When people criticize Obamacare, they typically just look at the PRICE of THEIR monthly premium, which I think if obviously myopic and incomplete.
About 15 million americans have health insurance that would not have it without obamacare. People want health insurance so when they get really sick and treatments are available that can save their lives (let's say for at least 3 - 5 years, I mean we all die eventually), that they can access those treatments. Lives are being saved, and in some cases dramatically improved if not saved. If you want to look at the impact of obamacare, look at the plusses as well as the costs. For those that are conservative and pro-life, what is the value of those saved lives?
Also driving obamacare cost is new drugs priced at exorbitant prices, like Harvoni for hepatitis C, recently $84,000 for the cure in the US, and $1,000 in Eqypt and $900 in India. Why does congress allow this absurd pricing, and put the vast majority of cost on the US, when clearly Gilead can make money at $900 for the cure in India; they are not taking the business at a loss. My theory is that the congress has been bought by the big pharma lobby, and the repub controlled house and senate want to keep the price high so Gilead will have the money to pay for their next election campaign, which is why the incumbents stay in office.
Check out the 10 most expensive drugs in the US, NOTE Cuprimine went up 400% in 2015 alone from $8,000 to $40,000, abuse of the patent system.
10 Most Popular Prescriptions - GoodRx
When abuse of the patent system is breaking the nation, sucking all the money out of individuals pocketbooks for insurance premiums, and out of the federal budget for medicare (which is prevented by the republican bill in 2003 for medicare part D, to negotiate drug prices for medicare), a legislative remedy is required. Yet none has been discussed, as though the medicare modernization act of is ok. Premiums only cover 13% of the cost of medicare part D, throwing $50 billion a year on our national deficit, yet nobody talks about it. It was not paid for in any way, i.e. other spending cuts or tax increases. The private medicare supplement plans in theory can negotiate drug prices for "their plan", but they have all done a poor job compared to the govt. bureaucrats in Canada, England, Egypt, and India, all of which pay substantially less for prescription drugs than we do in the US. If we fix this, medicare, medicaid, and obamacare costs would all come down significantly.
That does not begin to address the fraud and waste in the system. People are placed on hospice care and medicare is billed for items these people do not use. Hospice requests a fancy new wheelchair because medicare will pay for it, when the old wheelchair is the one that is still used. I have seen this in my family. Or oxygen equipment that was needed after pneumonia, but is no longer needed and you can't get the supplier to come pick it up because they say, "oh we'll be over but don't worry medicare is paying for it". Congress could improve this, but apparently they don't want to fix it. They could set up private medicare cost recovery companies you could call when you see abuse you cannot stop and they could suspend the provider or get a rebate from the provider, and keep 10% of whatever they recover. You'd see costs drop significantly. This is not rocket science.
