how much are you paying for health insurance (not employer sponsored) per year?
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Anonymous
| If you're a family of 4 in Northern Virginia (2 middle age adults/2 preteens) - how much are you paying for health insurance if you're self-employed / not employer sponsored? What are your deductibles & copays? |
Anonymous
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Oh lord, in for the sticker shock answers.
Health insurance has become such a scam in the last 15-20 years. |
Anonymous
| You’d almost think the Affordable Care Act wasn’t affordable. |
Anonymous
You'd almost think the Republicans have been dismantling the Affordable Care Act piece by piece since the day it was passed. |
Anonymous
Wasn't meant to be. It was a payback for big corporate insurance companies for their lobbying efforts. Was designed to drive up prices. The only solution is to deregulate insurance scam and allow more competition and a free market. Also support more "cash-only" doctors and clinics, who are required to post prices for everything online and at their business locations so patients know in advance what everything costs, with no hidden fees. |
Anonymous
Yes, my neurologist was cash-only and just retired. So sad because I’ve been seeing neurologists for 40 years and he was far and away the best. He actually listened to me, it was amazing. |
Anonymous
The ACA has become a de facto high risk pool because the health insurance mandate was gotten rid of. It’s really too bad. |
Anonymous
"nooo we don't want to insure people who aren't perfectly healthy!" Big Insurance chimes in. 
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Anonymous
That tracks. When the customer is the one paying their salary, they listen and give better health care. When the insurance buddies of doctors are paying them regardless of their level of care, they ignore the patients and do what big insurance/pharma tell them. |
Anonymous
We had that for years. The only solution is a national health service. |
Anonymous
$28,000 + $10,000 deductible= $38,000 out of pocket per year. 100% coverage once that is met |
Anonymous
But that still wouldn’t solve the problem. First of all, even if doctors and clinics were somehow transparent about pricing, that still leaves hospitals (the source of crippling debt) opaque. They can charge as much as they want because it’s literally life and death. Secondly, even if you completely abolished the ACA (which I don’t think you should do), prices would remain artificially inflated because we would still be subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid patients. According to market forces, companies will charge the highest prices people will pay. Less customers at astronomical prices is more profitable than more customers at reasonable prices, so that’s what we’ve got. Personally, I think we need universal coverage, transparent pricing, AND heavy regulation of the industry. Break up the monopolies and shut down private equity. Private companies should be able to make a REASONABLE profit, but this price gouging is inexcusable. There is no reason American drug companies should charge Americans more for medicine. I realize research is expensive, but when it is funded by the government, there should be some sort of financial relief, maybe a reduced patent period. The fact is that neither the Republican approach (the government should get out of the way of industry and let it do whatever it wants) nor the Democratic approach (the government should pay industry whatever it wants) is a workable solution. Ultimately, the only winner in either scheme is private industry, who has no doubt spent millions, if not billions, of our money to lobby both sides for that outcome. |
Anonymous
If it can’t be sustained without massive government subsidies (borrowing from the future) then it’s not affordable and should be dismantled. |
Anonymous
How is that even possible to pay tgat? What is your HHI? |
Anonymous
BWAHAHHAHAAHHAAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHA Oh wait, you are actually serious with that comment? Allow everyone to laugh harder now! 
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