The Affordable Care Act "reform" will shift healthcare costs to workers

[Better Believe It]

Corporations, Federal ‘Reform’ Keep Shifting Healthcare Costs to Workers
By Roger Bybee
May 13, 2011

How federal healthcare 'reform' helps drives the race to the bottom

The race to the bottom is, unfortunately, likely to be intensified as we get closer to fully implementing the Affordable Care Act in 2014. In fact, the ACA may well tend to establish a bare-bones, high-deductible policy as the new norm. The taxation of perversely mis-labeled “Cadillac” benefits has the very real potential of putting the squeeze on union-won healthcare benefits, especially in high-cost states.

Despite the efforts of AFL-CIO Richard Trumka and others to limit the damage created when the Obama administration suddenly adopted John McCain’s regressive idea of taxing better benefit plans to fund expanded healthcare coverage for the uninsured, it may not take long before fast-rising medical inflation pushes the dollar value of union-won health benefits up to the Cadillac level, as IUE-CWA Local 201 President Jeff Crosby has noted.

Insurers try blackmail

By basing itself on the Massachusetts plan which keeps for-profit insurers as the parasitic middlemen at the core of the healthcare system, the ACA sacrificed the potential for comprehensive, high-quality benefits covered from the first dollar. This potential has been underscored in the fight over retaining ACA’s requirement that 80 percent of premium revenue be used by insurers to provide healthcare and improve quality, freeing up 20 percent for profit, bureaucratic overhead, and sales and promotion.

No less than nine states are seeking waivers from the 80 percent requirement, falling prey to insurers’ blackmail demands. Insurers are threatening to stop selling individual coverage in a number of states unless they can spend, in several cases, just 65 percent on paying for healthcare and quality improvements.

Read the full article at:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7298/ge_other_employers_fight_to_set_lower_new_normal_on_healthcare_benefit/


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Obama Health Law Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies
by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
May 11, 2011

When President Obama kicked off his health reform push, he highlighted our research finding that 2 million Americans suffer medical bankruptcy each year, promising to end this disgrace. Our latest figures warn that his reform won’t stanch the flow of medical debtors.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed by Congress in March 2010 was modeled after Massachusetts’ 2006 health reform plan – a plan that’s now been up and running for more than three years. So Massachusetts offers a preview of what to expect when the ACA is fully implemented in 2014.

Unfortunately, medical bankruptcies haven’t dropped much – if at all – in Massachusetts. When we surveyed bankruptcy filers there in August 2009, 53 percent cited illness or medical bills as a cause of their bankruptcy, a percentage that’s statistically indistinguishable from the 59 percent figure we found in early 2007. Indeed, because the total number of bankruptcies soared in 2009, the actual number of medical bankruptcies increased from 7,504 in 2007 to 10,093 in 2009.

Why are so many people still suffering medical bankruptcies despite Massachusetts’ health reform? While only 4 percent of the state’s residents remain uninsured, much of the new coverage is so skimpy that serious illness leaves families with crushing medical bills.

Read the full article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/11-6

[TransitJohn]

1. I still hold out hope that the ACA will provide some small marginal benefit to a few.

But it is becoming apparent that this will be like the con job that was the lead up to the Iraq invasion....everything those who opposed it said (and were vilified for) will turn out to be true....but it still won't matter in the 'conventional wisdom.'

edit:sp

[eridani]

3. It's like a rescue boat that picks up 20 our of 100 people who are drowning

You can't expect the other 80 to stand up and cheer, but on the other hand you don't want the Republicans to put a hole in the boat.

[TransitJohn]

4. Good analogy.

:hi:

[woo me with science]

9. Just like the Titanic.

Change we can believe in.

[blueclown]

2. Wow.

For instance, the cheapest (and most commonly purchased) coverage available to a 56-year-old Bostonian through the state’s health insurance exchange costs $5,616. Yet, if you’re sick the policy doesn’t start paying bills until you’ve paid a $2,000 deductible. And even after that you’re responsible for 20 percent of the next $15,000 in medical expenses

Shockingly, the ACA or MassHealth do not to prevent these predatory "insurance plans".

[eridani]

5. Note that the only people harmed here are actual sick people

The healthy majority thinks that they have perfectly good insurance, and so are happy with Romneycare. Their opinions are worth about as much as their opinions about how good their fire extinguishers are--that is to say nothing at all.

[TheKentuckian]

6. Hardly surprising considering they are straight out of the Heritage Foundation

designed to protect and strengthen the insurance cartel and championed by the likes of Gingrich and Dole as the Republican answer to Hillarycare.

[leftstreet]

7. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

8. knr nt

[Fumesucker]

10. No one could have predicted..

That the bill the insurance industry wrote would not be great for the public.

[Better Believe It]

11. Yes. How shocking!