So, What Happens to Everyone Who Loses Their Insurance & Can't Buy It Anymore?

What is going to happen to us if we can’t get health insurance? I really don’t know how I will pay for insulin without insurance.

I’m seriously scared about that. Terrified.

I have family outside of the US where they have universal healthcare. They already offered my husband and I room and board.

Won’t happen— and if it did (which it won’t) prices of meds would just have to drop to reasonable levels, or their manufacturers would go out of business-- and we all know that’s not going to happen

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I’m terrified. I’m losing my health insurance once my divorce is finalized (any day now). Fortunately, my Type 1 daughter will continue to be covered by her father’s Federal BCBS…

It would be political suicide to undermine the preexisting conditions coverage that came with Obamacare even if the entire rest of the plan is scrapped… it will never happen. I am 100% positive of it. I’m actually optimistic about the possibility of it being replaced with something that actually provides necessary coverage to those who need it without driving the costs of those needs through the roof. I’d like to see something that actually benefits consumers instead of insurance conglomerates.

@Sam19, I wish I shared your confidence. I agree scrapping the preexisting conditions coverage, the under age 26-ers staying on a parent’s plan rules and the no lifetime maximum rules would be hugely unpopular and political suicide. The trouble is that it’s much easier to tear things down than it is to build them back up. So I can imagine a scenario where the Republican-majority House and Senate manage to pass a bill repealing Obamacare – but then can’t pass another bill to put those other provisions in place.

@rgcainmd, are you a doctor who has no health insurance? How is it possible that your employer does not provide that??? What an insane world we live in.

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Because she is self employed… and therefore part of the tiny minority of Americans who might ever actually have to get insurance from an exchange… which is kind of a moot point anyway because the ‘exchanges’ have pretty much failed or are failing in most states and have become forced monopolies with zero cost control mechanisms. the vast majority of us have employer based coverage that really doesn’t have anything to do with Obamacare-- though Obamacare care still has set the prices on an unprecedented and unsustainable trajectory. I’m 100% non partisan and an independent voter-- those are just the facts as I see them.

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I am self-employed, and was always covered under my then-government employed husband. Didn’t make sense to purchase a health insurance plan when adding me to his plan cost relatively little…

No offense intended, Sam, and I’m not trying to start a political battle here, but Republican Senate and House members, not Obama, “set the prices on an unprecedented and unsustainable trajectory.” They made sure to “prove” that the ACA wouldn’t work.

I am so effing sick of bipartisan bickering…

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Well if that’s so, they certainly proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I just hope someone, anyone, has a plan that will actually work for the people who need it

@Sam19, This is not the case in California, at least from what I can gather from various list-serves, there are actually quite a lot of people on the exchanges. Of course, that could be a biased sample (people emailing around to find out which doctors are covered under the exchange plan). But this article puts the 2015 figure at 2 million people covered under the exchanges. 2 million people may not seem like a huge percentage of California’s population, but it’s certainly not “a tiny minority”

Your link says a total of 2 million had ever enrolled in California with 1.3 million still receiving exchange plan coverage… I think californias population is around 40m? So that’s about 3%… and it’s just my hunch but I bet ca is probably the poster-boy for successful implementation. Now each of those 3% are important and absolutely need coverage. But I think we can find better ways to ensure they’re taken care of without upending the entire system and driving costs through the roof nationwide for everyone, including many millions of people who absolutely can’t afford that. Just google health insurance premium rates… don’t have to be a partisan to see that the trajectory is unsustainable.

Hmm… interestingly, California is the “poster boy” for successful implementation because the state anticipated passage of the ACA, got a jump on it, and implemented the exchanges enthusiastically, thoughtfully and in good faith. Large population may have helped as well.

Anyways, it’s just interesting to me that so many of the places where the exchanges and ACA are failing are places which aggressively aimed to have them fail to make a point.

As an aside, I live in San Francisco, land of some of the more loony-tunes lefty politics (do NOT get me started on all the insane propositions I have to vote for, with their Russian-nesting doll like architecture and combination of hippie-dippy and reactionary squashed up against each other). This city is incredibly dysfunctional in soooo many ways.

But overall, I have to say all the “socialist” health care stuff works pretty well here. When my son was born, I got 6 weeks of 55% paid maternity leave and 6 weeks of partial pay disability, twice what my employer offered. My husband was also able to take off 12 paid weeks when my son was born. Amazing!
I get insurance through my employer that I don’t pay anything for because the city mandates all full-time workers must get substantive insurance. As far as I can tell, these systems work pretty well.

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[quote=“Sam19, post:5, topic:57237, full:true”]
It would be political suicide to undermine the preexisting conditions coverage that came with Obamacare even if the entire rest of the plan is scrapped… it will never happen. I am 100% positive of it.[/quote]
^This.

Every proposal and all talk from republicans since the ACA was passed in 2010 has included the pre-existing conditions ban for any replacement.

[quote=“Tia_G, post:6, topic:57237, full:true”]The trouble is that it’s much easier to tear things down than it is to build them back up. So I can imagine a scenario where the Republican-majority House and Senate manage to pass a bill repealing Obamacare – but then can’t pass another bill to put those other provisions in place. [/quote]That’s a very reasonable concern.

The leadership is on record that it will be one bill – a replacement bill – not repeal first, then craft a replacement.

Anyway, again it would be political suicide to get a repeal bill going without something ready to replace it with right away. It’s not like the country wouldn’t notice, and I hardly think the press will be carry water for the pubbies on this (or any other for that matter) issue.

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[quote=“Tia_G, post:13, topic:57237, full:true”]
But overall, I have to say all the “socialist” health care stuff works pretty well here. When my son was born, I got 6 weeks of 55% paid maternity leave and 6 weeks of partial pay disability, twice what my employer offered. My husband was also able to take off 12 paid weeks when my son was born. Amazing!
I get insurance through my employer that I don’t pay anything for because the city mandates all full-time workers must get substantive insurance. As far as I can tell, these systems work pretty well.
[/quote]Socialist socioeconomic policies always work well when there is enough money to pay for it. Who doesn’t want free goods and services? How could people’s lives, well-being, and happiness be anything but improved when their needs and some wants are provided for them?

This must be kept in mind when looking at a city like San Francisco. It is an enormously wealthy city, with a massive tax base. For a variety of cultural and historical reasons, there’s a great deal of value in being located there as a business, so companies are willing to pay quite a premium – part of which is the cost of local public social policy – to be there. Imagine Wells Fargo or Dropbox moving their headquarters to Bakersfield… I have no doubt they’d save a lot of money, as would their employees. Yet, they don’t, for obvious reasons.

Now, let’s look at the sort of businesses that ARE in Bakersfield… Honestly, how capable, financially, do you think most of the (small) businesses are at providing these same sorts of benefits that you have?

They can’t. They simply can’t without going out of business.

And that’s the fundamental problem with socialism. There simply aren’t the resources to deliver on the promises for everyone.

The paid family leave and disability are a statewide policy. The health insurance is a San Francisco thing. I think it initially started it as an included 5 percent service fee on tabs at restaurants to provide insurance for waitstaff and then somehow expanded from there.

It’s also very chicken-and-egg. Salaries are higher here in part to compensate for high taxes – which provide for more social services. So it’s not clear to me that if, say, Bakersfield started implementing a system for providing health insurance and people decided it was a more desirable place to live because of this perk (plus cheaper cost of living), that they wouldn’t be willing to relocate.

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At this point the deductables are so high that I might as well only have catastrophe insurance. It’s out of hand and this under the so called Obama care. So it is hard for me to believe that it is going to get any worse.

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rgcainmd is correct. We need to fight the battle with our senators and representatives.I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of 6 months and therefore I have never been able to get an individual insurance policy.

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Unless one gets a job with a big corp or govt., the days of an affordable PPO type plan with decent deductibles and co pays have been over for a long time. Congress will have to play a big role in the replacement of the exchanges and subsidies and the Paul Ryan plan is already out there as a first pass at where they are headed. Maybe they’ll get aggressive with the drug companies and make insulin affordable? That would help.

Forbes had an article about it:

My own gut feel is self employed people and small businesses will in the long run end up in nationally available private plans (with tax credits hopefully covering part of the cost of the premium). Something like the association plans a lot of small businesses used to rely on, basically working like individuals buying group coverage.