A Few Words About Obamacare

From bankrate.com: What If Obamacare Never Happened? A chilling look at the world Republicans want to resurrect.

For another reminder of what the Working Poor had to do before the Affordable Care Act. here's one of my own posts from 2006, New Millennium, Old Style Medicine.

Until the ACA went into effect, one of our friends had to try and make do with with herbal and folk remedies to treat her asthma and other problems. Under ACA provisions, she finally qualified for AHCCS (Arizona's equivalent for Medicaid) and has been able to see actual medical professionals and get prescription medications.

One of the dire predictions Republicans made about the ACA was that people would have to pay more for insurance under ACA. That's turned out to be mostly untrue. There's a small number that fall into various qualification cracks, but most of those increases in premiums are small. (I checked the ACA website to see what coverage matching what I get through my USPS retirement would cost. It was about $40 more a month than what I currently pay. That would be annoying, but it would be something I could afford without much trouble; most people who complain about increased premiums seem to be in a similar financial niche as I am, and could similarly afford such an increase if  ACA coverage was their only option.)

I actually met someone recently complaining about ACA premiums being unaffordable, though. It was a new co-worker, who had been on AHCCS during a long period of unemployment. When he finally re-entered the workforce, that AHCCS coverage ended, so he went to the ACA website to see what he could get. He complained that he ended up with a figure of $490 a month. Since he's one of our temporary contract workers at $9.00/hour, that would be over a third of his monthly income.

That figure sounded WAY too high to me, especially for someone who'd just come off of AHCCS, so I suggested he contact one of the person-to-person ACA counselors to see if that amount was accurate. Surprisingly, he actually took my advice (he must have missed the memo everyone else in the world has apparently read, because no one EVER takes my advice). As it turned out, the counselor was able to figure out that in the process of filling out the online questionnaire, the guy's grandchildren had somehow gotten listed as dependents, so that $490 figure had been for the fellow employee AND several grandchildren. The actual cost for solo coverage equivalent to what he'd had under AHCCS would only be about $200 a month. That's something he can afford, so he was a LOT happier the next time I talked with him.

Here's the short version of this post: THANKS, OBAMA! No, really, thank you. I mean that.