#Obamacare Insurance

[mysharona1987]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Berkeley Lovelace Jr. at NBC News:

Millions of Americans risk losing subsidies next year that help them pay for health insurance following President-elect Donald Trump’s election win and Republicans’ victory in the Senate. The subsidies — which expire at the end of 2025 — came out of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, and increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The American Rescue Plan also broadened the number of people eligible for subsidies, extending them to many in the middle class.  

The looming expiration date means that the incoming Congress and next president will need to decide whether to extend them — something Trump and Republicans have already signaled they don’t support, said Chris Meekins, a health policy research analyst at the investment firm Raymond James. “If Republicans end up winning the House, in addition to the Senate and White House, having a GOP sweep, I think the odds are less than 5% they get extended,” said Meekins, who was a senior HHS official in Trump’s first term. Even Democratic control of the House likely won’t save the subsidies, he added.  Several important House races have still yet to be decided. As of Thursday afternoon, House Republicans had won 209 seats, just nine short of the majority, according to an NBC News tracker.  In 2024, more than 20 million people got health insurance through the ACA, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Since the 2021 subsidies went into effect, enrollment in ACA plans with reduced payments doubled, particularly in Southern red states, said Cynthia Cox, the director of the program on the ACA at KFF, a nonpartisan health care policy research group.  The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, extended the subsidies through 2025. In 32 states where data is available, 15.5 million people receive the subsidies, according to KFF. If the subsidies aren’t extended, the Congressional Budget Office — a nonpartisan agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress — estimates that nearly 4 million people will lose their coverage in 2026 because they won’t be able to afford it.  Enrollment will continue to fall each year, with coverage reaching as low as 15.4 million people in 2030.  

[...] Cox said she expects Republicans to keep dismantling the ACA, similar to Trump’s first term, when they eliminated the tax penalty linked to the law’s individual mandate, which required people to have health insurance or pay a tax. The mandate is technically still in place, but the penalty was reduced to zero. “If Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency, then we might see a repeat of 2017,” she said.  Gostin said eliminating the ACA entirely will be a challenge, even if Republicans control all three chambers.

Millions of Americans could face health insurance coverage loss next year, as subsidies for Obamacare are set to expire.

See Also:

The Guardian: Incoming Trump presidency threatens millions of Americans’ healthcare plans

[thashining]

Flashback: Inside the Night McCain Helped Doom the Republican Health Care Bill | "McCain" | FRONTLINE

"I don't work for the Republican Party..... I work for the people of Arizona, including the 600,000+ Arizona Residents this bill would leave with no insurance..."

[bitchesgetriches]

Your Super Simple Guide to COBRA Health Insurance

[thoughtportal]

[ridenwithbiden]

TO PAY FOR TRUMPS TRILLIONS IN TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH.

"Oz will succeed Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the current administrator of CMS, to lead programs including Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older, and disabled people, and Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for lower-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for more than 140 million Americans.

Also in the CMS fold are the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) and the Health Insurance Marketplace, which was created by the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama in 2010.

Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are currently discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other government welfare programs to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multi-trillion-dollar 2017 tax cut."

Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US Senate. Donald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6 trillion dollar annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.

“I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS,” Oz posted on X on Tuesday. “I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr].”

In the announcement of Oz’s selection, Trump said that Oz would “make America healthy again” and described him as “an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades”.

Oz has been on US television screens for nearly 20 years, first appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004. In that time, he has talked to his audience about losing weight with fad diets and what it takes to have healthy poops and, toward the end of his run, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential remedy for Covid-19.

Here’s what to know about the New York University professor and surgeon turned television show host, and now Trump appointee.

Mehmet Oz, 64, is a Turkish American Ohio native best known for The Dr Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. His father was a surgeon in Turkey, and after Oz graduated high school in Delaware, he was admitted into Harvard. He also served in the Turkish military in order to maintain dual citizenship, the Associated Press reports.

Before entering US homes via daytime TV, he had more than 20 years of experience as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Presbyterian-Columbia medical center in New York. He was also a professor at Columbia University’s medical school.

His bona fides at the prestigious institutions earned him quick credibility with viewers, and his popularity garnered him nine Daytime Emmy awards for outstanding informative talkshow and host.

Though his show ended in 2022, Oz maintains a YouTube channel filled with old episodes of his shows where he interviews guests such as Penn Jillette about his weight loss and Robert F Kennedy Jr about his 2014 book about the presence of mercury in vaccines. He also has an Instagram account that boasts more than a million followers, where Oz shares photos of his family and sells products from iHerb, an online health and wellness brand for which he is global adviser.

Oz’s questionable medical advice and time in politics. Throughout his TV tenure, Oz dabbled in the hallmarks of weight loss culture like detoxes, cleanses and diets that promised rapid weight loss. He also faced a grilling by senators in 2014 over claims he made and alleged false advertising on supplements he promoted on his show. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Oz regurgitated misinformation that came from the fringes of the right and medical communities.

These comments continued when he threw his hat into the race to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate in 2022 against John Fetterman. At the time, the Guardian wrote:

“Oz was dogged by questions about his actual connection to the state during the campaign. Oz lived in New Jersey for decades before he moved to Pennsylvania in October 2020, into a home owned by his wife’s family. He announced his bid to be the state’s US senator just months later.”

Following Fetterman’s stroke, during which he said he “​​almost died”, the Oz campaign launched unsavory attacks against him, with one Oz aide, Rachel Tripp, claiming Fetterman might not have had a stroke if he “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life”.

Oz ultimately lost to Fetterman, who garnered 51% of the vote compared with Oz’s 46%."

[intelligentchristianlady]

Translation: there is no plan.

[adaginy]

As terrible as the US healthcare system still is, a flashback to how it used to be worse:

I have to fight against an instinct to *not* be honest in filling out a health history -- not just the sex and cannabis or whatever, but simple things like "I had asthma as a kid" or "I have a family member with a substance use disorder".

Firstly because if they're in your files, and then if you temporarily didn't have insurance -- because you lost your job, for example -- and you got new insurance, those are pre-existing now, and your insurance would say "okay well we aren't going to cover anything asthma related until you've been paying premiums for a while."

But also because of rescission. Where you'd find out you had cancer or something else the insurance company didn't want to pay for, and the insurance companies would comb through your files and go "oh, hey, this doctor said you mentioned in a visit that you had strep a lot as a kid, and you didn't put that on your forms when you signed up for insurance, so your sign-up was fraudulent and we'll no longer cover you." Didn't matter that it was unrelated. You could sign up for a policy again, but now your cancer is a pre-existing condition.

And so the part of my brain that grew up before Obamacare does not want to tell the doc i have a crackhead aunt, because what if i forgot to put that on my health insurance paperwork, and I get rescissioned over it when I need my insurance?

When ACA was being debated and whatnot, btw, they asked insurance companies if they would stop this practice and they said no! If they'd said yes, it would have hamstrung a major argument for why the ACA is needed, but they decided to bet that the ACA would fail without them promising to stop this extremely profitable practice.

Under the ACA, rescission is illegal unless it's intentional fraud. They can't hold this unrelated thing you forgot to mention against you.

[scottguy]

Article: House Speaker Mike Johnson criticizes Obamacare and promises 'massive reform' if Trump wins

House Speaker Mike Johnson criticizes Obamacare and promises 'massive reform' if Trump wins

Mike Johnson promises he will take away your healthcare.

How is that a good thing?

[loveerran]

Medical Bill Assistance - For Real

I think you will all like this one :)

https://dollarfor.org/

I think most of you are aware that more than half of all U.S. hospitals are nonprofits. Nonprofit hospitals must have charity care programs to keep their tax-exempt status. These programs, also called financial assistance, decrease medical bills for low and middle-income patients. The org linked above will qualify you and make it happen. A high percentage of you qualify and (shockingly) the medical providers aren’t advertising the program.

Don’t have the spoons to face this on your own? They will do this with and for you: https://dollarfor.org/debt-forgiveness/.

What you will need:

About 3 minutes

The name of the hospital, the amount billed, and the approximate date of your most recent bill

Your household's size and annual income

Don’t want someone from a nonprofit helping with your personal medical stuff? Want to do it on your own? They have a walk-through for that: https://dollarfor.org/resources/how-to-apply-for-charity-care/step-one-check-your-eligibility/

You do deserve this!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nadra Nittle and Shefali Luthra at The 19th:

President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday announced a plan that would eliminate out-of-pocket expenses for most birth control for a majority of Americans.  Officials called the proposed rule, which affects people with private health insurance, the most significant expansion of contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in over a decade. They estimate it could benefit 52 million women of reproductive age. “For the first time ever, women would be able to obtain over-the-counter contraception without a prescription at no additional cost, and health plans would have to cover even more prescribed contraceptives without cost sharing,” said Jennifer Klein, assistant to the president and director of the White House Gender Policy Council, in a call with reporters.  The proposed rule would alleviate a significant financial burden for millions of Americans. The 2010 health law already required private health plans to cover at least one form of birth control for beneficiaries without any out-of-pocket costs. Research shows that the benefit has contributed to higher use of contraception, lower health care expenditures by women, and may have helped lower rates of unintended pregnancy. 

But applying the contraception mandate to over-the-counter methods has been difficult.  If enacted, the proposed rule would require health plans cover forms of birth control such as condoms and emergency contraception – both typically bought without a prescription – as well as a new over-the-counter hormonal birth control pill. That pill, known as Opill, hit retail shelves earlier this year, and a six-month supply costs about $90.  Democrats have pushed for years to strengthen enforcement of the ACA’s existing birth control mandate, citing reports of poor enforcement and of women receiving surprise bills for contraceptives that should have been covered. A 2021 survey by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research, polling and journalism organization, found that 1 in 5 women with private insurance said they had paid something out of pocket for birth control.  Biden administration officials reiterated those concerns. 

[...] Some Republican state lawmakers have been clear about their intentions to restrict birth control as well as abortion. Conservatives in Congress have called for the defunding of Title X, a federal program offering family planning and related health care services. They have also blocked federal legislation to protect contraception access. Harris, in contrast, has maintained that “contraception is health care.” Since Roe was overturned in June 2022, Harris has discussed the repercussions of limiting women’s health care during more than 100 events, according to Kristine Lucius, deputy assistant to the president and domestic policy adviser to the vice president. 

Harris has also criticized Republican efforts to repeal the ACA, which covers nearly 50 million Americans. Among those protected by the law are more than 100 million people with preexisting medical conditions. The law has already allowed millions of women to save on contraception costs.  The proposed rule will likely have a 60-day comment period, meaning that it will be finalized in 2025, officials said during the call, making it uncertain if it would still take effect if former President Donald Trump is elected. Trump’s position on contraception hasn’t been clear. In May, he gave an interview in which he suggested he would consider certain restrictions, but he later said he would not impose any. Project 2025, which Trump has distanced himself from — even though its writers have ties to both him and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance — does support restricting some forms of contraception. 

The Biden Administration announced on Monday a plan that would eliminate out-of-pocket spending for most birth control items by not requiring a prescription for birth control. This would be a significant expansion of contraception coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: White House Proposes That Health Insurance Fully Cover Over-The-Counter Birth Control

[thashining]

Affordable Obamacare

[bitchesgetriches]

Your Super Simple Guide to COBRA Health Insurance

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

[tomorrowusa]

Yesterday (March 23rd) was the 14th anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. It enabled tens of millions of Americans to get previously unobtainable medical insurance – especially those with pre-existing conditions.

Republicans derisively dubbed the ACA "Obamacare" in order to disparage it. But rather than making the law look bad, their nickname gave Barack Obama permanent credit for something enormously popular. As then Vice President Joe Biden told President Obama at the 2010 signing, "This is a big fucking deal!" – and it still is.

Republicans have tried countless times to repeal Obamacare. Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on killing it and and replacing it with something "better". Of course he had no other healthcare plan to replace it with.

Now Trump is running again and still wants to abolish Obamacare. If you have been helped by Obamacare or know someone who has, let people know that keeping the orange pus ball with bad hair out of the White House is the best way to ensure your health for years to come.

Fact Sheet: Celebrating the Affordable Care Act

[savvyebtqueen]

Please join me THIS SUNDAY 1/22/23 @ 3pm PST, 4PM CST, 6pm EST for a Healthcare ACA "Obamacare" Live Stream. Learn how to apply, understand, how the program works and if you might qualify. Do you need Healthcare? Join me and ask your questions!