I've already mentioned that I more or less agree with the sentiment of the Affordable Care Act. I'm not going to repeat all of that. Health coverage is a right, and no one should be excluded for any reason, period.
I was listening to some dimwit on the TV machine talk about why Obamacare sux. I think she was from Georgia. Maybe on CNN. (That's usually what we have on at work.) And her proposed alternative to Obamacare was to increase the number of high risk plans available.
HA.
HAHA.
HA.
When I moved back here to the mainland, where qualifying for Medicaid is next-to impossible unless you have 17 kids, I looked into all of those options. Medicaid required you be making something like 30% of poverty level and have a kid/be disabled. I'm that sort of disabled where you will never ever qualify, so that wasn't an option.
Then I looked into the high risk pool. My state has one, but it was not currently accepting new applicants. Which was also true when I looked at it 8 years ago, so I wonder if anyone got on that plan in the meantime. The high risk pool is for people who are turned down for pre-existing conditions, which has happened to me 3-4 times in the last five months. It provides you with coverage, but it also considers "being a woman" to be a pre-existing condition.
A 30-year-old male who needed a high risk plan would pay about $300 a month for coverage and a woman of the same age would pay about $700.
Unless you're making a pretty big amount per month--in which case I assume you have a job that probably pays for a pretty sweet plan.
People seem to forget that their insurance rates went up every year even before the ACA. They forget that they could be dropped for any reason or no reason--that the insurance company could just manufacture a thing you "forgot" to put on your application and use that as a reason to rescind coverage. I had some stupid doctor tell me my pains were all in my neck and send me to physical therapy. The next doctor said that the first doctor was full of it, but that the PT couldn't hurt if it would involve some kind of massage or relaxation whatnot. So I went.
Voila. Pre-existing condition. One of my applications was denied and cited that as a reason.
So yeah. If you're one of the disabled, one of the diseased, one of the fallen ... you're pretty thrilled that you can't get turned down. And you'll get a plan for less than $200 a month and you'll probably get most of it subsidized if you're making no money. Or some of it if you make less than $45,000 or so. No $700 premiums for you!
Of course, if you're one of the healthy who never thought about insurance and maybe didn't have it, or had the shittiest plan available ... you're probably pissed off that you have to pay for something that might (gasp) fund the care of another person. Because we are, fundamentally, a country of selfish assholes who like to trot around pretending to be Christian. And we don't want to like, ACCIDENTALLY help another person or something.
Since I'm quitting my full time job that confers benefits, I took a look at what's available in my area. There's a gold plan for $183 and a bronze for $164. I think subsidies might only work for silver level plans or some business, so I'm not sure what's going on there (I think the second cheapest silver plan was $170ish or something, and that's what subsidies are based off of) but that gold plan is calling my poor, diseased name.
Hopefully I'll just get a job with insurance in the meantime. And avoid this mess.
No comments:
Post a Comment