While I don't really care to become involved in all the political rhetoric that is filling the airwaves and Internet bandwidth during the U.S. Senate campaigns, I can tell you that one thing I have heard on the commercials is true. That deals with health insurance and Obamacare.
Remember the commercials promoting the Affordable Healthcare Act which said, "if you like your present insurance, you can keep it," and the opposing commercials which warned of losing health insurance coverages because of the new act of Congress. And now, during the senatorial campaigns, some commercials point out how the cost of Obamacare is devastating to individuals and businesses.
Well, even if Obamacare may be counted a blessing by some, that last commercial is true. Sure, you might be able to keep your current insurance coverage, but will it be affordable as the act's title says?
Employees at our company recently learned we could keep our current health insurance coverage if we paid about three times the premium. For many of us that meant we would be working only for health insurance and have nothing left for such "non-essentials" as food, clothing and housing. To comply with the law and continue to offer "affordable" health insurance, we were given another option to pay just a little more for insurance which offers roughly 300 percent less coverage on the front end because of deductibles roughly three times as high as before.
That, of course, essentially means a pay cut of a few thousand dollars per year and less coverage. I don't know if that really qualifies as keeping a present insurance plan or not. I would lean strongly toward the "not."
No, I don't blame the company for the insurance change. It's the result of the "Unaffordable Care Act." We may as well give it a correct label.
And to verify my thoughts as to the real culprits in the rise in costs for health insurance, I asked the billing office at the medical office I visit regularly for skin cancer checkups. I told them of the changes in my insurance and was told the effect of Obamacare was about the same for all the patients who came in with group health insurance. Premiums were up and coverage was down -- roughly 300 percent.
For many -- and I could be included in that group -- the much higher deductible could mean putting off or not visiting a doctor when a screening or checkup is needed or when one becomes sick. It could even mean that maladies which could have been treated will become serious and even terminal because care was unaffordable or not available because the deductible was unaffordable.
The other alternative that many are considering is quitting jobs which offer health insurance so that low-cost or free health insurance can be obtained through government subsidies. After all, if insurance premiums take up almost an entire pay check and don't leave enough for food and clothes and housing, what choice does a person have? One can be better off working part time and on the government rolls for health care.
Of course, that could be the real plan behind the whole Affordable Care Act. It could be to make health care so unaffordable for the working class that everyone becomes dependent upon the government and no one is willing to stand up to its tyrannical abuses.
At the very least, the government should change the act's name and call it what it is: unaffordable healthcare!
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 10/08/2014