One of the things that infuriates the shit out of me is people who talk about things with strong opinions of stuff, which they actually do not know the first thing about. And the absolute worst thing that has happened to this country is when the fairness doctrine was done away with and you ended up with all these partisan news channels and podcasts and talk radio, who lie through their goddamn teeth because they are the height of preaching to the choir.
One of the things that pisses me off the ABSOLUTE most, actually, literally more than anything. If the Affordable Care act, also known as Obamacare.
Look we can debate the effectiveness of Obama’s Presidency for a million years. I for the most part, think his Presidency was garbage. But unlike most people who are just anti-Obama, I’ll cite my reasons.
#1: His recovery plan for the Great Recession was bullshit. Instead of actually focusing on things like manufacturing, and infrastructure, and things that would not only create jobs, but also create government revenue, and reduce the deficit, instead his idea was just bailout after bailout. Most of which the companies just pocketed or used for stock buyouts. Prime example. Carrier was starting to fall apart because of steel prices. US Steal at the time had already shut down 3 of their 4 main blast furnaces because Japan and Brazil had started making dirt cheap steel, but Carrier wanted to buy America. Solution, create some public works project, like infrastructure fixing bridges. Using public funds, but the stipulation is that you can ONLY use US Made Steel (this is what Biden did and it worked). You will increase jobs for people working on the project (tax revenue to pay down debt) and at the same time, with the new demand US Steel will hire more people (more tax revenue to pay down debt) and with their increased production, it will then lower prices for Carrier. Wins all over. But Instead of making an investment, Obama just gave them a $280 million bailout. None of which ever saw the light of day, they closed 2 more factories and then moved production to Canada and started buying steel from Nippon in Japan.
#2: Poison Pill Debt. This is also something Trump LOVES. They make these God Awful financial choices, but bury them in ways to where that debt will not come due until they are well out of Office. Obama generated 2.3 Trillion worth of national debt based off funding which did not come due until years after he was out of office. Trump does the same thing, you think the debt is bad now at $38 billion, has added $8.3 Trillion ALREADY this year which won’t start coming due until 2030. Trump is in love with what is called Debt consolidation Bonds. The way it works. Give a company a $1 billion bond which does not come due until 2030. So the company you gave it go cannot get that money until then. It’s a promise for money later. But the company then takes that bond and sells it to a Private equity firm, who gives then $850 million in cash now. And then they just sit on the bond until it matures. Then cashed it in. On a VERY VERY low level, it’s what JG Wentworth does. They buy your life insurance policy for pennies on the dollar, gives you the cash now, then waits for you to croak the cashes in the full value. Same Principal. $8.3 Trillion no one had paid attention to in 9 months coming due in 5 years. It’s gonna be a shit show.
#3: Bullshit drone attacks and not involving the gang of 8. Again something Trump also loves to do, which he is currently doing in Venezuela, and previously did in Iran. The gang of 8 is there for a reason. To stop someone from being a crazy made man bombing shit for shits and giggles. To his credit, Biden never did this once. But Obama did it 39 times, and Bush had already done if 72 times.
#4: Getting involved in Libya. There was no plan on what do do after they got Muammar Gaddafi. We spent billions of dollars trying to stabilize an area we had no reason to be in, in the first place.
#5: Trans Pacific Partnership. You fucking kidding me? This might be the worst trade deal of all time. This is also the single greatest reason why we have turned into the giant globalist world economy. Because of this deal it was a giant hurdle to be an American only company. IT encouraged multinational corporations to get around taxes and tariffs. As I’ve said a billion times, tariffs haven’t worked in 300 years, that’s not how the world works anymore. It’s also the thing I never got with Trump. Republicans HATE HATE HATE tariffs, it’s all about the free market. Tariffs are a democrat landmine, and one that always blows up in your face. Like right now when Trump has had to roll back his stupid things on stuff like Beef, Coffee, Fruit and vegetables because the price has gone up so much, due to his retarded tariffs.
Anyhow, Obama sucked, and I can go on for days about why he sucked, but the one thing he did which he hit out of the Goddamn park was Obamacare.
Now you’re going to be hard pressed to find a Republican that supports Obamacare. Which takes me back to my hatred of partisan media shit. Find a Republican that talks about how bad Obamacare is, and ask them, what specifically they don’t like about it. They are either not going to be able to tall you, or what they tell you is going to be completely and utterly wrong, because they are just going based off TOTALLY BULLSHIT talking points.
The biggest thing they will tell you is that “It will cause insurance premiums to skyrocket”
WRONG
So, So, So, So So, wrong. Wrong so hard it makes me want to cry.
The biggest reason for insurance premiums to go up is because on uninsured people.
You’re a hospital. You have an uninsured person come in who is having a heart attack. You’ve got to put them in a room for a day or two, you run EKG, Echocardiograms, MRI, ultra sounds, do stress test, you’re going to need to put them on a bad of statins, and blood thinners, buy the time it’s all said and done later the person had a bill that is $200,000. This person has no insurance. They also obviously do not have $200,000. The hospital has very few recourses to go to recoup that money. First thing right off the bat they will do before you even leave is put a lean on your house. Whoopty do, if you don’t move out of the house, it could be 50 years before you croak and the recoup it through probate. And that’s If there weren’t other bills. IF the person was in serious debt when it’s all said and done and probate is done, you might come out with fuck all. So $200k down the toilet. IF the person doesn’t own a house, the best you can do is file a judgement against them, and garnish a max of 3.5% of their wages. Even if a person is making $100k a year, that’s only $3,500 a year you’re going to get back.
Every day, every single hospital in the country is losing hundreds of thousands or even million of dollars a day from uninsured people. There is only ONE way to try to recoup as much as possible. And that is to charge the insurance companies as much as humanly possible to get as much guaranteed money as you can.
This literally goes exactly against their argument that is increases rates. The more people that are insured, the less hospitals will have to gouge, which will cause premiums to increase less.
Such a stupid argument.
Now, let’s talk about who is on ObamaCare. Yet another place where in this case the right wing media makes me want to set the world on fire. Go talk to people who are against ObamaCare and one of the things they will say is that the people on it are nothing but a bunch of Welfare Queens milking the system, and they should just go get a job.
You know who is on ObamaCare?
Me.
While people are out there screaming unemployed Welfare queens, where exactly do you thing Self Employed people, and people who work for small businesses get their insurance?
When you work for a company (of over 100 people) and when you are hired and go through orientation and they are just like here is your insurance check the box to get it. It’s not like that for anyone who is self employed or works for a Small Business.
Where do you think it magically comes from?
For people between the age of 26 and 65 only 3.7% of people who use the ACA are unemployed. It’s not the 100% you think.
Individual plans straight from an insurance company are crazy expensive. So for employers, they get the group plan rates. Which are heavily discounted. If you are self employed or run a small business, you cannot apply for the group plan rate.
That is one of the things Obamacare is. It lumps all the people from the state into a group plan for the state. So you get the group plan discount. There is $0.00 cost to the state or the federal government. It’s just you get the group plan because you’re part of a large group with the same benefits.
I know there have been a lot of talk about the ACA advanced credits lately and how they are going to expire and it’s going to cause people’s premiums to go up. For me personally, I think they should expire. There is A LOT of misinformation with that as well. I can’t speak to other states, but here in New York, if they expire, it only affects people who make over $65,000 a year. For me personally, I do get the credit because the income right now is unlimited, but if they cut it back to the $65,000 I’m fine with that. For me it’s a $56 credit I Lose, which honestly I do not really need. I make more than enough to cover that $65k a year
But, now lets talk about the real difference. So with ObamaCare it makes the state marketplace get the same type of deductions that a business would get. Which keeps things even for Large Corporations, Self Employed People, and Small Businesses.
Now when I buy it through the NYS Marketplace. Again, just the group plan. ZERO tax credits, this costs the government nothing
Meanwhile, the EXACT same plan, if I was go go through MVP directly would be
That is $459.31 A MONTH. That’s $5,416.68 a year. Look, I make good money, but I’m not sure I make good enough to pay and extra $460 a month for insurance.
This did not exist before ObamaCare. This was one of the staples of it. It allows states to create group plans and negotiate prices. It saves millions of people thousands of dollars a year. And allows people who otherwise would never be able to afford it, actually buy it.
If you look at the absolute cheapest plans there are
VS
This is absolutely the difference between being able to afford insurance, or going with out.
Now, this is the high level stuff.
But lets talk about the things no one thinks about or wants to talk about.
Before ObamaCare there were exactly 1, literally 1, a Kaiser Permanente plan which cost $10,000 a month, that had a Max Out of Pocket of $75,000
One of the biggest, actually I think THE biggest thing that Obamacare did was require the Max Out of Pocket Cost. The amount that once you have paid that, everything from that point is 100% covered. This alone has saved millions of families from bankruptcy.
I’m going to give 2 actual real examples here, one good, and one bad.
I’ll start with the bad.
There is a guy who lives on my street a few doors down. In 2006 he was working for Delco and got laid off. The first thing they did was rip away his insurance. He was offered Cobra at $1600 a month, which he couldn’t afford. He looked for work for a few weeks and did find a job pretty quickly working at Kodak. But with Kodak you had to be there 6 months before you would qualify for insurance. A few weeks after he started working there he was outside mowing his lawn. He collapsed in the yard while mowing. My neighbor who is a nurse ran over and probably saved his life. He went to the hospital, and he was in there for over 4 weeks. He had a massive heart attack, and he needed double bypass surgery, and a pacemaker put in.
Again, he was not vested into insurance yet at Kodak. When it was all said and done, he had $420,000 worth of medical bills. The dude had maybe $200 to his name. His wife had left him years before, he had a special needs kid, he was done for. Rochester Regional (Unity at the time) put a lean on his house before he could even leave the hospital. Which isn’t going to do much when the house was only valued at about $140k at the time. He spent nearly a year out of work doing cardio rehab and stuff. Pulling in just your basic disability, which is only 40% of your normal income. So he just kept going further and further in debt.
Flash Forward 20 years. Rochester Regional still has the lean on his house to this day. He is never, ever going to get out of debt. He did eventually go back to work, but they have a judgement on him where they garnish 2.5% of his wages every week. He is 77 years old, can barely walk out to his mailbox on his own, yet still going to work at Lauren Tool and Die every day. I talked to him a few weeks ago. He said the best thing that could happen to him would be that he would die. His grand son has to come over to help around the house. He absolutely should be in a home, but none of them will touch him because… After 20 years, because of interest and late payments, he still owes. $620,000 today. When he dies, the house is gone, his life insurance policy is gone, any saving he has is gone to pay the debt.
This is what the world was like before ObamaCare but people want to Ignore it.
Story 2. Around Christmas ever 2023, my mom and I were at home and she started feeling really bad. We tested our selves, and both tested positive for covid. For the next few days we had good days, and we had bad days. But it was covid so expected that. My mom was 80 years old at the time. On New Years eve day, I woke up and there was silence from my mom’s room. Which was weird, cause she would usually be on the computer or watching TV or something. I opened the door, and she was passed out on her bed. She had messed herself, her feet were black, her legs were blue and she was barely breathing. I called 911, and then also called my neighbor (the nurse who again may have saved her life with shit I didn’t know like putting her feet up and stuff).
She was taken to the hospital (Same Rochester Regional Hospital). She was found to have Sepsis, be in septic shock, be in Atrial fibrillation, and have covid. They ran every test known to man on her. She had infections on her feet, which a cardiovascular surgeon basically stripped all the skin off her toes. She was put on a metric ass load of drugs. She spent the next 15 days in intensive care. In a room by herself. Once she cleared the infection and virus, she was 80 years old, and been in bed for 15 years, her leg and everything had atrophied. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t do anything. She was moved from the hospital to a geriatric rehab center in Brockport. Where she was for the next 20 days, doing occupational therapy, and physical therapy. All the stuff that made sure she could function. After the 20 days there (and 35 days total being hospitalized) she came home. She was still in rough shape. For the next 6 months we had a home health nurse who come to the house 4 times a week, and a physical therapist who came twice a week. She was put on a cocktail of drugs. Eliquis. Farxiga, atorvastatin, lisinopril, spironolactone, and metoprolol. On their Own, this mixture if $$2184.29 a month ($26k a year)
This whole thing happened POST Obamacare. One of the laws for ObamaCare is that every insurance company HAS to offer a Medicare Advantage Plan. These did not exist before Obama Care. They are completely unique to that. So if you had Medicare (like pretty much everyone over 65 does) that covers 80% of medical expenses, but not drugs. If you go to a company like MVP or Excellus or whoever, and get a Medicare Advantage plan, they cover that difference.
When my mom had this happen, she had a Medicare Advantage plan through MVP which cost $96 a month. She had, what Pre-Obamacare would have been over $700,000 worth of expenses. Where when it was all said and done. She only paid $1,839 out of pocket.
Now, lets talk about something else. Where post ObamaCare EVERY policy HAS to have a Max Out of Pocket, and it cannot exceed $15,400. Law. Pre-Obama care it was actually the exact opposite. No companies outside of that one Kaiser one had a max payout, instead, nearly every single plan has a “Max Lifetime Payout”
I’ll admit, it was usually pretty high, like $500,000. But companies would only carry you up to a certain point, after which they would drop you. If you had something like MS, or Parkinson’s, or ALS. You were fucked. If you had cancer you were basically fucked unless it went away quick. But if you had one of those life progression diseases. It was a death sentence. You had maybe a year or two for getting coverage, after that it was too bad so sad. That’s just fucking cruel.
Then there was the Pre-existing conditions. One of the provisions in ObamaCare is that they CAN NOT take pre-existing conditions into account when giving insurance.
Cancer.
Just going to say right off the bat cancer.
More importantly, breast cancer.
From 1985 to 2008 a total of. I had to check this number 5 times, with multiple sources but it’s true. 94% of all females between the age of 21 and 65 who had breast cancer were dropped from their insurance. I had check this through over 50 peer reviewed papers, all over the world, and verified the stats and it is fucking crazy
Post Obama Care – Life Expectancy of Localized Breast Cancer (stage 1) is 99.7%
Pre Obama Care – Life Expectancy of Localized Breast Cancer (stage 1) was 72.4%
Post Obama Care – Life Expectancy of Regional Breast Cancer (stage 2) is 97.3%
Pre Obama Care – Life Expectancy of Regional Breast Cancer (stage 2) was 51.9%
Post Obama Care – Life expectancy of Distant Breast Cancer (stage 3) was 91.2%
Pre Obama Care – Life expectancy of Distant Breast Cancer (stage 3) was 31.6%
For Women, ObamaCare makes breast cancer screening free. For Men it makes colon cancer screening free. Actually, Annual physicals, Colonoscopies, Mammograms, Vaccines, Diabetes screenings, Prenatal visits, are all required to be free.
Before Obamacare we had what were called “junk plans” companies would tell people “oh here, you have insurance” but they wouldn’t cover Hospitalization, Emergency care, Prescription drugs, Maternity care, Pediatric care. Basically like a bullshit car extended warranty.
So, this is my thing, and this is why I hate partisan nonsense. Because when you have something that is a winner, no matter how good it is, the other side will lie through their fucking teeth telling you how bad it is because it wasn’t their side that came up with it.
