More bad news for Republicans: The Affordable Care Act is working great

[gratuitous]

Richard Mayhew, insurance maven at Balloon Juice, has a quick rundown on some of the salutary effects of the Affordable Care Act: spending on healthcare nationwide is down about 10% from the 2010 projections, and consumer anxiety about being able to pay for medical expenses has gone down to 15.5% of the population (down from 21% in the last quarter of 2008).

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/06/20/good-news-everybody-37/#comments

I wonder if anyone in the popular media will notice this?

[onecaliberal]

1. It would be awesome, if my premiums stopped going UP every damn year.

[uponit7771]

2. Mine too but I understand its working great for the greater vs the few

[tonyt53]

3. Ya wanna know why? It is because their profits have a cap in place.

Before the ACA the average EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) was about 35%-40% for most insurance companies. The ACA cut that in half, and they can now make a maximum of 19% EBIT. People are actually utilizing their insurance - they are getting medical care before a problem develops or worsens. Insurance companies are running in the high single digit or low teens in profit. Remember, they are for-profit companies with stockholders, so profit is a must. In another 3-4 years, as the general health of people improves, the amount paid by the insurance companies out in benefits will decline. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but there it is.

[scscholar]

5. "medical care before a problem develops"

Uh, no. I don't know anyone that's been to a doctor in years, and I haven't been to one in over thirty. I don't want some hateful doctor to damn me by lying and saying I have a preexisting condition. My mother had her life ruined by a doctor that did that when she was pregnant with me. She was diabetic for only a short time while pregnant, but the doctor ruined her life by declaring her diabetic so she wasn't able to afford health insurance and she died from easily treatable conditions, but she was unable to find coverage because of what that doctor did to her.

[Freddie]

8. Pre-existing conditions cannot keep you from getting insurance or make it more expensive

One of the major provisions of the ACA. And you can't be dropped if you make a claim.
My brother is a self-employed cancer survivor. For many years he was covered on his wife's work plan. She died 6 months ago and he could have gotten COBRA - very expensive and temporary (18 months) or an Exchange plan. He happily got an Exchange plan for himself and their teenage daughter. Prior to the ACA, after COBRA ran out, for a cancer survivor? SOL.

[gratuitous]

4. Indeed - they never went up before

I wonder, though, how much better the ACA would work if we had had a functional Congress during the last six years. Every big piece of legislation requires tweaking and adjustment, but the ACA is hobbling along in its original form minus a couple of important pieces shot off by Republican malcontents who don't want it to work.

[bhikkhu]

6. Roughly 5% per year the last decade, vs 10% per year the decade before

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I worked for a company that self-funded employee health insurance in 1998, at no cost to employees. Within two years they were losing their shirts on medical costs and asking employees not to go to the doctor unless absolutely necessary, use walk-in clinics rather than the hospital and so forth. Another two years and they went to private group insurance and charged employees a monthly fee deducted from the check. And the fee went up every year...I haven't worked there in a long time so I don't know how things have changed under the ACA. At my current job I have health insurance at $75 a month, and its stayed the same for three years now (though deductibles and copays are fairly high if I actually had to use it).

[onecaliberal]

9. They definitely went up before ACA too, but it seems like we're

Paying more for meds, more co pay, higher premiums....
It's on congress for sure but when you have republicans voting 70 times to scrap it, I don't expect things to change any time soon. We will continue to pay more and more for everything until they've squeezed us all out of every dime we have and we die destitute on the street.

[central scrutinizer]

7. We would be facing bankruptcy without the ACA

Mrs. Central Scrutinizer is an IBEW member who has union benefits when she is working but we can't afford to keep her on COBRA during layoffs. She was always covered under my plan during those gaps. I retired September, 2015 and moved to Medicare. We signed Ms. CS up for a silver plan ($2500 deductible, $6800 stop loss) at that time. Shortly thereafter, she is diagnosed with cancer (inoperable, incurable) and we hope chemo will buy her a few more months. Without ACA, she would have been denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. Each chemo treatment is about $10,000. We met the stop loss long ago so the insurance is picking up the costs.

[Thinkingabout]

10. Pre-existing conditions may not be important to those who has not experienced a problem,

I love this feature.

[LWolf]

11. While

my premiums go up every year, my copays and deductibles never go down, and this coming year's change is going to be even worse; so much so they keep calling meetings to talk about how to plan for it.

I didn't use my insurance before the ACA because I couldn't afford the copays and deductibles. I still can't, and I still don't get care for health issues because I still can't afford the copays and deductibles.