Obamacare only reduced the growth of healthcare costs, it did not stop the growth. The approach that most democrats believe would reduce cost is single payer or Medicaid for all.
Any number of effective cost-saving measures could be passed that would have the effect of increasing your premiums.
As for the increase premiums are up 25% in 2017 alone. At the same time deductibles are also rising, its much more money for much less coverage if you are unlucky enough to make over 50k a year or so.
http://fortune.com/2016/10/25/obamacare-insurance-premiums-2...
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Fall201...
It's remarkable that premiums didn't rise more under the ACA, despite how many new previously-uninsurable people were covered.
If you're paying for your own insurance, you're in the individual market, which is significantly more expensive, and what you're seeing is, in part, the market absorbing the cost of guaranteed issue, something we decisively did not have before the ACA, when health insurers could lock people out of coverage on suspicion of a medical condition, and later rescind care. Pre-ACA and post-ACA insurance is for that reason also not an apples-apples comparison.
Regardless of the cause, it's extremely frustrating to be hit with such a large monthly bill for rather poor coverage. I'm not quite as bad off as 0xbear, but we're at $1550/mo for a family of three for much crappier coverage than we had a few years back.
Here in Phoenix we've seen double digit increases every year for years, and are down to a single provider on the individual market.
Paying $18k/yr before you even use a plan is insane. Use it at all and you're looking at $20 or 25k total, with coverage limits not really kicking in to stop the bleeding until you've shelled out 30k or so.
Somebody making $80k/yr just hits the subsidy payout and is spending 20-40% of income on health care. Unsustainable.
Argue the whys all you want, these sky high rates have to change.
If you don't argue the whys, you're mostly providing a lot of noise that is convenient cover for the next attempt to bilk insured people.
Yes, premiums are way too high. They are not high "because ACA", though. In fact, they'll rise at a much faster rate if we get rid of ACA. (The latest bill had an annual rise of $11.4K for a single male adult >62 years, with an annual income of $12K.)
There's no question ACA is broken, and we need to fix it. But we need to know and understand what is broken to fix it. A repeal won't do that.
There's a good argument to be made that e.g. enforcing cost transparency would do that. (Right now, you have no idea what insane cost your provider will charge you - they make shit up as they go). Single payer is one possible way to do that. Not the only one.
There's another good argument to be made that we need to talk about the right to die. Numerous patients are kept alive at insane costs, even though they would rather live out the last few quiet moments at home, with their family.
There's another good argument that for a decent risk pool, everybody needs to be insured. (This is an argument that stands little chance until being insured is actually somewhat affordable)
There's a good argument to be made that Medicare should be allowed to actually get competitive bids. (Right now it's rejected to "pilot projects" and "test markets").
There's a good argument to be made we need to focus much harder on preventative care. Follow-up costs from acute episodes are much higher than a decent investment in preventative care.
There's a good argument to be made we should talk about our test and prescription obsession. The amount of stuff unnecessarily prescribed "just in case" is ludicrous.
None of these will immediately lower rates. But each day we spend wasting on the theatre that is the junk the current GOP tries to ram down everybody's throats is a day they rise. And should this pass, they'll rise tremendously.
If we don't all inform ourselves as to the why's and then hold our representatives feet to the fire using well-formed arguments, so they can't weasel out, we're stuck with a shitshow. So, while I understand the frustration - I've got health care bills too, after all - an attitude of demanding change without informing ourselves what change to ask for leads to an even worse disaster.
And that feet-to-the-fire thing applies to all parties, in case you were thinking I have a particular partisan view. But it needs to be an informed roasting, or we'll merely end up with the loudest guy making the good sounding promises.
I'm ranting against those who continually tell me "it's not that bad", "suck it up", "you're lucky you have insurance" or some variation of the above.
The first step in fixing the problem is to recognize the problem, and there's many I've talked with that reflexively reject the premise that there is a problem in the first place because of what that means for the ACA.
The foundational issue is that we're stuck in an uncanny valley between single payer and private insurance. Either single payer or private could be viable, but not the unholy menagerie we have now.
The high costs, over prescription and under prevention that are bloating the system all driven by that issue and could be solved with a single arbiter that gets the bill, whether that be the government or the citizen.
The best proposal I've seen is a two-tier system like Germany has, with public healthcare for all and private healthcare available for the rich. That tends to rub Americans the wrong way because fairness, but really solves most of the problems because it gets universal coverage to spread the risk pool while accepting the natural impulse to want to pay for better care if you can rather than rejecting that option out of hand like some single payer systems do.
I lol'ed. Because... we already have private healthcare for the rich, we just don't have public healthcare for all. Because fairness ;)
And I'm very much enamored with the German system as well, but then, I'm biased. I'm from there. (And currently pondering going back there, because as much as I love what the US could be, I hate what it currently is)
Is the actuarial and outcomes data corpus of the health insurance industry so bad that it makes actuarial sense to segment the markets to individual, medium group, large group, etc.? I've always wondered what the explanation is for so many cohorts.
Are state insurance regulations preventing medical insurance providers using more sophisticated risk modeling to create larger pools, or co-marketing with life insurance companies that gather pretty detailed data on individuals before underwriting?
Especially post-ACA, there are very strict limits on what factors can be used to set premiums. Risk-based assessments are basically outlawed except for a few defined variables like age and smoking habits.
The NHS costs about £3,500 a year per person.
Without adjusting for inflation, this growth is ~60% growth in 6 years, or a doubling time of ~9 years. After adjusting, it's more like 40% over the same 6 years or a doubling time of ~12 years.
That's why factcheck should not be used to check... facts. Just as they claim the RNC have twisted this and that to make themselves looks better factcheck is twisting things here as well, to make someone else look better. Health insurance providers had raised premiums in anticipation of the vote and the legislation passing. So it's specifically important to look not at 2010 when it was signed into law but a few years below when there was this uncertainty about it. One way market deal with uncertainty is to hedge their bets. "Not sure what will happen, but this might pass, and why don't we just raise the rate now" kind of idea.
I've heard this directly from the health insurance representative who came and told us told us, "sorry but rates are going up sharply because we anticipate this new legislation".
But they did during 2009. By July, a number of bills were already approved by committees in the House. And the Fall is usually when the companies get prices for the next year. So it went up sharply then. Then in again in 2010. Price is not always comparable because the level of coverage had also changed. We had to get new plans and while they covered some mandatory free procedures and didn't have lifetime maximum, they had also bigger deductibles and a reduction in options and procedures covered.
That doesn't mean we'll find a larger jump there, I found it for my self, but the KFF study shows there wasn't in general. However discarding date legislation has passed is also dishonest as factcheck did. Companies which are affected by regulations monitor them closely and adjust to them correspondingly.
So you could have the impression that you had "cheap insurance" as long as you never need to have significant healthcare paid for.
The very year ACA took effect my health plan was canceled, my doctor went off-network, my new plan had 3x the annual premium and has grown 30% year over year, as have deductibles, and I fight tooth and nail every single charge to make sure it is in network and covered.
Yes, one anecdote is not data. But there is no more validity to the politician's lie that I can "keep my health plan, keep my doctor, and health care costs will go down."
Same here, and I hear the same exact story from most people I talk to. Plans dropped, premiums skyrocketing. Here in Phoenix we've got a single insurer left, and we'll see if we have anybody next year.
What I haven't seen is stories of average joes who were substantially helped by ACA. Sure, if you didn't have coverage before by cost or pre-existing condition, or get subsidies now, maybe you're happier. But the vast middle class, not so much.
So there's a face for you, 32 year old, healthy, middle class, white woman who likes cats, rides horses, and has a pet bearded dragon who she talks to in a baby voice can get regular cancer screenings because of ACA.
Post-ACA, I could once again buy health insurance.
I consider no longer being locked out of the US medical system a substantial help.
Consider also the not middle-class recipients of medicaid expansion.
Something like 80,000 Floridans lost that policy because it didn't carry the minimum services under ACA/Obamacare. But it wasn't just losing the policy, they were never able to afford the new blue cross blue sheild policies, having to purchase from a new insurer most of whom had reputations as fly by night operations (many not existing before ACA and shutting down 1 and 2 years in), and finally losing the good BCBS network.
Here is a copy of the actual letter sent out by BCBS when they had to cancel the policy: https://www.floridablue.com/blog/my-policy-being-canceled-no...
If that's the case, then the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Dems want to insure the poor while still ensuring high profits for the industry, while the Republicans want to screw the poor while ensuring high profits for the industry. They differ on one very important issue, but are still mostly the same.
Actually reducing medical costs requires a far more thorough overhaul of the system.