GOLIKEHELLMACHINE: if you weren’t paying for your own health insurance in the 2000’s, i just honestly don’t give a single damn what you think about the ACA or it’s shortcomings at the time it went into effect, and if you don’t know anyone on medicaid, i also don’t give a single damn what you think about it now.

if you weren’t paying for your own health insurance in the 2000’s, i just honestly don’t give a single damn what you think about the ACA or it’s shortcomings at the time it went into effect, and if you don’t know anyone on medicaid, i also don’t give a single damn what you think about it now.

the intersection of those circles in the venn — people who weren’t adults in the 00s and people who don’t know anyone on medicaid now — is much larger on bluesky than i would like.

I can ignore a lot of the fringey politics posting because there's so much wishcasting to it, it's not real discussion But the people who don't really understand what "pre-existing conditions" really meant make me see red every time. The ACA has saved so many lives, bought so many years for people

seriously. especially since now that most people have had covid at least once, that’s literally a preexisting condition. do you WANT to become uninsurable?

I think a lot of them know folks on Medicaid and don’t realize it

I also think a fair few of them qualify for Medicaid & don't realize it, because they're downwardly mobile & they never had access to the program

Not to change the subject, but I'd say the same about transgendered folks. If you think it didn't happen until recently, it's more likely that you interacted with someone in the past who'd transitioned and you didn't know it.

ACA conversations can be so fucking frustrating. Like yeah do I wish that Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman didn't make it worse? Of course. Am I glad that as a cancer survivor insurance companies can't just decide not to insure me? Also yes.

When I was on Medicaid (admittedly in NJ) it was in some ways superior to my current (public sector) insurance. That said if I got boneitis or something and had to go see a bunch of specialists I'm pretty sure I'd be doing better under this one.

my partner’s on OHP here (oregon’s medicaid) and it saved her life and got her through cancer last year at no cost to us, if i could buy into OHP i absolutely would

Every time this conversation comes up I think back to that one GOP guy who gave a speech about how we couldn’t let government do insurance because it would be unfair to the private sector, like, if they can’t compete seems like a them problem my guy.

That's the next goal in MN if we keep the trifecta - let everyone buy into our very good state plan.

I don’t understood why more states don’t do this!

No appetite in anywhere except where Dems control both houses and the governorship, and that's not many states! I think there's a very good conservative case to be made for letting people buy in - saves $$, fosters people striking out to start new businesses - but conservatives are uninterested.

Limiting health care access increases the pressure on workers to take/stay in jobs that underpay according to the price a free labor market would set. So basically every employer can be expected to lobby against good care.

Will you advance liberating columns into other states? Or do we have to eat lutefisk?

I feel like the last generation to eat that has largely passed on (my grandma, 1916-2005, loved the stuff) so you're probably safe there. We'll still export leaving the coffee pot on from dawn to dusk, however.

Joe Brandon declare "Medicaid for All, by any means necessary"

I remember hearty congratulations from my friends when my job paid for half of a not very good plan in like 2004.

Acne was a “preexisting condition”. 🤨

I'd be completely uninsurable

This is the craziest Freakonomics type story I've ever read, but entirely unsurprising when you consider how Obamacare actually works.

Analysis | Why the South has such low credit scoreswww.washingtonpost.com Why does the American South have worse credit scores than the rest of the country? Hint: It's not just race or income.

Here is a gift link if anyone needs it: Wapo “Analysis: Why the South has such low credit scores” wapo.st/3wZ53Kx

Analysis | Why the South has such low credit scoreswapo.st Why does the American South have worse credit scores than the rest of the country? Hint: It's not just race or income.

“Of the 100 counties w/ the highest share of adults struggling to pay their medical debt, 92 are in the South, and the other 8 are in neighboring Oklahoma & Missouri. “On the other side, 82 of the 100 counties w/ the least pervasive medical-debt problems are in the Midwest, w/ 45 in Minnesota alone

Thank you. I was surprised to be able to read it. Very sad about the medical debt of so many and the cause - lack of Medicaid Expansion!!! It comes down to insensitive government officials!! They like to pontificate but do nothing to help their constituents!!

📌

If you don't know what the words "lifetime limits" mean, I don't want to hear your opinions on how shitty the ACA is.

the ACA was the first time i could afford health insurance as an adult. it made a huge difference in my life at the time

People being able to leave a really shitty job (if they or a family member had any health issues) and start their own business was a good side effect of this, too.

I paid almost $200 a month for a useless plan with a $10,000 deductible because I didn’t want my parents to have to sell their house if I got hit by a car. I didn’t see a doctor for nearly 10 years. It was not good.

Also, small rural hospitals depend on insuring as many local residents as possible through ACA or Medicaid. Without it, they close their doors, and the nearest hospital would be 75 miles from where I live. Many retirees are able to settle here because of the care they provide.

Yep. My home state, SC, didn't expand medicaid, and as a result, lots of rural hospitals in the lower part of the state closed, and the one in home county go bought out by Prisma. My dad, a family practice doctor, told me all about it, and will never forgive Nikki Haley.

iT's a HeRiTaGe FoUnDaTiOn pLaN

Don’t know if I’ve said this before or not but I used to work customer service for a health insurer and my “IT HAS BEEN X DAYS SINCE I TALKED TO SOMEONE WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY BONED IF NOT FOR THE ACA” counter rarely went above 7. And my division of the company didn’t even deal with Medicaid

Better and fairer systems are possible and desirable but people wildly overestimate the ease with which we could transition to something like single-payer and wildly underestimate the downsides of having benefits for e.g. abortion or gender-affirming care be controlled by the government

What it ends up being is a funhouse-mirror version of Trumpism — Trump c 2016 believed that he could get some Super Smart Business Guys, give them two weeks, and they could come up with a better plan that would cover everyone, because he literally doesn’t know the first thing about any of this

Likewise, it is necessary and sufficient to people On Here to simply say “I believe healthcare is a Human Right” and anyone who asks about the details is just a neoliberal shill spreading FUD

It’s kind of a pity that healthcare is not more of a salient issue in 2024 because I would love to have a debate moderator ask Trump “in your own words, can you take 3 minutes and explain what health insurance is and how it works” and watch him flop around like a goldfish that jumped out of the bowl

(Not that I think that would make a difference but still, I deserve a little flop sweat, as a treat)

Honestly, a bunch of them are probably still on their parents' health insurance and don't even realize that's because of the ACA.

I was self-employed so remember getting insurance for my now-wife while she was still in grad school and thinking it was really dumb that pregnancy wasn't covered. like the heck.

I was slightly amused when I saw my plan covers both abortion treatments and whole-birth care. They get you either way!

in California reproductive coverage is all-or-nothing like that, thanks to a court decision in the 1980s

I have a (now adult) child with multiple chronic health conditions. She would be uninsured without the ACA, and we’d probably be bankrupt. It’s far from perfect, but so much better than what we had before.

A buddy of mine got a brain tumor in the early 1990s when we both would have been around 23. Two surgeries to remove it, along with ancillary chemo and radiation, meant he hit his lifetime max by age 25, meaning no more coverage ever. People have no idea how grim it was.

amen, brother

bsky.app/profile/mdaw...

pre-ACA, MrsAware was charged higher insurance premiums for having had a precancerous mole removed also her c section for LilAware cost >$5k out of pocket good times.

Even if you just changed jobs with health insurance, you have benefited from the ACA. Why must we always undermine every accomplishment, she asked rhetorically.

The ACA saved my life.

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