ACA, also known as Obamacare, Is the Scapegoat

Let me break this down so it can forever be broke:

ACA did not raise the cost of your insurance premium, your insurance company did.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), more commonly known as Obamacare, made for several provisions:

-Health insurance for those who were previously uninsured or under insured, through the state market places or exchanges (and development of those exchanges) and the expansion of Medicaid in states that chose to do so;

-Children remaining on their parents insurance until age 26;

-Elimination of pre-existing conditions (includes pregnancy, cancer, diabetes, HIV, etc) clauses;

-Prevention-centered care that includes $0 co-pay for well-care visits and annual screenings, and $0 copay for maintenance drugs and birth control. Did your doctor’s office start talking about or advertising ‘patient-centered care’? Thank ACA.

These and the many other provisions of the Care Act cost money. Covering more sick people costs money. So to offset that, the bill did require everyone to have insurance or pay a fine. More younger, healthier people chose to pay the fine than those who chose to get insurance. Healthy people generally would have offset the cost of paying for those older, sicker patients who chose to get insurance. Because that did not happen, insurance companies shifted the cost to the consumer, us, by raising premium costs rather than taking a hit to their billions of dollars profits. It’s the same thing as when our telephone company, AT&T, charges us, the consumer, that FCC charge as opposed to paying it themselves. Now, some of us are fortunate enough to have employers who take on the bulk of the cost for premiums. For example, I pay less than $200/month for my family’s medical insurance. Of course, that is not the case for everyone and the self-employed have that burden to bear alone. People who get their medical insurance through the state exchanges receive federal offsets for their premiums.

So, to sum up, ACA did not raise your medical insurance premium, your insurance company did. How could this have happened? Well, while the public was complaining on social media and around the dinner table about “Obamacare”, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies had their lobbyist speaking to the members of Congress to get their clients’ needs known. Did you call your State and Federal Senators or Representatives to let them know what you wanted to see happen with the ACA before it was passed or did you just go by what you heard and bitch and moan about it to your friends?

This time around, let’s not wait until after the bill is passed to voice our complaints and concerns. This time, let us all be vigilant and email, fax, tweet, DM, and call our representatives and let them know what is important to us. You can believe the insurance and pharmaceutical companies already are.

Of course, this is all a simplification of a very complicated issue so by all means, stay informed. For more reading on ACA, visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts-and-features/key-features-of-aca/.