled, we should bring in freemarket business leaders to make it work properly.

Also - worth remembering that costs for insurance would most likely have risen sharply even in the absence of the Obamacare changes.

Do you pay full price for checkups and other doctor visits? I don't think you're supposed to, but IIRC, classicman claimed that his insurance didn't cover his checkups.

I think Marcus had cash jobs when he had his heart attack, and had no documentable income. That would have gotten him on Medicaid.

Without the ACA, the heart attack would be a big red preexisting condition; I doubt he'd be able to get anything close to as low as $325.

I'd say it's not so much the ACA he's unhappy with; it's the US system in general.

That said, if I did my calculations above correctly, there may be some question he could have answered differently on the subsidy application that could get him down to $221.

I know probably a dozen families who have ACA plans, whereas before they couldn't get any. They all have preexisting conditions (well, their kids do) and they are thrilled at their $5000 deductible or whatever it is because their annual costs are $30,000-40,000.

I'm on it and its far worse than what I had before the PPACA.
My costs have basically tripled, as has my OOP and my copays are far less.
For example, I get fever blisters. Meds used to be a $20-25 co pay. Now my silver plan covers 90% That leaves me about $200 to pay instead. Again, I'm a pretty healthy guy for my age so there is that. Tough to listen to people who aren't forced to deal with this when its the rest of us who are getting screwed.
As for the 26 ... Thats like a "get a life" age. At 26 I had a kid and another on the way. Its ridiculous to keep adults on mommy and daddy's plan at that age. Get the fuck out of the basement and grow up. If there needs to be a special plan for the injured or disabled ... oh wait, we already have one. This is also counters the "young healthy adults will pay and offset the costs" bullshit we were fed.

The Insurance companies are not the problem. Every other facet of healthcare is. Not one other cost is regulated - Not one. I hate the whole game, but to simply harp on the "Big evil insurance companies" is ... bites tongue.

As far as the " Maximum overhead charged by insurance companies is regulated"
The PPACA put a limit the profits insurance companies can make. This was another great talking point that meant virtually NOTHING. IIRC only one insurer was out of line when it was passed. All the others were already in compliance. Oh, and that one was out of line by ~1%. Herring anyone?

McGuffin.

All I know is that I have gotten a refund every year since Obamacare was passed because the insurance company didn't hit the target. The refund went to my employer and was applied to my premium. That never happened before the law was passed.

I was asked by Turbo Tax if I had health insurance for 2016. Nope. I was asked why not. I answered an available answer, which was "I couldn't afford it." They saw my income, they saw it was all part time jobs, and though the initial assessment said I should have been able to afford 180 bucks a month, my answer to that question on the federal taxes assessed my penalty for the year. That penalty? ZERO dollars. I was floored. But I was thankful. I was honest, and I got a bit of karma for that.

Oh, I still owed some fed taxes, state taxes, and city and school taxes due to that crappy situation, but it would have been so much worse with that healthcare penalty.

Who knew?

It's partially affected by what's available in your area:

So perhaps there was a cheap plan available when they did your initial assessment, but there isn't one now. I'm glad it worked out, although I guess it would be better if you were able to get steady employment... :(

I don't even take the LSU poll seriously too

English, motherfucker! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
/SamuelL.