No. Insurance policies are set for the year now, and short of the company folding or pulling out of a state completely, there won’t be changes made until the next cycle, usually in the fall for a January (2018) implementation. They could pull the existing policies but couldn’t introduce new ones until they are approved.
The president alone doesn’t have the power to do much with ACA. If he did, Obama would have changed it all himself the first day he took office, but he had to have congress do it and it took more than 2 years. Most of the power to enforce ACA is with the tax code, which is an instrument of congress.
I think the changes to the ACA will be much slower to be changed. Trump wants to have interstate plans and those can’t spring up overnight.
Considering I almost died the last time I was uninsured, I am now uninsurable, and I wracked up over 200k in bills this year… yup. I cried for about 5 hours over it last night.
I’ll take, things that no one cries about in first world countries for $1000, Alex.
I am very concerned. Before ACA, the only company that would offer a policy for my 14 year old daughter quoted $28K per year just for her. Why? She has well controlled asthma but needs to take controller medicines. Myself, I will likely need surgery every 10-15 years to save my eyesight. I am guessing I would also be uninsurable. If ACA is completely repealed, both odf us will be able to get insurance at ANY cost. Based on posts here, many people will be in the same boat.
As someone mentioned, I am sure next years policies are set in stone and cannot be cancelled. But what about the subsidies that make these policies affordable? I guess it is okay to write off 20 million people. However keep in mind that the visits to the ER (expensive and wasteful) will go up as will medical bankruptcy. There will be a cost to all of us.
While many only consider the subsidary cost, there is a real cost to everyone due to people being uninsured. They did a study in NYC that showed it was cheaper to give free medical care to asthmatics due to the savings from fewer ER visit and hospitations. That cost of the uninsure will be buried into what the medical system charges the insured people.
What people cannot seem to accept is that not everyone has insurance through their employer. That does not mean that they do not work hard or are not contributing members of society. Many work as hard as you but just can’t afford the 20K+ cost of insuranc on a middle class salary.
^^ I think you meant “things that no one cries about in first world countries except America for $1000.”
@twoinanddone It’s true that the president by himself can’t do much, but this congress has been trying to repeal ACA for 6 years. I doubt he’ll find them a reluctant partner.
Yeah, I’m worried. I get my insurance through my H’s employer; he will retire next year and go on medicare soon after that, leaving me with my major preexisting condition uninsurable. The party of the president-elect never did anything about pre-existing conditions before, I do not expect they will be of any help now.
If I remember correctly, coverage for pre-existing conditions pre-dates Obama:
“After most states had by the early 1990s implemented some limits on pre-existing condition exclusions by small group (2 to 50 employees) health insurance plans, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (Kassebaum-Kennedy Act) of 1996 (HIPAA) extended some minimal limits on pre-existing condition exclusions for all group health insurance plans—including the self-insured large group health insurance plans that cover half of those with employer-provided health insurance but are exempt from state insurance regulation.”
Here in Georgia, at least, I remember back in the mid 90s you could not deny coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition, and my BIL (who is the poster child for pre-existing conditions) was self-employed and able to get coverage on a pre-Obama exchange for a reasonable amount.
I don’t think we’re going to go back to denying coverage for pre-existing conditions because the ACA is not the originator of that idea, and we’ve (thankfully) been moving away from the reprehensible idea of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions for a while now.
I was reading the WaPo article about the GOP’s enthusiastic support of total repeal in the first month – they’ve already crafted the bill, and practiced getting it through last year, it only lacked a majority and a President to sign it. Anyway, when I got to the part about insurance companies have flat out said if Congress tries to include preexisting conditions, they’ll pull campaign money and/or simply refuse people on other grounds and let them take them to court. Because ill people have that kind of time and money.mYou’re a fool if you think campaign rhetoric promises anything.
I started to cry, and then hyperventilate. S2 has an incurable illness w medical bills of thousands in deductibles, five figures easy uninsured per year. The meds alone would be several thousand a month. He’s on our insurance. He has very very basic insurance at his work. His specialists are not covered, his hospital is not covered. If we keep him on our insruance, he has better coverage longer, until ACA goes away. But then there would be a gap until his work would pick him up, IF it would pick him up. His open enrollment ended Oct 31.
So yes, I’m terrified. We have been saving all our money for this day. But we’re terrified. If we can make it to next October, he’ll go on his work insurance. By then , all our money will be gone, and we won’t have any way to help him with the copays and deductibles.
Yes, they could certainly change the federal law that requires insurers to accept all comers, but I would think it unlikely. (But that is just my speculation.)
@MotherOfDragons They could and did deny coverage for preexisting conditions here in California. I had two different brokers tell me that D was uninsurable on the individual market, which was where most of the abuses were, and where most (not all) of ACA’s protections are. So individual market people like my D have the most to lose.
But at what cost? The real question is: will the policy be affordable? Under a free market system, the premium has to set high enough to cover the risk ot the people in the risk pool. Makes sense unless you want to go out of business. So if you have a pre-existing condition then the free market demands require a high premium to cover that risk. The problem happens when the risk pool is small (small company or single indiduals) or you are in a risk pool of sicker people such as the exchange pools which have a high number of people with pre-existing conditions (since where else can they go?).
What company in their right ming wants to underwrite someone with a serious or chronic medical condition? That is one of the things the flawed ACA was trying to fix. Trump initial plan of medical saving accounts and allowing medical deductions won’t help much. If romanigypsyeyes is like most of us, I doubt she had 200K to put in a medical saving account. Sure being able to have 200K in deductions might help.
One other thought. The common advice is to get a job full benifits so you can be in a large pool with heathy people. The problem is how many of us have know someone that has lost a job and then gotten sick or lost a job because they got sick and couldn’t work. Many I suspect.
I’m surprised I’m that special. Given the choice of jumping through the ‘Wellness’ hoops or paying more, I choose the hoops. And between the choice of biking/riding more or watching a dozen or so ‘wellness’ webinars to make the points necessary for the cheaper options, I choose humping it with the fitbit. Hurrying along just so I could eventually put it back in my dresser drawer, rather than putting it in my pocket everyday, along with my change.
Suggestion for promoting change in habits over less than a generational time frame - Chunk the ‘mash your butt’ options for earning your way to a cheaper plan. The ones where you listen to someone drone on and on, explaining two or three pertinent facts in the same way the armed services explain things to recruits: “tell what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them.”.
I think it’s a sound suggestion, but that it would discriminate, discriminate against the lazy, probably makes it’s a non-starter.
@MotherOfDragons There are dozens of models of universal care out there. Every country in the developed world has it, except us. Unfortunately, some of our leaders seem determined not to learn anything from them. It’s a disgrace.
However, the coverage for pre-existing conditions without medical underwriting requires universal coverage (or being in a pool that is not largely selected by medical history, such as large employer pools), so that the pool is not exclusively composed of people who need expensive medical care (adverse selection). The ACA tax penalty for no insurance was not high enough to get enough non-medically-expensive people into the pool, which is why insurers are leaving and premiums are increasing.
Of course, people want something for nothing, in that the coverage for pre-existing conditions without medical underwriting is popular, but the requirement to have coverage is not. But that would make the adverse selection problem worse than it is now.