This is a huge part of the population. Not just a negligible percentage.
This is just about every person that works for a temp agency or a small mom and pop type business.
Married making about 50k a year with a mortgage, a couple kids, two vehicles, etc etc
This is most definitely another $355 bill per month they can't really afford.

one of my commeters on mikesouth.com had this to say



Mike: Like me via my daughter, you have experienced health issues and understand how valuable real health insurance is if you have an issue. I’m not talking about the kind of plan you get for $50 a month with a $3,000 annual cap. I’m talking about health insurance that pays your bills, according to the contract, if you get sick.

During the debate over the affordable care act, Obama said once that the biggest problem with the argument of health insurance is that most people don’t know what health insurance costs. It costs a lot – in fact, real insurance costs that covers you when you’re ill costs a lot.

Here are the things that people don’t understand. Prior to Obamacare, health insurance was regulated at the state level by the state insurance commissioner. The commissioner determines the base plan that an insurance company has to offer to do business in the state – that applies to all insurance, including auto, homeowners, life insurance and health insurance. There are states – they tend to be Republican southern states – where insurers can offer very cheap, no frills insurance plans for any of the above. The problem is — they don’t cover squat when you need them.

I live in a state where the base plan is pretty good, when it comes to heath insurance. Even a crappy plan offers a lot of coverage if you’re sick. It’s just a very high deductible and no co-pays or very high co-pays.

Now, I’m the treasurer of a non-profit organization that offers its director a family health insurance plan with $20 co-pays, prescription coverage, and $1,500 maximum deductible/out of pocket from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The annual cost for a family plan? $26,000. That is not a misprint.

Now, when the feds announced the cost of the exchanges for my state, Michelle Bachman was still running for president. The exchange plan that was equivalent to the Blue Cross plan my director enjoys was about $18,000. Michelle Bachman said: $18,000. That’s outrageous. Who can afford that? Meanwhile, I’m looking at it and thinking, I can’t wait to get that plan for only $18,000, because it’s $8,000 less than what I’d have to pay for a BlueCross plan.

My $968 a month plan – just under $12,000 a year – comes with a $7,500 per person deductible per year ($22,500 for my family), no prescription coverage; and a $75 office co-pay.

Again sounds like a gyp, right? But prior to Obamacare, I was paying $1,350 a month to cover me, my wife and daughter, $10,000 per person deductibles ($30,000 a year), no prescription, no office co-pays and no coverage for lab tests, annual physicals or things like my wife’s mammograms or the formerly mentioned colonoscopies. I used to spend $2,000 a year on my wife’s physicals, so she could get mammograms and pap smears.

So, is $968 cheap? It is not. But, it is a bargain compared to what I spend.

Obamacare is only expensive to people who were previously uninsured, had no desire to buy insurance, and if they got ill, went to the emergency room because the hospital was obligated to treat them. If you were buying real insurance – insurance that covered you in an illness – it’s a bargain compared to the alternative.

Last point – health care isn’t like an automobile if you need it. If you or I go to buy a car, we can choose a new Mercedes for $100,000 or a 98 Honda Accord for $1,000. Either one will get you to work.

If you get cancer, break your leg, need a heart bypass or, like my daughter, develop a post surgical infection that threatens your life, you cannot choose between a Mercedes or an old Honda Accord. There’s one standard of care and it costs what it costs. You get treatment or you don’t. You live or you die. You get an Xray and a cast for your leg, or you risk losing your leg or developing gangrene.

This was my thought as well. Just another way to fuck me out of my money. The doctor that I used to go to would let me self pay for $20 a visit instead of the regular $100. Now she only accepts patients with healthcare. I guess I'm one of the few people that thinks paying $100 for someone to take my weight, blood pressure, heart rate and temperature is a fucking rip off.

So, I was just looking at the current prices of healthcare available to me. The same plan that I was looking at from Blue Cross was $75/month is now $195/month. That's for the cheapest plan available. This shit is a fucking scam.

I've heard as of today the shit website has cost about $600,000,000 and the idea of the law was to get the 40,000,000 uninsured people some insurance. Umm.. next time just give us $15,000,000 each. That's government for you.
:error

Last night on NBC nightly news with Brian Williams they announced the total enrollment so far in the program.

They can all fit in Texas Stadium.

Look at the fine print and see what you actually get for that. Deductibles and copays are far beyond what an average income in the US can afford.

Yes, just spoke with Humana on the phone and the cheapest plan they could offer me was $201.09/month with a $6300 deductible.

Very true.

It's all fucking nuts!

Obamacare and Romneycare are the same thing, so, if you are cheerleading this debacle because of your team colors, you are mistaken. This is corporate welfare for big pharma and the insurance industry (because the taxpayers didn't give AIG enough)

Are you self-employed and in California? Ya know, like a lot of webmasters are?

Here is the California question for the self-employed on getting help with the insurance they are going to be forced to buy, whether or not they can afford it:

"Gross Income - How much do you earn in self-employment revenues in an average month before you pay your business expenses or taxes?"

It doesn't matter how broke you are, if you are genuinely self-employed, odds are good you will not qualify for help. If you have ever been a pro webmaster, photographer, writer, musician, model, illustrator, designer, creative person or entrepreneur of any kind, you know that the money you get to live on is what is left over after you have paid your business expenses. This is second grade math.

Democrats are scrambling to make changes to the law. This is what it took for Democrats and Republicans to work together.

Pre existing conditions? Think again, insurance companies are already learning how to get around it.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/healt...tions-20131107

Lower costs? As long as you don't have to use it, deductibles are going way up!


This whole law was about getting Barry's name on something, no one knew what was in it, no one cared

Again, I'm for healthcare for everyone, but this law was passed by idiots that never read the damn thing and the president lied to get it passed

I have to wonder if the population knew before the last election what we know today..would Obama have gotten reelected. This first year has been nothing but drama, scandals and lies.

Keep in mind, this is still the honeymoon period..

prices are going up to help pay for people that can't afford health care... i.e. if you are using the 'exchange' for health care I am paying for part of your coverage :2 cents:

yes, because Obama supports don't believe any negative reports about Obama, choosing believe anything negative is only slander by the republicans. that's the best part of being a liberal... selective truth .... and anything 'not true' is just hate filled bigotry from hate filled minds and total moron scum :2 cents:

And rather than getting a thankyou from the government and the *entitled* for your hard effort,you get a fuckyou...give us more!

High incomes already pay historically low taxes. Just the facts as some people like to say. Who cares though? They're spending over half a billion dollars already on a fucking website. Lets all come together and bitch about that.

Just a reminder...28% of a million dollar income is $280,000
28% of a $75,000 income is $21,000

What does the government do for those in the higher income levels to justify 10+ times more money for the identical services?

The government is collect more tax revenue than ever before

Yet they want more

Maybe spend the money more carefully first? Then talk about higher taxes

the state websites are very expensive as well as are the people hired to push it

Universal healthcare would be awesome. Giving big pharma and insurance companies a bunch of extra money from people who can already barely put food on their tables and gas in their cars -- that is not healthcare.

I know that revenues are not income. Apparently the State of California does not know the difference. That was my point. I am telling you what the government web sites in California calculate to determine eligibility.

How exactly do you think a Federal subsidy is going to work, if a person's state does not make them eligible? If the subsidy happens after there is a Schedule C, then it is too late for someone who did not have the money for the insurance.

Also, what wealthy school district did you go to school in that you got to take accounting classes in 10th grade?

I read an article about that yesterday as well, but then I read another that had some different numbers so I'm not sure how they count them. The article said that nationwide there have been more than a million people that have applied. The point of the article is that most of those applications were from states that set up their own sites and were handling things themselves while those states that were leaving it all up to the feds were having a harder time and getting fewer applications.

I agree. I think this is step one towards us ending up with a single payer style system. I don't know when that will happen, but I think it eventually will.

Provides roads, currency, military support, national guard, nasa, darpa, food inspection, drug inspection, clean water, clean air, the list goes on and on and on. The idea that the government could spend less or be more efficient is all fine and good. However the notion that someone who earns 21K benefits as much as someone earning 280K from the status quo is simply ridiculous.

Yes, they both breathe air, but the guy making 21K isn't going to be able to act on new technologies that come out of Darpa the way big tech firms do with things like GPS. The guy making 21K doesn't need the police and military to protect his assets, he has none. The guy making 21K is the one who is likely to be IN the military getting shot at overseas to protect the assets of the guy making 280K. The guy making 21K doesn't need a road that handles tractor-trailer traffic nearly as much as the guy who owns a factory. The guy making 21K likely has zero dollars so a reliable currency doesn't matter to him nearly as much as it does to the guy with 280K.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, those of us who are paying more in ought be afforded a level of respect for doing it. We also ought to do it without belittling someone making 21K or in dire need of help to obtain subsistence support like food stamps. If you make 1B you are getting more out of the status quo than if you make 1M. If you make 1M the status quo helps you more than if you make 100K. If you earn 21K, the last thing you want is to keep things as they are now. Even with Obamacare and every other change made in the last 100 years, the government is about protecting the status quo and preventing radical change. Wealthy people get more from that and pay more for it. :2 cents:


**EDIT** I mistakenly wrote "Wealthy people get more from that and pay more for it", in reality it's more accurate to say Barely Rich people get more from it and pay more for it. Wealthy people get the most from it and pay 12% or less ;)

It's a feeble justification. People who continue to cry about how unfair it is that people who are in a higher income bracket always talk about percentages. Convert those percentages to real dollars.

Is it my fault or problem that the guy down the road is a boozer and can't hold a job? He drives the same roads, calls the same police and fire department...has basic freedoms because of the same military. And now I am supposed to give him free healthcare.


Wealthy people don't get more from the system.. They EARN more from it.

Why is it, people that always seem to have a axe to grind against Obamacare always claim some ridiculous prices.. Yet anyone else seems to come up with very affordable numbers?

For what the website alone has cost they could have given 2 million dollars to each american man woman and child and said "pay for your own fucking health care - goodbye"

Your math is a little off.

The site cost around 630 million to make. There are around 317 million Americans.

This means that we each could have gotten about $2 not $2 million dollars.

"All wealthy people get more from the system.. some earn it" would be a much more accurate slogan to go with, just as some poor people are "boozers." The majority of wealthy people would be willing to admit timing and luck play a role. The majority of poor people would be willing to admit drive and aptitude also play a role.

None of that changes the fact that those 'winning' the game get more out of the status quo than those 'losing' the game, or that government activities are mostly about securing the status quo. :2 cents:

Just under 1 million people have "created" an account at the exchanges to shop/compare plans.

106,000 people have actually "selected" a plan. Though not all of them have "paid" for the plans. They have till December 15th to make payment on their plans. What % of those will follow through and pay for it? We shall see.

The number of billionaires in the US is what..maybe 100? So for the sake of clarity, I assume that is who you are talking about as the wealthy.
That group is so small, to spend much time considering how they look at the world is a waste of time.

It's that group under them. The 4-5 million families that are considered millionaires that I am talking about. People who go to work. Do the math on that group 4.5 million people all in that 28% bracket. Just figuring their income at a flat 1m they contribute $1,260,000,000,000.00 annually in taxes.

The number of billionaires may be around 100, the number of wealthy people who did not earn their wealth through their own aptitude is much higher than that. Someone who inherits 100M and never works a day in their life is wealthy. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Someone who earns 100M and has it at risk on new ventures isn't in the same boat. I don't view it as simply a 'number' above or below to qualify.

You consistently underestimate the number of people who are wealthy because of luck or timing more than any drive or aptitude on their part, while grossly overestimating the number of people who are poor because they are willfully stupid, boozers or lazy. I'd agree more driven high-aptitude people are wealthy and more lazy boozers are poor, but the numbers aren't as far apart as you pretend. I've known plenty of wealthy boozers who are quite lazy, and some incredibly driven really bright poor people.

Those winning the game do get more out of the status quo. The losing pay less to keep the game going. Those facts have been true since this civilization began. We can argue how much less is fair, what benefits are within reason... But the notion that you and someone earning 21K get an equal benefit per dollar the government spends is just silly.

Incidentally, a millionaire in New York isn't even barely rich. A millionaire in Montana may be a wealthy modern day land Barron. Wealthy vs barely rich is a label more of how you earned it and whether or not you are at real risk of losing it, more than it refers to a dollar amount.

Help me out here: how is this so terrible for the rich folks who already have nice insurance plans? Why are they so upset?

Because they are very bitter people whom have a very strong contempt toward social equality. There have been several studies that have shown that the more money a person has the less empathy they have toward other people. ie.. The term rich snob, didn't come about for no reason..

It's going to be cheaper for me and way better. I'm going from a catastrophic plan only that I pay $148/month and only covers medical expenses above $5900 per year. This ensures that I don't go bankrupt in case something bad happens but I get no actual care, ER visits in Tahoe are around $600 to $1000 each time. I also pay $600/month for my asthma prescriptions so I tend to not take them since I can't afford them and suffer from constant asthma attacks.

With the government subsidies, I now qualify for a $328 plan that I only pay $103 for and I can go to the ER, receive preventative care and get prescriptions for about $20 copay for each incident. SOO MUCH BETTER!

I am very excited for the change.