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The ACA will be a disaster, they said. Costs will skyrocket, they said.

holbritter said:
Do you realize how little you have to make to be eligible for subsidies? Again the middle class gets screwed. Can't afford the premiums but make too much to get help.
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About 77 percent of the customers on HealthCare.gov, which serves 39 states, will be able to find plans that cost them less than $100 per month after subsidies, according to Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

Subsidies are available to people whose household incomes are 100 to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $24,300 to $97,200 for a family of four.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/18/more-than-half-of-us-says-they-cant-afford-to-pay-over-100-per-month-for-health-insurance.html
 
Threegoofs said:
So I guess all this terrible law did was substantially reduce the costs of projected future expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Gosh. What a tragedy. [emoji849]


Of course, for those of us who followed and follow these things in the real world, and not just to generate political spin, we all understood that reduction of costs meant reduction in projected future costs. Because we aren’t stupid and uninformed.
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People claimed what they claimed about it (claims that you insisted they didn't make). And what they claimed is that it would lower costs. Your thread is specifically about what people claimed vs. the actual reality of it. Sorry if it doesn't all fit with what you'd prefer.
 
Harshaw said:
You JUST said to me:



So, apparently, according to you, "the opposition" was correct.
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Good try. Medical care costs have been spiraling out of control for quite some time now, since long before the ACA was even thought of.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Good try. Medical care costs have been spiraling out of control for quite some time now, since long before the ACA was even thought of.
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So? You said "the opposition" was "full of hype and exaggeration" for saying that costs are "soaring out of control," and in your very next post, you said "medical costs are soaring out of control."
 
Harshaw said:
People claimed what they claimed about it (claims that you insisted they didn't make). And what they claimed is that it would lower costs. Your thread is specifically about what people claimed vs. the actual reality of it. Sorry if it doesn't all fit with what you'd prefer.
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Like I said, for people who understand the issues, it makes sense.
 
Harshaw said:
So? You said "the opposition" was "full of hype and exaggeration" for saying that costs are "soaring out of control," and in your very next post, you said "medical costs are soaring out of control."
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You got me.

Costs were spiraling out of control, the opposition said that costs would spiral out of control, and they continued to do so. They still do.

Where the opposition was right was that costs would continue to soar. Where it was wrong was that the out of control costs were due to the ACA. Clearly, that is not the cause, as costs were out of control to start with.
 
Threegoofs said:
Like I said, for people who understand the issues, it makes sense.
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No, what you said is you're going to choose to believe that all these people in all these different venues really "meant" something other than what they actually said so that you can be right.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Where the opposition was right was that costs would continue to soar. Where it was wrong was that the out of control costs were due to the ACA. Clearly, that is not the cause, as costs were out of control to start with.
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Well, that's a much more defensible position, though I don't think it's near as clean-cut as you say.
 
Harshaw said:
Well, that's a much more defensible position, though I don't think it's near as clean-cut as you say.
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It's pretty clear cut. I can remember health insurance costs going up as much as 50% in one year long before anyone even heard of Barack Obama. What the ACA did accomplish was getting more people covered, but a lot of the cost was shifted to upper middle class people who bought individual plans.

The health care system in this country is still a mess, the ACA is still the law of the land, and nothing much is being done about it currently.
 
Harshaw said:
No, what you said is you're going to choose to believe that all these people in all these different venues really "meant" something other than what they actually said so that you can be right.
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The conversation around what the goals were was quite clear st the time.

You must have been to busy obsessing over some other imaginary problem.
 
Threegoofs said:
The conversation around what the goals were was quite clear st the time.

You must have been to busy obsessing over some other imaginary problem.
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Whatever you need to convince yourself that people didn't actually say what they very clearly did.
 
Threegoofs said:
But the data is in. And costs seem to be quite under control.

Thanks, Obama!

evonne-s-cow-121817-slide.png
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That's just playing games with the numbers. The ACA forced a whole lot of young healthy people to enroll in insurance programs. That particular demographic spends less on healthcare because they are healthier, so they bring down the cost per enrollee. The number that matters is how much spending per person changed - including ins. premiums (including what employers and the gov't pays).
 
faithful_servant said:
That's just playing games with the numbers. The ACA forced a whole lot of young healthy people to enroll in insurance programs. That particular demographic spends less on healthcare because they are healthier, so they bring down the cost per enrollee. The number that matters is how much spending per person changed - including ins. premiums (including what employers and the gov't pays).
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Well, Einstein...given the fact that millions more have been covered and are presumably using insurance, The per capital numbers would look even better.
 
Harshaw said:
People claimed what they claimed about it (claims that you insisted they didn't make). And what they claimed is that it would lower costs. Your thread is specifically about what people claimed vs. the actual reality of it. Sorry if it doesn't all fit with what you'd prefer.
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Lowering cost increases is the same thing as lowering costs. Both save money and make HC more affordable.
 
iguanaman said:
Both save money and make HC more affordable. So explain the difference to me.
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One is lessening the increase. The other is actually cutting.

It simply cannot be said any more plainly or simply than that, not even by Cookie Monster, so if you have any further confusion, you are on your own.
 
Threegoofs said:
But the data is in. And costs seem to be quite under control.

Thanks, Obama!

evonne-s-cow-121817-slide.png
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What happens to your chart when you remove the 10 billion dollar annual federal subsidy?

And, the struggling middle class who don't receive any subsidies at all...................... and face soaring health care costs?
 
iguanaman said:
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/18/more-than-half-of-us-says-they-cant-afford-to-pay-over-100-per-month-for-health-insurance.html
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I think that's a really relevant point. The talking point is that the ACA is bad for the middle class, but where it really can hurt is the upper middle class. The difference between the upper middle class and lower middle class is growing every day, so it makes sense to be specific. How it hurts the upper middle class is still very important and needs to be addressed, but the desire to lump everyone together is clearly a political strategy. The same can be said about the tax bill. It benefits the middle class long term in the sense that it helps the upper middle class.
 
RetiredUSN said:
What happens to your chart when you remove the 10 billion dollar annual federal subsidy?

And, the struggling middle class who don't receive any subsidies at all...................... and face soaring health care costs?
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Another guy who can’t read graphs.

They all seem to have one common trait...what could it be?
 
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