Healthcare power to the people.
When you are feeling well, you are strong, you feel powerful. You can do anything.
When you are sick, you are weak, you feel powerless. You can barely do anything.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not only about ensuring that every American citizen has access to health care. The ACA is also bringing about a redistribution of power . When humans are kept healthy, at less cost, they have more options in their lives and thus more power.
Healthy people have the increased strength to make changes in the world. They can take on more challenges, they can take on greater risks when confronting the evil in this world.
But let me be more concrete. Eventually, as the law is implemented, 40 million Americans will have health care access for the very first time. And for the first time, they will not have to choose between using up meager savings or paying bills and going to see a doctor.
Suddenly, 40 million people will have personal resources they can use for other purposes than staying well. That is power.
Today, 5 Million US citizens have what I would call sham health insurance policies. Such policies do not cover prescription drugs, they have $5,000 to $10,000 deductibles. That means you pay the the full cost of the first $5000 or more in any medical care you receive during a year. And pay for your own medications. If you are healthy or relatively ill during a year – you receive no benefit from such policies. You have to be really sick before you get past the deductibles, and then, most often, you are dropped by the insurance carrier – or not allowed to renew your policy unless you pay a whole bunch more each month.
Many people who have gotten sick with such policies eventually had to use up all their personal resources an/or go into debt to cover their medical bills. That is bad insurance!
The Affordable Care Act originally banned such insurance policies because they rarely or never really helped those who bought them. But because President Obama promised that anyone could keep their current insurance, if they wanted to, the law has been modified so that those 5 million or so citizens can keep their bad insurance policies, if they want to. And many will, until they discover they can get much better health insurance coverage at the same or less cost. Then watch the stampede to the new Health Care insurance Market Exchanges!
Again, as these 5 million begin to have better insurance and cheaper insurance and health costs, they will have more resources at their disposal. And this is additional power in their lives!
And what about everybody else – those who mainly have coverage through their employers. First as the system gets fuller participation, health costs will go down for everyone – that is what happened in Massachusetts, which has 97%+ of their citizens covered.
But I think of equal importance is that no employees now has to stay with a lousy job or bad corporation just to keep their health insurance. With the ACA, if you have a job – you have affordable insurance. Don’t have a job, you have affordable insurance. Move between jobs and your affordable insurance goes with you.
This is a fundamental shift in power from employers to employees who no longer have to grovel to make sure their spouse or children have health coverage.
If you live in a state with a Democratic governor – you are lucky. You should have fairly easy access to state run Insurance Exchanges. And most Democrat Party run states have also opted for the Medicaid expansion part of the ACA, that is now available, if you qualify for that part of the new insurance Coverage.
On the other hand, if you live in a state with a Republican governor, you are most likely getting screwed. Most of these states have not set up insurance exchanges, nor have they opted for expanded Medicaid. This makes it so much harder to get enrolled into affordable health care plans.
I cannot understand why Republicans wish to deny Health Care to American citizens. The healthier we are, the healthier our nation is – the more individual power the people have, the more powerful our country is.
I can understand that the very rich want to keep all the power – money and resources for themselves. They do not want to share. And, certainly countries like China would love to see a weaker United States. It is obvious that Republicans are working for the very rich – don’t listen to their words, just look at their actions. And maybe Republicans are working for the Chinese… I don’t know.
But the good news is that you and I can throw the bums out. We can vote Republicans out of office.
The money I am saving on my new health insurance policy, which I got through my state exchange is going to be spent on getting Democrats elected. I encourage you to do the same.
Health care for all. Power to the people.
Just Some of the Benefits of the ACA
No more concern about pre-existing conditions: More than 105 million Americans no longer have lifetime dollar limits on their coverage: Under the new health care law, insurers can no longer impose lifetime dollar limits on care and annual limits are being phased out by 2014.
More Americans have access to free preventive services: In 2011, approximately 54 million Americans had their prevention coverage improve in their private health insurance plans.
Thanks in part to new tools and resources provided by the Affordable Care Act , health care fraud prevention and enforcement efforts recovered nearly $10.7 billion over the last three years.
Since September 2010, approximately 3.1 million young adults have gained coverage through the provision of the Affordable Care Act that enables children up to the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ health insurance plan.
In every State and for the first time ever, insurance companies are required to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10 percent or more and more states have the authority to reject unreasonable premium increases.
Health insurance reform lowers costs for American businesses – especially small businesses – who are struggling to remain profitable and competitive under the status quo. The independent Congressional Budget Office confirmed that the bill would lower health insurance premiums for the same insurance plan by up to 4 percent for small businesses and 3 percent for large businesses, and estimates indicate that reform could save businesses $2,000 per person in health costs.
The Congressional Budget Office found that health insurance reform will reduce the deficit by $210 billion in this decade and by more than $1 trillion over the following 10 years. And a family of four would save as much as $2,300 on their premiums in 2014 compared to what they would have paid without reform.
The best is yet to come: As all Americans get access to real healthcare, the cost of staying healthy will go down and Americans will live longer, higher quality lives
Weekly Address: Working to Implement the Affordable Care Act
President Obama says we are on the way to fully implementing the Affordable Care Act and helping millions of Americans.
Affordable Care Act
